How one couple, 80 grannies and a flock of sheep are changing the face of sustainability

“To see a guy with really big hands knit... It’s a sight,” Anna Rauhansuu laughs. “He likes to be the centre of attention,” she says of her husband and business partner Janne. Anna and Janne are sitting next to each other at a broad oak table, speaking to me via video call from their farm in Pöytyä, Finland – the home of their knit wear brand Myssyfarmi. Playing into all the beautiful farming cliches, Anna has knitting needles and a ball of indigo blue yarn in her hands, she knits as we talk. Janne has just come in from harvesting the organic crops. On their heads, colourful knitted beanies.

In a past life, Janne was a professional windsurfer, travelling the world, until an injury forced him to stop. “I was living in Switzerland, in the mountains, I was there after my career...” Anna looks up from her knitting to finish his sentence, “searching for a new direction”. Janne found local grannies who started teaching him to knit. “It's my farmer's hands,” he says. “I’d be sitting in the cafeteria in Swiss hostels and people would be watching me, thinking ‘What is this man doing?’ I found it funny and cool.” The party trick soon turned into a hobby with friends requesting Janne-made beanies.

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Around the same time, Janne decided to return home to his family farm with Anna, who is also a Pöytyä local, becoming the seventh generation to take it over. He and Anna had a blissful vision to make the farm completely organic, sell vegetables, raise children. They had the farm. They had Finnsheep in the pasture next door. They had an in-demand product. The stars, it seemed, had aligned.

For Janne and Anna, their journey from hobby beanies to the booming business that is the brand Myssyfarmi today is so much more. Their story is a snapshot of a bigger movement. A shift towards more sustainable, more traceable, more local. It’s a trade that is starting to crop up around the Nordics that treads lightly, taking only what nature gives. An industry that turns back the hand of time, that looks to the past to go forward.

“It is a term in Finnish kotiteollisuus, and in English, it's ‘cottage industries’,” explains Anna. “It’s how we used to work here in earlier times. Where the farmers, or the farmer’s wife, would make crafts at home for the local industrial company. We are kind of going back in time.”

To get to the final Myssy ‘Muffi’ hat, the journey starts on one of Finland’s many organic sheep farms, where Janne and Anna collect the wool. It’s then spun in the few remaining spinning mills, Pirtti and Virtain Villa, in Finland before being hand-dyed by mostly natural ingredients at the couple’s farm. Finally, it’s knitted by locals. Often the entire process happens within a 200-kilometre radius.

The heart of the Myssyfarmi business is the ̒army of grannies̓, as they jokingly call themselves. As demand for the beanies grew, Janne and Anna turned to Janne’s mum and her friends to help out. Pretty soon they had women all over Pöytyä putting up their hands to knit beanies, hats and socks. Four years on, there are around 80 grannies with a waitlist to join.

“Three of my friends were members of this army,” says granny Tita Lehto as a group of her friends laugh around her. “Then, almost two years ago, I sent off my application by email, writing, of course, how brilliant I am. And then I received a response saying “I'm sorry, but we don't need any grannies now.” Then one gloomy morning last September my phone rang about 8:30 am and I was still in bed, and someone said 'Would you like to become a granny?' But I didn't quite understand what it was, and I put the phone down.” Her voice changes - she almost squeals as she remembers the moment. “I phoned back immediately and said, ‘I'd love to’.”

Along with Tita, I met three other grannies: Pirre Frey, Marju Helander and Tutta Lehtinen. From the second they appear on screen I understand why membership is the hottest ticket in town (they even have a WhatsApp group). The women are jovial, warm and know how to have fun. Conversation is easy, with more laughter than words. All the grannies are given ‘granny names’, which are stitched into the products they create, so you can easily trace who made your wares.

Pirre introduces herself, explaining that while her name is actually Pirrko, her granny name is Pirre. “There was already a Pirrko,” she says, matter of factly. “I knew a dog who was called Pirre, and well, it was a very lovely dog.” To this there is eruptive laughter. Marju has been a granny the longest. When I ask who is the ‘record holder’ they all point to her. She shyly admits that she once knitted 40 beanies in one week. I ask what her favourite thing to knit is. She says the ‘Muffi’ with pompoms. Anna takes one from the table and they all gather round it, collectively letting out a “Oh, that’s nice.”

Anna, who has a business background studying at both Turku School of Economics and Copenhagen Business School, knew that if Myssyfarmi was to take off, they’d have to focus on the global market. Going abroad and showcasing these homespun wares, made in a traditionally Finnish way, was key to success. “We got a government grant in 2016 and then we went to Berlin Fashion Week and that's how it all started, really,” she says. Under the slogan “It’s not cool, it’s warm,” Myssyfarmi’s catalogue of products is now sold in 16 countries.

