Wool Classer

I'm Trish Moki Ludlow. I'm an in-shed North Island wool classer. My job is to class the micron, which is the fineness of the wool, where the lower the micron the finer the wool. I also class for colour, which we see as a fault, so we remove any colour to keep the line nice and even. So length and colour are the two biggest things I look for as a wool classer. We want to prepare consistent lines. If you were to come into my wool shed you would see a display of consistent lines. You would see an even prepared line length, and you would see two or three of those. And when you look at the wool bin itself with the fleeces in you'll see that it looks all the same. You'd move along down my wool lines and you would see I've removed colour to keep that money line even. So you're ticking off the off types to keep that money line even for the farmer.

I've had 25 years as an all-breeds wool handler in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom, so I understand the job itself. So I've gone from a wool handler, and I've stepped up, and I've done a 2 year course and now I'm a classer and I enjoy it. I can't thing of anything else better to do.
An important focus as a wool classer is to have good communication with your whole team. You need this because you're preparing wool for commercial sale. You're trying to make good returns for the farmer. You're putting out a thousand sheep a day. You want consistently prepared, even wool lines. So I need to have good communication with everyone. My wool presser – he's the one that puts the wool in the packs behind me. He is just the glue to the team. The wool handling team are there to prepare all the wool. It's a very physical job, and as long as you can communicate with them and respect them because they contribute immensely to the end product and to the wool bales.

It's so satisfying at the end of the day for everyone. You know you've done a good job and when I check off my last bale in the documentation book – the wool bale log – I'm just relieved and satisfied we've done a great job. You know, you get paid to do what you love. I couldn't want more than that. I love the team environment and the team spirit. I like to think I get up and I work with my family. You just thrive on getting out there.