.02
greenfleece fiber
Stephen Hoyt grew up on the family homestead in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. The farm was founded in 1819, but like many dairy farms in the Northeast, was no longer self-sustaining by the time Steve was five. After graduating from college with an engineering degree and serving in the Peace Corps, he returned home to realize that the farm needed an economic reason to survive. “We had a big barn and I had an aptitude for working on equipment so I started looking for a business to fill the barn.”
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 of 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. Greenfleece Fiber can produce unusually wide single wool batt rolls (up to almost 10 feet wide), which are perfect for king size mattresses and large quilts.
wholesale customers
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.