Big day here on the farm!
As you may know, we’d taken steps to teach ourselves to shear, and even invested in some equipment, but were only able to take it so far — obstacles included our own time, energy, know-how, and the quality of the equipment. We got two lamb boys “sheared” back in March or so, which was fine as a learning experience, and generated a little bit of usable wool, but did not advance our confidence that we could continue on through the whole flock with any kind of expedience or decent results.
We pinged our “regular” guy, who happens to be a noted shearing expert in Maine, and prepared to wait perhaps weeks after they said they’d include us on their next Waldo County run. But barely days had passed when, on Monday, they said “how about Wednesday?” Yikes! So Monday/Tuesday were devoted to designing, and then erecting, some augments to our fencing system, chutes and gates, so we could have most of the sheep — nine ewes — in one small corral adjacent to the shearing pen.
Today the shearer, Jeff, arrived right on time and got to work, as I stood my ground in the holding pen and ushered unshorn ewes through to Jeff and shorn ewes into the back paddock, and Marsh dragged tarps back and forth holding the completed fleeces, for inspection, labeling, and storage. Just now we were joking that if the three of us formed a team of superheroes, I was the strong one, Marsh was the fast one, and Jeff was the clever one.