Of Sheep and Shearing

The recent shearing post elicited two responses: questions about the wool, and comments like, "Why the hell don't you have electric shears, you masochistic maniacs?!" Or something to that effect. So I thought I should address these issues.

We will wash the wool (with plain old dish soap), just to get the worst of the dirt out. It will then be brought to a nearby woolen mill that will wash it more and card it. Carding is when the wool is basically combed over and over until it's all fluffy. The fluffy stuff is called roving. Roving is what spinners spin into yarn. The woolen mill will do the spinning, too, if you give them a certain amount of wool. We have not yet collected enough wool for them to spin. One of the MiL's cousins spins, and she offered to teach us. We just haven't gotten around to it yet. The MiL knits. I do not. I tried it once. I'll just be polite and say it wasn't for me (repeat after me: Kristin is NOT krafty). But if we could get to the yarn stage, we could certainly get something knitted from our very own sheep's wool. We're working on it.

Now. As to why we ("we" meaning A., of course) use hand shears: Hand shears are much, MUCH cheaper than electric shears. Like, hundreds of dollars cheaper. We've only been shearing a few sheep, and buying electric shears for that would not be cost-effective. Once the flock grows to the point that we have enough shearing to warrant electric shears, we STILL will not buy electric shears--we will get a professional shearer to come with his or her own electric shears and shear the flock.

In addition, A. is not a professional shearer. He had never sheared a sheep before last year. He had no training or experience; he just threw the sheep down and started cutting the wool. A. is of the opinion that for an inexperienced shearer, hand shears are a lot safer than electric shears, mostly because they force you to go slower. I can imagine it would be all too easy to get to buzzing quickly with the electric shears, and then . . . WHOOPS! Did you just shear off a nipple?

Yes, it can happen. And yes, I would promptly throw up if such a thing occurred.

The shearing is not particularly stressful for the sheep, as someone suggested. Our sheep aren't fazed by much. Once they're down, they just accept their fate and wait for it to be over. One of them even nibbles grass while she's being sheared. Hardly the behavior of a traumatized sheep. In fact, I think the worst part of it for them is watching the rest of the flock eat the bucket of corn we use to catch the sheep we want. They really like corn.

We don't worry about a lot of second cuts (this means shorter tufts of wool that are usually cut in a second go-round--these are not as desirable from a spinning standpoint because you want long fibers), because we are not commercial wool producers. A. actually does do an excellent job with the shearing and gets the wool off basically in one big mat (which is the goal), but even if he didn't, we can be choosy with the wool and just take the best of it. We're not really trying to maximize the amount we get; we're just trying to get it off the sheep.

In the end, of course, it comes down to this: The shepherd wants to use hand shears. And the shepherd's word is law. Amen.