So naturally, I was expecting sheep-shearing to be fun.
Nope, it wasn't. It was crazy, hard and scary. But mostly crazy!
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| Here I am with our half-sheared Leicester Longwool sheep, which is a critically endangered heritage breed. |
We went to a sheep-shearing party at the farm where we bought our sheep and watched a man from New Zealand who had been brought in hand-shear the 20 or so sheep. He sat the sheep down on their rumps and sheared them each in about ten minutes or less by himself.
It was our first time so we erred on the conservative side and figured with electric shears, two people, and a whole afternoon (for two sheep) that we would be fine.
We weren't.
Thankfully, we waited until my brother and mom were visiting so they helped us hold the sheep down because our sheep kept trying to stand up and run away. The professional shearer didn't have that problem - must've been something in the air that day... It took us an hour for the first sheep and about 40 minutes for the second sheep. It's a good thing we only had two!
We got wool everywhere, had to dodge pee puddles and were all sore from bending over for so long. I was a near basket case as I kept imagining that we would accidentally cut a major artery or something and have our sheep die right there in front of the kids.
But I am happy to say, "We did it!!!" It is done until next year (I am positive my mom and brother will make sure they are NOT visiting during shearing time!) and we only nicked each sheep three times (same as the professional shearer!!) and they are just fine. Although looking much skinnier than before.
I was amazed at how much easier the second sheep was (and we sheared the more aggressive sheep second) just from having the experience of one sheep under our belt. I think that next year we will do much better and that I will (hopefully) be much calmer than I was this year.
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