Ready, Set, Shear! | Foxfire Fiber & Designs

I so look forward to shearing season, but two feet of snow two days before shearing nearly caused a major snafu this week. With shearing dates are booked months in advance, a shearer's dance card is pretty darn full at this time of year. If you're unprepared or if the sheep aren't dry, good luck trying to reschedule at the last minute.

Tuesday night's storm dumped two feet of heavy, wet snow taking out the power lines for a day and half. On Wednesday, Mike and I melted pots snow over a burner and trucked it down to the flock. On Thursday I hauled water from the fire station in the village. If the power hadn't been restored on Thursday afternoon, we would have had to scrap our first of three shearing dates.

But we managed to shear on Friday, right on schedule. In round one we tackled rams and hogget ewes. Although it snowed all day our focus was indoors, harvesting fleece.

We rounded up the boys and brought them into the holding pen. They feel much safer when crowded together and we don't have to chase them when it's their turn. "Savory" was first up. This is the way to hold a 275 lb. ram. Keeping the head up says, "I've got you, pal". A sheep with its head lowered is stubborn and powerful. Get the chin up and the sheep relaxes once it realizes you're in control. At least that's the theory. You can lead a sheep this way but it really helps to have another person pushing from behind, especially if the sheep doesn't want to budge.

Since rounding up the flock is a major production, shearing day is a great time for annual maintenance tasks. I'm fortunate that my shearer Andy Rice doesn't mind tending to hooves, cdt vaccinations and deworming. Some shearers only want to shear.

Savory gets a pedicure (above) and haircut, below.

While his twin brother, "Cilantro" watched over my shoulder. ( I know they don't look like twins, but that's what you get sometimes when you breed a cormo ram to a cross-bred ewe). I have more to say about Cilantro's shearing in a separate post.

Although we worked steadily, didn't quite finish with this group by day's end. There are still ten rams yet to shear. There's no sense rushing, especially with fine wool sheep. The fleeces are dense, the skin soft and full of wrinkles. It takes nearly the same amount of time to shear a 120 pound hogget as a full grown ram, but a ram will give five times the amount of wool. The hoggets are more wrinkled and still haven't grown into their skin. It's easy for a shearer to nick a skin fold if he doesn't take his time.

We'll finish up the boys on Monday when we're slated to shear the bred ewes. Then we'll finish the remaining fine wool sheep on March 8. (And in case you're wondering, the Border Leicesters have their turn a bit later in the spring.)

Shorn hoggets at the feeder.

We have a huge stack of beautiful fleeces to show for a long day's work. I promise to share some shots of the goods in another post.