Blog #6

Thirty-three Gulf Coast Natives!

So …, The first gig of the season is in the record books, and it was a blast!  Dede and I went up to Gainesville to shear a flock of about three dozen Gulf Coast Native (GCN) sheep, which in retrospect, may not have been the best idea I’ve ever had, but aren’t mistakes the only things we can truly call our own?  30+ sheep is quite a few for a slow shearer to take on for the first shear of the year.

In this case, though, it all worked out well.  We went up the night before so we could get an early start, and we were well underway before 0900.  The challenge with starting that early in the morning in February is, even though it’s Georgia, it’s still winter.  The first hour was spent shearing at 26°, which isn’t exactly warm.  You can tell in the pics that the day and the shearer warmed up quickly—first the long-sleeved shirt, then the stocking hat, then the baseball hat all went into the dirty clothes pile.

 

GCNs are a very easy shearing sheep with beautiful wool, so that really helped.  I spent my time shearing, not wrestling the sheep, fighting through hard lanolin, or trying to maneuver a 200+ pound beast of the field.  When you flip them over, they often have a bare or nearly bare belly, and they generally have an easy-going disposition.  They still get the wiggles and want to escape, but by and large they aren’t fighting the whole time.

A friend I used to work with has a saying that he uses in aviation: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”  It applies in agriculture as well.  I tried to shear a bit faster and paid the price.  The sheep were all shearing well, but there were two occasions when I did nick a spot that had to be treated.  I slowed back down, and I sheared smoothly for the rest of the day.  All told, I felt better about my tally in the time spent once I slowed back down.  I was also very fortunate that the owner took the two nicks as a teaching moment with me.

I’m now adding super-glue and a spot of clean wool to my bag of tricks.  When I showed the owner the nicks, she saw they needed treatment and pulled out a tube of superglue and asked me to find a clean bit of shorn wool.  I held the edges of the cut together, she drew a line of glue down it, then dubbed the wool onto that.  The glue bonded to everything, of course, including the clean bit of lanolin-rich wool, which acted as an antiseptic dressing.  Raw wool is also very stretchy, so as the sheep moved, the “bandage” moved with it.  Not that I’m planning to nick more sheep, but accidents can happen, and a bit of preparation can reduce infection, fly strike, and other ills should they occur. 

We were on our way home during daylight, once again avoiding I-75, and Dede read a few more columns from Sean of the South.  A great way to finish a very good day.

Next weekend there is another gig, up in Atlanta this time around.

More to follow!

C-Ya!

*** No animals were harmed in the making of this post. Shearing is an important part of sheep farming for the wellbeing of the sheep. ***