Chocolate is a purebred coloured Ryeland ewe with a relaxed attitude to life, she doesn't hurry anywhere - unless there's food on offer! Chocolate's always the first into the feed bucket and the last to leave. She has a deep voice, which she uses to tell us when it's dinner time, and has lead to her nickname of 'Louis' after Louis Armstrong the jazz musician. She had a single lamb in February, who we named Louis after his mother. Louis was a very big baby and grew faster than all the other lambs, probably on account of his mother's excellent diet!

Chocolate grows a short-stapled downland type fleece with plenty of crimp. Her fleece is a fairly dark colour, brown at the tips and black/grey marled underneath, which when processed has evened out to a lovely dark heathered brown/grey shade. Her fleece isn't the softest, but it should make fine sturdy socks, mittens, hats or other outerwear garments.

Chocolate was shorn in early May and her fleece sent to a small commercial mill for preparation into roving for handspinning. Our flock's fleeces were all prepared individually, so unlike many commercial tops available to handspinners, this roving maintains the character of the single sheep who grew the wool. The preparation is in true roving form, so is presented as a thin continuous strip of carded fibre. It contains a little spinning oil and some lanolin remains, making it very easy to draft and perfect for longdraw style spinning. It has been scoured gently without carbonizing agents, so you may find the occasional piece of hay or seed, this is however easy to pick out during spinning. Chocolate roving is available in very limited quantity (a sheep can only grow one fleece a year!).