How North York Moors Tweed is Honouring Local Farmers
Honouring her family heritage and the farmers of the North York Moors, Emma Boocock recently launched North York Moors Tweed
For Emma, a full-time lecturer and farmer, wool was in her blood well before taking over Freebrough Farm six years ago. First bought by her great grandfather, the farm passed from father to son until Emma’s dad took over in the 1980s. After his unexpected passing six years ago, Emma (who was living in Leeds at the time) took the plunge and took over the family farm. ‘A day or two before my dad died, I’d said to him that I was going to be moving back,’ she explains. ‘I was always farming with my dad. I was always outside with him, always helping him with the sheep (and not so much when he had cows). I love this place and love everything about it – it was an easy decision.’
Running a working farm is tough at the best of times, and balancing that with the increasing financial demands of today, and a full-time job at university, Emma knew that, like so many other famers, she would have to adapt to survive. ‘You’re thrown into [it] not really knowing what you’re doing and I was trying to remember everything my dad had taught me,’ she explains. Introducing a glamping site on the farm seemed like an option, but something in Emma’s gut told her it wasn’t the right path: ‘I think it never really sat well. Yeah, it’s a great place, but is that something we even want?’
During this time, she attended a diversification event for famers in York and had a chance meeting with Lake District Tweed, who use local wool as part of their farm diversification to create heritage tweed celebrating the area. This, Emma says, sparked something in her. ‘I was really inspired by what they were doing and how they approached it. She [Maria Benjamin] gave me her contact details. I let it sit with me for a couple of weeks and I don’t know why but I called her – it snowballed from there.’
The more Emma considered it, the more the idea of creating a tweed honouring the farms and landscape of the North York Moors made sense. ‘My grandparents, great grandparents and my dad were all super passionate about Scottish Blackface sheep,’ she says. ‘Our summers consisted of going around agricultural shows and basically showing sheep.’ When going through family belongings, Emma even discovered an award her dad had won for his fleeces.
She also had firsthand experience of how far the value of wool has dropped in recent years. ‘Throughout the last four generations on this farm, people used to be able to pay their year’s tenancy rent with the money that they’d get from the fleeces,’ she explains. ‘Whereas now, you can’t even pay for the clipper from what you actually get.’ All this together gave Emma the idea of launching a local tweed, inspired by the landscape and made with wool from local farmers.
The project, which is currently underway and producing three collections of tweed (including throws), has been a labour of love. ‘The core value is supporting farming communities and the North York Moors. This year we’re only starting with three collections, but each one is gathered from those places,’ explains Emma. One of the aims is to pay farmers a fair price for their wool. ‘This year they’re getting £1 per kilogram, which doesn’t sound like much but actually the farmer at Rosedale has given nearly 350kg of wool – that’s £350. Last year we put in 250kg and only got £40, so you can see the difference in the money these farmers are going to be getting for that.
‘My vision is that we are going to be able to pay them more than that in future years. If it becomes a success, we will be able to pay them potentially upwards of £2 or £2.50 to £5 a kilogram if we really push it. Wool should be valued like that.’ The project also aims to involve farmers in a profit share scheme, where they will get a percentage of yearly profits from the tweed.
The initial launch, due this summer, will include the Freebrough Collection, the Danby Collection and the Rosedale Collection and each has been specially designed with the area in mind, using wool collected locally.
‘It’s the legacy here on the farm – my dad and my grandad especially influenced this project with their passion and their love for the moors, the sheep, and their passion for farming’
‘Another reason why we started this project was to celebrate the North York Moors National Park. It’s so unbelievably beautiful and I think just from moving back over the last six years I’ve realised how much I’ve missed this place – the wildness, the ruggedness, the colours, the different seasons across the year. I really wanted to create something that showcased that and celebrated it,’ Emma explains. ‘That’s what I really want to come through in our tweed and throws. For example, Rosedale is steeped in iron mining and so we really wanted to bring that out within that collection. It’s very much greys and then rust, iron undertones, so it mimics that area.’
The manufacturing process has been a steep learning curve for Emma, beginning with collecting the wool from local farmers. The wool was then sent to British Wool in late 2025 to be graded. The next step was to scour the wool (a process by which the grit and grease is removed from the wool), which was undertaken by Thomas Chadwick & Sons in Dewsbury. When Living North caught up with Emma, the scoured wool was heading to be spun. After that, it will be a trip to the dyers before heading to be woven. ‘This is a totally alien space for me. Obviously I’m from a farming background but my full-time job is as a lecturer in sports coaching so it’s been a steep learning curve,’ says Emma. ‘We’ve had really encouraging emails from upholsterers and wedding suit companies like Dandy Threads in Guisborough, who have been really supportive and really encouraging about what we’re doing. They’re super excited about trying to make some suits out of what we’re making which is amazing. It’s totally beyond what I expected.’
Support from the local community has been overwhelming and a Kickstarter set up to help get the project on its feet raised well over £10,000. ‘The North York Moors National Park did a socials post about us just before Christmas and we got a huge response to that,’ says Emma, who hopes that people can remain patient as the collection is finalised. ‘I think a big thing with this project is to try and educate people that this isn’t a fast fashion process,’ she explains. ‘You might have to wait a year for our next batch to come out because that’s just how it is. We’ve got into this culture of ordering something and it’s going to come in four hours, or come the next day. But this process teaches us you’re investing in key pieces and that might take a few months. I’ll be able to put a label on your tweed or on your throw that gives you a little bit of a story of this farm where this wool has come from.’
For all the good Emma hopes the project will bring to local farming communities, she knows her dad would have loved it as much as she does, and that is foundational to her motivation. ‘It’s the legacy here on the farm – my dad and my grandad especially influenced this project with their passion and their love for the moors, the sheep, and their passion for farming.’
