Tag Archives: fleece

Shear Bliss

Too corny?

Ah, well.  Yesterday the flock finally was freed from their heavy fleeces (just in time for temps to plummet and rain to fall all day today). But yesterday. Yesterday was glorious.  Later in the evening there was much more frolicking than I have seen since…..well, last spring.

04.25.15a

I love watching Emily work, and I love seeing the wool coming off to reveal the little bodies underneath.

04.25.15b

Wembley’s fleece came off in a solid, felted clump, not unlike a rug.  Poor thing. When a sheep has been as sick as she was, it’s no surprise.  I’m sure the three or four baths I gave her didn’t help. But, now she’s well and free of the old fleece and can start a new, healthy coat.

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Now, this. This is what I love to see. The colored flock. The sun-bleached outer layer, the darker layer at the skin, and all the variation in between.

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The pure Border Leicesters were mostly silver underneath; the Border Leicester/ Cormo crosses were more black underneath.

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Our friend Amy came and helped out with hooves, while Emily’s dog watched (and snatched hoof clipping to chew on).. Seriously, she was a HUGE help. And unsurprisingly, Emily can easily manage a sheep one-handed while Amy and I struggled tag-teaming them.

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The goats were surprisingly well-behaved for her.

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Neve helped out, too, of course!

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Cassie.

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Lyra

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Ursa – who is seriously the tiniest thing once you get her out of her coat!

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Wembley the Wonder Lamb.

I know everyone is sad we were unable to have a party for shearing this spring, but trust me, we had a great reason (BABYBABYBABY) that Susan will update y’all with soon enough.

In the meantime, I hope all of your steps are as light and carefree as the flock!

Yesterday In Pictures

We are SO reveling in the spring weather!!!

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Yes, hello. My name is Adelaide. You show me a fence and I’ll show you a stuck goat!

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She does this every. day.

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It’s been warm enough the last few days that the dogs have started their summer ritual of hanging out in the stream.

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The peas are growing well!

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The peonies are going to bloom any second.

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The lilacs are blooming now and busy attracting bees and butterflies with their heavenly scent.

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The strawberries are flowering.

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The broccoli is sprouting.

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The Monarda is shooting up fast.

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The raspberry bush is taking over!

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The azaleas are about to pop.

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The dogwoods are showing off.

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And Ursa is looking mighty tired of that fleece!

All the Naked Ladies

Yesterday our friend Emily came down to shear the ewes in advance of lambing.  I’ve been around for lambings done with wool still on and with wool removed, and I can tell you I FAR prefer them to be sheared before they lamb.  It makes it soooo much easier to see what’s going on, and much cleaner as well, without all that dirty wool hanging over their back ends.

What I love about Emily is she not only shears them; she clips their hooves and gives me an idea of how healthy she thinks they are.  Susan and I were  happy to hear (and see!) that they all look great, and she thinks all but two are bred. Emily handles countless flocks of sheep all through the year, so her opinion carries a lot of weight around here.

The rest of the flock will be sheared at the big shearing party on April 5; we didn’t want to move the ewes to the park that far into their pregnancies, though.

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It was chilly when we went out at 8, but sunny, and bright.

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We stuffed them into the mini barn the day before so they wouldn’t get wet in the rain; and I do mean they were stuffed in there.

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As the wool came off, however, they had so much more room!  It’s amazing how much less space they take up when they’ve been shorn.

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They’ve been getting extra grain and hay so they stay warm.  I elected to keep them near the barn since we’ve got snow today, but they are happily munching their hay and chewing their cud, more or less oblivious to the white stuff.

If you’re wondering, Emily wrote up an excellent post about shearing sheep and cold weather HERE.

A Day at the Pool

A few days ago, Erin and I drove up to Maryland (are you sensing a pattern?) to spend the day at the Maryland Wool Pool.

Despite what you may be thinking, it’s not a swimming pool full of wool– I’ve already been through drowning in yarn, remember? It’s where all the wool producers in Maryland and the surrounding states are invited to bring whatever wool they have and be paid a fair price for it (more on this later).

By the time Erin and I got there– about 9 am– the pool was already in full swing. Let’s walk through the process.

