Shearing Day with Shetland Sheep

One of the joys of becoming a part of the sheep farm community is the opportunity to participate in other people's sheep activities. Last week, I helped with the shearing of a flock of 16 shetland ewes.

The beauty of shetland sheep is the range of colors that they come in. The picture above shows them penned together before the shearing role call begins. (If their eyes look a little strange, it's because I was having difficulty editing out the "red eye.")

The day was chilly but calm. The peacefulness of the scene is available to all of the senses - no intrusive noises, the fresh air smells, the visual enjoyment of the outdoors and the sheep. These lucky ewes were shorn with handclippers rather than electric shears.

Shearing a sheep for its fleece involves it all coming off in one piece. After the fleece is shorn, the sheep is free to go off on its own again. Ewes are shorn prior to lambing usually. These freshly shorn ewes will be living in the warmth of a barn. The rams will be shorn later when the outdoor temperature is warm enough to stay outdoors without a coat of wool.

And the fleece goes onto the skirting table where it goes through the initial picking to discard the undesirable bits.

The excessively dirty fleece or the areas that have felted too much while on the sheep drop to the ground. They will later be raked up and used for garden mulch.

And each sheep's fleece goes into its own bag where it will be skirted again (a second picking over) and then sent off to be processed into roving for spinning or batting for quilting or felting.

We started with the white sheep and proceeded on to the darker and then the darkest color sheep so that their fleeces could be kept in better color order. After working with fleece, your fingers become coated with lanolin which makes a wonderful hand lotion. I had to stop taking pictures because my fingers were too sticky to handle the camera anymore.

Our own sheep are going to be shorn later in the spring. I'm hoping to have the opportunity to help out with a few more shearings between now and then.

Our House

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." H.D.Thoreau, Walden

Summer 2001

Winter 2002

In my adult life, I had envisioned a time when I would build a permanent nest for myself lined with memories and artifacts collected during my nomadic years (around 30 addresses in 30 years). While I didn't picture giving up all of my roaming, as I love to travel, I did picture staying put at one address longer than I had previously. I have achieved that. I have lived here over six years.

This house is my mother's last material gift to me. I feel she would be glad of my choice.

The house is a bungalow style, strongly built in 1917. Real wood used throughout its construction. Plaster walls, hardwood floors and high ceilings. While the house was in good structural shape, it needed some cleaning up. Namely the floors needed repair as every room, including kitchen and bathroom, had grungy, old wall-to-wall carpeting. Yikes!

Scraping off old, nasty carpet liner in the summer heat is not fun

Here's a brief tour:

The (then) unfinished 2nd floor: A former boss of mine once said that people buy a house because they fall in love with a single aspect that they can't live without. For me, it was this space.

It also has a view of the old millpond (Morning Light entry). And in the early days, it came with white geese who would wander across Main Street daily.

As was true of my childhood home, it is on the parade route, too.

Plenty of room for gardens, as well.

Since moving in, many changes have happened including getting married, buying sheep, new paths to explore. Also, Drew and I have expanded our living space by finishing off the 2nd floor. A lesson learned: staying put does not mean being stagnant.

Morning Light

This is a winter's view from our window. I love the way winter bares all so that I can see through to what lays beyond. The silhouettes of leafless trees make me think of naive folk paintings. The simplicity of the lines helps me to clear the clutter from my mind momentarily before the full force of day sets in. With cup of coffee in hand, I like to make my to-do lists for the day, update the calendar, write in my journal and otherwise tackle the world from a gentle, quiet, peaceful stance.

Since writing about clutter (January entry), I have gotten some comments from others and have also done more online searching on the subject. There is a lot out there about clutter, suggesting that it is a bigger issue than one who is caught up in clutter might realize initially.

As for my own material clutter, I have been taking a more active approach to breaking it down and clearing it away. I love recycling day, which is on tuesdays for us, because it gives me a goal to reach. How high can I fill the mixed paper bins? What area has been cleared as a consequence?

If that tuesday is also the day when the cleaners come, I have a double incentive to work on it. Additionally, we have a great service that will pick up donated goods for their store to sell. So my de-cluttering efforts are easily rewarded. This means, of course, that the issue rests with me in my cluttered mind.

Sheep Eyes

So, where do you take your sheep when he has an eye problem? To an eye doctor, of course.



Who knew? I certainly didn't until it turned out that Slim's eye problem wasn't your everyday sheep eye problem.

Around here, the local sheep owners often do their own veterinary care as sheep doctors are hard to come by. When Slim started exhibiting an ongoing eye problem (watery eye, white cloud covering his cornea), we tried our usual contacts to see how to proceed. There is an ointment (Terramycin) that is commonly used. We tried that but to no avail. Then we did manage to contact a vet who does make farm visits and does like working with sheep. She had some thoughts as to what it might be but recommended that we take Slim to an eye doctor.

