The WoW Flock Diaries: Bring on the Bah Bahs

It would be remiss of us not to introduce you to the ladies that make up our flock and let you know about their origin story - every flock has one! Our ladies come with quite a pedigree. 

Some of you may be familiar with a little place known as Harewood House; those who are fans of Emmerdale will know that it has been filmed on the Harewood Estate since the 1990s and those who enjoyed the Downton Abbey film will recognise it as the home of Princess Mary. The Estate is also home to a number of rare and conservation breeds, including a flock of Wensleydales.  See where we’re going here? Our ewes are from the Harewood Estate flock, so we really have to be on top of our game to make sure we live up to their standards. 

Harewood House and World of Wool are two very different places; one is a 4,000 acre estate and the other is a mill and our HQ, and as much as we love the botany bath and coffee machine, the WoW shop isn’t a place for a flock of sheep. So where do they live? Much like the characters in Downton Abbey our ladies have two residences; their winter grazing is in the Colne Valley (not far from our HQ) and their summer grazing is a bit more of a trek away near Bakewell.

The matriarch of our flock is Lappy, named after Lapiz Lazuli. She is always the first to the gate in the mornings and loves a good scratch. As a whole, we refer to the flock as the Bah Bahs, because when you greet them you get a chorus of ‘baahhs’ back! The rest of the ladies don’t currently have names, not because we’re not going to name them, but because nothing seems to fit their personalities yet. We should point out that large wool flocks probably don’t name each of their sheep, but you can guarantee that there will be some individuals that stand out and are referred to by either their tag number (‘Oh no, 182 has escaped again’) or their markings (‘Watch out for black nose, she’ll eat your sandwiches.’)