First, the farmer backs his or her truck up to our skirting/grading table. The fleeces are dumped out of their bags, and we take a look at them. They’re placed into one of five categories:

  • Finewool (for suits, sweaters, and items to be worn close to the skin; $1.10/lb)
  • Mediumwool (for outerwear; $1.00/lb)
  • Coarse / Longwool (for rugs and homewares; $.95/lb)
  • Nonwhite (any breed with a black or red face has a fleece that’s classified as nonwhite, since the little flecks of face and/or leg hair won’t be able to be dyed. These fleeces are used for items that won’t be dyed; $.90/lb)
  • Short (any fleece shorter than 3″. Used for stuffing and felt; $.70 lb)

The price, of course, changes from year to year– the commodities’ market can be pretty variable. The price of wool was apparently down from last year, but still way up from the average price that’s been seen in years past. This year’s highest bidder was the Chargeurs Scouring Plant, which is just north of Charleston, SC.

 

Erin and I didn’t know enough to class the wool– it takes a lot to become a certified woolclasser– but we learned a ton. By the end of the day, Emily or David Greene (Principle Extension Agent Emertius for the University of Maryland, who reminded me of another David Grene, author of one of my favorite books of all time) would turn to a fleece and ask us, “What do you say that one is?”

“Medium?”

“Medium!”

and we’d whisk it away.

It was a little bit trial-by-fire, and we spent most of our time carrying fleeces from the table to different bins, and then carrying the bins across the warehouse (oh my Lord they were heavy when they were full– we’ve got the callouses to prove it! David built them all for the wool pool out of aluminum in the ’60s– something we learned after complaining that they should have been designed to be lighter!) to the five giant piles of to-be-baled wool.

 The wonderful thing about the wool pool, though, was how open the whole thing was. Do you only have 10 sheep? or maybe run a flock of 150? or maybe you sheared all spring through, and ended up being given over 3,000 lbs of “junk” fleeces?

Either way, the wool pool will take what you have to offer (I think we only turned down one fleece; a super-cotted old Lincoln), bale it up, load it up via forklift onto a tractor-trailer, and send it out to the commercial market.

(Side note: I’m terribly jealous of those balers. Zac and I packing our fleeces off to mail to our mills looks exactly like this.)

It touched me quite deeply to see the rows and rows of wool bales, weighing between 300 and 400 lbs apiece, all lined up. Even though, for most sheep producers, wool is a byproduct (the primary product being lamb. A dollar a pound for wool just isn’t enough by itself to sustain the flock, let alone the shepherd!), this is still a year’s worth of physically and emotionally taxing work for a whole state worth of shepherds.

Friends, I was humbled to see it.

That said, we weren’t overly precious about it. Lydia ran back and forth down them; we each hopped up on one to eat our lunches:

But it did make me think.

I think I sometimes forget, if something is sold in a chain store, that it was produced by real people, or that it was touched by human hands at all. In my eagerness to source my food from our own garden (if not farmers’ markets) and my durable goods from hand-makers who produce their goods in small batches (a fantastic argument for which can be found here), I forget about the very-real farmers who do sell to grocery stores, or that any of the Maryland-raised wool that I touched might well end up being sold as sweaters at Target or the Gap (nevermind the infuriating cheapening and appropriation of handmade products that such stores promote).

It’s been too simple for me to look at a mall and sneer at the nearly-identical shops, lobbing easy insults (also, at 23 years old, I’m still a grade-A sneerer)– these shoes are cheapo knockoffs; this dress was industrially produced; I’ll bet that was made in China; this is designed to be thrown away after one season! And while I still believe that homegrown and handmade is better, I don’t think it’s a black-and-white matter of hand- vs machine-made, and I certainly know that I won’t so quickly look past the fact that these goods, however cheap, were produced by absolutely human hands, American and (predominantly) otherwise. In short, I’ll make sure to reserve my disregard for fast fashion, and my compassion for shepherds, craftspeople, and workers of all sorts.

Erin and I drove home tired, sweaty, dirty, and slick with lanolin (although we weren’t nearly as bad as last time!). We learned so much, and I consider myself very lucky to have gotten to see this step in the wool-production process first-hand. All I know is that I’m really looking forward to our next wool field-trip (there’s talk of a wool classing class at Maryland Sheep and Wool next spring)!

