The sheep
One thing we do at Hyltorna Farm is breeding sheep. The Rya sheep are of the ancient Swedish landrace and belongs to the Nordic shorttailed sheep. They have a double-coated fleece with a long lustrous outer coat, and a shorter, softer inner coat. The fleece can grow very long, up to 30 to 40 centimetres a year. However, we shear the sheep twice a year after lambing in april/may, to keep the wool fibrer around 15-20 centimetres long.
In our breeding we have white, brown and black sheep with characteristic appearence and long lustrous wool. Since 2009 we also have Värmlandsfår an ancient kind of forest sheep with black, grey or brownish double-coated fleece.The wool of the Värmlandsfår can differ from down to finn or rya type.
The sheep graze pastures not fertilized by anything but the manure the sheep spread themselves and the plants can shed seeds for next years's grazing. In our meadows you can find both quaking grass and lesser butterfly orchid.
The lambs are borned in march to may and the upbringing of lamb is done the natural way where the lambs follows the ewes and graze grass and herbs, leave from trees and bushes and stay occupation during winter, eating the cortex from cut down Norway spruce and pine trees.
We get meat, wool and fleece from our sheep. The wool is sorted, scoured, carded and spun to yarn in the oldfashioned way with a spinning wheel. The yarn is used in the farms weaving studio or is sold in the web shop.
Most the fells are washable in tepid water (30 degrees C).