Joan Snyder provided the spark. She is founder and managing partner of Frog Hollow, Inc., where she now focuses on “financial intermediation in envirotech and agritech.” Having established the first U.S. integrated farm and commercial creamery for sheep’s milk and dairy products on her farm nearby, Joan saw firsthand the challenges facing small sheep farmers who needed to shear their flocks once or twice a year but could not find a market for their wool.
In 2007, Steve and Joan purchased equipment from a mill in the lower Hudson Valley, which once made the felt hammerheads for Steinway pianos. Steve redesigned the equipment to meet his needs. Though he began by scouring his own wool, Steve discovered it was uneconomical in smaller quantities and found a supplier who would clean the wool without the use of chemicals: “Originally, Bollman Industries (maker of Bollman hats) agreed to process our wool as a special order, but now they process most, or all, of their wool using only biodegradable soaps.”
“By purchasing products made with Cozy Up Wool Batting you can help the environment by providing a market for hard-to-sell local fleeces.”
When the 500-900 lb. bales of washed fiber arrive, they are cleaned on a 1940s-era vacuum picker, which opens up the fibers and vacuums out the dust and loose particles.
The newly cleaned wool is blown through a duct to the carding machine. Here, the jumbled fibers are combed straight and more uniform. A thin web of wool fibers coming off the carding machines is slowly layered until a consistent thick batt of wool is formed. The batts are gradually rolled up and packaged for use in mattresses, quilts, pillows, or beds. White Lotus Home can produce unusually wide single wool batt rolls (up to almost 10 feet wide), which are perfect for king size mattresses and large quilts.
Cozy Up Wool Batting is made to order for wholesale customers. Minimum width 36 inches. Maximum width 110 inches. Minimum order size 600 lbs. Contact us for more details.
Today, White Lotus Home will continue to buy sheep’s wool from as many US farmers as possible, with a focus on those in the western New York area.
Cozy Up-branded batting is sold to CeCe’s Wool and others for pillows, comforters, and pet beds, and to regional mattress makers. White Lotus Home is committed to growing and supporting the market for locally raised, locally processed wool products for the home and craft market. We hope that a growing market will allow co-ops and wool pools to expand and provide better prices and efficiency to local sheep farms.
Wool batting keeps you cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold. How? Wool breathes. It draws humidity away from you in warm weather instead of trapping it against your body as synthetics can. As we know, in cold weather wool is an excellent insulator.
Wool batting has no chemical fire retardants. It doesn’t need them. Wool is composed of natural protein, and flame tests show it resists burning.
Wool batting provides excellent, even support for your body. Wool batting is combed (in the process called carding) to provide uniform support, and wool fibers resist flexing, folding, or crushing for many years.
Wool bedding lasts a very long time. When properly cared for, wool can last many decades and will not break down, unlike some synthetic fibers, which can break down and create dust.
Wool batting is a natural and renewable product. Wool comes from sheep that must be shorn regularly to stay healthy (otherwise it keeps growing longer like people's hair).
Wool batting is naturally biodegradable and recyclable. You can compost wool with an appropriate mix of other materials, or it can be recycled to make more wool batting.
Cozy Up wool batting is local. It comes from Northeastern farms that use best management practices such as Kyle Farm in Avon, NY who graze their sheep sustainably on Genesee Valley Conservancy lands. Cozy Up batting is manufactured here in the northeast as well.
Cozy Up Wool Batting is now powered by White Lotus Home, a processing facility that specializes in carding wool from northeastern sheep farms into. Batting is available in widths up to 110 inches. Fibers are scoured without harsh chemicals, using only biodegradable soaps and mechanical separation of chaff. If you are interested in bulk orders of wool batting or bulk carding services (min. 600 lbs.), please contact us.