Sara John
Gowerton, South Wales
Beef & sheep
BEEF, LAMB & WOOL, SOUTH WALES: Sara helps run her husband’s mixed family farm on Wales’ Gower peninsula, but her lifelong passion is sheep’s wool, which she hand-spins, dyes, weaves and sells at shows and craft markets.
The farm covers 270 acres (109 hectares), around half of them tenanted, and keeps beef cattle and sheep which are both reared on grass most of the year. The sheep are a wide range of breeds, from commercial ones sold mainly for breeding, to native breeds and crosses kept both for their delicious meat and their interesting coloured wool. These include Llanwenogs, Blue-Faced Leicesters and Coloured Mules. Her daughter also keeps 15 Black Welsh Mountains and the family enjoys showing them at local shows in the summer.
Sara’s husband and father-in-law work full-time on the farm. Sara helps with the sheep while also focusing on her wool business, raising two children and working four days a week as a personal assistant to disabled adults.
Sara is herself a farmer’s daughter, raised in Mid Wales. Her interest in wool dates back to her childhood when she would accompany her father to the farms where he was shearing. She also travelled with him when he worked part-time for the British Wool Board, collecting wool from farms and taking it to the depots. She also had her own flock of Torddu Badger sheep, which gave her valuable first-hand experience in sheep-rearing.
At 21 Sara knew she wanted to pursue her love of textiles so took a degree at Carmarthen School of Art, graduating with first-class honours. She then took a Masters by Research degree at UWTSD Swansea during which she explored the traceability of wool. She is keen to see people buying from small local businesses so that they know where the wool is from and can support their local farmers. Zero waste is also a key element of her practice, so all scrap yarn is turned into new products, from art pieces to home decorations.
Today Sara gives talks on wool and sells it raw to spinners, felters and gardeners. She hand-dyes it herself, from dyestuffs in the garden on the farm or from foraged plants or food waste such as onion skins. She hand-spins some of it into fancy yarns and sends the rest to three different small mills (one in Wales, two in England) who process it for her into quality yards suitable for knitting, crocheting and weaving. She also gives spinning demonstrations to community groups which she enjoys. “I love interacting with the public & sharing my knowledge,” she says.
You guessed it… wool and crafting! Sara also enjoys foraging, for dyestuffs and food, and growing her own vegetables at home. Writing poetry in both Welsh and English is a hobby too.
Talking Point
"I get really frustrated with people who say they support sheep farmers yet don't think of buying woollen items themselves,” says Sara. “If everyone in the UK bought just one pair of British woollen socks each year, then the entire year's supply of wool would be used. This would increase the value for the farmers, and that in turn should incentivise them to care for this underutilised fibre, rekindling farmer’s fibre knowledge. Fully traceable clothing is a win all round. Wool is the most sustainable fibre there is, yet it's often overlooked in favour of planet-harming synthetics which contain microplastics which are harmful to health and can take hundreds of years to biodegrade. Wool, by contrast, is a natural, safe and renewable resource that's fully biodegradable."
Declared interests
Member of Tenant Farmers Association