Imagine you're just minding your own business, just bopping around in your pasture with your buddies on a cool spring day.
Then some guys come along and herd you and your buddies into a barn. It's a little snug but it's warm and dry. There are some noises on the other side of the wall and some low chatter, but for the most part you're calm.
Suddenly someone grabs a hold of you and another bops you on your butt and starts shaving you. The noise is terrifying and the cool air hits your body before you know it. You're turned and twisted, the clippers buzzing all over your body and legs.
Next thing you know it's over. The guy who had shaved you lets you go, another guy guides you out to the pasture, and off you run. The cold hits you and you wonder where your friends are. You call and call and they answer, but some weird people show up. You realize then they are your friends, only shaven. Somewhere you hear the voices of women cackling with delight.
It was this Saturday that I and some of the members of the Portland Spinnerati went to Jon and Ronda Schultze's farm where we helped with the skirting of their Icelandic sheep. Eddie, a shearer from New Zealand, came to shear and eight of us took the shorn fleece and removed the vegetable matter, dung tags, second cuts, and mats.
Our reward? A car full of fleeces ready to be taken to the processors.
3 comments:
Wasn't it fun?!
Great post! I'm doing mine tomorrow. I'm going to steal your pictures of Pam and I splitting that fleece for my blog.
Ooooh, I LOVE to watch Fast Eddie work! He has the nicest Southern exposure! Great post, great photos, great point of view. There's an old Suffolk proverb - "God always tempers the wind to favor the shaven lamb."
Nice score!
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