How to Skirt a Gotland Fleece

Fiber artists clamber to get their hands on the lustrous Gotland curls. Felters, doll makers, and hand spinners all enjoy digging their hands into a lovely curly fleece. As a shepherd, it is my job to know how to properly skirt a Gotland fleece. This is one of my most important tasks on the farm. Our customers will either get their hands on our wool in the form of yarn, washed  curls, or raw fleeces. These products represent our farm, our sheep, the Gotland breed, the health of our sheep, our farming & animal husbandry practices, and our vision. I want to put forth our best wool for our customers.  Through the skirting process I handle each fleece and remove undesirable bits and wool. I also evaluate the purpose for each fleece and for the wool that I pull away. Though our lamb fleeces tend to be the softer, as with most sheep breeds, there is so much value in even the wool from the oldest sheep. It is knowing the right purpose for the wool that is key. I encourage you to revisit a blog post I wrote a little over a year ago on how to skirt a Gotland fleece. In that post, I focused on skirting an adult fleece. I gave step by step instructions on what to look for, what to remove and why, and which wool to keep. I included a diagram that gave the anatomy of a raw fleece clearly showing which areas need to be skirted away. This information is invaluable to a fiber focused sheep farm.

As I have been going through my Gotland fleeces the past week, I wanted to share with you how I skirt my Gotland lamb fleeces. Our lamb fleeces tend to be super clean as they have been on pasture all summer. The summer rains keep their wool fresh and clean. Our lambs tend to have very little breech wool or variation in quality of wool from front to back. Almost every bit of their fiber is useful. The easiest way for me to tell you how to do this is to show you…..

A Happy Fleece Customer

Each shearing a I reserve a few of our Gotland fleeces for customers to purchase for their handspinning or fiber projects. I still have a couple fleeces to sell. Send me an email at info@grandviewfarmvt.com if you are interested in purchasing one.

P.C. in Virginia purchased two of our fleeces, Linnea’s and Kayla’s. Here is the message she sent to me after her box arrived in the mail: