Vanessa Bell creates handknitted heirlooms from her own wool

There are other hurdles to overcome before ‘wool-cam’ becomes feasible, but Vanessa has already cleared the first one — getting Philip, 54, to stock fibre sheep again. Like many others, Philip got out of wool years ago to concentrate on more profitable fat lambs, cattle and cereal crops, but today you’ll find 1000 merinos grazing across Greendale, the couple’s 930-hectare property at Breadalbane, near Goulburn.

The flock is integral to 49-year-old Vanessa’s vision for her online business, Sarah Jane Bond, which offers handknitted baby blankets and garments. While her products are currently made using pure wool from Bendigo Woollen Mills, Vanessa is frustrated she can’t produce her own yarn, which would be non-mulesed and ethically produced. “I want to achieve complete traceability, which is what the consumer wants, too,” she explains. “At the moment you go to all the trouble of growing sensational wool only for it to be shipped offshore, heavily processed and then, to add insult to injury, they send you back someone else’s wool. We were all geared up to send our wool to Italy, which is about the only place that offers traceability, then COVID-19 hit, so we’ve had to hold off for the moment. We urgently need an end-to-end wool processing plant in Australia.”

Sarah Jane Bond launched in 2017, a few years after the birth of the couple’s youngest son, Charlie, now seven (Charlie has three step-siblings: Georgia, 23, Camilla, 20, and Digby, 17).

The business is named after Vanessa’s great-grandmother, who knitted the baby blanket Vanessa relied on to keep newborn Charlie snug and warm. An avid knitter herself, Vanessa says she was struck by not only the durability of this treasured family heirloom, but the lack of anything of comparable quality.

“I realised there weren’t any beautiful cot-size or pram-size baby blankets made out of pure wool, they are either wool mix or polyester,” she explains. “I also love merino sheep, so I put two and two together, placed an ad in the local Gunning newsletter and by lunchtime I basically had a knitting team.”

Eight talented women — including one almost in her nineties — now click the needles for the business.

“One of the most beautiful things about Sarah Jane Bond is that it empowers older women and recognises all their skills and experience,” Vanessa says. “I think it’s such a joy and a privilege to be learning from them.”

The patterns they use are steeped in tradition — a deliberate decision to pay homage to a disappearing craft. The more intricate designs can cost over $700 but when you account for the skill and time (sometimes months) involved to make them, plus the ability to hand it down through the generations, Vanessa says they offer good return on investment.

Sarah Jane Bond baby items are now found in homes across the country and as far afield as the French Alps. However, the business represents more than just a side hustle to the couple’s farming business, which includes Wirchilleba, an 8903-hectare cattle and organic wheat property at Gilgunnia, near Cobar, and a newly acquired 1618-hectare block, Moothumbill, near Nymagee.