Hairy Scary!

I was in the basement when with one hand I pulled back the heavy duty black bag and with the other hand reached in... to the hairy scary!

It was wool. 

Nothing to be afraid of. silly...

But it has been sitting in my basement, freshly sheared and unprocessed. It stunk. And it scared me.

What if bugs were in there? What if a rat or mouse had made a home...

What if those things ARE in there but I just didn't reach them yet when I scooped up the top pieces and put them in a box.

My house smells like a barn.

I have wool boiling on the stove.

(No, I'm not joking)

Of COURSE there is a story...

Once upon a time, there lived a young couple who went to a Sheep Shearing Festival with the husband's parents. There, they met many nice sheep farmers, looked at prices and chatted with sellers and even purchased a small sack of New Hampshire grown Alpaca wool. You see, this young wife had a joy for doing things the old fashioned way. She intended to find a wool supplier so that she could make and sell wool dryer balls.
Little did she know, a special blessing was waiting for her. An acquaintance found the young wife at a sheep herding show and said she would like to give her some fleece from her small flock. The young wife was astounded and asked why this woman wanted to simple give her wool- they hadn't met until this point! The young wife's in-laws told their friend about the small business their daughter-in-law had started and the mission behind it. And that was that. The woman wanted to support a business that supported something beyond itself. 
The young wife walked away humbled by this woman's generosity. She journeyed for weeks trying to find a local wool processor to clean up this giant bag of wool, but alas, she came up empty handed. So one night, after the young wife tucked her sweet babe into bed, kissed her husband as he went off for a bike ride, she plopped herself down in front of her computer and found Google. All the same things came up as before. A little saddened, but having energy and new hope after finally feeling well (she had been sick for days to finally learn that she had strep throat!) she ventured fourth in her journey. She looked up how to clean wool by hand, and save the lanolin, shrugged her shoulder and thought to herself "that looks easy."
And so the story continues. This young woman has never done this before and has no one to reference to but the internet. She is hopeful and being smart about it, has started off with a small test batch.
The lesson to the story is this, when you can't find somebody to do what you need to be done, in the means in which we want it to be done, do it yourself!

... And they lived happily ever after.