Shearing

Shearing

Over lunch Gay says, “I thought you might take Corrie to the shearing shed to train her up so she’ll know what to do when you’ve got the shearers in.”

                Ron says, “Ah, right!”

                 “When is this shearing?” Simon slathers his toast with butter, than reaches into the honey tub, gathers up a dollop, and spreads that on as well.

                “This Friday.  You’re not going to be here, ta.” Gay grins, leaning forward, needling him a little. She knows how much he likes attacking new experiences.

                Simon leans back in his chair, looking like shearing is the stupidest thing in the whole world, and no one should ever do it, or maybe looking like the timing is the stupidest thing in the whole world. I haven’t learned to read him very well, yet. The he goes back to eating his toast, more or less blank faced.

                From this conversation, and because on the farm there is no talk of “training” or “preparation,” this means that shearing is a big deal. It’s a monumental occasion and you should take it VERY SERIOUSLY.

                Also, I am excited because Simon is leaving for Christmas, and so he won’t be around for this fabled day of shearing, and so I have Ron’s attention all to myself.  Simon and I have an uneasy relationship at this point. We have seen each other walking around in my towel and his boxers to the shower, which was fine, and we have shifted sheep together, but I think he resents the fact that Ron and Gay’s attention has shifted from his 18 year old boy-self to me, the new-comer, even though I have been, so far, quieter than most of you generally know me to be. It is a trust thing and it is a caution thing and it is a, “what do they want me to be?” thing. 

                Simon had been at the farm for a long time, six weeks, and knows a lot more than I do about how the farm and farming works. So to know something he didn’t know—what a bonus! What an opportunity for greatness! At lunch I hold in my grins, but I sort of bounce my way to the shearing shed.

                The shearing shed is just a barn that attaches to the main covered yard where the weaning and dagging takes place. It’s comprised of two parts: the sheep penning part, and the shearing part. The penning part is filled with various twisty runs and then holding pens with swinging doors to hold sheep. The floor is wooden slats with about an inch of space in between so that when the sheep are being held their pee and poop can just fall right through the floor ground below (which opens to the yard). It doesn’t have much light, and is very basic feeling. When they’re not shearing sheep, they sometimes keep various odds and ends here. For instance, before the penultimate shearing we had to clear out several large tractor tires a quarter filled with water from one of the pens—I have no idea what they were for.

                The shearing part has solid wood floors, and the roof, though most of it is corrugated iron, has strips of corrugated plastic for skylights, so there’s more light coming in. It has a woodsy, yellowy glow about it, and it smells like greasy sweet wool, a little salty, a little fatty. Ron generally has half bales of wool stacked in several corners—wool that is too orange, wool that is just bits and pieces of stomach or heads, wool that didn’t get put away last time, wool that he’s collecting up to make part of one large bale.  In one corner of the room there’s a very old and pokey couch, springs showing, and several similarly decrepit chairs stacked on top of it. In the middle of the room is the Baler, a metal elevator shaft looking thing, but smaller. Also in the middle of the room is a large wooden table, but instead of a solid surface, the top just has thin slats running across it, so that when you put a fleece on it the small extra bits can fall through the cracks to the floor.

                Ron puts on special shoes, moccasin like things, which slip across this beautiful wooden floor and don’t trail poop or mud or grass across it like my gum boots will. He gives me a pair of green tennis shoes that another volunteer left behind. They have a flat white sole and are perfect for slipping around in. The shearing shed is like a quiet, clean, haven space.

                Ron brings out his shearing implements, a hand tool that looks like a large beard trimmer. Instead of the razors going horizontal, the comb, as it’s called, spreads up and out like short fingers, and a cutter, which is shorter with triangular pieces, moves back and forth. These will move back and forth at very high speeds and shear the sheep that way. He spends some time oiling the comb. The hand piece connects to a loose arm in the ceiling which has a motor attached to it, called the down tube. You pull a cord to turn the motor, and the comb/cutter, on and off.

                Ron already has a couple sheep lined up for shearing; I can hear them rustling behind a door that marks the separation between the shearing section and the sheep penning section. He shuffles around and then the door swings open and he backs out, holding a sheep by its forefeet, sliding the sheep along on its bum. The sheep looks like having its front hooves by its ears and being dragged almost on its back is no big deal; its totally calm. Ron, too, looks like this is no big deal.

                Ron drags the sheep over under the motor, and starts the comb. He’s got the sheep wedged between his knees, and he starts to shear the sheep across the belly. He takes off a big piece of crusty belly wool, all yellow and brown and short, and trims up some of the wool around the sheeps genitals and the insides of the legs, and then he sheers against the leg until I can see the pale pink skin of the sheep coming into view.

