Another Successful Shearing Day!

Last Saturday we pulled off another one—lots of volunteers wrestling with uncooperative sheep, a shearer shearing 46 sheep, people milling about gates and fences and other sharp objects—and no one got hurt. That’s our idea of a good day. We usually have 10-15 insane people—oops, I mean volunteers—who come down to help. For some reason we ended up with 27 people there at one time…not enough jobs to go around. “Give us a job,” they clamored. I was tempted to send them down the hill to clean my house, but I resisted. Things settled down by noon, and we were back to 15 people.

My mom brought lots of WONDERFUL food, and some visitors added to the groaning table in the feed room.

Instead of the usual 25 or 30 degrees, the kind of weather that chills you if you’re not working hard, the temperature was a balmy 65 degrees…unheard of in March in Minnesota…

Enjoy the photos—none of Melissa or me…guess we weren’t working hard enough!

Here are the sheep BS (before shearing):

Here are the rams….”Why do we always have to go first?”…Because, boys, we’re shearing in your pen, and need to kick you out before we bring the ewes in…

Our esteemed shearer Drew in action:

Here’s one sheep who’s glad she’s almost done….Note the shearer’s daughter in the background. Teenagers are always on the phone, even during shearing!

All eyes are on Drew all day long. It’s fascinating to watch the fleece come off.

Jake in the wool bag:

Bonnie and Jackie bravely pulling poop off a fleece. It’s called ‘skirting’ the fleece, but it could also be called “touching ‘poopy’ wool” or “getting your hands incredibly soft with lanolin.”

Girl: I wonder if Zipper is going to try to eat my camera.
Zipper: I wonder if that camera is edible.

And finally, after two hours of farmer preparation, six hours of shearing, and another hour of clean-up, everyone went home, leaving two tired farmers, and a flock of entirely buck-nekkid sheep….(who are allowed into the barn in case it rains or gets cold!)