 

 

 

This is the Way We Wash Our Wool

Lots of locks and lanolin today!  Our pals Greta and Kate came to learn about washing wool, and we met new friends, Julie and Daniel who have a starter flock of Rambouillet sheep south of Fort Worth. 


They came to learn about what they had, now that their fleeces are off the sheep and in bags.  (Our shearer, Danny, did a beautiful job for them, as usual.)  Rambouillets are big sheep - their fleeces are 7-12 pounds each, right off the sheep.


And what they have is mighty fine.  Gorgeous fine wool from each of their 14 sheep.  What a pleasure to run my fingers through this beautiful greasy goodness.


We skirted one of their big fleeces, separating out the less fine areas and the really grassy parts, and selected a nice handful to wash.  We couldn't wait to see how the wool would look, clean.


A couple of hot washes and a rinse make a world of difference.  This is going to become a lot of really amazing yarn someday.  Of course, I've recommended that they send their fiber off to Lynn Snell at Spinderellas.  'Cuz I know she'd make some amazing roving or yarn out of it.


I want to be sure to tell you that they're offering lots of this year's clip for sale in its raw state.  These fleeces are very consistent all over with the kind of crimp that makes us spinners go weak in the knees.  Julie and Daniel will be up in the Plano area next weekend, so if you think you might like to buy some of this wool by the pound, (probably $10-$15/pound, depending on how vm-free it is) or by the whole fleece, let me know and I'll have Julie and Daniel drop by with some for your perusal.  I can teach you how to skirt and wash it!

I'm looking forward to getting to know our new friends better - not only are they really working on learning all about their sheep, their wool and what spinners want, but they are developing an orchard with figs, pomegranates and pears.  Wouldn't that be a great field trip?  I want to see Larry the ram, too.  He sounds like a real character.

It's so fun to hang out with new shepherds.  They have a lot to learn and a lot to share.  I'm privileged to be part of all that.


How to Shear a Sheep in Five Steps

If you’ve ever met Emily Chamelin, our shearer, you’re probably as much in love with her as I am. Every single time I watch her shear, I’m astonished by her strength, skill, and conscientious respect of the animal she’s working with. I sort of can’t decide whether I want her to be my older sister, or whether I’d just like to be her when I grow up. Suffice it to say that, if I can ever become as much of a badass as Emily, I’ll have accomplished something to be proud of (I asked Zac if this was even possible, and he said, “Well, you’ll have to work really hard.”)

Therefore, when Emily kept asking if I was going to come to Shearing School, and Susan said she’d pay to send me, I was over the moon!

Former Farm Manager Erin was also planning on going, so we decided to go together. Erin is another woman I admire to no end, not only because she’s a good friend who also happens to be way smarter and tougher than I am, but also because ever since I started working at the farm, my job has literally been, “Try and be as good as Erin.” Let me tell you, she’s a lot to live up to!

So, back in January, we sent in our checks and, in turn, received a page of information about what we’d be learning. Our Shearing School is put on every year by the Maryland and Delaware Cooperative Extensions, and is designed both to teach the shepherd how to take the fleece off a sheep, and also to serve as a source of continuing education for shearers.

As the time wore on, though, I became more and more worried about one bullet point– under “Items to Bring,” was listed “A body with the strength and willingness to learn to shear sheep.” Willingness, I could handle, but I wasn’t so sure about strength. Our classmates, whether farmers or not, would all be bigger and stronger than me– most people are, statistically speaking. Erin had been working out with shearing specifically in mind. I’d spent the three months since January joking about needing to start, but, of course, never did.

In the morning, when Erin and I walked up to the pre-class circle of would-be-shearers, our instructor was saying something about how, used to be, they advised you take the class only if you could bench-press 120 lbs. I assuaged my horrible sense of dread by thinking of when Emily learned to shear (never mind that she was 15 then, and I’m 23), thinking of everyone’s encouraging tweets and emails, and swearing that, if I made it through without serious embarrassment (cutting off an ear, or something even worse? being unable to even control my sheep?), I’d start running every day (which, of course, has yet to happen).

After a few shearing demonstrations and a rehearsal of the 5 positions of shearing, there really was nothing left to do but try it ourselves. “It’s just like learning to swim,” they told us, “You’ve gotta jump in!”. We all split up into groups of four, grabbed a sheep and a pair of clippers, and got to work.

