Six Years of Sheepskins: How We’ve Refined Our Craft and Rescued Over 6,000 Hides
We’ve officially entered our sixth year in business! Since we began keeping careful records, we’ve documented 6,042 sheepskins rescued from the waste stream of animal agriculture — 5,509 hides tanned for farmers across the country, plus over 500 salvaged from local butchers. We’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come.
When we started, we believed we could brain-tan sheepskins for people like us — small farmers who wanted heirloom-quality textiles as tributes to their flocks. We bought a special brain blender, built a smokehouse, and collected buckets of brains from a local butcher. We dove right in… and quickly learned just how naïve we were! Brain tanning a single hide requires an enormous amount of time and physical labor.
So, we pivoted. We began experimenting with alum tanning, thinking it might scale better to meet the growing demand for our services. We used that method for about a year. It worked — but not perfectly. The process was finicky, and the results weren’t as consistent as we wanted.
About two and a half years ago, we transitioned to vegetable tanning — or as we call it, bark tanning. From the start, this method produced more consistent hides, though it still took plenty of hands-on care to achieve the soft, supple finish we’re known for today.
In January, we traveled to the UK to visit tanneries that have been using a bark tanning method refined over 30 years to achieve exceptional consistency. We’ve been integrating what we learned ever since — and we’re thrilled with the results.
If you’ve been with us since the beginning, thank you. We hope you’ve had the chance to experience our work firsthand. We’ve always poured our hearts into this craft, and while we’ll never stop learning or improving, we can now confidently say: we have a truly outstanding product to offer.
Thank you for following our journey. We are here because of, and for, you.
-Team Driftless
One upgrade we made is in our drying room. We now use expanded metal to stretch wet hides for a more consistent suede finish.
