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.
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