When the shearer says he is available you rather drop everything and go. My friend Claudia happened to be driveway visiting that day and so we both headed off to Steve’s to help.
Steve texted about 10:00 that morning that Ross, the shearer, would be coming in the afternoon. Claudia and I got ready to head off to help as shearing even such a small flock (16 adults needed shearing this year) is best done with several hands to help. It’s a 75min drive to Steve’s from my house in Manotick. The sheep were in the barn and we were lucky the threat of rain held off until we were done. You do not want to shear wet sheep, nor deal with wet fleece.
Ross got right to work, I got a few pictures but my phone decided that it was a good time to run low on battery so I didn’t get as many as I wanted. Here he is shearing the first sheep.
Steve’s role was to help catch the next sheep and to keep others out of the way. Claudia helped deal with the temporary gates on the barns and carried the fleeces to me to be skirted. Skirting is removing parts of the fleece that are too dirty, short or matted to use. I hold an Ontario Handweavers and Spinners’ Master Spinner Certificate but I’ve been spoilt lately by prepared spinning fibre so it’s been a long time since I did this job. Let’s just say I could use more practice. In the few minutes it took Ross to shear each sheep I was only able to lay out the previous fleece, take off the obvious worst bits and roll and stuff it into a bag.
The thing to know about these particular fleeces is that Steve wasn’t able to schedule a shearer last year so they are at least 2 years worth of growth on the older animals. Some of the fleeces managed this better than others. There is a lot of lovely wool on this one
but also some parts that will probably have to have the tip ends cut off where they are matted. Because it’s 2 years of growth there will still be plenty of length left to work with. A few of the fleeces were the first shearing of last year’s lambs and they are in awesome shape.
Tommy was not overly impressed by the process. He has gorgeous dark brown to black fleece with a white splotch. His was one of two fleeces that I was able to keep track of which sheep it came from.
We sheared 16 of the 22 sheep. The other 6 are this year’s lambs so won’t be shorn until next year. One of the fleeces was, unfortunately, a total write off, I don’t know what that sheep did but the fleece was completely matted and didn’t seem worth trying to fight with. I scored the one fleece that isn’t Shetland. Bacon is a Rideau Arcott Ile de France cross, his fleece was filthy, and I had to cut off half of the length in places but what remained is gorgeous and it’s mine all mine. I’ll show you pictures of washing it another time, and then I’ll tell you my plans for it. That leaves 14 Shetland fleeces of varying sizes, colours and qualities. I spent an afternoon weighing, photographing and taking notes on each of them. Eventually I will get them posted here for your purchasing pleasure.