Would you like to see how to shear a sheep?

Erin was braver than everybody else, and so went first.

To begin with, you sit the sheep up in front of you– this is first position. Starting at the breastbone (we called it the brisket!), start shearing off the belly wool.

Since this is the wool that’s dirtiest, it helps to go ahead and get it out of the way. It’s important to shear wide enough to make sure  that you’re well-set-up for farther down the road.

After you take off the belly wool, you lean over further and take the wool off the legs and crotch, sort of scooping the clippers up the right leg, across, and down the left leg. The big danger here is accidentally shearing off a ewe’s teats, so you’re supposed to cover them up with your left hand (“you sure won’t shear ‘em off now!”).

Emily helps me navigate a tricky spot.

Once the belly, crotch, and legs are clean, you rotate about 90 degrees, change into second position, and start shearing her left hind leg (I’m using the feminine pronoun because, well, most sheep are ewes). It’s also in this second step that you clear the wool off from the tail area, and, since her head is easily accessible, shear off the topknot of fleece from the top of her head.

I love how much Erin’s smiling in this picture. Shearing is fun!

After than, you swing your legs around your sheep and into third position. You’re going to move your clippers up from the brisket along the neck, and end your stroke (or “blow,” as they’re called) under the left side of her chin. This is, in my opinion, the most thrilling– I mean that in both senses– part of shearing. You’re “unzipping” the fleece along the underside of the neck, and it definitely looks and feels the coolest, but it’s also terrifying.

Because (obviously) the sheep is covered in wool, you can’t tell where the wool ends and the sheep begins unless you have a very exact knowledge of her specific anatomy and musculature (more on this later). It’s pretty terrifying to move a pair of clippers into the unknown– rather, unknown, except for the knowledge that, if you make a mistake, you could cut your sheep’s neck pretty badly.

If one end of the error spectrum are nicks and cuts, then the other end of the spectrum is second cuts, which are short pieces of fleece that weren’t taken off with the first pass of the clippers. Second cuts cause all sorts of problems– if incorporated into yarn, they make it weaker, and cause it to pill more quickly– and so it’s important to keep them to a minimum. In fact, our instructors told us that we must not be so afraid of cutting the sheep, because, otherwise, all we’d do is make second cuts. I wasn’t so good at not being afraid (but, still, I nicked a few sheep).

After you’ve opened up the fleece along the neck, you keep making parallel passes with your shears– up from the chest, along the left side of the neck, ending right under the eye; up the chest, along the neck, end under the ear. This is the part when it’s easiest to take off an ear, so, just like with the teats, you’re supposed to find it, get hold of it, and make sure to keep it out of harm’s way.

Once the left side of the neck is clear, you start working on the left shoulder. Emily showed Erin and I a bit of weight-shifting footwork that helps get the sheep’s shoulder in a better position to shear.

The more you know about your sheep, the easier she’ll be for you to shear– and since she’s covered in wool, it can sometimes be hard to tell. If you know she’s fat, it’ll be, as Emily says, “Easy, like shearing a beach ball.” If she’s skinny, you’re going to have to work a little harder to navigate around the bony hips, shoulders, and spinal processes. Does she have two teats, or are there four (ewes sometimes have an extra vestigial set) to watch out for? If she’s a finewool sheep with Merino heritage (hello, Cormo), she’s going to be covered in the wrinkles and extra skin that those breeds were bred to have (more skin = more hair follicles = more wool per sheep), and you’re going to have to make sure not to nick those. If she’s in good health, she should shear easily. If she’s doing poorly, though, the lanolin (which usually melts a bit, and helps to lubricate the clippers) won’t flow so freely, and instead stays thick, like wax, and gums up your clippers.

I was continually amazed at the intimacy of it, and humbled by the amount of strength and knowledge required– I don’t think I’ve experienced anything like it in my past year of shepherding. It’s quite a thing to know there where, why, and how of every single inch of every single sheep, and then use that knowledge to navigate a potentially dangerous situation (those clippers are sharp), and end up with a valuable product (7 or 8 lbs of wool per sheep).

