Martin's Shearing: Lots of wool in 2025

Blog #39

A bit of coffee, a bit of dessert, and a blog post. A good way to spend a chilly evening in December.

So …, Martin’s Shearing 2025 is now complete. We’ve sheared the last sheep, cleaned the gear, had the combs-n-cutters professionally sharpened, and now it’s time to sleep in on Saturdays for a bit. We’re going to sleep as late as we want on days we don’t need to get up for a project, feed the cats, go on a trip, or …, yeah, we really aren’t going to sleep in much. As the late philosopher Ozzy Osbourne said, “Life won’t wait for you, my friend” and I’m inclined to agree.

So how did 2025 go with a handpiece? My counter tallied up 240 sheep and goats. This does include some of them being sheared twice, the Angora goats and Swiss Valais Blacknose sheep. This is more than 2024 by just a few, and about three times as many as 2023 when I started shearing again. While 240 sheep is much less than a single day’s tally for a great many shearers, when there’s only one to five in a flock, it takes a while to add up, which is fine with me. They all need shearing.

Why did we shear some animals twice? Longwool breeds tend to do better by getting a trim every six months, both for the quality of the wool and for the health of the animal. Wools that are processed tend to do better with a staple length of 3-6”. Longer may foul some equipment and shorter tends to drop out of automated equipment or have more short fibers which some people may find to be scratchy. I know there are folks who will prefer to work with longer staples and those who have uses for shorter, but middle lengths generally work better. Additionally, shearing these critters every six months creates a more routine schedule to roll shearing in with other hygiene and husbandry tasks.

We put in a lot of miles shearing this year, as well. Dede and I travelled over 6,050 miles for shearing gigs. For scale, we could have driven from Macon, Georgia to Newport, Oregon and then all the way back to Macon and covered the same miles – yes, coast-to coast and back. This works out to ~175 miles per gig, or 25 miles per sheep. Another way to look at would be to drive for about 20 minutes, then shear a sheep, then drive 20 more minutes, shear another sheep, and do this again and again, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then repeat all the way back.

We had a total of 35 shearing gigs, too, for 240 sheep and goats, and that comes out to 6.9 per stop. I really believe every wooled sheep should be sheared every year for health and hygiene reasons, which is one reason I have no problem doing small flocks. There are other reasons, too, like my shearing speed, my age, and the miles driven. Dede and I try to limit this adventure to shearing those we can do in a day, starting and ending at home. Occasionally we’ll take on a flock that’s larger and/or more distant than we can do in a day and still sleep in our own bed, but that’s by exception.

I also kept track of the breeds of animal I’ve sheared this year. My relatively small sample size of 20 dozen ruminants has included 14 different identified breeds. The table below shows the breeds in roughly the order I sheared them.

Gulf Coast Native	Navajo-Churro	Suffolk
Dorset	Southdown Babydoll	Angora goats
Finn	Jacob	Swiss Valais Blacknose
Hampshire	Cheviot	Blue Faced Leicester
Lincoln Longwool	Katahdin-X (hair)	Unspecified X-breeds

Some of these breeds are listed by various conservation agencies as critical or threatened, including Gulf Coast Native, Jacob, Navajo-Churro, and Lincoln. Others, including Dorset, Suffolk, and Hampshire account for over half of purebred registrations, so it seems to me that Georgia sheep run the gamut from popular to niche, and from large commercial flocks to individual sheep on a small pasture. It’s so cool to see into the world of such a wide variety of livestock within the species Ovis Aries.

One other thing about doing so many smaller flocks is the opportunity to meet and work with so many families in Georgia. For some it’s all-hands-on-deck with the kids corralling the sheep while the parents are doing other tasks, for others it’s one person at the site with Dede and me. It’s also fun to find out why folks own sheep. One owner grows the animals as his own meat supply. Another shepherds her animals to provide a steady supply of fiber for yarn and other wool-based products. One has her children doing the lion’s share of the work for shows—but she’s really growing productive citizens with sheep as a living teaching tool. A few others raise them for display, either as movable petting zoos or as a farm to visit. In short, the people I shear for have as many reasons for having sheep as I have stops on my shearing journey.

This has just been discussing people I shear for. There are so many other folks and families we’ve met on this adventure. I’ve met folks with hair sheep that don’t require my services but are great to talk with and learn from. There are others I see at Sheep Association meetings who have long-established relationships with other shearers and are very happy with them and still talk with me about what I’m doing and why. One family has even recommended books for me to read, and one of those is next month’s book in Dede’s book club.

The sheep producing community in Georgia is a great group to be involved with. By and large the owners are very open, caring, and giving people who are committed to the health and welfare of the animals they have dominion over, and are also committed to improving the lives of others around them. None of us are becoming independently wealthy and living a life of ease from our involvement with sheep production, but we all find some level of satisfaction with it or we’d be doing something else. I know I’m still digging the sites, sounds, and smells of a healthy, productive farm, and I hope to continue well into the future.