New horizons

Graeme Bethune reflects on how the fleece of one special sheep, Boss Ewe, changed his future and that of his farm

- Graeme Bethune

IN MY article in Issue 175, I mourned the loss of my sheep friend and flock leader, Boss Ewe. The pain of loss is turning into a remembrance of the pleasure she gave me through her life, and the major role she played in the start and development of the yarn from my farm business. Caithness Yarns' bread and butter is a focus on batches of undyed, unbleached, naturally coloured yarns, of different feel and for different purposes and this comes directly as a result of Boss Ewe's yarn, and how the public received it and delighted in it.

Caithness Yarns was conceived one hot summer day about seven years ago, while the sheepies were getting sheared. Boss Ewe had just had her haircut, and my friend who was rolling and packing, shouted across to me querying what to do with her fleece. You see, the Boss had a coloured fleece, an amazingly thick, long fleece of black and tan; awesome, but the Wool Board just don't want to buy coloured wool. So I asked that the Boss fleece, and the fleece of my half-dozen brown Castlemilk Moorits, be put aside. I fumed about the injustice of wool policy and prices. I spent the next while raging quietly about the effect this had on the value of coloured sheeps.

Then I had a genuine lightbulb moment! I resolved to turn a negative into a positive: I would get Boss Ewe's wool, and the brown Castlemilk Moorit fleeces, and make something of them. That was the moment Caithness Yarns was conceived. Little did I know how big a part of my life it would become (it's essentially a full-time job to go with my other full-time job of being a farmer). And how what I would learn from the Boss Ewe, and from you, my customers, would change how I farm forever.