October 1, 2021
It’s starting to look, and feel, like Autumn around here! We picked up a load of leftover pumpkins and scattered them about for the sheep to eat - and nothing says Autumn like a field filled with pumpkins.
Tree crews have been on our road all summer, clearing along the power lines, and today they happily delivered all the wood to our house. We now have eight cords of sixteen-foot logs just waiting for us to cut and split. -It might be a long wait.
This Sunday will be the first time we’ve sheared our flock in the fall. Usually, we only shear in the spring, but our Shetland Sheep’s wool grows so long, it can be a problem for the spinnery, and some of the sheep look uncomfortable by the middle of March. To shear twice a year is twice the work, and twice the price, but hopefully there will be less fiber loss due to matting and rooing (shedding), and that will offset some of the expense.
Our sheep’s fleece grows more than half an inch a month, so they will have plenty of wool to keep them warm, before winter’s frigid temperatures really set in. Most “long wool” flocks, that I know of, shear twice a year and say it’s the way to go. We shall see! I’m quite sure we will get plenty of feedback from the shearer, the spinnery, and the sheep, after which we can evaluate whether, or not, it’s right for us.
The temperatures are getting decidedly cooler, and even though the katydids are still serenading us like Summer is never going to end- it will. We are just one hard frost from them all falling silent, and then it will not only look and feel like Autumn, but when we fire up the wood splitter, it’ll sound like it as well.