                Slowly the wool comes off, slowly the skin becomes visible. Every now and again bright red blood blooms against the sheep’s body as Ron nicks it, but the sheep doesn’t seem bothered, and Ron doesn’t seem bothered either as he twists the sheep from leaning against his legs to flat on its back, to arched up against his stomach, to bent almost in half with its head between his legs, to again propped up against his legs. And somehow he does this without the sheep kicking or fussing.

                When he’s done, when he makes the last buzz and the fleece is off the sheep, the fleece sits on the floor, fully together, not in bits and pieces scattered together. Ron lets the sheep up, and it scrambles to its feet, having a difficult time finding purchase against the floor that’s slippery with wool grease.

                Ron turns off the comb, and the loud buzzing in the room goes quiet.

                “Ah, Right. So. What you want to do is find the legs.”

                He points to the fleece. This is my job, this is my training: what to do with the fleece when the comb has got it off the sheep. This is what I’m supposed to learn. It is important that I get this right because just a week ago Ron was going on and on and on about some neighbor kid of theirs they hired to help out in the shearing shed, doing this exact job, and how poorly he did it. I really need to be better than this neighbor kid, who is probably in his forties by this point, but Ron and Gay still remember that one summer when he really screwed up the shearing.

                 There is one problem.

                I don’t see any legs, I see a lump of wool, much of it looking all the same.

                “I don’t see any legs,” I say.  

                “Well, there’s one there and there.” He points to roughly one corner and then another corner, and starts gathering it together in definitive motions, “then you pick it up from the legs, gather it towards you, then open it again, then gather it again, then gather the whole lot, in your arms, and then pick it all up and come to the table and—” here he’s walking towards the table with a bundle of fleece in his arms, “with your grip still on the legs, where you originally had it, you throw it,” he throws the fleece and it opens, like a parachute, over the table, and settles so that it looks like a slightly rumpled, very dirty rug. “And see, down there is the head, and here is the tail.”

                “Ahh,” I say, but really it just looks like a slightly rumpled, very dirty rug, and I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.   

                He explains then that what we do at the table is sort through the fleece and take out a list of about a million items. Sticks, twigs, bits of grass, etc. I don’t mention to him that sheep live in the open and probably have lots of these little bits and pieces, and that wool looks like it’s very hard to get sticks and bits of grass out of. He just tells me to put the bits of grass in my pocket. So ok.

                I should also take out any bits of dag—poop—and throw them down the shoot that empties to open ground and yard. I should also be on the look out for overly yellow fleece because they can’t sell that as white wool—yellow fleece will never dye right to make white things, so if they wanted to make white carpet with our wool, a yellow fleece wouldn’t work. They have to separate out the yellower bits and sell them separately (generally to make black carpets). 

                I think, ok, I can do this.

                Then he shows me how to fold the fleece up, flicking the edges together to get all the small bits to shake off in the process. If this were a normal shearing day we’d put this fleece in the baler, but today, on training day, we put it in a pile with other wool of its sort, because we don’t have enough wool to make a bale, yet.  

                Ron goes to shear another sheep, and instructs me on the proper way to sweep away the cuttings so I don’t get in the shearer’s way, but so that I keep an area clean.

                Then, I am the one to try to pick up a fleece. He says, “See, there are the legs.”

                I still don’t see the legs.

                I pick up the fleece and immediately the bottom of the fleece falls out and trails along the floor. I fling it along the table and half of it gets caught on the lip of the table, so the head of the sheep is still down here with me, with the tail, and who knows where the legs are, and you can see the underside of the fleece in parts and some of the overside, but not all of it. If you can see all of the top of the fleece all at once then you can see all the imperfections—all those sticks and twigs and bits of poop—all at once, rather than hunting through for them. Ron helps me out a little bit, but then he goes to get the next sheep.

                Four sheep in, I am still no better at finding legs, at throwing these damn fleeces, although I have gotten the movement better, the folding action better. Eventually I figure out that the legs will always be in the ten and two position, roughly, based on where the sheep ends up at the end of the shearing. Ron seems happy enough with this method (I don’t tell him this is my method. I simply do it, and it is moderately successful).

                Five sheep in, Ron finishes shearing one sheep, I pick up the fleece while he goes and gets the next sheep, and then he starts shearing while I throw and pick over the fleece from before. I sweep, come back to the fleece on the table, wrap it up, he’s done with that sheep, I pick up the fleece, throw it while he’s getting the next sheep, and we begin again.

