My first experience with sheep was nonexistent. I knew they had wool and I went Baaa. I read many books about sheep and the art of spinning wool. It was a dream that I wanted to fulfill. I looked around for price and the starting price was $75.00 to $500.00. Well, that’s quite a bit of money if you wanted a small herd. He knew he wanted a herd that would reproduce so he could sell lambs for extra meat. If everyone was getting $75.00 to start off right, I wanted to get in on the action. Here in Maine there is a weekly cattle classified. I entered a free cattle search ad. I got a few calls for different types of animals like chickens, goats, and sheep.
The call of the sheep was exciting as the lady wanted me to bring 10 sheep. She explained that sheep were a hobby and that when she sheared them, she sent the wool to Canada to be made into blankets for her Christmas gifts. Now everyone has received a wool blanket that she wanted to do something else. She was changing from sheep to horses. I said “yes” before consulting with my husband. When he called me I told him the good news. Now he knew I wanted sheep because he had sheep magazines all over the house and I conveniently left some in the bathroom.
“Where are we going to put them?” he said.
We don’t have enough fences or stables. I’m always the one to put a happy face on things, I suggested we clean out our storage area for the sheep, that would be perfect.
“Who is going to do all the moving?” she asked.
“The kids and I will do it,” I told him.
At that time we had goats and he didn’t like them anymore so I had to choose between sheep or goats. To tell the truth, I was sick of the goats too, so they went to the classifieds.
In the middle of the week the woman called me and asked me when we were going to pick up the sheep, I wasn’t sure as she still had to solve the fence problem. She said no problem, you can have all the fences and stakes if you pick them up by this weekend. All of that sounded great to me.
I guess this is where I need to explain that my husband is a trucker who leaves on a Sunday and comes home on a Friday. So Friday night we headed through Maine to the coast for a two-and-a-half-hour drive for 10 free Shetland sheep on a million-dollar property. Needless to say, my husband was pretty grumpy and tired. All we had was our mini van to transport the animals. We pulled out all the seats and headed over there. It was almost 9 pm when we arrived and she wasn’t expecting me. When I called her to tell her we were on the way, she said she was fine, but she thought I was someone else and the sheep weren’t rounded up yet.
They finally got them into the barn and we started loading them onto one of the sheep that had a beautiful set of curly horns and the rest were a variety of colors. Only 8 could comfortably fit there, but we had no room for the fence. We would have to go back the next day. The ram kept banging on the windows, its horns snagging on his seatbelt straps. It was 11 pm when we got back on the road. Having 8 animals moving around and slapping their faces on yours and doing Baa on your face was enough to keep us awake. Never mind, I think all 8 of them must have peed about a gallon each on the way home. When we finally got home it was after 1am and we backed the truck up to the barn doors, backed the truck halfway and closed the barn doors. We opened the hatch and a lot of liquid came out along with the manure. The sheep came out and we rounded them up in the barn. I gave them some of the grain she had given us and pulled the van out of the barn. The carpet was pretty ruined and it smelled pretty bad. We leave the windows open all night to get rid of the stench.
The next day, the kids and I took out the rug and tried to clean it. He went straight to the metal. We then tried to clean the interior which came out better than the carpet. It still smelled of shame and wool, but we could live with that.
We didn’t really get to see much of the estate the night before, so we were taken back when we arrived the following afternoon. Right on a rocky cove a huge house and a new barn. He even kept matching Persian cats in the barn to catch mice. We went back to pick up the fence and she had other pens for us to pick up too. She took a few hours and the interior was full. She still wanted us to take 2 more sheep, but we declined on the ride home the night before. I promised her that she would never do this to my husband again. I was going to keep my word. So now we had sheep and fences. My husband wasn’t going to put up the fence either. The kids were on summer vacation and I thought it would be a fun project. Ha ha, no one thought it was funny except me. My daughter will help no matter what, but my oldest son won’t. He makes a big production of everything when he doesn’t want to do something. First it’s rolling your eyes, stomping your feet, taking your time, and then disappearing all together. Finally, my daughter and I decided that he should stay awake at home and serve customers. We put up the fence ourselves. Holes had to be dug at least 3 feet deep and all other wooden posts were metal posts. The metal posts had to be pounded to some extent and all we had was a sledgehammer. I was standing on cement blocks to crush them while my daughter held them. We had to nail the fences to the posts and hood the metal ones on the clips. Okay, it wasn’t the best job, but it’s good enough. We had used some trees for posts and ate so my son would at least dig the hole for the posts. He took us a full day and I couldn’t move my neck and my back was sore by the time we finished, despite the heat, sweat and exhaustion.
