Getting happily fleeced
Speaking of “fleece,” we’ve got plenty of it. Black Welch Mountain sheep fleece, that is. A week ago Max and Aaron and I went to a nearby sheep ranch to lend a hand wrangling sheep for a day of shearing a couple of hundred head. For more on these fuzzies go to Desert Weyr’s website.
The day was clear and cold with a biting wind. But the work, on the whole, kept us warm and moving. Max and I have recently been warming to the idea of grazing sheep in our orchards and vineyards to keep the cover crop mowed and to add manure to the soil as well as meat to our table and wool for whatever one does with raw fleeces.
Max has done considerable research and has learned a lot about this proposition. So we took advantage of our neighbors’ shearing to get hands-on with the subject matter. It was a treat and an education to observe a real Welch sheep shearer at his work. Aaron crowded the fuzzy black critters toward the shearing floor which Max and I kept tidy. We moved the shorn sheep back into the paddocks and admired the fresh fleeces as Oogie extolled their relative virtues and shortcomings. Nothing is wasted; even the “junk” fleeces are salvaged for garden mulch.
The deep, soft, warm, slightly greasy black fleeces were seductive. Max brought home one of lamb’s wool that is sheer delight (no pun intended) to caress. All week she has been washing and cleaning and cleaning and washing the wool. Then drying it on the rack by the wood stove. Finally tonight the clean fleece is stored in moth-proof sacks awaiting the next phase and we have use of our dining table again. She admits to being obsessed: a beginner flock will definitely be on site at the Farm next spring.
It will be interesting to see the carrying capacity of our orchards, as the goal is to do away with fossil-fuel-powered mowing. The variety she has settled on is Southdown Babydoll; a relatively smaller heritage variety said to have exceptional wool, excellent meat, and a quizzical grin for a fixed expression. An Extension Service researcher in our area has been experimenting with training this variety to graze in vineyards without harming the vines and we aim to learn from her.
Rain rode in on the winds of yet another cold front yesterday afternoon. Our west windows are splattered with mud — fertile topsoil from the corn fields around Delta, presumably. It rained over night but we’re still expecting snow and another night of deep cold temps. Max claims this could be the last cold weather for a while, so I’m tuning up the sprayer and preparing to sally forth into the apple orchards as soon as the weather warms to spray against powdery mildew.