About Willow Vale Wool
Crafting Quality with Every Fibre
where quality meets craftsmanship.
Our History
We are Michael & Jenny Hedges, 3rd & 4th generation farmers working on our family farm in Yass, NSW.
“Willow Vale” has been in the Hedges Family directly since 1949 when Michaels Grandparents, Charlie & Myra Hedges purchased the original 630 acres from a relative and indirectly since 1912. Charlie & Myra purchased some Superfine Merino ewes to start their flock. When their son Max and wife Kathy took over the farm, they continued to grow the size of the flock, and they purchased land from a neighbour and grew “Willow Vale” to what it is today.
Michael & wife Jenny took over running “Willow Vale” in 2017, they have enhanced the original flock genetics by introducing new bloodlines and now have an outstanding flock that produces beautiful soft stylish good handling white wool perfect for the woollen products that are on offer. We also continue to breed our own 1st cross ewes using our Superfine Merino ewes crossed with Border Leicester Rams purchased from our neighbour who has a stud and breeds quality sheep, these ewes grow our beautiful 1st X Comeback wool.
Jenny also owns her family farm “Cranky Jacks” at Dunedoo that has been in the family since 1906 starting with her great grandparents Thomas & Sarah Ballard, then onto their son Frederick & wife Winifred then onto grandson Vincent & wife Louise then great granddaughter Jenny & husband Michael.
Our Wool
We are passionate about agriculture, sheep & wool and are dedicated to keeping our traditional superfine merino flock as true to style as we can. We are so proud of our sheep & wool! We love the look & feel of it.
Our wool is a beautiful, luxuriously soft, good handling, white, stylish wool grown on good bodied, healthy happy sheep here on our farm at Yass.
Our wool ranges from 14.5 to 17 Micron in the superfine merino and 23 to 25.5 micron in our 1st X Comeback wool. The sheep are carefully shorn by a dedicated professional shearing team who come to our farm annually and is classed by Jenny.
We pick out the best for our Willow Vale Wool products while our other wool goes to Auction. Our finer micron wool goes to Italian Woollen Mills for high end products while the rest goes to other parts of the world depending on demand for orders for where it ends up.
Our dream was to see our wool in end products to touch, see and share with you!
We had two main visions for our wool. We often thought it would make a magnificent baby blanket! We’ve always wanted to see what it would look like as a product instead of putting it in the bale as raw wool straight off the back of the sheep, sending it to auction and never seeing it again.
We dreamed of enjoying our hard work and dedication in improving our flock genetics and wool quality by being able to touch and hold a product made with our wool! One of the most important parts of our dream was that we wanted it to stay on Australian soil to be processed!
So, after a lot of research, many phone calls and emails it finally happened!! 100% Australian, 100% single source wool. We are so excited & proud to be able to share our beautiful fibre with you!
Turning Our Wool into Premium Products
We always knew that our Superfine Merino wool was great, but we took a chance on our 1st X Comeback wool from our 1st X cross ewes that we breed and the best was classed into lines suitable for our products. Our 1st X ewes are bred from our Superfine Merino ewes and Border Leicester rams, this gives their wool a bounce and lustre to it that is also soft.
We decided to add another breed to the mix – Cormo. What is a Cormo? A Cormo is a rare Australian breed developed in Tasmania in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s by crossing a Corriedale ram with Saxon Superfine Merino ewes. With selective breeding a Cormo was developed. We have a breeding program in place with our first drop of first cross Cormo’s being born in 2024. Over the next few years of selective breeding we will have a mob of purebred Cormo ewes that we believe will have wool with the softness of traditional Saxon Superfine Merino with the spinning qualities of the Corriedale.