                On the sixth sheep my fleece throws out so that it goes onto the table and looks like a slightly rumpled and very dirty rug. I feel it fling from my hands like a parachute and I feel it all land on the table and there it is, spread out before me! Boom! All in one piece, rather than in crumpled bits, rather than in a ball, and only a little bit has caught on the lip of the table.

                I shout, “I am not the best, but I did it!”

                And Ron says something like, “Ah, well,” and goes back to shearing.

               

                It turns out that we don’t shear on Friday, because Matt, the head shearer, cuts his finger and needs a week to heal. So we don’t shear on Friday. Simon comes back in time for the penultimate shearing.

                The penultimate shearing is the day when we’re scheduled to shear 700 odd sheep in one day. Originally there were only going to be two shearers going at once, but now there are going to be three. Ron can shear a sheep in about four minutes. That’s about enough time for me to collect a fleece, throw it (haphazardly), sweep around him, throw out the bits and pieces of bad fleece, wrap it up and put it in the correct pile. Ron tells me that these professional shearers take about a quarter of his time to shear.

                 I think it’s probably good that Simon’s back.

                So when Simon’s returned from his trip and we’re on the bikes, pulling into the shed, Ron says, “So, which of you wants to shear a sheep first?”

                And I say, “You’re soo funny. Simon, don’t listen to him. He’s joking because we’d probably kill the sheep.”

                Ron says, “You think I’m joking?”

                And I say, “Of course you’re joking. You have to have, like, a university degree to be a sheep shearer. It’s a big deal. That’s a sharp object!”

                Ron says, “A university degree, huh?”

                Simon is already walking up to the house.

                At lunch Ron brings out his camera. He flicks through a couple of pictures.  “Ah, here’s Melisse—there she is, one of our volunteers, shearing a sheep. And here’s Patrick, shearing a sheep. They came last year about this time.”

                I look at him. “You weren’t joking?”

                “’Course not.”

                “I can shear a sheep?” I say. The world explodes into possibilities in front of my very eyes.

                Simon says, almost throwing up his hands but not quite, “Of-horses-of-courses you can shear a sheep, what did you think?”

                I open my arms.  “I thought I would KILL it! And there would be blood and awful things would happen and I would just—I thought I would kill it!” I’m thinking—Seventy Dollars Down, and Panic, and Blood, and I don’t think I could keep feeling Nothing in that situation, guys! Really!

                Gay laughs, “Well, you’d be the first!”

                Ron and Gay think this is hysterical, quite amusing. Oh, Corrie, the first person to kill a sheep. Hilarious! One for the record books! A story they’d tell all the future volunteers!

                They go on in that vein for a while.

                “Well then, yes. I want to shear a sheep. Yes,” I say. I will do this. I will do this SO WELL THEY WILL KNOW ME AS THE SHEEP SHEARER. Or whatever.

                Ron takes us up to the shed.

                He shears a couple sheep first to show us how it’s done. He stops and explains the process as he goes. With those two he shows Simon how to throw a fleece, but without eleven sheep to practice on and a whole afternoon to haphazardly get it right, Simon doesn’t really get the hang of it—he only has two or three tries, so there’s no way. I throw one fleece and I’ve somehow managed to forget everything Ron’s taught me as well, so I’m of no use, either.  I try to share a moment of shrugging, “what can you do?” with Simon, but it doesn’t quite work out, he turns the wrong way and I shrug at his shoulder, mid air, overly exaggerated, for no reason.

                Since I’ve been in training longer, and have watched Ron shear sheep more times than Simon, I get to shear first. Ron shore a sheep for us slowly, first, describing exactly what he’s doing, but I’m not an audio learner, I’m a visual one. I learn by reading and then writing it down again, or by doing it over and over until my body is forced to pick it up. So Ron says, “first we start with the leg, do a couple blows to the side—” but after that I can’t keep his words in my head. I can’t keep the order of the parts of the sheep straight.

                I tell Ron exactly this—that I’m not sure what to do when, and he’ll have to walk me through it. He says ok, that’s fine.

                The first thing that he makes look easy but actually is very difficult is getting the sheep positioned. The sheep is like, A MILLION POUNDS (ok, 150, 180), and it’s dead weight. That sheep does not want to help you. It’s slumped over. You have to brace it against your knees at just the right angle so it’s sitting on its bum with its head tilted just like this so that it doesn’t fall sideways. Part of this position is natural and you don’t have to think about—when you’re doing it it’s there. But if you lose it the sheep falls sideways and then thinks, “Yes! My chance for Freedom!” etc.