It’s funny, even though my husband swore he wasn’t going to do something, sure he could find all the faults with the fence and how it wasn’t right.
Well, you know what I didn’t care about unless he was willing to fix it, then I didn’t want to hear about it. The area we fenced was full of wild brambles that were no longer producing and lots of bamboo. We wanted it to clear up and let the sheep out to feast on what was there. I really enjoyed them more than the goats; they were quite calm and did not want to have contact with humans except the ram. His name was Brownie; it was a bottle from the farm.
In mid-January, my husband and I decided that we had too many animals. It had been an extremely cold year minus 20 without wind chill. It had become an all day event to thaw water in the barn.
Brownie was our weathered male sheep. It was a friendly fat sheep with its big brown saddlebags on each side. I was aging about 13 years. He ate more grain than the other 7 sheep. When they castrated him they removed his horns and with his age the winter was harder for him.
Since he was so nice, we decided to take him to the butcher first.
Well as I said it was cold and my husband had dressed in his thermal suit, hat and gloves. It was my job to find a strap to secure it to the truck. My husband thought he could handle this himself. He bribed Brownie with grain and took two handfuls of wool. Since Brownie was a tanned sheep, he had no horns to grasp. Brownie locked his legs and my husband was frustrated. He tugged and tugged to no avail. So my husband picked Brownie up and proceeded out the door. When they were halfway to the door, Brownie’s feet caught on the edge of the door. Now Brownie had jogged and he threw his head back and hit my husband in the face. My husband can’t handle pain well and he threw Brownie to the ground and held him down. I left the workshop and found them both on the floor. My husband’s nose was bleeding and Brownie’s eyes were watery. I asked my husband what he was doing on the floor. “Stop fooling around,” I told him. I tied the leash around Brownie’s neck and carried him to the truck with no problem.
The next time we needed sheep to go to the butcher we hired someone for $30.00 to chase, catch and deliver to the butcher.
Sometimes being a good farmer is admitting the things you’re not doing well and finding a way to fix them. Now my husband doesn’t have to take a day off work to chase my farm animals. Some people take it as laziness because I didn’t do it myself. I see it as my time being better spent on another project rather than hurting myself or the animal trying to transport them.
I love my sheep, but I can admit that I don’t know everything and shearing is another topic that I have no idea about. After reading all the magazines and books, they show a placid sheep lying there and being sheared. I decided to call someone who shears small herds. Bill has his own sheep farm and demonstrates at fairs. Bill is coming to the area to do 2 other farms and we all split the travel fare. I spent half the day watching him work. He was hunched over, sweating and fighting with the animals. My sheep are small and fickle; his, on the other hand, are large and placid. I don’t want large animals that I’m not comfortable handling. So was it worth $7.00 per sheep plus the extra $.50 hoof cleaning? Yes it was! If it was me it would have been a 3 day job and I would have ended up calling a vet because I probably would have cut them badly.
During the same winter that Brownie left we had a problem with the ram “Rusty”. It was a handsome white ram with curly horns and a small patch of rust-colored wool between the horns. It was cold in January minus 20 and with the wind chill it was minus 35. He decided he wanted all the grain and was going to headbutt all the girls. Well, now they were all bleeding from cuts on their heads. We had to separate him from the girls and spray them with an antiseptic spray to stop the bleeding. When spring came and no lambs were produced, we decided to sell Rusty. I normally give any animal here 2 months to sell, if not they usually end up in the freezer. I got a lot of calls and emails, but basically everyone wanted it for free. That’s not how it works here; every animal here needs to pay for itself. We put it in the freezer like a soft breakfast sausage. That’s a big seller on my farm and Rusty ended up paying for himself.
I saved all the wool from the last 2 shearings and saved them for when I had time to learn to spin. My neighbor came down from the first shearing to teach me how to skirt and store the wool. Bordering is when she sorts out the big blobs of manure, meat, hay, and sticks from the wool before she stores it. Even then the wool smells of urine and lanolin. I asked my neighbor how to clean it and she told me to do it in hot water with mild soap. She did exactly that and after the wash room she still reeked of the awful smell of urine and wet dog. How am I going to sell this wool, if I can’t even clean it? I asked the Shearer since he had 8 bags in storage. “Sell it dirty” hand spinners would rather get it that way. I was a little leery because I knew you wouldn’t want to buy dirty wool, but it all sold. I was making $30.00/hide. Well, the sheep just paid there’s grain for the year. I never would have thought of selling the raw wool that way. I wasn’t entirely sure of my skirting skills either, but all the feedback I got was that I underestimated my wool; it was the best they ever had. That gave me enough momentum to try again next year.
