Wednesday 12 June 2013

Bare Naked Ladies



After two false starts, we finally sheared the girls.  Last week, and after a week of rain, Dave called to say Peter, our shearer was arriving on the first ferry on Friday morning.  The prospect of twenty two wet fleece did not cheer me up.  However, the forecast for the coming week was great so we spread tarps out on the grass with plans to dry the wool over the next few days.
Peter arrived with the sunshine, set up and started to work.   He sheared four sheep before badly slicing his thumb in a scuffle with one of the girls who somehow managed to jam his thumb into the gate in the sheepfold.  He spent the next four hours in Lady Minto Hospital waiting for medical attention and came out sporting a heavily bandaged and sutured thumb.

 Maybe it was the shirt that made her do it!

 Shearing was rescheduled for this week and the weather was great – until the night before when once more it clouded over and rained all night.  The sheep were waiting patiently out in the open in the small paddock.  Peter called at 6 a.m. to say he would see if the weather changed and sure enough, the sun came out shortly after eight and dried those woolly coats in time for his arrival at noon.  By one thirty we had 22 naked girls and some very confused lambs who recognized the call but not the new vision their mother presented.   The noise as they sorted themselves out went on for several hours.



Shearing is not an elegant process - at least for the sheep.

Note Peter's gloved hand!

It just takes two or three minutes to remove a fleece.  It also takes a lot of skill to handle the sheep and to get them into a position where they 'give up' and let it all happen.  Although they seem to be pleased with the results, they have a great deal of trouble recognizing one another without their coats and even the lambs will go and sniff the fleeces to see if their mother's are somehow still inside those big piles of wool.


There are some lovely grey fleece this year.  The fleece in the forefront is brown/black, soft and lustrous - a definate 'keeper' for hand processing.


All the fleece looks good.  I estimate we sheared about forty five pounds of grey and another fifty pounds of the white; enough when combined with the fleece from Windsor Farms to make up a load for the mill in Carstairs.  There is one lovely brown/black fleece which I may hold back and hand process.  

 I estimate we have over 100 lbs of fleece (unskirted and unsorted).

Next week will be spent skirting, sorting and weighing in preparation for the mill.  We will see if my estimates hold and how much we have left after the sorting process is done.  The fleece is pretty dirty this year due to all the wet winter weather.  The girls take shelter from the rains under the cedar trees and in the hedgerows among the thistles and brambles.

I managed to sort and skirt all of the grey fleece before heading home to pack my bags for a trip to see the Vancouver grandchildren where I even got some knitting done with Naomi and her friend Abby. 


This is what it is all about.

 

 Bare Naked Ladies.