That said, it’s also hot, sweaty, greasy, difficult, dirty, exhausting, poopy, smelly, frustrating, and sometimes bloody. Dragging ourselves back to the hotel after the first day, I told Erin, “If anyone ever tells me shearing’s like a beautiful, graceful, athletic dance between the shearer and the sheep, I’m gonna punch ‘em in the face,” and there were plenty of jokes about, “Any job where your read end’s gotta be higher than your head– that’s not a good job!”

So, back to business.

Once the whole left side is clear, you slide the sheep down your shin and into fourth position. A big part of learning the positions is making sure the sheep is comfortable– the more comfortable she is, the less she’ll struggle and fight, and the easier it is for the both of you.

It’s time for what’s called the long blows, which are some of the easiest parts of shearing to learn (but hardest to master). They also look really cool. You move your clippers right across the body, tail to head. You keep making blows along the back, making sure to keep the comb of your clippers right along the curve of her back, until you’re one blow past her spine.

After that comes fifth position: swing your right leg around, pick up your sheep, and, holding her nose between your knees, start shearing down the right side– head, neck, and shoulder– rolling the sheep up towards you as you move down her body.

Once you’re past the shoulder, you start making diagonal passes down the right side– you’re almost done!

After making those diagonal passes down the sheep’s right side, all there is left to do is clear off the right leg and hindquarter.

See how Erin is using her left hand to put all her weight into the sheep’s right flank? That serves two purposes– 1) it straightens out the right leg, so that it’s easier to shear, and 2) it tightens up the skin, so that there’s less risk of it getting caught in the clippers. Honestly, there’s so much skin-tightening, head-holding, ear-grabbing, leg-straightening, and teat-saving done with the non-clipper-holding-hand, you might as well say that it did all the work! Nevertheless, both Erin and I had pretty sore right arms from holding on to those clippers! Not only are they pretty heavy, but they also 1) vibrate and 2) are dripping with motor oil and lanolin. It’s not easy.

But, once you’ve cleaned off that last leg, you’re done!

Emily actually took videos of both Erin and me finishing our sheep– they’re up on Facebook, if you’d like to see more.

And so, here I am after my first-ever sheep, grinning like a goofball.

She looks like a carpet after it’s been vacuumed!

But the job’s not over once the sheep’s shorn! In their varying levels of wholeness– ranging from the gorgeous waterfalls of wool produced by some of the experienced shearers to the utterly destroyed scraggles produced by all of us beginners– the fleeces were taken to the skirting table and sorted. As someone who erred on the side of second cuts, I felt a little guilty!

Erin and I came away from the weekend physically exhausted, but otherwise wildly enthused about shearing– not only are we planning on tagging along with Emily when she’s in Virginia next, but we’re also thinking of going up to Maryland for the wool pool (can you imagine seeing a whole state worth of wool, all in one place!?), and we definitely want to go to Maryland Sheep & Wool, too (anyone have a couch or a spare bedroom for us?).

All in all, I found that my favorite thing about shearing is the intense focus and drive that it gives you– as soon as you turn on the clippers, the world contracts to you, your sheep, and the noise of your machine (this is a bit of a lie. I had Emily coaching me– literally holding my hand in some parts– through my whole first sheep, which was the only reason my sheep looked so good.). The only important thing is getting the fleece off the sheep, and making sure they’re both in good condition by the end. No matter what happens– you cut your sheep? you feel tired? your sheep escaped from you? you seriously don’t think you can do it? It started raining and the barn roof started leaking onto your head?– you cannot and must not give up. You can do it because you must (does anyone remember the end of Bambi, where he’s been shot by a hunter, but there’s a forest fire, and the Great Prince of the Forest comes up and says, “Bambi! You must get up!”? It’s like that.), and I haven’t had that feeling since I got to help Susan pull a stuck lamb last spring.

It’s definitely a heck of a rush (although maybe that’s just from spending 30 minutes with all the blood going to my head!), and I can’t wait for the chance to do it again!

Everybody’s Naked

It's done.  All the shearing is done and the fleeces are bagged for cleaning.  Ahhhhhhhh.  Give me a minute while I enjoy some major shepherd relief.  Nothing could have gone any better, from surviving the rain on sheep shearing day, to me learning how to successfully drag a trailer.


