Driftless Tannery’s mission is to reduce waste in animal agriculture by gathering sheepskin from the waste stream. We do this by offering tanning services to farmers across the country in order to preserve their sheepskin for personal use or sale. We also gather hides from meat processors in our area. At one point in time sheepskin were valuable to small and large butchers alike. Due to changes in environmental regulations in this country and trade difficulties with countries like China, the largest producer of chrome tanned sheepskin, there is no convenient market for sheep hides; therefore, small and mid-sized processors dispose of sheepskin into landfills. Because of scrapie concerns, sheepskin cannot comingle with the other animal waste that may move on to a rendering or composting facility. Those are the rules in Wisconsin at the time of writing this blog.
Larger sheep processors have come up with solutions for their waste, but that is an enterprise in and of itself. Small and mid-sized processors simply don’t have the resources, time or space to diversify in that way. Driftless captures as many of these wasted hides from our local meat processors as we can process and sell to consumers. If you purchase sheepskin products from us, you are supporting our efforts to reduce waste thereby supporting local farmers and butchers by reducing disposal costs. By purchasing sheepskin from the farmers we work with, you are not only directly supporting them, you are also supporting our mission.
Occasionally we will pick up unwanted hides that are less than perfect candidates for sheepskin or other hair on products. We turn those hides into bark tanned leather. We are currently using mimosa bark tannage, the same tannage we use for hair on sheepskin. There are many benefits to using mimosa as a leather tannin, most notably, mimosa provides a consistently soft and easy to dye leather. Leather workers often like to have different colors of leather to produce their products (black, brown, red, blue, etc). We do not offer dying services for leather, so it is best for us to offer leather in its crust stage. The crust stage is like a blank canvas for leather workers in which the leather is in its most natural state and has not been waxed or finished. This allows crafters the ability to dye and finish the leather to suit their needs. Leather you purchase from us will have a slight salmon colored hue. The coin purse in the photo above is a fresh piece of mimosa tanned leather that has just been coated in leather balm. The purse in the photo is a piece of leather that was treated in the same way but has been out in the world for a couple of years. You can see the beautiful patina that comes with age and environmental exposure. That is to say, if you purchase a piece of mimosa tanned leather from us, and you like the color of the purse in the photo, you will not have to dye the leather, nature will do the transformational work for you. If you prefer a different color, the leather is ready to be dyed. Driftless will continue to capture as many of these wasted hides from our local meat processors as we can process and sell to consumers. If you are a leather worker and would like to purchase more than one piece of leather (available here), please contact us today by email at driftlesstannery@gmail.com or by phone at 608-630-2960 for wholesale options.
Stay tuned to find out more about our leather products as we work to use different tannages on leather. We have a trial going right now using commercially available quebracho tannin (an agricultural species similar to mimosa) and a new local source we found using hickory husks, a waste product of the local nut oil industry.
Thanks, as always, for reading and supporting the work we do in our tiny tannery.