The Wool Revolution: a Message for the Health Seeker

By Eliana Jantz 

Since 1982 I've been actively exploring, developing, manufacturing, and marketing natural bedding alternatives. 

In the mid-eighties, I stumbled upon raw wool and soon realized a quantum leap had just occurred for natural bedding. 

At that point, the wool industry was a small time operation in northern California that offered the service of washing and carding raw wool to a small rural, shepherding community of people who lived in the same area. 

A family would deliver their freshly-sheared wool fleeces to the wool warehouse and shortly thereafter would receive their own fleeces back in lovely, clean, and combed batts, ready to be used in comforters and pillows. 

The once very common practice of preparing wool as a wonderful natural resource had become barely a whisper of activity in the United States.

In Europe, the connection to wool as an important resource has always remained strong, but in America the industrial revolution caused a huge shift to synthetic materials. With an emphasis on synthetics, natural fiber producers faltered and shrunk, although a strong marketing campaign did manage to carve out a sizable share for down .

Wool, by far the most beneficial bedding fiber in existence, was all but forgotten. 

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When I started using wool for bedding, I quickly realized it solved every major problem we had encountered so far in developing healthy, natural sleep environments.

With wool, we had… 

1. No more mildew problems since wool does not mildew and quickly expels moisture. 
2. An effective temperature regulator because overheating does not occur with wool, and this makes it suitable for all seasons and climates, as well as for the often different needs for partner sleeping.
3. A natural substance that provided a resilient sleeping surface. Sleeping on wool is like being cuddled by your own bed. 
4. A sustainable, renewable and cruelty-free natural fiber.

I thought I had stumbled on the world's best kept secret!

I attended a local wool growers meeting to find out if there was some way we could collaborate. 

There were over two hundred woolgrowers in Sonoma County alone, and many more in neighboring counties. 

The sad part of the tale was that most woolgrowers had no idea where their wool was going after they sold it for a price so low that the U.S government, in an effort to compensate for past blunders in international marketing deals, offered the growers an incentive to keep this industry alive. 

But even with governmental incentives, the growers were no longer able to show any profit for their wool. This sorry state of affairs caused a very fast decline in wool, a domestic, natural resource that was once highly valued. 

Together with the wool growers and a select number of industry representatives, we developed a program where we would buy wool directly from the growers at a fair price and manage the wool processing ourselves, thus saving the cost of unnecessary middlemen. 

In so doing we also implemented quality standards to ensure sustainable farming practices, as well as cleaner, healthier wool. 

At that point, we felt as if a first step in saving this valuable resource had been taken. 

In our third year of the program, our wool needs grew to 70,000 pounds annually, half of the potential Sonoma County yield. 

The demand for wool continues to grow in direct relationship to the process of education and marketing. 

Now, in the late summer of 1999, Shepherd's Dream, a Sonoma County based business, is preparing to market to the whole world via the Internet. 

We currently manufacture and sell direct, our Wool Surround system (wool pad or mattress topper under you, comforter on top), sleep pillows, neck pillows, and chair pillows.

We can also provided slatted, solid wood frames for cleansing air flow, latex mattresses, and organic cotton sheets. 

We make it our business to share useful tips for healthy sleep, and we look forward to interacting with you. 

Eliana Jantz
Founder of Shepherd's Dream