shorn
11 May 2008 by colouritgreen
Had the sheep shearer come today - nice lad, very competent at his work, kind with the sheep, and takes care over not cutting them. He’s a local lad, and divides his time between here and New Zealand.
Although I think it would be good if we learned to shear.. watching him work.. I realise it’s quite a skill. He was done within half an hour, with minimum stress to the girls - and that’s the main point of the exercise.
Here’s our before and after pictures:
I couldn’t get a group photo.. for after. Shirley had the biggest fleece (pictured in the middle in the top picture ) its at least 8 inches long.. even the shearer commentated on it. If we sold through the wool marketing board we would only get pennies, so we are keeping the fleece for ourselves for spinning etc.
So we have three new fleeces wrapped up in an old duvet cover now lurking in the shed. Unfortunately we still have two and a half of last year’s fleece, plus half a brown fleece that was given to us.. we really must get on with wool processing.
Problem is we now have no hot water.. with the rayburn off, which makes washing it just a little harder. Himself states this as yet another reason why we should get solar hot water. I don’t need any convincing!
That looks like a *lot* of spinning, but the girls looked nice & clean before. Enjoy!
yes a lot of spinning! but we are still enjoying it, so it is a nice treat. just must remember to get into winter wool processing mode earlier than last year.. we only started in Feb I think.. where does all the tiem go.
Yes, they were pretty clean before hand, although did manage to rubn a load of that moss off the wall in just before the shearer arrived.. oh well it picks out easily enough. and my hands are lovely and soft from all the lanolin!