touch the earth farm blog

Yesterday morning I finally sheared our sheep. I don’t imagine you’ve ever priced them out, but shearers are quite expensive little machines. So I was hoping to be able to borrow one from a friend who picked up some shearing equipment at an auction. This, of course, meant waiting for them to finish shearing and coordinating pick up, etc. Once I got the go-ahead to borrow them, too, I wanted to order my own set of blades so that I wasn’t dulling their blades on my sheep. All of which is a long-winded explanation of why I was so late shearing them.

Here’s a photo of some fluffy sheep in January:

The shearing went pretty well, all things considered, and I was really glad to have Jim’s help wrangling them out of the stall. The day before, I’d moved the sheep into the paddock closest to the barnyard and set up a chute to the barn using electric netting. With the kids’ and Jim’s help, I was able to get the sheep into the barn that evening, which not only made them easier to catch for shearing, but also kept them dry—you can’t shear wet sheep. While I had them immobilized, I also trimmed their hooves, all of which looked pretty good, and checked their eyelids for anemia.

Here are the not-so-fluffy sheep in April:

I did a pretty nice job on the two black sheep, but the lighter sheep is pretty choppy. The fact that she has horns made the job particularly difficult. Her fleece came out beautifully though:

Just look at all the beautiful color variation:

The smallest sheep, who also happens to have been a bottle baby, was the easiest to sheer. She was very cooperative, letting me get some really nice blows and clean her up nicely. She’s the one with the white nose looking at you in the photo above. Her black fleece was absolutely luxuriant:

Julia was out watching, and she climbed into the loft to take some photos of the actual shearing process for the last sheep—Candace, our largest sheep. Candace is the only one who will let me pet her, but I have a sneaky suspicion that has changed since yesterday. *Nope: she was happy to let me love her up, and happy to have the fleece off!

Candace was anything but cooperative. She bucked and kicked and fought the entire shearing. Here I am starting out on the brisket, hoping she’s settling into the process:

And here she is about a minute later. Notice the hog panel that is now just inches from her feet as she’s fussed and fought herself several feet forward:

She looks good, but her fleece came off piecemeal, as I sheared her any way I could, much of which meant having her on her side with Jim holding her firmly. The neck blows were awful to do because she refused to stay still. Definitely not text book New Zealand method!

Thankfully I didn’t nick her at all. The first sheep was the only one I nicked, and unfortunately, I got her a couple of times, though none of them bled. Their wool was so incredibly matted that it would not open up and fall away, making it really tricky to shear. Once I figured out how to work with the wool, however, I got significantly better. I’m thinking that I’ll need to shear them twice a year so that the wool’s not so difficult to get through.

Here’s a photo of Candace from today:

And here’s one of poor Esther and her chunky haircut:

Both Emily and Julia are really looking forward to processing the wool ourselves, so I’m busy researching just how to do that. We’ll need to pick up some carders, and after that, we’re hoping to learn felting. I’m not a knitter, so I don’t think spinning is in my future. I’ve learned to knit, but it’s just too hard on my wrists to make it worth doing, but I think felting would be a whole lot of fun. The girls are really looking forward to learning and creating. As luck would have it, next weekend is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, so we’re hoping to pick up some cool tools and tips while we’re there.

Navajo-Churro wool is unique in its dual wool layer: it has an outer protective coating that is coarse and a finer inner coat that is quite soft, but not nearly as long. Here’s a really great website that shows some of the natural fiber colors and the beautiful rugs it makes. Notice that she raises N-C’s, shears them herself, spins their wool, and then weaves it. Wow!