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January 19, 2018 by Stephany Wilkes

Charge More for Metal Scrapie Tags

Emily Chamelin, who must be one of the top shearers in the world (certainly in the U.S.), alerted fellow shearers to some unfortunate news today, news I want to share here. Current and prospective shearing clients: I now charge more to shear sheep with metal Scrapie tags.

Apparently, the USDA only provides *metal* Scrapie tags for free now. Plastic Scrapie tags must be purchased. Metal Scrapie tags–like any metal in a fleece (staple, bottle cap, wire)–are dangerous. The American Shearers Council has long said metal tags are a hazard and should be phased out, and I am disappointed that the USDA does not seem to either comprehend this or, if they do, to care. I will have to charge more if your flock becomes a metal tag flock.

Emily says she is using this additional charge to start a “when not if” hospital fund, the inevitable result of a handpiece lock-up. Here is a video of what happens when a handpiece locks up, most commonly the result of hitting a metal ear tag accidentally. Pay attention at the 1:00 minute mark:

The handpiece swings violently, smashing into the hand and/or forearm. This usually results in broken bones, and/or the comb entering the shearer’s arm and cutting whatever it can reach – bone, tendon, muscle, maybe everything. Shearers’ careers, and lifelong physical mobility and dexterity, have ended because of metal ear tags.

Please remember this when you order Scrapie tags for your new lambs. Keep your shearer safe: Avoid any metal, all metal, at all costs.

Shame on you, USDA. Shame. My next email is to ASI, and I hope to heaven they will address this on their next trip to D.C.

December 3, 2017 by Stephany Wilkes

Shearing Sheep With Years’ Worth of Wool

Folks love stories of so-called Shrek sheep, found God knows where with years’ worth of wool growth (and living proof that sheep do not “just shed” their wool if left alone in nature).But, as a shearer, those stories used to create nothing but dread. “Poor sheep,” I’d shudder to think. “It’s probably wool blind. And imagine what’s hiding in that fleece! Barbed wire, bottle caps, stuff that your shears turn to shrapnel.” No thanks.

It is no accident that the most experienced shearers are called upon to shear Shrek sheep. Years’ worth of heavy wool pulls the sheep’s membrane-thin skin away from its body, making it much easier to cut than usual.

I put off shearing sheep like this for as long as possible. I’d give the job to someone else, avoid them altogether. This approach works until you’re on the job and the next batch of sheep in the pen have 2-5 years’ wool growth. “I’m sorry,” the flock owner says. “I just bought these and they came with all this wool. I get mine sheared every year.”

You’ve got to learn sometime, and this year was it. And, as with most things related to livestock, my fear had blown it entirely out of proportion. I thought I’d share what I’ve learned about shearing sheep with years’ worth of wool growth, and help beginner shearers who end up in this situation for the first time.

A man in bandana and tank top with a complete brown sheep fleece spread out on plywood, on top of hay — My shearing partner, Jordan, displays a completely felted sheep fleece, several years’ worth of wool growth. This is from a small sheep.

Stay calm.

If you take your time, you’ll be fine. Slow down and own it. I make a practice of saying “This is going to take me a while,” both to set expectations and to give myself permission.

Do not discount your rate.

Not even if you’re a beginner. That sheep (and its owner) needs you more than you need the tricky work. It is fair to charge more for sheep in poor condition, which include Shrek sheep. There is a greater risk of cuts and nicks, they require more shearing time, and they use more equipment, in that you have to swap combs and cutters more often than you do for regularly sheared sheep. You’ll go through a cutter every 1-2 sheep, and the same or similar for a comb, vs. getting 2-4 sheep per cutter and 3-7 sheep per comb. These are costs you bear, and you should pay yourself fairly for them.

As a ballpark figure, I would not shear a sheep with multi-year wool growth for less than $10-$15/head, after the ranch call, certainly $12-$15/head for a ram with that kind of growth.

If customers balk, explain that this is because of excess wool growth and that next year, it will cost less. There’s no need to make anyone feel bad for falling behind on shearing. We know how hard it can be to find a shearer, and how few of us there are. Tell them they’re doing the right thing, that things will be better in the future, etc. but also communicate the reality of the situation so no one is surprised. I use very plain language: “I never like to nick a sheep, and I will do my best to avoid that, but here is the situation with the wool…”

Adapt your technique.

Many years of wool can be very heavy. If a sheep produces a 7-12 pound average fleece every year, and hasn’t been sheared for three years, it is carrying 21-36 pounds of wool. Sheep have very thin skin, so that kind of weight pulls and stretches the skin up as you shear the wool away.

I wish I’d worn a Go Pro or something this year so I could show you what I mean, but I didn’t, so let’s go to Imaginary Shearing Land (via the Mister Rogers trolley). We’re shearing the neck. You do one stroke, and the wool from that stroke falls over to the side (away from your shears, over the sheep’s shoulder that you’ll shear next). You’ll see the just sheared wool (helped along by gravity) pulling the skin away from the sheep’s body, and lifting the skin right into the way of your shears for the next stroke. If you forge ahead as is, you’ll cut that lifted skin: the just sheared wool is lifting it right between the teeth of your comb. Damn and blast.

