My sheep are foldy, if you know what I mean. They have lots of skin rolling back on itself. If your shearer isn’t skilled, the animals will come out all nicked up, polka dotted with blood. Luckily, this rarely happens. He’s also great at keeping second cuts to a minimum. They are bits of fleece that are too short to include in the spinning process. We definitely don’t want them.

Aaron is also special because he produces his own line of yarn from his own sheep, or fleeces he’s been given. It is crisp, down to earth, ‘farm’ yarn in natural shades of grey/brown. We are currently sold out. He’s developed a bit of a fan club. I’m hoping this blog post will put some pressure on him and he’ll send some more along!

There is nothing like throwing a big old fleece. In this case, I think we had about 12 pounds of fleece from just one of my males. Once it’s scoured and processed we might have 5 or 6 pounds of spinnable fiber. That’s about 5 ladies medium sweaters!

Once the sheep are sheared there is a little bit of a meet and greet thing that happens. They pretty much don’t recognize each other anymore and need a few minutes to get reacquainted. Once they’ve rebonded, they head out to the yard and share a hay snack. Oh, and by the way, if you are interested in raw fleeces, please contact the shop. They are BEAUTIFUL.