Out Like A Lot of Lambs

April finally, and warming up. Potholes on the roads, puddles on the laneways, sap in the maple bush, and lambs in the barn.

Which is to say I was out at my cousins' today for shearing day. Meat sheep they may be, but some of the fleeces are lovely, crimpy, soft things (and how they got it in a Rideau/Dorset/Finn melange of a flock, I don't know), and they are planning to send some of the best to a mini-mill this year. My job was to help them identify and sort out the best of the fleeces. Mom came along as well, but she spent half of the day enjoying the cousins' baby and taking her for a sleigh ride.

Each batch of sheep got shooed into the corridor and vaccinated, then into the chute one at a time to await the shearer.

Last year's shearer was not terribly fast, and they ended up with an 18-hour day to shear the lot. There were more sheep this year, but it only took the new shearer maybe 6 hours total for the 110-140 head in the barn - a huge improvement for everyone concerned, including the sheep, who were eager to have a bite to eat. It seems shearers prefer the sheep to be fasting 12 hours ahead, so they're lighter and not farting while you work. Completely understandable - but yeah, after shearing, the sheep all wanted to hang around in the corridor where there was a hay bale they could snack on.

Lambing was planned in stages this year, so one batch had lambed a while ago, and the babies are still nursing, but strong and fuzzy. The pen beside them had the ewes who were clearly pregnant, but not due yet.

Of course, there are always surprises as well. Under all the wool, it's hard to tell who's expecting if it wasn't a planned pregnancy. It seems one of the ram lambs from last year got left in with the girls a little too long, and this morning there was a new baby lamb in with the ewes who were supposedly not expecting! He was snuggled with his mama under a heat lamp, and wearing a cute little sweater. So cute you can't help but say Awww!

 

Reputation

One of the things I rather love about having connections in the country is how easy it is to acquire fleeces for spinning. For someone with a few pet sheep or camelids, or cross-breed sheep raised for meat, they still have to shear, but it's not usually worth the time and gas for them to bring the fleece somewhere to sell. People get to hear through the grapevine that I spin, and fleece falls into my lap.

Like this weekend. My cousins are starting up a flock of meat sheep, bought parts of two flocks from different people, and two guard llamas from someone else. And the sheep were sheared recently, so they wanted to know whether I could use some of the fleece, and whether I might want the llamas' fleeces also, since the co-op they're sending the fleece to doesn't take llama. There you are. I got to spend an hour or two Saturday picking over the fleece. Some are really more like coarse hair, but some were fine and crimpy and lovely (if a bit dirty, as you can see in the picture), but I came away with a garbage bag of stuff that washed out white and soft. Still don't know what the breeds involved were, but it's nice!

The llamas are not shorn yet, but when they are, I get that too. Price? One handspun item from the fleece. Can do.

Plus, it's lambing season, so I got to visit with the lambs. My aunt was on midwife duty - one had dropped triplets that morning, and another had twins while we were picking over the fleece. I got to hold one of the morning's lambs - still with a bit of umbilical cord dangling, and tiny fleece curls like embroidered french knots. The count at that point was 85 lambs, and to keep them organized they were all numbered and color-coded. Sheep from one flock had pink numbers, and the other had purple, painted on the back, and the lambs had the same numbers as the mother. Talk about counting sheep!

While batches of that fleece soaked, I picked and dehaired llama. This one came from someone my mother knows. She came up to me at the local Fair a few years ago, said she had heard from my mother I spin, and she had a llama. They had shorn him when the weather got warm, so he would be more comfortable, but now there was a garbage bag of fleece in her garage, and could I use it? And in due time, a bag of fleece arrived. It's quite a nice grey-brown, soft, and not dirty - but oh, so full of hay. Either he's very fond of rolling in it, or he believes in keeping emergency snacks stashed on him at all times.

raw llama

clean llama













I'm going to lose a lot, either to felting due to my taking a couple years to get to it, or to short and excessively hay-filled bits. But I've got a couple hundred grams cleaned already, so enough to do something as a thank you, and some over, for sure. And I will be certain to clean the next llama fleeces promptly.


 

Wild and Wooly

Last time I did a library run, I found something I thought I really ought to read in the mystery section.

According to the synopsis on the jacket, it involves sheep who track down their shepherd's killer. And the sheep have names like Miss Maple (the flock leader) and Othello (a black ram). Somehow, it seems like something that ought to be animated a la Wallace and Gromit, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

And what's the book sitting on? A bag of wool that arrived on my doorstep this week. When a friend who knew I was a spinner mentioned she had a bag of fleece and would I like it, I said, sure, I could find a home for it, and she showed up unexpectedly the other morning. It's a bit on the coarse side, and it has some dark hairs mixed in, but it's washed and carded into roving, and I will find a use for it. It's really amazing how once people know you use/like whatever, a lot of it falls into your lap. I've got several random sheep fleeces and a llama one at the parents' waiting to be washed, and I didn't go looking for any of them. It was all, 'Oh, so-and-so mentioned that you spin. Do you want...' Maybe I should be surprised the stash isn't taking up more space than it does!