Sunday, September 1, 2013

Baaaaaaa!!!

September arrived today and that little fact makes me smile.  I love autumn. It is starting to feel like it's on it's way, even though it was ninety degrees today..  Next month I am hoping to have some wether lambs that are ready for the freezer.  But before that happens I wanted to be sure to harvest their wonderful fleece.  I plan on having it blended with some of the alpaca fleece.  I'm told it will make amazing yarn!

The young man I bought the lambs from last spring happens to be an actual sheep shearer!  Shearing is very much a dying art and I am so pleased to see a young guy that is still willing to work that hard!  Most of the old timers that used to shear around here are long gone, so I am very lucky that Josh was willing to come all the way out here to give my lambs their haircuts!


Josh Pecukonis, sheep shearer extraordinaire.
 

We also had Jim helping us again today.  Jim has become pretty much invaluable around here.  Especially since he is a sheep whisperer!  It was his job to wrangle the wooly buggers and hand them off to Josh.
 
 
Then we'd shear each one and I'd gather up the good parts of the fleece and bag it.

 
 

Then Jim and I would scoop them up and haul them over to their pasture.  It's sure is easier than trying to drive them anywhere!  They scatter like ping pong balls!

 
Boy, I'm sure glad I only have nine of them!  They are weighing between 80-100 pounds or so!


Up and over!

 
Of course we did have some spectators! 


When we were finished we had some of Prairie Granny's awesome homemade pizza and ice cream!  The best part of a tough project is the dinner afterward!  I'm very grateful to have help in that department or we'd be eating at the local bar and cafĂ© on a day like this.

Special thanks to Josh's mom, Anita for taking the great photos for this post!  It sure takes a village to make everything work some days.  Thank God for the village.

Bye For Now,
B

2 comments:

  1. It can be difficult to find a shearer. We are grateful for the young man that does our shearing.

    Nice photos! :)

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