It’s April here on the farm, which means it’s time to shear all the fiber animals.
Here is Willow with a huge wool coat on ready and waiting for shearing day.
We have a sheep Shearer that comes once a year to shear our animals. Shearing day will start at 9 a.m. sharp. Each animal will be brought to the shearing area and shorn within minutes. This should take about two hours to complete.
Here are two of our sheep and a goat peeking out of the barn to see what is going on
Our two llamas, Dahli and Angel enjoying a sunny spring day
The next step will be the skirting of the fleeces, which means to sort through taking away and leg and belly wool, which is not desirable to spin. Then each fleece will be rolled up and placed in its own bag tagged with the animal’s name. When all have been skirted and bagged we’ll box them getting them ready to send to the mill. At the mill they will wash the fleeces and put them into roving form, which will ready them for spinning into yarn. Then the fun begins for me, spinning, dyeing, knitting and felting! The sheep will be happy to have their wool coats removed and all will be well here on the farm.
Here is some handspun yarn on the wheel waiting to be taken off.
Here is a picture of one of my many spinning wheels.
On occasion I like to relax with a drop spindle to spin the yarn instead of sitting at the wheel.
Here is a view of the inside of our farm shop filled with all the products made here on the farm.
