The big event in my sheepkeeping/spinning year must be shearing. After using the services of local chaps - some better than others I might add - I found the perfect chap for the job about three years ago via the jolly old internet! Finding the right shearer was quite difficult. Most shearers are doing commercial flocks of sheep where the fleece needs to be taken off the sheep quickly and is more or less chucked to one side and almost treated like waste. When you have chosen your sheep for their fleece you would like the shearer to take some care when removing said fleece from your animal - no second cuts please! It's quite annoying to see someone slicing through the beautiful fleece and seeing it chopped up before your very eyes. However Philip isn't like that. He comes from a family of handspinners so he knows what spinners want and he also doesn't mind how small the flock numbers are - another problem when dealing with commercial shearers. The next problem is of course the wonderful British weather. Last years shearing was cancelled a couple of times due to snow and rain and I was keeping my fingers crossed that this year would be o.k. I kept the sheep in their field shelter all morning so they were nice and dry when Philip arrived as handling a wet fleece is no fun and the fleece need to be dry for storage until they can be washed.
Nibbles having a haircut.
And now it's Huberts turn.
Of course the weather has now turned nasty with lashing rain from the cold north-west with the threat of snow on high ground. What lovely May weather again!
The proposed trip to see the lambs was canceled as a result of the weather. I'm hoping to go next week but Lucy sent some photos taken on the last warm sunny day we had.
We had summer last week end too much to hope now for any better weather until those fleeces start to grow back all thick again.
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