Oh man, do I need a massage today! More on that in a minute...
It has been fairly quiet around here since my last farm update, but here's a quick photo of some of my big pregnant girls!
You can see Umbra, the big black ewe to the left, who I showed you last time with the beginnings of her baby belly. Beside her is my East Friesian/Finnsheep cross ewe. Both of her parent breeds are highly prolific breeds. She is due February 28th... I suspect she's carrying at least quadruplets!
Now, for that backrub thing.
Yesterday and today I was off to a farm about 1.5 hours from home to help shear 400 sheep!
That's just one mob.
Thursday started early. I was up at 5:30 and on the road an hour later. Thank goodness for a breakfast stop along the way!
"Sheila" the GPS tells us how to get where we have to go (sorry for the blur!!)
We get everything set up after arriving (this usually takes about an hour)
And then the sheep start arriving for their haircut!
There were four of us shearing the first day (I'm in the orange shirt, you get to know everybody by their backside on the shearing crew, since we're bent over most of the time XD).
Here's Lorrie, my shearing teacher/mentor/employer, clearing the first hip on a ewe.
My standing record was 34 sheep sheared in one day. This was sheep 35 on Thursday!
I made it all the way to a whopping FORTY-ONE that day. The second day I sheared 21, as there were not very many left. Also, my muscles are like large bundles of overcooked spaghetti, so that was about all I could manage anyway.
The wool gets packed into large bags using a nifty machine. My brother came to help out today (Friday) and is an old pro at running it.
So that's my busy couple days! I'm not sure I'll be moving very fast tomorrow, I definitely won't need to hit the gym for a few days!
Thanks for dropping in! This is just a taste of the excitement of shearing time, I'll be spending about two months shearing around Saskatchewan in the early spring. Talk to y'all again soon!