                Another thing that he makes look easy but is actually very difficult is BENDING OVER. I am short, yes, and so I have less far to reach, but MY-HOLY-GOD-IN-A-BUCKET, it freaking HURTS to bend over and shear all the different parts of a sheep. Because I don’t know about you, but I normally live my life in a standard upright position, so the muscles in my back are not as developed as, say, the muscles in my legs. And then you’re holding the sheep up, generally, or you’re holding the head, or helping the sheep to bend so you can get under its armpit or something, but you’re still supporting it with your legs. So your legs are being used for the sheep—no help for you from the legs department, they’ve got enough to deal with.  And your arms are being used to hold the comb and to keep the sheep in check, so you can’t brace yourself or balance yourself. So your back is really the only muscle keeping you from falling all the way forward. Your back is the only set of muscles that’s fully responsible for your general positioning and posture.

                The last thing that he makes look easy but that isn’t is holding the comb in your hand, because that thing is vibrating like crazy. And not a good kind of vibrating. The kind of vibrating that makes you think, “Oh, well, those bones just might come out of their sockets any time now.” 

                As Simon said, afterward, “look at my hand!” and when we looked at his hand it was still vibrating. 

                He really is very witty.

                So here is what happens with my first sheep.

                Ron helps me get it into position, and I shear the part of the first leg-wool off. I promptly realize that this is the hardest thing I will ever have to do in my entire physical life.

                At that point, the sheep slips sideways off my legs and starts kicking.  I get many images of broken bones in my head, so I FLING the comb away from me, and it hits the floor, but for some reason I stay near the sheep, ready and willing to keep those hooves close, and start screaming, “I’M SO SORRY, I’M SO SORRY, I’M SO SORRY.” But the handpiece is on the down tube, and can’t actually detach, and I don’t actually ever pull the cord to turn the machine off, so it’s wiggling around on the floor, fighting to come back to where the sheep is kicking and where I’m standing, everyone’s ankles ready and ripe for a good old fashion slicing.  And I’m still screaming, “I’M SO SORRY, I’M SO SORRY, I’M SO SORRY!”

                Ron and Simon rush over to the sheep to keep it on the floor, rather than scampering off, and get it under control.  Once they have it in an upright and leaning position, Ron pulls the cord and the motor on the comb turns off. Ron has Simon hold the sheep while he inspects the comb.

                I have to take a minute, a couple deep breaths, because I’m pretty much in full panic mode at this point. I look at Simon. He’s got the sheep firmly against his legs. I expect him to say something. I’m bracing myself for him to say something.

                I’ve had various working relationships with guys. This is the point in time where they look at you and try to lighten the tension, put you at ease, try to get the focus off the awful thing you’ve just done—but in doing so they merely highlight that you have done something awful (and they’re not the ones who did it, no, they’re the heroes making you feel better) and it feels like teasing, it’s the remnants of teasing, sometimes it is teasing. I am tense, waiting for it, waiting to laugh all this off even though I am three breaths away from crying.

                But Simon says nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s wonderful. I have such a surge of affection for him, for doing nothing, for just holding that damn sheep. It was no skin off his back, he doesn't even realize he's doing it, and I love him for it. Simon thinks of this as nothing more than a moment for me and Ron and that’s what it is.

                It takes me three or four breathes to not cry. It takes me two breathes to think, “get back on the horse.” It takes me maybe three breaths to trust Simon not to make fun of me, to feel what trusting someone is like, and what good silence sounds like. Then I go over to Ron and see what he’s doing.

                Two of the edge fingers of the comb broke off when I flung it on the floor, so Ron calmly, and without saying anything, is putting another comb on. He explains that this new comb is a little broken itself, but still useable. I take that as a sign that he’s not mad, and that, like my first car, we’re using materials a little worn out, so that if something happens to them it’s not the end of the world.  

This is the starting (and offending) position.
Note the head just underneath my head, slumped
to the side.  

                When he’s ready I step back next to the sheep and pick up the comb again. This time Ron helps me hold the sheep a little bit closer, a little bit more.  There’s one hold that no matter how hard I try I just cannot get. The sheep is supposed to be in between your legs, with the spine just behind your left leg, and your right leg in between its two back legs, and its head is against your thigh—I just can’t get it.  This is the point when you shave from the brisket (in between the legs) up the chest, up the neck, to the ears.  It’s also difficult because you can’t see where the shaver’s going, you just have to do it blind. So Ron holds part of the sheep while I make cut after cut, trying to get down to skin, sometimes not quite making it. Simon stands by, watching my mistakes so that when he goes he’ll know what to do better.

                Ron shears a sheep in about four minutes.

                It takes me thirty.

                It takes me thirty because I keep having to stop, straighten my back, stretch it out, and ask, “Ok, where do I go now, what do I do now?” Ron explains, showing me where to shave, and I just follow, blindly, almost, not thinking too far ahead.