I adapt by holding the wool down with my left hand, and shearing with my right. My left hand is at the outermost part of the fleece, putting all of that wool between my hand and the sheep’s body, and between my hand and my sharp, fast, dangerous shears. I hold the wool against the sheep’s body, from the outside, and basically shear underneath it, being very mindful to not cut my hand. I check the sheep’s skin and hand piece position with every stroke and adjust accordingly.

I hope this makes sense. You’ll see what I mean, in any case.

Bring scissors.

Multi-year wool has often felted right on the sheep’s body. This solidified wool makes it difficult to find a safe, clean spot to lay the comb on the sheep’s skin and get started in the proper place, at the proper angle for comb bevel and teeth.

A pair of hand scissors really comes in handy. You can safely and slowly cut wool away by hand, until you’ve created clean purchase for your hand piece. I always feel better and calmer when I’ve set myself and my shears up properly, which gives me the best chance for shearing safely and well.

Bring hand scissors if you don’t already. I can’t say it enough. Add them to your kit. They’re wonderful for safely cutting wool away from the sheep’s face, too.

Use normal equipment, but more of it.

I do not use 9-tooth combs. I’ve sheared sheep with multi-year growth just fine with my usual 13-tooth combs. Indeed, I’d be more leery of using a 9-tooth comb for Shrek sheep, as that lifted skin would fit too easily in the larger space between the teeth. No bueno.

You’ll need more oil, more often, and Kool Lube spray too. After a year or more without shearing, lanolin can dry out, harden, and/or get absorbed by the extra wool. There is less lanolin, literally less oil, to help your shears glide along. This is even worse in cold weather. Your shears may also run hotter than usual, pushing through more wool with more gunk in it. Keep everything well oiled and as cool as possible.

I hope this helps somebody out there. Just take your time, all the time you need.

December 1, 2017 by Stephany Wilkes

Making Raw Fiber into Finished Goods

June 24, 2017 by Stephany Wilkes

I, 80

“Where are you from?” people ask. “Where do you live?”

“I-80,” I say.

The name of this business still holds, though. Interstate 80 is transcontinental, inching east-west (or, I dare say, west-east) from San Francisco, California to Teaneck, New Jersey.

Stretch of highway, and green and white highway sign that says Donner Summit, pine trees and blue sky — My buddy, my pal

Spend too much time alone in the car and you start talking to the highway. After Morning Edition starts its second loop and the next audiobook CD from the library is too scratched to play, you might say, “I swear I’m beginning to recognize some of those construction workers, especially on the approach to the Carquinez Bridge. You know, you look so different out here, it’s hard to believe you’re the same I-80 I drove in the Midwest, though you’re concurrently 80/90 in that region, from Portage, Indiana to Elyria, Ohio, where my great-grandmother dwelt as a child and did not fondly recall it. You’re a toll road there, too. Whenever the snow got bad on I-94 West, as I approached Lake Michigan, I would cut south to you via 23 or 69 or 131. I thought your tolls might mean you’d be better maintained–plowed and salted–through Ohio and Indiana.”

Hypothetically speaking.

Wikipedia reminded me that revered John McPhee wrote about I-80 best (as he does most things) in Basin and Range, which became Annals of the Former World, which you should read. McPhee describes the geology revealed when the land that would become I-80 was excavated and leveled:

“What about Interstate 80, I asked him. It goes the distance. How would it be? ‘Absorbing,’ he said. And he mused aloud: After 80 crosses the Border Fault, it pussyfoots along on morainal till that levelled up the fingers of the foldbelt hills. It does a similar dance with glacial debris in parts of Pennsylvania. It needs no assistance on the craton. It climbs a ramp to the Rockies and a fault-block staircase up the front of the Sierra. It is geologically shrewd. It was the route of animal migrations, and of human history that followed. It avoids melodrama, avoids the Grand Canyons, the Jackson Holes, the geologic operas of the country, but it would surely be a sound experience of the big picture, of the history, the construction, the components of the continent.”

A pale brown desert in winter, low mountain in the Great Basin, with snow squall clouds above it — Snow approach. Winnemucca, Nevada.

I was born in the Motor City to an auto worker and submit, as further evidence of misplaced birth, the fact that I do not like driving. I will do just about anything to avoid it, which is why I’m confined to city living I don’t otherwise relish. I need public transit, walking, and biking. The idea of spinning up the ignition for a half pint of half-and-half or a store run for pastel muffin-cup liners is agonizing. (“Oil,” I can hear you say. “Just oil the muffin pan. You don’t need the liners.”)

And yet…

Pine trees, lake, mountain and blue sky with fluffy white clouds on a sunny day — Donner Lake

Interstate 80 is, sometimes, what was once the Oregon and California Trails. Waypoint names like Emigrant Wilderness and rusted metal signs at Nevada rest stops keep you humble. “Hubris,” they whisper. “Hubris.”

