Our Story

My name is Megan Landes-Murphy and I'm a first generation sheep producer raising Shropshires in south central Nebraska. My husband, Tom, and I have been fortunate to live in and experience a few different sheep production environments around the U.S., from Wisconsin to Montana, before settling down here in Nebraska and finally raising a few sheep of our own. While looking for something to do with our wool, I saw a problem with the market for second-rate wool. Most sheep producers in the Midwest don't have the breed types and/or production environments that favor high-quality fiber for use in clothing. Like us, most of the surrounding sheep producers get most of their revenue from lamb sales, not wool. Nevertheless, these sheep still need to be shorn every year, but their wool is often of so little value that whatever price they can sell it for doesn't even cover the cost of shearing (the sheep's annual haircut). With few markets for their wool, many sheep producers reluctantly resort to burying or burning it just to get rid of it because they see that as their only option. This is disheartening because wool has remarkable properties, with applications beyond clothing, that took humanity thousands of years of selection to achieve and takes the sheep all year to grow. I just knew there had to be another way.

After naturally going down a Google rabbit hole, I ran across a research article by the University of Vermont that compared wool pellets to a traditional organic fertilizer in plots of tomatoes and spinach. They found that vegetable yields, vegetable quality and soil quality were similar between the two treatments. This suggests that wool pellets are a viable alternative to other fertilizers on the market. I found this so exciting! Not only would this create an outlet for underutilized sheep wool, but it would be beneficial to the soil health and help people grow their own nutrient-dense food in their backyard! I jumped head first into producing wool pellets and I haven't looked back ❤

In addition to using wool from my own flock, I've partnered with a sheep shearing crew right down the road from me, so all of the wool I use comes from within a 200-mile radius of our ranch. Utilizing local wool reduces our carbon footprint due to transportation and keeps money in the rural economies. 

Thank you for finding your way here, I can't wait to show you the magic of wool!