                At one point Ron says, “The good thing is that you’re getting a pretty close shave, a lot of people have trouble getting close to the skin.” He means this to be a compliment, but I hadn’t been thinking about anything except just getting through, so when he says that I promptly lose whatever I had going for me before, and I notice that my previous close shave becomes decidedly less close almost immediately.

                But then I’m on the last leg, I have six blows left, I’m ignoring the pain in my back, I’m reaching over the sheep to get that last bit on her rump, Ron is directing me, telling me where to shear, helping me to see because part of the problem is that I just can’t seem to SEE what needs to be shorn when I’m actually behind a sheep with a comb in my hand.

The sheep's head is between my legs. 

                And then I shave off that last bit from the tail, and I step back, and the sheep scrambles up, a little bloody under the leg where I full-fledged rammed her in the soft flesh there, thinking it was wool, but no, that was skin, but generally all right. She doesn’t have tufts coming off of her or anything. She’s not particularly even or smooth looking, but she looks enough like the sheep Ron shears.

                I sit in the nearest chair immediately.

                Simon’s up next. Ron walks him through it, but Simon is a “watch and learn” type guy, and picks it up pretty fast. It still takes him twenty minutes to shear his first sheep, because Ron stops the motor to explain the cuts, explain the movements, etc. Simon is a lot stronger than I am and makes holding the sheep look easier.

                 I’ve got Simon’s camera and take as many pictures of him shearing his first sheep as possible, to thank him for his silence, earlier. I try to get good angles and good light. Later, Simon says something about taking five hundred pictures, and they weren’t necessary, but after dinner he puts his SD card into the TV and Ron, Gay, Simon and I go through each and every single one of them, going back and forth on the merits of each one. There are only maybe five or six good photos in the lot because a lot of them are blurred because he was moving when I took the photo, but that’s why I took so many.

                I shear one more sheep that day, and Simon shears two more. By Simon’s third sheep of the day he’s getting faster at it; although once he nicks the sheep’s ear and a spurt of blood comes out onto his arm, making all of us think that Simon nicked himself. It’s a river of red, almost a crayola red/orange, on his tan arm, and we all stop to make sure it was just the sheep. He doesn’t stop to wash it off until dinner, so it dries there and I can see the faint lines of blood all afternoon.

Last couple blows.

                My second sheep is easier and harder than the first. It’s easier because I remember how to move the sheep a little bit better, and there’s no kicking or throwing of the comb or havoc this time. It’s harder because my back is in a lot of pain. My left lower back, especially, feels genuinely on fire. I’m not prone to aches and pains, and I’m certainly not prone to doing things that will PROMOTE aches and pains, so I’m surprised when I recognize, “yes, that’s the wall. I should not push my body further than that.”

                Ron helps me prop up the sheep, again, although less this time. He has time to snap a couple photos of me shearing the sheep. In these photos it looks like I am working solo, concentrating, super in charge of the situation, but these times are haven moments where the sheep doesn’t need to be supported by two people and I am managing all right for five seconds. Generally, during these times I am thinking, “If I get through this, then I am done. If I get through this, I am done.”

               

Second sheep done!
(all the pictures of me shearing were from the second sheep)

                We shear these sheep the day before the penultimate day of shearing. Afterwards we tidy up the shearing shed. This includes hammering things and removing the previous Bales of wool. I learn how to “keep a bale rolling” while using Captain Hook’s hook. Simon and I have quite a lot of fun with that one, because each bale is about 190 k, and strength doesn’t mean a whole lot against 190 k unless you’re really strong, so you have to use technique and momentum. It is gratifying for me to be able to move such a large amount of weight just the same as Simon.  We poke the hook into the bottom of the bale, heave until it tips onto its corner, push it so that it rolls onto the next corner, and then quickly hook the hook in again and push to keep it “rolling,” on its own momentum in the direction we want it to go. I am not shy about getting 190k bales to do my bidding; I think both Ron and Simon are secretly pleased.

                “Various sundry items” also includes re-building a door between two pens. The old door had broken at some point in the last twenty years, and they are just now getting around to fixing it. Ron directs Simon and I to work together to unscrew the rusting bolt from the old door, to hammer in nails to hold up a post, to saw a beam to the right length.

                With the nails especially, I start off badly. Ron says, “Who can nail?” Simon doesn’t say anything because Ron is really asking me if I can nail. He knows that Simon can nail.

Simon and his sheep. 

                So I say, “Yeah, I can nail. I have nailed things before.” When I was ten, I nailed things. Yes.

                I line the nail up and swing the hammer with both hands, and the nail doesn’t go in. I hit it as hard as I can manage and it goes in crooked. I line it up differently and the nail starts a slow descent, wiggling back and forth like it’s hokey pokeying its way into the wood.

