Monday, May 3, 2010

Spring shearing

A few days before our shearer arrived, all are still well dressed and rather warm. The lambs still know their moms, and have no idea what will happen once the man with the clippers arrive. At our house he  arrived at 10.30 on Saturday night, after a long day of shearing lots of sheep in the area. Lukas wanted to get started at the break of light, so.... Sunday morning we were in the barn shearing at 6.15am, it only took about 35 mins since I only have 7 ewes and when all had been relieved of their woolen loads we had a delicious breakfast before Lukas went on to the other flocks awaiting his visit yesterday.




And here they are the lovely ladies,   short fleeced and hopefully cooler than before.
I have five duvets covers full of delicious fleece in the barn. I skirted and sorted all the fleeces at the end of the day, enjoying the warm sunlight and listened to the grass grow. The dog was very content with her bone on the lawn not too far from me and the cat, Smudge the Magnificent climbed into the wheel barrow and sat there staring off into the distance like a mesmerized queen in full control of her surroundings.

 All in a pile in the middle of the newly erected electrical fence.
The new lambs are very curios and don't know what an electrical fence is.
So true to their reputation that sheep have to eat on the other side of the fence where the grass is always greener (hm, don't we all often choose that route by the way?) they slowly move closer and closer, pretending not to be keeping an eye on anyone in particular and then they are almost there, the last straw of grass half a millimeter from the electrical fence and then....... click, clik, clik, their poor little ears hit the fence and they bounce into the air and the whole flock moves into the middle of the pasture, and shortly afterwards the meandering, with heads down towards the edge of the field starts up again.
I have to say, the shock is not so big they fall over or are damaged but just enough to remind them to not push their luck and try to get through it. I have often been jolted, when not quite succeeding in doing an elegant hop over the fence - it is a good reminder that it doesn't hurt to waste a few extra steps by going in to the barn to shut off the electricity before any attempts of scaling the hurdle is done.

And here I am talking about sheep and fleece when....... I should have been tapestry weaving, but there is always tomorrow and all will get done in good time!