Easter will soon be here, and one of the most common sights in livestock-raising farmlands here in the U.S. is that of the annual shearing of sheep. In fact, more than half of all American-made wool is shorn from April to June! Since wool plays such a large part in our lives, we feel it’s only fair to give this magnanimous material its due in today’s blog post. If you’re ready to learn more about wool and all it does for us, read on below!

1) Definitely NOT rookie numbers

How big of a deal IS wool, you ask? Very! Sheep are herded and shorn in every single state in the United States, talk about consistency! While Texas has the most sheep of any state (around 730,000), our home state of West Virginia has a very respectable 30,000 sheep to its name as well. All in all, the United States has just over five million sheep in any given year. That does sound like a lot, though how much wool does our country’s large sheep population translate to? Try 25 million pounds of wool produced annually just in the U.S. alone! We should recognize the humble individual sheep as well: each sheep produces roughly seven pounds of wool when shorn, which can be used to make up to ten miles of yarn!

2) A storied history

In many ways, wool made us what we are today! Called the “fiber of civilization”, wool as an industry began in Asia roughly 10,000 years ago, with wool-spinning (to make different wool textures) starting roughly 5,500 years ago. Clothing wasn’t the only reason why wool was valued so highly in antiquity: its water-absorbing properties made it an excellent tool to gather water in harsh, dry climates. Once people discovered that wool could be turned into felt, it became a very popular lining for the armor for soldiers, sandal padding, tack for pack animals, reusable bandages for the wounded, and even as a construction layer in tents and other portable living tools. Even at the national level, wool played a huge part in the lives of our ancestors. One of England’s main cash crops was wool, and it became the nation’s largest export in the Middle Ages with many other neighboring countries dependent on it. Spain also recognized the importance of this resource, and as a result they made it a capital crime to export certain kinds of sheep. They changed course in the mid-1700s, when Spanish royalty sent several hundred sheep to Germany; this proved a costly mistake, as Germany became a huge wool exporter within a few decades, which affected all their European trading partners. From the Medici family in Italy to the fledgling Australian colony, the introduction of sheep in many ways changed the course of history. Indeed, while we tend to only think of taxes on stamps and tea as the biggest causes of the American revolution, another large factor was the steep tax on wool meant to prevent American wool from reaching the English market. Wool’s resilience to wear, ease of availability, and impressive insultation helped to ensure that it continued to be popular down through the ages, and still represents a large portion of clothing, blankets, and other textile products to this day!

3) Woolingo

With such a large influence on history itself, it is no surprise that wool has also heavily influenced a number of turns of phrase in our language. Here are a few of the best uses of wool in English to work into your next conversation!

• Ever been “fleeced” at the blackjack table in Vegas? You may not have lost your coat of wool to the casino, but that didn’t stop this saying from taking root!

• Don’t let anyone “pull the wool over your eyes”, it’s always best to be thoughtful in your dealings so you aren’t taken advantage of!

• While a “spinster” is hardly a nice thing to call someone, it does have historical significance as meaning an unmarried woman who provided for herself by spinning wool.

• If something is “Dyed in the wool”, much like dyed wool itself, this means it is both permanent and genuine.

• Avoid a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, especially since you can’t afford the losses such a thing can bring, much like shepards could not withstand the losses of sheep in their flocks.

• We use “bellwether” to mean a predictor of future movements, and this stems from the term’s use to mean the lead sheep in a flock that would often guide the movements of the other sheep.

• While wool is indeed reusable, if it has been heavily-worn before its reuse, it can go by the civil war era term “shoddy”, which evolved to mean poor quality.

4) The Science of Wool

For something we have used for thousands of years, science isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we think of wool. However, there are a ton of interesting features the material possesses that are awesome science facts:

• Ever seen a sunburned sheep? Not likely, since wool provides natural UV protection. Pretty useful when you’re grazing outdoors all day!

• The structure of wool itself looks quite futuristic under a microscope: it’s actually composed of a long series of overlapping scales, which can tangle when exposed to heat and moisture. When this happens, it is called “felting”, which can be initiated on purpose to produce certain fabric qualities. Even with wool’s reaction to certain environmental conditions, it typically lasts much longer than fabrics made of cotton or silk.

• Stress tests, anyone? While cotton threads break after about 3,000 bends, wool fibers can be bent more than six times that before reaching their limits! Not bad for a fiber that is thinner than a single human hair!

• Wool is naturally anti-microbial, which prevents it from building up bacteria-caused musty smells that other fabrics sometimes suffer from.

• Originally, the overwhelming majority of sheep were black and white sheep were a genetic rarity. However, since white sheep had wool that lent itself well to being dyed, humans used artificial selection to breed more white sheep. As a result, black sheep are far more rare in modern times.

We hope you enjoyed our foray into the world of wool and why it is so important to humanity’s past, present, and future, particularly in the manufacture of clothes. While spring weather may not be the ideal time to throw on a thick wool coat, the wool that is shorn today will definitely be a great help when the leaves start to fall again. On behalf of customers and manufacturers everywhere, our most heartfelt thanks go out to sheep, sheepherders, and everyone else who helps keep this important material available to designers in the fashion industry. And a very happy Easter as well!