September 30, 2022
We are simultaneously preparing for the fall shearing and the beginning of sheep breeding season. Shearing needs to happen before the weather turns much colder, and sheep breeding starts to “take place” when the days get shorter, and the ewes come into heat.
We have sheep in three different locations and need to trailer them all to Hill-Stead for next week’s shearing. We’ll try to keep the breeding ram away from the young ram lambs (to reduce fighting). We also need to keep the rams and the ewes apart as much as possible, (to reduce breeding). It all sounds very controlled and logical – but it rarely goes exactly as planned.
In 2011 we had all the rams and ewes separated by electric fencing until the “October Storm” came, after which we were without electricity for nine days. It took the rams less than a day to discover that the fence separating them from the ewes was no longer electrified. Friends suggested we weren’t farming so much as simply running a sheep brothel.
We’ve since built very sturdy fences that don’t rely solely on electricity. Even so, things don’t always go as planned. Last year we decided we didn’t want as many lambs in the spring, so we only bred 20 ewes, but every single one of them had twins. “Man plans and God laughs.”
Next week’s shearing won’t be open to the public, (unlike our spring shearing) but we are planning to livestream it. We purposely scheduled it for a school day in hopes that schools – especially ones that can’t afford field trips to farms - can watch. We’ll be available during the livestream to answer any of the student’s questions as they come up.
Hopefully, if everything goes the way we planned (I can already hear the laughter), we will livestream the shearing exclusively and not the breeding in the background. Either way it should be a wonderful learning opportunity for the kids.
Shearing will be livestreamed Tuesday October 4, 2022 from 9:30-11:30 (or whenever we are done!)