                About a three quarters of the way in, Simon cannot contain himself any longer. “You are holding it with two hands, what is that?”

                When I finally get the nail all the way in, come hell or high water, I ask for another one. This time, Ron says, “Look at the head of the nail.”

                I do so, and the nail goes in mostly straight.

                When hammering, there are only so many things to look at. The hammer, the nail, the wood. SO WHAT THE HELL WAS I LOOKING AT BEFORE? 

                Simon and I take turns nailing things after that, and each time I nail in straight I feel a little bit more victorious. Finally, there are four nails left, but Simon’s just screwed up one of his, and I’m afraid he’s going to want another go to re-prove himself or something, which would be my inclination.  But Simon turns to me and says, “Two each?”

                I nod, smiling.  “Two each.” 

               

                The morning of the Penultimate Day of Shearing, we all wake up early. This is a problem because I hate early mornings. Also, we had a fairly large day yesterday. I am a zombie, and I think I speak in zombie language through breakfast. I look at my porridge and I think, “I would rather eat brains.”

                The porridge looks like brains, with frequent blood clot raisins mixed in, so I eat it, but I don’t eat any toast.

                Simon, the bastard, is chipper and bright, and ready for anything.

                Gay tells me that morning tea will include sandwiches, so if I’m hungry later on, there will be a chance to eat again.

                I think, “I will never be hungry. My stomach is an iron wall through Berlin.”

                 The professional shearers have very set hours. They start at 7:30, and go till 8:20, when they take a five minute break. Then they take a half hour break for morning tea at 9:30. At 12:35 they stop for lunch, which is an hour. Lunch consists of a full (main meal type) spread up at the house. At 1:30 they pick back up until 2:20, when they have another 5 minute break, and then at 3:30 they have another half hour break for afternoon tea. Then they go till they finish the job. With three shearers they hope to finish the job around 4 or 4:30. In actuality they won’t finish until 6.

                The professional shearers are basically like the rock stars you always wanted and hoped for. They’re not going to be traveling around; shearing is tough work, so they don’t drink or smoke; and they work with animals. What else could you ask for? There are three of them—so, one for everyone. There’s the one with the shaved head and barrel chest (he’s the fastest shearer—he enters competitions and is probably in the top 50 in NZ), or the one with the long curly hair, sandals and some sort of Maori pendant around his neck, or the older gentleman, with salt and pepper hair who asks me where I’m from and if I’ve ever done this before and is really very sweet. They all take off most of their clothes—down to pants and tank tops—to shear, and the muscles on these guys are pretty ridiculous (the older guy has the best muscles, objectively speaking). 

                When they start shearing, Andy, the one with the barrel chest, finishes his first sheep in about a minute. ONE MINUTE. And the sheep is clean. Not a nick on it. All the cuts were close to the skin, no extra blows were needed—it was beautiful. The other two shearers are done maybe thirty seconds later.

                But now we have three fleeces that need to be flung and cleaned all at the same time.

                So what ends up happening is that either we pile extra fleeces on the floor at the end of the table, or if there’s time we wait, fleece in hand, until the other person is finished cleaning theirs, or we divy up the table so that we can squish two or three fleeces onto it and two or three people can work at once. It’s sort of happenstance as to which method gets used at any given time.

                With three people sweeping, gathering fleeces, sorting fleeces, and stuffing them into the baler, we BARELY keep up with these shearers. I look at the clock. Only fifteen minutes have gone by.

                The day devolves into a sea of fleeces. I’m at the table, sorting through a fleece, looking for dag, looking for spray paint, looking for yellow. Sometimes the fleece is spread out, more often it’s in a tangle, a ball, a mess. I do the best I can. I look for maybe ten seconds and if I don’t see anything in that ten seconds I sweep it all up into my arms and take it over to the baler. I push it in, I push it in, I push it in. I look for more fleeces. 

                I’m at the table sorting fleeces. Simon says, “Corrie!” I look up and he nods with his chin, he’s got an armful of fleece. I see that Andy, the barrel chested shearer, is on the last leg of a sheep. Not good! He’s about to be done! I run over lightly, on my toes, and gather up, as correctly as I can, the fleece. I run it back to the table, where Simon’s almost done sorting through a fleece. He scoops it up in his arms when he sees me coming. I twist my body to the side and fling the fleece out (not good technique, hodge podge technique). The fleece lands and I spend a couple seconds sorting it out. I tear out a couple bits, tear out a couple bits, then I gather it up in my arms. I take it to the baler. The baler is full but I push it in anyway. I’m a little too short to get a good shove on the baler, but I shove in anyway.

