This weekend was the VT sheep shearing school which is one of only a few in the whole country apparently. I guess there aren’t many around because someone came from Michigan for it.
I dropped Mara off to the dog sitter Friday morning, which is a thing I still feel bad about. She’s getting more and more stressed every time I drop her off so house fencing stuff will need to happen before the next big trip thing that she can’t come with, which would potentially be MD Sheep and Wool in May 2023. Goals. So then someone can just feed her and let her into the yard. We’ll see.
I left there and headed right up, I ended up driving along the east side of the river through Vermont which was a really nice drive through tiny towns and farm fields. There was a large amount of swampy areas which I hadn’t expected. It makes sense being by the river, but I just hadn’t thought about it.
The sheep shearing school was in Shelburne, just south of Burlington and I stopped in there to grab a little bit of lunch. My original plan was to continue up to Burlington and get dinner up there, then come back to my accommodations but I ended up staying in Shelburne for the afternoon and I went to the Shelburne Museum.
Neat museum, the pet project of some rich people in the 50s but they did their research so that was nice. They had a huge collection of horse drawn sleighs, carriages and wagons which were mostly stored in an enormous U shaped barn that was absolutely gorgeous. The ends of the Us were banked so you could access both the ends of the Us and the first floor in the center and outside of the U. Absolutely beautifully built. They also had a round barn but I was less impressed because they had moved it there and then not rebuilt it as a proper round barn, but just as a two level barn with stairs in between levels.
There was some cool textile exhibits and neat collections although the weaving shop was closed which disappointed me. I left around 4 and headed to the camping site that I was staying at. I booked a kitchenette thingy which turned out to be a tiny decently nice apartment in a tiny building. I was kinda impressed. The wifi was decent, the water was very hot and it was surprisingly quiet. I brought my own food for the duration of the visit because eating out is expensive and it would probably upset my stomach.
I went to a little general store and bought some knick knacks and maple fudge then went back and relaxed for the night.
The next morning, I learned. There was some intros and “classroom” learning which was a review of the stuff we had been emailed. Then we went up to the barn and did some learning.
First, they paired us off and made sure we had all our equipment working properly (extremely important!). Then they demonstrated shearing a sheep. Then they sent an instructor to work with each board (two people partnered) and just get to it. They paired us up so they wouldn’t need so many instructors and so if we needed to, which we did, the person shearing could simply hand the clipper off to the other person and handle the sheep as needed.
We sheared lambs first who were smaller and the first ones we did had the belly, neck and legs already clipped. Then we did full lambs that afternoon. They had us start on lambs because that batch was destined for slaughter in February and if we nicked them, it wouldn’t matter.
We each did two sheep that day and me and my board partner split a third. Basically we sheared until the lambs were done.
Half of shearing is the clipper motions. The other half is the sheep handling. And holy shit, it is a hell of a leg workout. Essentially for most of the shearing, the shearer holds the sheep pinned with thighs and knees. Requiring thighs of steel. I had to tap out on one sheep because my thighs were not holding and starting to shake. Because we were still learning the motions, we were stopping a lot to ask for advice and stuff. Just hard to learn all at once. And it was hot. It was 85f and we were all sweating a lot despite being in a barn under cover.
But we got all the lambs done with assists from the instructors who finished off the last few so we could watch them.
I went back to the camp site, stretched and went right to sleep after eating.
Sunday morning, got right back to it. We started on ewes who were much bigger and much more difficult in some ways and easier in others. They’d been sheared before, so if we held them right, they just kind of flopped over. But some of them outweighted me and my board partner by a bunch. We were on the smaller end of the folks learning to shear and asked advice of one of the smaller instructors on how she handled the bigger sheep. It was some adjustments in how the sheep got held and foot positions. Some of the ewes just also were like big bags of jello, they flopped everywhere and didn’t really help in the moving.
But I got a big ewe done mostly smoothly although I still handed my clippers off to move her into the various positions. Then we did another couple sheep in the afternoon with me and my board partner finishing up before some other folks and there was a couple sheep left. So we asked around and there was an extra sheep left. So we split the sheep! I did half the shear and she did the other half.
In total, I’ve done five sheep. I still have to hand the clippers off to move the sheep two or three times for the big changes, like when you lift the sheep up from the long blows to the shoulder on the other side.
My next steps are to talk to friends of friends and see if I can practice sheep handling, and then talk to fiber folks and see if they know anyone who would be willing to let me shear their sheep for free for practice, smaller flocks and such. If I can grab a friend to help, that would work great. I’m excited though, it was really fun to be honest. I want to keep doing it and I’m also going to see if I can talk to some other shearers and see if I can tag along to help and get to shear a few sheep in exchange. I could see how much I improved from the first sheep and I want to do better more.
After the day wrapped up, I went north to Burlington. Seems like a nice enough city. I parked down by the waterfront, spent a few minutes looking at Lake Champlain, then found the closest and fastest method of food, which was a cafe place that had burgers and fries. It wasn’t gluten free but it was right there and I was extremely hungry.