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The grannies find it unbelievable that their creations have found fans all over the world from Paris and Japan to more remote locations. They even receive fan mail. They tell the story of one granny who was in Rovaniemi, “which is very north, very far away in Lapland, when she found someone wearing a hat which she had made. She saw her name on it.”

Anna explains that the grannies come from all walks of life, some have kids, some don’t, some are highly educated, while others may be more disadvantaged. Most learned knitting from their mothers and grandmothers, a tradition passed down through the generations. The grannies are paid for their work and are often given opportunities to travel with the company. For some of these women, this can be life-changing. When I ask what the experience has been like for the four of them, Tutta quips, “My husband is a lot more lonely now.”

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The process is as quaint and wholesome as you’d imagine. The grannies receive a basket of wool on their doorstep – the wool, organic from local Finnish sheep is exquisitely hand-dyed in a myriad of shades. They then knit in their spare time (all agreeing they love knitting while watching TV). “You get the wool but you can't create,” Tutta jokes looking at Anna, noting that the instructions are set “exactly how you should do it from the precise inches and centimetres.”

“Yes, I’m a very good army major,” Anna interjects with a smile. It’s not just the grannies that are a crucial part of Myssyfarmi, there is, of course, the famous Finnsheep. Working most days with Finnsheep wool, Marju explains that when it comes to Finnsheep compared to other wool, you don’t need to moisturise your skin. “The lanolin, it’s very good for hands,” she says. Pikke adds that a key difference is that in most cases the sheep have names. “I know many, many farmers. And they have many, many sheep, but many of them have real names and they are called by those names.”

Finnsheep are incredibly special to their surrounding people. According to the secretary of the Finnsheep Association Mari Rintala, “it is one of the oldest sheep breeds, brought to Europe during the Bronze Age and genetically it is close to the original wild sheep.” Used for meat, milk and wool production, they have industrial and historical significance in the country. In fact, the Finnsheep Association works to preserve the breed citing “conservation as both a national and an international obligation".

Janne and Anna were quick to learn just how special Finnsheep are. Janne had originally started knitting with Italian wool, but after some investigation found a uniquely Finnish yarn. “Finnsheep is one of the only sheep breeds that has the scales of the wool fibre pointing in side, not outside, making the fibre particularly soft,” explains Rintala. “This is why the fibre suits fine textiles and is popular among handcrafters.”

“It can be as shiny as silk when it's treated the right way,” adds Anna. Janne and Anna buy wool via contract farming agreements and work with 20-30 organic sheep farmers. In the fashion industry where greenwashing has become prevalent and sustainability splashed as marketing lingo, the pair are acutely aware of the importance of owning and overseeing every part of the production process.

Janne is even the chairman of The Finnish Organic Association board. “In Finland, all the sheep farms are monitored on a yearly basis and the organic farms are audited twice a year and held to strict standards,” explains Anna. “There are also no large sheep farms here compared to a world scale. The biggest sheep farms here have maybe one thousand sheep. And that's really small.” Janne and Anna don’t have animals on their farm, they harvest organic food instead. They do, however, have pet sheep, who they say act more like dogs. One named Susi was so special to the family there is an obituary on the company’s website. Another sheep, Tupsu, has a special line of hats made only from her wool.

The wool industry is notorious for waste. It’s estimated that nearly 60 per cent of wool is burned in Finland due to low market value. This is a similar situation throughout the whole of Europe due to the rise of cheaper synthetic fabrics. The issue with wool is that there is an endless supply, The Finnish Government Decree on the protection of sheep states that the animals must be shorn at least once a year for their health and safety. So a valuable natural resource often sits there unused.

But it’s not as easy as simply picking up a bundle and starting to knit, “all the work you need to put in, like separating the bad from the good wool, it’s labour intensive and expensive,” says the couple . I ask how they solve this and Janne responds immediately: money. “If you want a good job done and a quality product you have to be willing to pay a fair price.” Which gets us on to the topic of their beanies being more expensive than one you could pick up from a fast-fashion retailer. Anna raises the interesting point that we have gotten to a place where consumers don’t even understand the cost of anything any more. “We need to remember that somebody will always pay for the cheap fashion we buy.”

For the pair, it comes down to values and actions really do speak louder than words. “You can say you are going to buy Finnish produce, but then if you walk up to the store and Spanish fruit is cheaper, that’s when you need to listen to those values.” It’s not just the granny army Anna is leading, she hopes Myssyfarmi’s traditional approaches inspire others and make consumers think. “Customers are not dumb, they will see the difference but it won’t happen overnight. We need to understand that it takes a long time and a lot of water for the boat to finally change direction.”