                Suddenly, behind me, there are stronger arms than mine, more fleece than mine. Ron and Simon have both come up behind me with their fleece, with their arms. They push my fleece and their fleece into the baler too. I relinquish the push to them. I drop to the floor and pick up a fleece that’s been sitting there, waiting to be put into the baler. I come back up and push it in. Ron and Simon fold it in, too. Once they’ve got it I duck back out, push the lever, flick the switch, and we all step back and watch as the motorized baler comes to life to squishes the wool down, to compact it down into the bottom of the bale so we can stuff more in. Then we scatter in a million directions.

                I’m waiting for the long curly haired shearer to finish shearing; he’s on his last leg. As I gather up the wool, Simon comes along with a broom to sweep the little bits and pieces away. I hear Ron and Kelly, the dog, in the background, gathering and penning more sheep. I gather the fleece as the curly haired shearer steps into the pen for another sheep. I back away as he brings another sheep in and fling the wool on the table. As I’m sorting through, Simon comes up with another fleece. He says, “Corrie!” and I say, “I know, I know—sorry!” but he catches my eye and says, “3,2,1—“ and then as I’m just finished gathering up my fleece, as I have it in my arms, still on the table, he flings his fleece over mine. I shriek, “Simon!” He laughs. I smack him with the back of my hand, arms full of fleece, as he goes by.

                I’m sorting fleeces. Ron bangs on the baler, and then he turns to me. “Don’t put any fleeces in, the Baler’s out of commission.”

                Then he unhooks a lot of hooks, takes apart the Baler by undoing various plates and hinges, and all the wool from the whole morning springs out, it rushes out the top, and I look at it and I groan. All that work, wasted. We’ll have to stuff all of it back in again, but I don’t spare too much time thinking about it, because Andy is almost finished another sheep, and Ron is taking great armfuls of wool and just dumping them on the side of the baler, all that pushing and shoving for naught, but if Ron is tinkering with the baler, then there’s only two of us for three shearers—

                There’s a pile of fleeces at the end of the table that are impossible to throw because they’re not in their special folded clumps—Simon’s just dumped them on top of each other. I probably have too, come to think of it. I take an armful and try to sort it out, but it’s just a clump. I sort through it the best I can but eventually I gather it up and dump it in the waist high, six foot long, six foot across pile of wool next to the baler from where Ron dumped it. He’s still tinkering.

                I gather up a fleece from Matt, the older guy, and come to stand at the table, where Simon’s sorting through a fleece. “3,2,1!” I shout. He gathers up his fleece just before I fling my fleece, and on his way over to the pile of fleeces he sings part of the song on the radio right into my ear at full volume. I have no idea what he says, because I think he gets the song lyrics wrong.

                I look at the clock. It’s been forty minutes since the start of the day.  

                After Morning Tea (during which I eat the entire WORLD), Gay helps us out, since we’re behind. The baler door wasn’t shutting properly, that’s why Ron had to take all the wool out and tinker with it.

                When he’s got the Baler working again, we have to add those fleeces to the fleeces that are coming off the sheep.

                I find out important things. Simon is quicker to pick up fleeces than I am, but I’m better at gathering them. Simon is better at being quick about sorting through a fleece, but I’m more thorough.

                Gay is amazing at throwing a fleece.

                Simon will somehow be there when I am trying to stuff an impossibly big fleece into an overstuffed baler. So will Ron. I’ll be facing the baler, bracing myself, throwing every ounce of weight I have against the wool, my eyes closed, and then there will be warm hands and arms and skin and the wool will give way underneath me, will sink further into the back of the baler.

                Gay always takes the time to re-explain how to pick up a fleece she’s gathered so that it will throw properly.

                Simon keeps track of how many sheep are left and will tell Ron when a shearer needs more sheep penned up. Simon pens sheep, and sweeps.

                Ron handles the baler, as well as everything else.  

                I try to be as thorough (and yet quick) with the fleeces as I can, because I’m so worried that the company that receives the wool will test it and get a missed spray can mark, or a bit of dag, or a bit of yellow wool that they can’t use, and judge the rest of the wool accordingly. I also try to remember the giant pile of wool next to the baler, and stuff that in as well, so we can have a clean floor next to the baler, so we can be caught up. I also try to pick up the extra fleeces by the table that we haven’t gone through, so that we can be caught up there. If we have a lull, if all three shearers are on new sheep, I’ll sort through a fleece we haven’t done yet so that we’re a little closer to being caught up. I try to keep an eye on the shearers so that if a fleece needs to be picked up, I can go do that. Simon has an eye on that too, though, and we work out a system of “Simon!” and “Corrie!” and then chin nods.

