Fleeces and more fleeces of portuguese wool

A few locks from the Bordaleira Entre Douro e Minho sheep that live here in Serralves.

Isabel holding a small sample of the Churra Badana, one of the longwool breeds we have.

The fleece from the Churra Galega Mirandesa breed, that stuck out from all the other churras we got.

The samples from the fleeces from all our national wools, properly separated and identified.

We started by opening all the packages that had been arriving for the last weeks, to analyse and separate all the wools. From the Trás-os-Montes Churras to the Algarve Churra, from the several merinos, the Saloias and Bordaleiras, it was a real pleasure to get to see and touch all these wools for the first time.
The fleeces arrived in very different conditions of dirtiness and storage, of course. We can't forget that most of sheep breeds in Portugal aren't raised for fiber purposes, and so it is perfectly normal that the fleeces arrive incredibly dirty, with second cuts from a bad shearing or not stored properly. So, a large portion of the time was spent skirting the fleeces, because I had asked for more than one fleece for each breed, and we needed to restore them properly for later use.

We could see how different our Churras are from each other, the wool from the Saloia surprised us (none of us had seen or touched Saloia before) and I confirmed, once again, that the wool from the Bordaleira entre Douro e Minho is underestimated (Martin had already mentioned, after the shearing, that he found this wool very interesting).

At the end of the day, we gathered more that 15 bags containing the samples selected to be processed.
Part of the work will now proceed in the hands of Guida Fonseca and Isabel Cartaxo, in Viana do Alentejo, where they will be processing, using and analysing these wools for the very first time.

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[03.07.2015 / This post refers to the investigation and activities developed during the Saber Fazer em Serralves program]