I’m probably anthropomorphizing again where I oughtn’t, but the shorn ewes looked particularly put-upon today.
Travels with Musti
Dogs, nature, photography, and the meaning of life, with apologies to J.S.
Posts tagged “shearing”
Shearing today went remarkably smoothly, though I suspect the shorn sheep might have a different interpretation.
We needed extra help at the beginning to convince the sheep to cooperate with the gathering and sorting process, and folks stayed on to watch the start of the shearing. We had sheep crowded into a pen just beyond the shearing floor so it was easy for Bruce to grab the next customer.
For me, the most remarkable part of the process (other than Bruce’s stamina, shearing 31 sheep in less than 3 hours) was seeing what my ewes look like under all that wool.
In these two images, Bruce is shearing the mother of lamb #701, who I recently wrote was getting nearly as big as her mother. Without her fleece, it’s not at all clear that the ewe is bigger than her lamb.
And as I imagined, we ended up with an impressive pile of fleeces by the end of the morning.
My next project is to figure out if anyone wants to buy the wool. Bruce was very pessimistic about the prospects, pointing out that the synthetic fiber industry had not only stolen the market for wool, but also the name, since most people no longer associate “fleece” with a shorn sheep. To be continued…
Tagged: border collie, Bruce Clement, fleece, pasture, shearing, sheep, shorn, shrinking sheep, wool
I figured I’d eventually come around to shoveling shit — can’t really be a farmer without it. The shearer is coming tomorrow to relieve the flock of its wooly burden, and he needs a flat, clean place to work, so yesterday I cleaned out a section of the lambing barn for him.
I didn’t realize how deep the bedding had built up, but I managed to fill the tractor bucket seven times over.
I also got to make a significant contribution to the compost pile in one of the gardens.
Then today’s project was to set up the barnyard for sheep-sorting and bring the flock down from the pasture. While I shoveled shit alone, I was grateful to have help today from my shearer, Bruce Clement, and friend Wendy Pelletier in setting up the temporary handling system and moving the sheep.
Cleo and Bravo of course moved with their flock.
Tagged: barnyard, bravo, Bruce Clement, Cleo, handling system, herding, preparation, shearing, sheep, shoveling shit, sorting, Wendy Pelletier
Bruce Clement has shorn something beyond 100,000 sheep — he says he stopped counting a while ago — and is mostly retired, still shearing for just a few farmers he’s worked with forever. I’m not sure how I got lucky enough for him to take me on, but I suspect pity played a role, thinking he might guide me away from some of the more egregious mistakes of a very green shepherd. In any case, I’m grateful for his skillful work and the ancillary wisdom he shares as he maneuvers through my flock.
Today’s task was not a full removal of fleece, but rather an invasion of privacy. Shepherds around here call it “crutching”, removing wool from the belly, legs, and crotch of pregnant sheep so that it’s easier to observe their physical state in the leadup to lambing. Lambs will also have any easier time figuring out how to nurse if they don’t have to search for teats in a sea of dirty wool.
The trick to shearing, Bruce explained, is mostly in learning how to handle sheep. When I do it, the activity looks like a messy game of tackle football, with the ewe struggling to get over the goal line. Bruce turns it into something more like judo as he smoothly guides the sheep onto its backside.
And then the crutching itself takes less than a minute.
In the course of the shearing today, we got some more insights into the fate of Monday’s pasture lamb, but the true crime narrative will have to wait for a day or two…
Tagged: Bruce Clement, crutching, ewes, Hollow Oak Farm, pregnant, shearing, sheep