And the fiber is, easily, our best ever.  Here's Joseph without his amazing technicolor dream coat.  Cute spots, eh?


Here's his coat coming off in velvety waves.  Every bit as yummy as we had hoped.


The pasture is now populated with pipe cleaner animals.  They look like cartoon characters to me, freshly shorn.


And they match the nekkid sheep at the other end of the property.  Everyone is ready for the 80+ degree temperatures we're supposed to see, beginning tomorrow.  Whew.  Just in time.

Now, comes the big job of getting the fiber clean and ready to send to the mill.  We've been streamlining and perfecting our systems, so as soon as the last of last year's fiber is finished, we'll bang this stuff out.  And enjoy every minute.

Everybody’s Naked

It's done.  All the shearing is done and the fleeces are bagged for cleaning.  Ahhhhhhhh.  Give me a minute while I enjoy some major shepherd relief.  Nothing could have gone any better, from surviving the rain on sheep shearing day, to me learning how to successfully drag a trailer.


And the fiber is, easily, our best ever.  Here's Joseph without his amazing technicolor dream coat.  Cute spots, eh?


Here's his coat coming off in velvety waves.  Every bit as yummy as we had hoped.


The pasture is now populated with pipe cleaner animals.  They look like cartoon characters to me, freshly shorn.


And they match the nekkid sheep at the other end of the property.  Everyone is ready for the 80+ degree temperatures we're supposed to see, beginning tomorrow.  Whew.  Just in time.

Now, comes the big job of getting the fiber clean and ready to send to the mill.  We've been streamlining and perfecting our systems, so as soon as the last of last year's fiber is finished, we'll bang this stuff out.  And enjoy every minute.

Fiber Christmas


Since it only comes once a year, it sure feels like Christmas.  We trailer our boys up to my friends Amy and Arlin McCrosky's amazing ranch in Greenville, and we get to be part of a couple of days of assembly line shearing magic. 


Everyone has a job, and the collective works like a Swiss watch.  After four years, I've finally found my place in the machine, collecting the fiber into bags - one for the prime blanket fiber and the other bag for the leg and neck fiber.  The bags are labeled with the animal's name, date of birth and other background information.  We twist the two bags for each animal together and set them aside.  The floor mats are swept and blown off with an air compressor between each animal to keep the fibers from mixing.


After several hours, we take a break.  This is Mark Loffhagen, the shearer with the golden blades.  I've talked about Mark before... he's the same as ever, an Americanized Kiwi with a rye sense of humor.


We were all ready to take a load off for a bit after about a third of our animals were sheared.  Our lunch break came after about another third of the 'pacas were done.  All told, I think I heard that we did 74 animals.  Tomorrow we'll probably do about that many again.


Fun sights around the barn - this is a female boarding at Amy's place who has the cutest face ever.  Can you believe that silly smile?  And her dark eyes, and black snip on her nose!  She is a doll.


This is part of the group of ladies that occupy the barn where the shearing takes place.  It's quite a crowd - very good looking...


And then here came Amy's star herd sire: Abundance.  Wow - he is really amazing.  So much fleece coverage on his face that he can barely see.  The rest of his body is just packed with fiber as well.  They don't call him Abundance for nothing.


Hi buddy!


...And...  the "after" shot.  He's still a big guy without it, but the fleece is just enormous.


Every time I go there, I am amazed at Amy's fabulous barn.  This much hay would last me for years!  But with all the mouths she feeds, it lasts significantly less time.


She has a cool way of keeping her fleeces contained - we toss them into a big dog run.  They stack high, rather than taking up all the floor space.  Nice.


So, we got home without incident (and me pulling my very first trailer all by myself!) and the three shorn boys had to make friends all over with the still-fluffy boys.  They literally don't recognize each other without their fleeces, just like the sheep a couple of weeks ago.  Here's Boaz - a mere shadow of his former self.


And Moonstruck and Levi, together for comparison.  Not a fair comparison - Moonie is a big piggy boy, and Levi is the tiniest thing we have in the pasture.  But you get the idea.


And the payoff for the day's work:  pretty, pretty fleece.  This is Boaz's fleece.  We made an interesting discovery.  He's not a white alpaca with an apricot cast, he's a bona fide FAWN alpaca.  Amy says our good herd nutrition did that for his fleece, and that it's a very good thing.  Yay!