                By lunch my muscles hurt in the way that your muscles hurt the day after you do a really intense work out, except it hasn’t been a day after, it’s only midway through the same day.  The shearers eat pasta salad and lamb and mashed potatoes in our dining room and it’s very awkward, because they have regular clothes on and aren’t sweating any more. Also, we normally don’t have company. Normally it’s just Simon, me, Ron and Gay.

                After lunch the Shearers go back to the shearing shed, and I stretch out my muscles right there on the floor of the dining room. Simon and Gay watch me. Simon says he is not in any pain at all, the bastard.

                After lunch the baler breaks down again because Simon and I didn’t do something right and Ron has to unload half the wool in order to reset it. Another six by six foot, waist high (at least) pile of wool. All that stuffing and pressing and shoving wasted.

                We also have to wait several times for Ron to pack up the baler—often times you can’t fit any more wool into a wool pack. Only so much wool can go in. At that point Ron packs it up, labels it for sale, and moves the whole 190k bale to a corner of the room. That takes maybe ten minutes, and in those ten minutes the fleeces pile up next to the baler. The shearers don’t stop, of course. The shearers only stop during their set breaks.

                By the end of the day, 6 PM, The curly haired shearer and the older guy have sheared 235 and 234 sheep, respectively, and the barrel chested shearer, Andy, has sheared 290 sheep. IN ONE DAY. Simon and I are sitting on a bale of wool, totally exhausted. When we go in for showers, Simon says, “Well, that was a bit strenuous,” and I say, “Are you kidding? I was just going to DIE,” and I realize that if “statement” is in between us, then Simon is “under” and I am “over.” I tell him this and he laughs.

Matt (salt and pepper), Andy ( barrel chested) and Stew (curly haired).
Here you can also see the baler (where we stuff the wool so that it
can be compressed) and the bales of wool, one of which they are sitting on. 

                 If there weren’t four of us working on this, I think I would have given up. With four of us we managed to hold our own and come back from the various setbacks and not be overwhelmed by wool. Without four people we would never have managed it. With four of us there was enough work to do to keep us busy every minute, but if one person went out to pen up more sheep it wasn’t a total loss to the people on the floor. It wasn’t the end of the world. If the baler broke and Ron spent time fixing it, there were still three people dealing with everything else.

                And there was more, too. There was something about trying to shove a fleece into a baler and then suddenly feeling someone else’s arms behind you, helping, pushing just a little further in. Or striding over to the table to gather up the fleece that someone else is working on so that they can get on doing something else. Or hearing them call your name to draw your attention to something you didn’t see and that they can’t get to, but know that you can. Knowing that at the very least, shoving more fleece into the baler is helping. Sorting through fleece is helping. Sweeping bits and pieces away is helping.

                I’ve often been part of groups where the work is mental and so it’s very hard to pinpoint how much work someone is actually doing. Intelligence and difficulty levels are all very difficult to value. This group dynamic was not difficult to value at all. Everyone worked as hard as they possibly could. Ron and Gay were better at everything because they’ve done it more. Simon is physically strong and quick. I was quick and determined and thorough. It was easy to see what we did and how we worked together. It was refreshing to have it out in the open like that, too, where no one slacked off and you can trust that no on slacked off.

                And yes, it was painfully difficult. But it was also wonderful: constantly moving, constantly trusting those three other people, constantly working towards an achievable goal with physical, tangible results. Knowing that the wool, the sheep, will end, they weren’t just going to come back next week, like various data entry projects. It felt healthy and hard and worthwhile.

                I know that working on a farm isn’t as gratifying as this, all the time, and after years the same projects come up again and again, the same way as an office, or any other job. Three weeks is enough time to make and keep an illusion of a lot of things.  Three weeks is enough time to make and keep a rosy illusion of people, too.  Three week's is not enough time to dispel an illusion.

                But for that day of shearing, and for the days afterwards, the working together was real, the collective group did function the way you want a group to function, with Gay shouting out encouragements or reprimands or orders, and no one getting offended, just doing what she said, with Simon and I reading each other and developing signals the way we hadn’t before, with Ron pointing out to us what to do or how to do it. It was almost like a family, except when I think of a family I think about people loving each other through dysfunction, and here there wasn’t love, because love takes time, but there wasn’t dysfunction either. There was just—health, vitality, affection and trust. I don’t know what to make of that. I don’t know what to call it.

                It’s what everyone wants, I think. And I don’t know how long it could have lasted for, if Simon and I had stayed at the farm for five months, five years, if it would have cemented in or if it was just some sort of high we were all on after finishing the shearing.

                But this means that it’s possible again.