Blood, Sweat, and Shears

I know we've mentioned John Seymore quite frequently on this blog because he has become a very insightful link into our self sufficiency, he also tends to be very blunt and honest. In regards to shearing sheep he says, "shearing sheep is hard work, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying," and I can honestly tell you that he was telling the truth. I ordered a couple of hand shears from Amazon to see which ones I liked the best. As it turns out I'm very glad I made that choice because the one that was highly suggested ended up sucking so bad that I ended up returning it. I didn't even get to finish one clip as it just didn't function. The basic shears worked really, really well. We ended up taking two days to shear three sheep. The first day we closed the sheep up in a corner and dragged out the sheeps needed. We had to manuver the sheep a bit as we were staring to make sure we got everything. Casanunda was easier as he was smaller and I was able to finish him in a half an hour. I tried the same technique with one of the sheep and it sucked as it took an hour and a half and I ended up with about 3 cuts on my poor sheepie. The following day we got the other sheepie and I ended up just laying her down and finished her in about 20 minutes with a nice close sheer. I will definitely do it that way next time. We'll post more about shearing next time to make sure that we're actually working with a method that works.