We sheared 66 sheep last week over 2 days. It was the first time we had done back-to-back shearing; usually our flock is more evenly divided between the pregnant ewes who get sheared before lambing, and the rest of the flock who get sheared after. But this year we had only 20 pregnant ewes and felt 66 sheep was too much to do in one day. We spent most of Monday preparing, and by the time John arrived Tuesday morning, we were ready.
Once we got going, we had a great team that worked really well together. Patty was reading the ear-tags and making the labels for the bags and also labelling the envelopes for the fleece samples I take for every sheep. Lisa was helping me on skirting, Lolo, Melinda and Laura were wrangling sheep, holding them and giving them to John, then catching them when he was done and re-coating them.
John finished before noon on Wednesday, and by the end of the day we had all the sheep back to their pastures, the holding area cleaned out, the dirty coats washed and stored away, all the skirtings out in the compost pile, the barn swept, and all the fleeces bagged and sorted in the old creamery where I store my wool. It was a very productive and satisfying two days! And now I’m busy photographing fleeces, checking their skirt, and getting them up on my web site for sale.
