Shearing day is a total faff.
I think most farmers would agree, particularly when, as our farm used to, you have the odd Dorset sheep kicking around.
One of ours was called Dolly. A genius name, I know.
It takes skill, time and, if you are not particularly handy with a pair of shears, as I am not, money, in the form of somebody else coming to do it for you.
At the end of all that, you are left with a product which can feel like a total faff to get rid of.
As a child, I genuinely thought this was the whole point of sheep. Sheep grew wool, wool made clothes and farmers sold the wool. Simple.
Which brings me, obviously, to Shaun the Sheep.
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It took 30 years to make Shaun the Sheep from wool
This week, I discovered that it has taken more than 30 years for Shaun to actually be made from wool.
In three decades of Shaun merchandise, played with by children across the country and beyond, it seems nobody had previously thought the obvious material to make a cuddly sheep from might be wool.
There is something ridiculous about one of Britain's most recognisable farm animals being sold to generations of children without even his cuddly likeness being made from the product he is famous for growing.
There is, however, more to the story than that.
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British Wool prices
It is true that British wool prices have been recovering. We have written some fairly punchy headlines at 草榴社区 Guardian recently about wool prices reaching their highest levels for a decade.
British Wool's average farmer payment for the 2025 clip was 68p per kilogram, up 70% from 40p/kg the year before.
That sounds encouraging until you look a little further back.
In 1985, the average producer price for British wool was 101.5p/kg.
Those aren't figures adjusted for inflation or converted into today's money. Those are the actual prices farmers were receiving at the time.
You could actually afford a 99p ice cream with a kilogram to spare back then.
It seems wool prices have somehow managed to remain impervious to 40 years of inflation.
Isn't the world supposed to be obsessed with sustainability?
And this is the bit I cannot quite get my head around.
I thought the world was obsessed with sustainability.
It is all about reducing plastic, protecting the environment and working with nature. Meanwhile, enormous quantities of the clothes we wear are made using synthetic fibres.
There is even a Microplastic Filters (Washing Machines) Bill currently before Parliament, specifically because synthetic clothes can release microfibres during washing, which can eventually find their way into rivers and seas.
Yet at the same time, British sheep are standing in fields growing a natural, renewable and biodegradable fibre which farmers can struggle to make pay.
Tell me that isn't slightly mad.
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