The next day, being full of rain, we loaded up Slim and Slam into the back of a borrowed pickup truck (with a cap). It was the same truck we had borrowed to bring them home last October.

We then headed down to Medford to see eye doctors, Drs. Clinton and Evans. The clinic was quited excited by our visit. They see llamas on a relatively regular basis (due to their tendency towards inverted eyelids or entropion). And they have worked on horses and monkeys, and cats and dogs. But they are interested in small ruminants (sheep and goats) and hadn't gotten many such patients.

Even though Slim was the one with the apparent eye problem, we took both Slim and Slam because sheep like to flock together. Slim and Slam are never out of each other's sight. Slam would have had a fit if we had left him behind. When we got to the clinic, we hesitated for just a moment about leaving Slam in the truck. He started getting agitated just by our thinking it.

After checking with the receptionist as to where they wanted us, we brought the sheep up the front steps into the waiting room.

Checking in


Here's what the waiting room looks like without sheep patients.

Here's the waiting room after there have been sheep patients.


It turns out that both Slim and Slam have a bacterial infection in their eyes, although Slim's left eye is the worst. We were given some new medicine - eye drops that need to be applied 3 times a day.



We're not out of the woods yet but Dr. Clinton believes that the eyes will recover without any permanent damage.

'Tis a gift to be simple...

'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be.
- American Shaker Tune -

My lifestyle is not simple. It is messy, it is cluttered. Clutter is truly, truly annoying. It's embarrassing to witness in one's self. I recently read a New York Times article which said that when people resolved their physical clutter issues, they often lost body weight. I believe it.

Sources of clutter in my life:


I am an archivist and a researcher. As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, I minored in history. Since the '60s, I have kept journals after being influenced by reading Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. In 1998 when my mother moved from the house I grew up in, I received all of her family's albums and memorabilia - the official keeper of the Wisser archives. I have also written a doctoral dissertation. All of these choices leave me with lots of stuff politely called archives and documentation.









I am a crafts person. At one point, I focused on bookmaking with the idea of putting all of those written journal words into artful book form. Then I moved on to quilting. Now I'm spinning, dyeing and knitting yarn. I also cook and bake bread but tend not to think of that as craft. Hmmm.


I have moved several times in my adult life. Depending on how I do the counting, I come up with over 30 addresses (excluding long stays with people while in transition). I've lived in New York state, New Jersey, Washington state, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, the UK, France and Norway. While moving can be cleansing, it can also leave one with unpacked boxes. Once I found an unopened bottle of Dom Perignon champagne in a box that had been sitting in my North Caroina attic for three years. (It wasn't very good.)

I want to live more simply. I want to find a way to unite the common themes and dispose of the superfluous. How do I get there from here?

Sheep Lessons, Part I

May I introduce to you Slim (one full eye patch; some pink on his nose)


and Slam (two full eye patches).

They are Jacob twin wethers. (A wether is a neutered ram.) They were born last April. They are our trainer sheep. They are teaching us how to take care of sheep. When we first brought Slim and Slam home in late October in the back of a pick-up truck, I spent the first couple of weeks worrying about them at night. Were they lonely and afraid in their new home? No. Were they sick and I didn't realize it? No. Was I feeding them correctly? It seems to be working out okay.

Sometimes I would lay awake at night and think about how I knew how to take care of cats (I've lived around cats all of my life) but I hadn't a clue as how to take care of sheep. I've read about sheep and have talked with sheep owners and visited sheep farms. I have been to sheep fairs (they are great fun and great learning centers). I belong to a couple of e-groups on sheep and wool fiber (which are very helpful). But these two sheep were now ours and I was sure that I was going to kill one or both of them off through some foolish action or naive inaction of my own. Fortunately for them and for me, they are residing with people who know a lot about livestock (as we live in a village and can't keep livestock in our backyard.)

It is now three months later and they are still alive. They are incredibly sweet animals and very nosy. They like it when we spend time around them although halter training is still a work in progress.

Since the end of December, they have been joined by two polled Dorset ewes.


Since the beginning of January, the Dorsets have contributed three lambs (purebred Dorsets) and there are two more adopted lambs (Dorset-Hampshire crossbreds) and an on-loan Hampshire ewe mother. From 0 to 9 sheep in three months.


Needless to say, there has been a whole lot of sheep learning going on. Among other things, I know about building sheep houses, about sheep teeth, about giving a sheep drench (oral medications) and healing scald on the hoof with Dr. Naylor's Hoof 'n Heel (may have the clever spelling wrong). I've bottle fed lambs because their Mom couldn't provide enough milk. And I've led sheep on halters (although Slim and Slam still remain the most difficult ones to get halters on). The sheep lessons continue.