This year’s once-a-century rains made lakes where there usually are none, smack dab in the middle of the desert and wild to see. They are disorienting, these massive, flash lakes, but people say they used to appear more often than they do now. Lakes that appear every decade or so, at best, are an entirely foreign concept for someone from the Great Lakes that date back to the glacial. Water in the West is ephemeral in more ways than one.

A brown lake that usually isn't there, in the desert, distant mountains on the left, low scrub sage in front, and a blue sky with wispy white clouds — An alkali lake in Modoc County, California, that I have never seen before. It isn’t usually here, and won’t be for long.

This year, the Yolo Bypass flooded, filled to spilling with silvery brown chop. It was a sight. The Yolo Causeway is an interstate bypass that is 16,538 feet long, more than twice as wide as the Mississippi River at its widest point, in New Orleans, where it is roughly 7,600 feet wide. It’s a good thing they’ve left the Bypass a floodplain. It is green now, holds tractors and workers, and tells us yes, this is a real river delta.

It makes the fact that Creedence Clearwater Revival (a standby in my CD player) hails from here make sense: the humidity, the breeze reprieve in summer, fishing skiffs… When CCR sang about life on the river, it wasn’t a contrivance.

Left a good job in the city
Workin’ for the man ev’ry night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleepin’
Worryin’ ’bout the way things might have been

Amen, brother. Ain’t that the truth.

And the snow, the snow. I do miss it, and loved having mornings when I woke up to this. I was as giddy as a kid, skipping motel coffee to get out into it and slide over to a diner in snow boots.

A flat parking lot with four cars, lightly dusted with snow — Waking up to a new world. Going to be a chilly barn today.

I happened to be driving through the Sierra when eight feet of snow fell in five days, shutting Truckee down. Avalanche threats stopped the trains from running. Mammoth saw over 20 feet of snow in three weeks in January. It buried the ski lifts and I-80 was shut down for 12 hours.

White snow and blue sky at Carson Pass, in the Sierra — Carson Pass

I’ll spare you the saga, but I spent eight hours at Donner Pass over a stretch of a few miles. I watched with dread as snow accumulated on the hood at the rate of one inch per minute. My brand-new pricey snow chains broke in multiple places, and I had to bind them together with the baling wire that was holding my shearing cutters, using my hoof trimmers like pliers.

The chains, continuously thwacking and breaking in new places, threatened to wrap themselves around my axel and create a $5,000 repair. I eventually reached a sufficiently low elevation to remove them and draft behind a semi that melted the snow just enough to keep me from sliding into its trailer.

What is normally a five-hour drive took 13.5. I will, perhaps, never be so relieved to see anyplace as I was the Black Bear Diner in Auburn at 9:30 PM. I almost embraced the waiter. I do not know how the Donner Party lasted more than a few days. I am not surprised that so many of them died: I am amazed that half of them lived. How?!

I will find a way to negotiate a 4WD vehicle into this household, a desire only amplified by my midlife station (or a convenient excuse). As the I-80 miles stretch before me, I dream of a white Toyota pickup so tall I need a step stool to climb into it, the sort of truck that can sometimes be won at county or state fairs. It will have gold trim, and glittery decals of shearing combs and cutters affixed to its sides, and a vanity plate that says WOOL GRL or GOT WOOL, and a covered bed to camp in.

Such a truck will require a herding dog, one socialized to all farm creatures who can gather the still-eating sheep the customers have failed to bring in from pasture, again. I will name the dog Cedar or Carson or Moab or something equally western sounding.

Then I think of parking a truck in the city and tickets on street-cleaning days and wake up. Rosebud…

To my own amazement, I have developed a list of preferred McDonald’s locations. Yes, my turned-up nose has come down somewhat, even if I only eat the hashbrown (in the singular). My McDonald’s preference is based on two things: synchronicity with my biological cycles (i.e. duration since initial coffee) and the ease of approach to and from I-80 through the maze of All The National Brands that does not enable anyone to move from one business to another easily, the parking lots disconnected, the forced pulling out to pull back in.

Okay. You can, technically, walk over the dividers and irrigated tree rows, so long as you’re prepared to raise ire and become a social pariah (especially in dirty overalls between jobs). In that context, on foot across parking lots, people assume you’re a pan-handling meth head and start asking after your stolen shopping cart because you are, after all, a human outside of a car.

Self-employed and roaming, I have come to depend on McDonald’s and their clean bathrooms, fast wifi, and reliably fresh coffee that is neither a dark roast nor scalded to syrup from sitting on a hot pad, so much so that I now worry we may have vilified McDonald’s too much and they will close. I feel no small guilt for having listened to the author of Fast Food Nation speak at a Chicago Farmer’s Market so many moons ago.

Texting is out of hand but, if nothing else, finally makes driving feel exactly as dangerous as it is, statistically speaking, what with the swerving, lane drifting, and ditch diving.

I feel lucky to have seen and heard thunder this year. What a gift, this record-setting season of rain, and every day in it.