Fiber Arts Friday-Shearing 2010

This week was full, full, full of fiber. Last weekend we sheared our animals and all week long I have been moving bags of the glorious, soft fiber out of the house to be processed or sorted/graded.
Shearing day always begins a few weeks before the actual removal of fiber. This year I was crunched on time and did not clean up the paddocks before shearing. I won't make that mistake again. One of my crias, Floreanna, was full of vegetable matter and her refusal to stand still for 1/2 of second for me to try to clean it off was frustrating. I am sure if she walked by a refrigerator it would stick to her. She picked up every small bit of straw, hay, grass,etc. Lesson learned. As the forecast was for rain I moved the animals into the barn 2 days ahead of time. They hated it. They hummed and hummed begging me to let them go outside every time I came into the barn. I stripped the stalls every day to remove any debris that might wrapped itself into their locks. The morning of shearing I cleaned the stalls again and laboriously cleaned each and everyone of the 15 animals by hand. Taima helped me pick off most of the vegetable matter. I then gave the animals a small bit of hay to munch on. And we waited for the shearer. Dave Easter came late in the afternoon and we began our work about 4:30 pm. Beforehand I cleaned the barn, organized an area for shearing and prepared the bags for fiber. Each animal had 3 clear plastic bags with their name on it. One for the blanket, one for the neck fiber and one for tail, belly and legs. Andrea Morrison of Wonder Why Alpacas is an apprentice grader and sorter. Following her instructions I was a able to organize myself and felt much better this year about shearing. Of the 7 animals that I wanted to have show blankets on I used flannel backed table cloths to wrap the fleece in. All clearly labeled, of course.


Thankfully I had help. The Talbotts of Grand Alpacas and my spinning cohort Katie and her mother in law helped to hold the bags as Dave sheared or to wrap the blanket and weigh all the bags.Taima held the head of the animal while Sam clipped the toenails. I found that if each person had a specific job it was much more organized and less confusing. I sort of did this and that. The most amazing aspect of shearing is watching the blanket as it is sheared off the animal. We have a bay black, Kahula, and his fiber reminded me of melting chocolate as it formed "waves" onto the plastic bag under him. I cannot properly describe how beautiful it was.

There are three things I would do differently next year..1. clean the paddocks 2 weeks before shearing. 2. Use Ty Vac to place under the animal and wrap the blanket in. 3.Make sure Noah is home to help out (he was at a Regatta out of town). Other than that I think we were very productive.
We finished shearing around 9 pm. I still had to feed the other animals and clean up. We were all exhausted on Sunday and a bit sore. We had a great time. I love shearing day.