Snapshots: A'Shearing We Will Go

A. decided to do the sheep shearing himself this year, since he only has seven ewes to shear and the nearest shearer is not near. His electric shears aren't working, though, so he got some hand shears from Greece and used those.

They work fine, but each sheep takes him about an hour and he can only do three sheep before the muscles in his forearm are too fatigued to go on. A lot of this has to do with the extremely thick wool on our Debouillet sheep. Debouillets are a Merino cross, but these are almost all Merino, and their fleeces reflect that. They are extremely dense and heavy, which means they are very difficult to shear.

It's also very hard to find where the skin is under all that wool, which means A. has to be very careful to avoid cutting the sheep.

The older two boys are now the sheep holders, leaving my only jobs bagging wool and clearing the floor between sheep. I like this division of labor, as it means I'm not sitting on top of a sheep for three hours.

 A. did the shearing in the enclosed porch of the casita this year, which worked very, very well. He lured the sheep in there with some hay, shut the door on them, and then they were easy to catch and pull a couple of feet over to the tarp for shearing.

Oddly, they were also very calm being all squished together like this. I guess because they're flock animals, they feel safe if they're close to the rest of their flock.

Six of the seven sheep are sheared, so we're almost done. I'm sure the sheep appreciate the literal lightening of their woolly load.

Let's see what else . . .

There's a little tomato forest in the bathroom under the lights.

Looks like I'll be planting these out a lot sooner than mid-May.

Calvin made this creepy little figure.

Meet Farmer Bean. He's screaming at you to get out of his field.

And last, a rare sunset photo for you this week.

Brought to you by the fact that I forgot all about taking my laundry down until it was almost dark.

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.