6/21 Shearing

I was familiar with farmers waiting for a few dry days before they could cut and bale hay, but it never occurred to me that sheep would also have to be dry before you could shear them. The last two days have been very cloudy and windy, perfect for drying wool on the sheep I guess. So Redbank Farm, where our hosts Tim & Fran Charge live, is having a shearing this morning. They hired two shearers, and a third young bloke who is learning to shear, were hard at it in the shed; about 3 hours into it by the time we arrived at 10:30 to watch.


When we drove up from the cottage, we went up the dirt road to the shearing shed. It looked quiet from the outside, 3 Dorsett rams in an adjacent pen, 6 utilities (pick up trucks), every one white with the flat bed and apparently every one brought their working dogs! The yard was full of Kelpies (an Australian breed of working cattle & sheep dogs.) Tim's "Schooner," an affectionate mooch, attached himself to Bentley who was generously distributing as much affection to whomever he could get his hands on. After the picture above was taken, Bentley says, "I'm in heaven!"

Inside the shed we found 3 shearers, 1 certified wool grader, 1 handyman and Tim (the owner) and a couple dogs, trying to participate. Bruce, the grader (smiling in yellow above), was a wealth of information and loved to talk about farming and sheep. He had a friendly, enthusiastic way of explaining how wool is cleaned and graded or why sheep are crossed to produce lambs with different qualities. It was fascinating; we like sheep a lot, having raised a handful back in Toledo days. As a biology teacher I gleaned a lot of useful information relating to farming and genetics.

Tim squeaked the shearing in! Though the morning was nice, by the end of the afternoon it began snowing! This picture, of the cottage, was taken at dusk the same day! The recently shorn sheep were kept in an enclosure and fed to avoid risk of problems in the cold weather.

Snow? In a way, snow was disappointing, it looked so much like Toledo now; not very much like Australia! Still, it is beautiful; very beautiful.