Jennifer Osborn, a local farmer, believes Canada, and really, the world, has a wool problem. "Particularly in Ontario, most of our wool actually is burned, dumped or landfilled, which is really a shame. Farmers don't get a very good price for it.
The international market doesn't pay anything for it. And wool is less than one per cent of the textile industry globally," said the Mount Forest area farmer. As a regenerative sheep farmer at All Sorts Acres, Osborn started turning that excess wool from her own farm into wool pellets and spreading them on her garden and pasture.
Wool naturally holds water extremely well and has other attributes that are good for the growing. "It has more nitrogen content than any manure out there, including cow, goat, sheep, chicken and also mushroom compost. So, it's a really interesting material.
We are kind of looking at it as a resource, instead of just to be used for clothing like hats, scarves, mitts and things like that. It's actually a really valuable resource," said Osborn. Jennifer Osborn with her sheep near Mount Forest, Ont.
on Sept. 16, 2024. (Scott Miller/CTV News London) Anecdotally, wool and wool pellets have helped portions of Osborn's pasture over the past couple of years.
So, this spring, she partnered with Grey County Ag Services' Experimental Acres program for monthly soil testing to see how different levels of application of wool pellets impact the soil on small test plots. "We need to learn to find out how we can use this incr.