'I quit my job to live in a freezing field with 130 sheep - it changed my life' Every lambing season, Elizabeth Kneafsey, known as the Wild Wool Shepherdess, feels happiest camping out on the hillsides and sleeping among her flock to protect the newborn sheep from predators - no matter how chilly it gets.
“More and more people are starting to get the message and I get requests from all over the world for my handmade wool products – 80-90 percent of my sales come from the US and Canada where people fall in love with my sheep and ask for a ‘living’ wool rug, made with sheared wool, which is made without harming the animal in any way.”.
In her workshops – which are open to anyone - she teaches everything from how to tan a hide using traditional methods, how to make ‘moon water’ (place a bottle of water in moonlight overnight to give it energy), how to make medicine from plants, and even a ‘smudge stick’, a wad of various herbs burnt to cleanse a space of negative energy.
“If one of my flock dies, I skin and butcher it myself, using every last piece – every last sinew of meat and offal, the bones, the fleece, the brain to tan the hide, candles are made from the tallow.
She then worked as a contract shepherdess across various hill farms throughout the country, living nomadically in a caravan with her young son, a time that she says were the best years of her life.
