Sweaters in the raw

by Chuck September 10, 2010

It's taken me months to get it done, but today a shearer finally showed up at our house to shear the sheep. The were starting to look a little ragged around the edges, the last guy who sheared them didn't do the best job ever, and their long wool was starting to look a little green at the ends what with all the rain we've been getting lately.

I started looking for a shearer in June of this year. Back 30-odd years ago when I raised sheep on the family farm that's about the time of year when we sheared, a memory that was reinforced by the flock just West of Duvall, they started losing their fleeces around June too. The first person I contacted didn't show up for our appointment. Didn't show up and didn't call to let us know that he wouldn't be coming. Customer service at its finest. I realize that losing the business of a flock of 5 sheep isn't going to break this guy, but I might have more someday. I won't, but he don't know that...

After that it took me a while to even find another shearer that was willing to come and shear a small flock like mine. Once I did, he only makes appointments a month out, and then he needed to reschedule a couple of times. Not a big deal, but I took time off for the first one and missed some work for the second time too.

He did do a nice job on the girls, he only nicked one sheep, which I remember as being a big deal. I'm not sure how much wool we got, but if it's a conservative 15 pounds each, we have 75 pounds of wool sitting in the garage. On Craig's List you can buy wool for $2.00 a pound, so the 75 pounds of wool will just pay for getting the sheep sheared. Next I need to figure out how to "skirt" fleeces. Sounds like the kind of thing you should know how to do if you are selling wool.

Tags:

Farm

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