Sheep, sheared!

And I can almost say I did it myself.

C. is the fiber person, and she's always done the shearing. She thinks I'm insufficiently careful with both sheep and fleece. But she's busy with the garden, so I decide to step up.

I bait the triangular catch pen, in the pasture, with grain, and manage to catch Bambers.

I know professional shearers plop the sheep onto her butt and hold her upright, and take 10 minutes to peel that fleece right off – like mamma whipping off baby's jammies. I'm not up to that. I put the halter on her and tie it up tight, then sit on a stool next to her and start clipping at the neck. She hops and fusses. I try all four pairs of sharpened hand shears, and one is... okay. Not great. I think it might be hand strength that is the problem. Or the angle of the blades. I eventually go to the scissors, and manage to get the top of her neck down to the middle of her back. Like a reverse mullet. Or a crew cut that slid off the head onto the neck. I leave it for the day, and she gets the hell out of there. Yes, her haircut is tragic – but she is a little cooler, and it is a start.

Next day, I catch her again, and manage to shear her back and sides on down to the top of her tail before we both get tired. Now her haircut makes her butt look big. Heaven knows what the neighbors think.

Shearing is hard on the back, so I rest a couple of days and get back to it. I try the same grain game, but everyone is a whole lot more suspicious. Every time I get one in the pen and the gate nearly closed, she plows past me to freedom. Damn sheep.

They hadn't knocked me down (yet), but I am hot and frustrated. I need help. I find C. in the garden. She is in garden mode, though, not sheep mode, and was not enthusiastic. She has important garden stuff to do. I am hot, frustrated and convinced that one of the sheep needs to be sheared now. It's possible that one of us is being unreasonable.

Peevishly, she joins me at the big gate from garden to pasture. Peevishly, I bring a bucket of oats and the sheep halter. I step through the gate, the goats mob me, and yellow jackets fly out of the pipe next to the gate and sting me. And C. refuses come through the gate to help because of the hornets. Bloody hell.

OK. Plan B. I'll catch a damn sheep in the halter somehow, take her through the hornet gate, and C. will lead her through the garden and out the other gate to the shearing area (my cane and I are not steady enough to lead her any distance.) OK? OK. (Pity it doesn't occur to me to withdraw gracefully, lure the sheep back over to the shearing area and catch them there on my own. Duh.)

So I dump several little piles of oats to distract the goats, make a lasso of the harness and lay it along the top of the grain bucket. The greedy sheep push their heads into the bucket, I pull the loop tight, and I have two. OK, that's a problem. I manage to release one, and keep the other, just in time because here come the goats after the bucket. I pull Tricks the sheep, my intended victim, over to the gate, staying well away from the hornet nest in the pipe. C. opens the gate for me and I hand off the sheep, who drags C. away into the delicious wonders of the garden. I'm closing the gate, wary of hornets, and the other sheep plows right through me into the garden. In the pasture, the goats are fighting over the grain bucket, and one manages to get his horns and head through the handle. Now he's wearing the bucket around his neck, dancing to keep his brother out of the grain. In the garden, C. loses hold of the halter.

We have two sheep loose in the garden, one with a noose around her neck, and a goat stuck in a bucket. It is not our finest farming moment.

The sheep are skittish, we manage to herd them back into the pasture, and the goats are too distracted by the bucket of grain around the little guy's neck to rush the gate. I grab him and somehow wrestle his head and horns out of the bucket handle.

I withdraw to sulk and plot my revenge. C. returns to her gardening. Her hand is hurt from the sheep ripping the halter away.

A few days later, I have a cunning plan. I draft C.to help me move the triangular catch pen into the barn. I lure the three sheep into the barn pen, and shut the goats, and alpaca out. In a confined area, it's pretty easy to get a sheep into the triangular pen, where I sit and shear for a few hours. I'm nearly done when I cut poor Bambi on the thigh. And I had been doing so well. Sheep skin is so thin and delicate, it's easy to do. I lose confidence. C. kindly comes over and finishes for me. We dab that purple wound stuff on her to keep the flies off.

Done!

Yes, I sheared the sheep all by myself this year.