Category: Wool

Hoar frost, those shaggy crystals of ice, that feather branches and lace leaves and grass.

The temperature dropped below freezing last night  for the first time this fall.

I broke the ice on the hens water bowl and refilled it,  but had plugged in the heated water bucket for the sheep and donkeys the day before.

I went to muck out the barn and Kim and Lori were already at the barn gate waiting for grain.  Lori hasn’t had grain since last winter, but she knew where to meet me to get some this morning.

The sheep won’t eat frozen grass, and when it freezes it has less nutrition, so I put out two leaves of hay.

They ate it all.

By late morning the frost was all gone and the we had blue skies,  a warming sun and green grass.  This afternoon the sheep and donkeys were back out grazing, not the least bit interested in hay.

I haven’t let the sheep into the back pasture because many of the plants are going to seed and I didn’t want the seeds getting stuck in the sheep’s wool.

This morning I opened the gates to the back pasture, since the sheep are now shorn.  There’s been a few nights of frost, but the grass had a chance to grow in the past month.

The sheep and donkeys were all happy to graze there.

I was nervous waiting for Joe Hamilton, our new shearer to show up, even though I got a good feeling from him when we spoke on the phone.

He was knowledgeable, asked all the right questions about the sheep and the set up of where he would be shearing.  He sounded responsible and he always got back to me the next day or sooner.

All good signs.

But I didn’t even realized how much it was weighing on my until the shearing was done and everything went so well.

Joe has been working with animals he whole life.  He grew up on a farm and got his first sheep when he was a kid.

He’s also a self-taught shearer.

He learned to sheer sheep from watching Fred DePaul (a legendary shearer in the area) shear Joe’s sheep when he was a kid.

One year, Joe realized he could buy a shearing clipper for the same price he’d pay Fred.  So he gave it a try and over the years learned all he needed to know from experience, reading and watching YouTube videos about sheep.

“I do it backwards” Joe said, leaving the belly, which is usually shorn first, for last.

Jon and I stood watching as Joe walked Issachar out of the holding area in the barn, turned him on his back and began shearing.

His calm and confidence was palpable.

He said he learned working around cattle that they can sense your adrenaline and they react to it.  So unless you want trouble, it’s best to learn to stay calm around them.

Joe lives and works locally.

He has his own sheep and he knows a lot of the small sheep farmers and helps match people and sheep, often was a flock is dwindling.

So if someone has only one sheep left  and would like one or two more older sheep to keep them company, he often knows of someone who looking to re-home an older sheep or two.

I do think of how I’m not going to get anymore sheep and that Robin in so much younger than the rest of the flock. So if someday Robin is the only sheep I have, Joe might be able to help me find an older ewe or wether or two for him to live his life out with.

The sheep’s wool has a luster and shine that I’ve not seen in past years.  It most likely because of all the rain we had that kept the grass growing and nutritious throughout the spring and summer.

Joe said he’d be happy to come back for our spring shearing and we are happy to have him.

Our Shearer is on his way to the farm as I write this.  It’s already almost 5pm, so I have a feeling that once he is done shearing the sheep I’m going to be too tired to post any pictures.

So as of now, I’m planning on putting up the pictures from today’s shearing tomorrow.

See you then.

It’s time to shear the sheep again.  We do it twice, in the spring and fall, six months or so apart.  Ian who has been shearing our sheep for the past years has moved on.

But we have a new shearer.

His name is Joe Hamilton and he lives in town, just a few minutes away.  When I knew Ian wouldn’t be shearing our sheep this year (he’s been cutting back on shearing for a a few years) I used The Front Porch Forum to find a new one.

The Front Porch Forum is a community service that started in Vermont.  It’s a  online community  where people can post things for sale, list events or ask for recommendations for a handyman a shearer or just about anything else.

I don’t have an exact date yet when Joe will be coming to shear the sheep, it will be either Friday, or over the weekend.   I’ll have all the sheep shorn except Kim.  Her wool takes longer to grow and so once a year is good enough for her.

I hope to have last years wool back in February from Nobletown FiberWorks.  And tomorrow I’m sending off another box of my junk wool to be made into Bedlam Farm Wool Pellets.

I went out with my canon camera this afternoon and took some pictures in the pasture.   Above is Kim eating and apple.  That’s Issachar, as he often is,  next to her.

I wasn’t surprised when Zip hopped up on the fence post in front of Asters.

It rained again this weekend, a soaking rain that helps keep the grass green and still growing.  We could get a frost any night, but I have a feeling the animals will be eating grass into October.   That’s Asher up front.

The hens are still molting, but they’re wandering a bit more than they were.  This morning I saw them way out in the north pasture.  By the afternoon they were back,  resting under cover of the dahlias.

Soon it will be time for the fall shearing.

Along with green grass, the wildflowers continue to bloom while others are going to seed.  Many of those seeds are hitching a ride in the sheep’s wool.  Good for the seeds, but not for me. I have a feeling I’ll be pulling a lot of those little sticky seeds (Agrimonia for one) form the sheep’s fleeces when it’s time to skirt them.

You can see the little seeds in the wool around Merricat’s face.

Issachar and his twin brother Asher are always the first sheep at the gate.  They can be pushy, always associating people with food since they were bottle-fed.

But they’re not aggressive and both of them are also gentle and affectionate.

Their personalities are so similar although I’ve always found Issachar to be a little more serious to Asher’s playfulness.

My Bedlam Farm Wool Pellets are $25 for a 1 lb bag + $10 shipping, you can buy them in my Etsy Shop, just click here.(shipping for more than one bag varies, I can calculate the cost, it’s usually  $10 for one or two bags).

Or you can email me at [email protected].  I take checks, PayPal and Venmo. 

A few weeks ago I sent off a box of my junk wool from the spring shearing to be made into Bedlam Farm  Wool Pellets.

The junk wool is all the short and dirty wool, often from the belly of the sheep, that can’t be made into yarn and roving.  I used to just throw it away, which I always felt bad about.    A few times I put some of it in the woods for animals to use in their nests, but it takes years for it to be put to good use in the woods and I didn’t want to have piles of wool laying around in the woods.

I used some in my gardens for mulch, but it was often too thick in some places and too thin in others.  And by the end of the summer it was still there, just more soggy.

About two years ago I heard about Wool Pellets.

People have been studying them for years and they finally made it to the market place.   I found Otter Lake Farm and Fiber in Western New York who had just gotten the equipment to make wool into pellets and we’ve been doing business together ever since.

Wool contains nitrogen and potassium which both help with plant structure.  The Wool Pellets supplement the soil and help aerate it  and keep it moist.

They can be used as mulch around the base of each plant to keep slugs and snails away ( wool has barbs on it and snails and slugs can’t slide over it easily).

Bedlam Farm Wool Pellets, are my wool reformed into pellets. Nothing is added and nothing is taken away in the processing.

When I send in 10 lbs of wool to Otter Lake Farm and Fiber, I get 10 lbs of Wool Pellets back.

It takes one pound of pellets to cover a thirty square foot garden.  You can either mix the wool pellets into the soil,  or use them as a mulch after planting.

As long as you store them in a cool dry place, Wool Pellets will last up to three years before using them.

This year Lori is the sheep on bag of Bedlam Farm Wool Pellets.  In past years it’s been, Robin, Kim and Socks.

This years Bedlam Farm Wool Pellets.