Shearing is finished!!

Monday & Tuesday, after work, Jerry sheared what he could. Wednesday, he finished.
18 ewes have been sheared. 16 look to be definitely bred. Queen Victoria is starting to bag up... There could be lambs pictures here any day...............
I am going to start skirting, taking pictures, bagging/tagging, and weighing today, Thursday.

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The end of the night on Tuesday. And a Wednesday morning fleece.

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Chocolate 13

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Chocolate 12

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Silver


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There appears to be a lot more room in the barn.

At the right, Grace & Kennedy watch the shearing and wondering where dinner is....

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Shauna


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Maggie

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Lola

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Sweetie

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Fluffy. Look at her neck. That is where the coat ends and where all the garbage collects. Imagine that VM in this fine fleece.....................

Look at that crimp!!

We are having a heat wave!!

The weatherman is calling for temps up to the 50s by Wednesday and then dropping to the 20s on Thursday and snowing again. We are taking advantage of this by shearing 18 pregnant ewes in 4 days.

In the above 2 pictures, we started shearing at 10 am when Jerry got home from work and it was about 28 degrees. In the second picture, it is 11:06 am and the temperature has risen to 34 degrees. All the snow has now started to come off all the roofs with a vengence!!

Welcome to our January thaw. If you go back to this time last year in our blog, you will see that the girls were eating on the front lawn. We had no snow for so long and the grass was growing. Not this year. We broke almost all the snow records for December!!

Shearing has started!!

The indignitation of it all!! (o; Victoria is very pregnant. Our first possible due date is tomorrow, the 7th of January......
Nice crimp!! As you can see on this fleece, there is some dirt on the tips. Even with the coats it can not be helped as the sheep live outside... There is a little 'felting', but when the fleece is washed this disappears.

'Queen' Victoria gets sheared.


Queen Victoria, naked amongst her peers...

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While Jerry shears, I sit on a bale of hay and knit. This is one of the sheep's grain pails that is housing my yarn, and then the hat when he needs me. This is some of our homegrown mill spun yarn that was left over.

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John asks "What are you doing?"
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Heifer

Heifer wants to know 'What have I gotten myself in to?'

Her fleece is so dark and thick that it is hard to photograph.

The top 2 are with the flash.

This picture is without flash. You can see how white the white looks compared to her chocolate fleece.

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Moose (Matilda)

One of the biggest 'babies' on our farm. She is another one with a dark and thick fleece.
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Psycho Romney


Hay feeders on either side of the aisle way.

This shows how hay/debris might show up in a finished fleece.
Unless we decided to bring out the shop vac and suck up every little piece of hay and dirt, there might end up being some 'stuff' that will get picked up by a fleece.

Later in the week I will take all 18 fleeces and heavily skirt and shake them out and try to photograph them in the sunlight to offer for sale here on the blog.