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The indignity…

shearing

One of the neighbors, giving one of the neighbors a trim.

This was a demonstration of an old shearing machine by a local farmer. What they do for reals is import New Zealanders. They are fucking fantastic shearers of sheep, apparently.

The lady next door was telling me they got invited to a shearing (maybe next year, when people know us better). She said there was a great big Kiwi and his little apprentice. The big guy could shear a whole sheep in a minute. The apprentice took two minutes. Between the two of them, they did a herd of six hundred in a day.

And you thought you had a rough day.

After that, they put the wool in a sort of giant trash compacter and it comes out in a cube so dense and hard you can’t poke a dent in it with your finger.

Wool is graded mostly by the diameter of the individual fiber. The local variety of sheep has a very coarse wool that ends up mostly in carpets. You could be standing on one of my neighbors right now.

How rude.

Comments


Comment from dfbaskwill
Time: July 16, 2009, 8:02 pm

The indignity! But my carpet IS nice.


Comment from JeffS
Time: July 16, 2009, 8:06 pm

The shear horror of it all……


Comment from scubafreak
Time: July 16, 2009, 9:00 pm

Ya think THATS bad, try THIS!!! http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc

Funny, nasty and infomative all at the same time……

🙂


Comment from nbpundit
Time: July 16, 2009, 9:52 pm

Carpets? What carpets?
/hardwood floors


Comment from Lipstick
Time: July 16, 2009, 11:29 pm

The sheep looks pretty calm about the whole thing.


Comment from Mrs. Hill
Time: July 17, 2009, 8:09 am

That’s why I come here — for the woolgathering!


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: July 17, 2009, 10:47 am

Kiwis are very adept at wrestling a sheep to the ground for some reason.


Comment from Gromulin
Time: July 17, 2009, 12:37 pm

New Zealand : Austrailia’s Canada !


Comment from Allen
Time: July 17, 2009, 12:37 pm

That reminds me… I visited Kiwiland once, and saw in a store window a sign that said: “Four Skins for Sale.” I had no idea that a common unit of sale of sheep’s wool was from four of the buggers. Much to my chagrin.

Then again I’m like Bulgarian wine, I don’t travel well anymore. 🙂


Comment from mommer
Time: July 17, 2009, 1:07 pm

I have tried to shear a sheep. OMG, it was awful. I think the sheep got so fed up she was about to grab the shears and do it herself. She was a white sheep but the wool yellows as it ages and since the hand shears were rather dull I switched to some regular sissors. Long story short, she ended up looking like a sheep carved out of a block of old foam rubber.

The next year I had a professional come and shear my little flock. It was worth every penny.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 17, 2009, 1:15 pm

Yeah, the guy in the picture got some bits of mutton in his sheepskin. I don’t know if it’s because he was using antique equipment, or if it is common to get a few razor nicks.

He also took a good deal longer than a minute. The ewe isn’t as mellow about it as she looks, but sheep don’t have a lot of ways of demonstrating they’re not happy. They can’t even bite people — no upper teeth.


Comment from Pupster
Time: July 17, 2009, 2:23 pm

They can’t even bite people — no upper teeth.
Neither does Bawney Fwank, so I’m led to believe. 


Comment from dfbaskwill
Time: July 17, 2009, 4:04 pm

The lisping and sashaying (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Barney Frank! Sheep and Frank in one post! What wonders does the weasel bring us?


Comment from scubafreak
Time: July 17, 2009, 7:25 pm

Well, if you go to the link I posted above, you can hear Mike Rowe describe how to castrate a lamb with your teeth…….

😉

Here ya go again

http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 17, 2009, 7:32 pm

Ohhhhh…is that what it was? I figured when people get into pissing contests about “how bad was your job?” I didn’t really want to see the photographic evidence…


Comment from scubafreak
Time: July 17, 2009, 7:37 pm

LOL…. They don’t SHOW it, he describes it as an epiphany that he had about his misconceptions of what work really is. It’s a GREAT speach, actually. You should watch it!


Comment from iamfelix
Time: July 18, 2009, 5:48 am

I saw this bio of Mike Rowe a while back and found it interesting – odd and varied career path.

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