SHAGGY SHEEP SHEARING.

Well, as I said yesterday, the arable farmers were desperately trying to get their harvest in before the rain front moved in and dampened all the crops and last night, rain it did.

I awoke this morning to the pluvial pattern of raindrops on the window pains. A wet day!

Having come downstairs, and said "Good morning" to the two ewes, I got  a muted reply.

One, as many of you may have noticed has too much fleece, bad enough in the last weeks of hot weather but this morning her coat of too much wool was just drenched and heavy with all the overnight rain.

Well Dafad here had already planned on getting her sheared and so had been preparing a pen in the enclosed space behind the large compost heaps. Hoping that with the clever use of old doors found in the barn here, that it would be enough to pen her in for shearing.

Meanwhile as I was trying to sort out some tools and generally trying to tidy up the greenhouse, two inquisitive ovines came nosing in to see just what I was up to. They have free range of half of the garden here and as you will have already read, done a good job de-weeding the veg garden and the two apple orchards. The rest of the garden has plants apparently poisonous to sheep (such as azaleas)so are blocked off from visiting that area. They are getting increasingly more confident and definitely nosey! Note the extra wool on Donner, time for a de-fleece to lose that extra, rain sodden and heavy weight. Not needing to be baled for the wool marketing board,  the wet fleece doesn't matter.

Into the makeshift pen they both went and after a bribe of lots of ewe nuts they settled down well enough to be trimmed of all that extra wool weight that they were carrying.
Now, having no professional  shearer on hand, they had to make do with a total amateur. So ... the clip was not as neat and tidy as could have been and there was no fleece as such to roll and bale (it was full of burrs anyway) but at least she was free of all that extra weight. Much cooler!

Now ... 
don't blame the pink handled shears on me, they were lent to me by a friend and are labelled, wait for this "Gardening shears." After a bit of sharpening, they became sheep shears this afternoon, the closest they got to gardening was to remove all the burrs caught in Donners' fleece. She seems to attract them in a way that Bramley doesn't. Donner is definitely the most assertive ewe and tried her hardest to get out of the makeshift pen.
She really did not like having the over long wool, burrs & dags removed from her and a bit of a battle ensued.
The only blood drawn was from the shearer, who had a bit of a slip with the shears when Donner tried to win won over but the shearer won!
The compost heap is now wool enriched & all the gathered droppings are also included, in two years time the compost out of the middle bin will be good to go on the veg garden!

And as for "Madame" she quite obviously felt much better not carrying that extra weight.

Fleece free!

For the rest of the day she seemed much less irritable (I'm not surprised) who wouldn't be wearing a winter coat during the blistering hot summer days that we've had recently. And ... according to the weather forecast, last nights rain was just a watering can for  us gardeners and we are due more blistering hot days. At least one sheep will be happier!

But I still prefer Badger Faces, even if not quite pure breed!