Levi's huacaya fleece is really, really soft and white, but what you can't see in this shot of the butt ends of the fibers is the outside of his fleece, which is a MESS.  Mud, spit, and who knows what else, got all over him, and it's going to be a job to get it clean.


And then our little Suri superstar, Micah.  Again Amy drooled over his fleece, which we have noticed has a lovely light silver cast to it.  We're considering whether Micah may have a new career path ahead of him, besides growing the softest, densest fleece we've had here to date.  (That may change once we get Joseph sheared.)  More news if it develops.

It was a really great day, and I learned more cool things about alpacas, shearing, fiber, and our own boys.  And the news is all good.  We have some really nice fiber on our farm.  Hallelujah!

And now I have an ice pack on my back and I've taken some Ibuprophen, so I'll be able to do all this again tomorrow, when I trailer the Boys of Color (black, fawn and gray) back up to Greenville for another day of shearing fun.

To wrap up, here's a video about how Amy "harvests" fleeces she may use later in competition.  "Show fleeces" get special attention, and must be handled differently from your regular, run of the mill amazing fleece.  The process is called "noodling," though no noodles are used.  Crazy.  Enjoy:


Skirting a Jacob Fleece


Samson's Fleece on the Hoof
We named this farm after the Jacob sheep we love so much, thinking that Jacobs would be the only kind of fiber animal we'd ever need.  Funny how things change, but there was good reason for us to at least begin that way.  Jacob wool grows naturally in at least two colors on the sheep's back.  You can dye it if you want, but it's awesome the way it is.  This wool is super easy to spin, and very versatile.  This primitive breed can be medium coarse to impressively soft, and everywhere in between.

Let me show you how I usually skirt my raw Jacob fleeces, to take best advantage of all its unique qualities.

First, we lay the fleece out on the screen skirting table, cut ends down.  We see what we saw on the sheep before shearing - the outside of the fleece.  We can see all the grassy areas, and the coarse, icky areas.


I work my hands all around the outer edge of the fleece, finding the places where the wool is not as soft as I'd like.  I pull out grass and burrs, super dirty parts, felted bits, and short cuts.


Around the edge of the fleece that came off the animal's back legs, we find a good-sized coarse area called the "britch."  On most sheep, this is the least desirable wool.  You can see how harsh and hairy it looks.


Once most of the bad stuff is removed, I flip the fleece over to see the cut side.  You can see that the wool is much cleaner close to the skin.  Samson has nice bright white wool and deep black wool - some Jacobs are browner or grayer than this.


The second cuts, or the tiny bits of wool that are caused by the shearer going twice over the same spot, are easy to see when they stick to the opposite colored wool.  We pick those off and toss them to the birds, for nesting material.


On a pure white sheep, we'd be done at this point.  But with these spotted Jacobs, we have a couple of options:  we can wash and blend all the wool together into a nice heathery roving that looks gray, or we can sort the wool into three different piles - the white wool, the black wool, and the wool along the color borders that is too intermingled to separate cleanly.  Samson has more white than black wool, so I'll start with the white.  In the picture above, I've started pulling the large section of white wool (lower right corner) away from the black spots, getting pretty close to the black without pulling any of the black into the white.  I use a motion I call "Pac Man hands" to pull and part the fiber into the clear color groups.   This takes time and patience.


See, now I have the largest pure white areas pulled away from the black spots.  Now, I spread the remaining fleece out and work from the inside of the black spots, making sure I don't get any white mixed in.  This leaves the wool that's just too hard to separate cleanly - a mixture of black and white.  How much wool you leave in this "mixed" group is completely up to you.  I try to work pretty fast, and I don't mind a large amount of mixed colors.


Here are my three bags full - black, white, and mixed.  These batches are ready to be washed.  When they're clean, we can continue to remove any grass or short bits that have not been separated out yet.  The mixed wool, when carded, will become a gorgeous heathered gray.  With three different colors of wool from one sheep, you can see that the possibility for natural colorwork is vast - fair isle patterns, stripes, mosaic knitting -- you name it.

If you haven't ever tried spinning or knitting with Jacob, I highly recommend giving it a go.  Your fiber fingers will shout for joy!