She's Gonna Shear?

That is a question I've heard a lot of the last few years as I've started doing more, but more so this year as I'm doing the majority of the shearing. I'm sure the majority of people are just used to seeing K doing it and me helping or catching the sheep, but some are genuinely surprised that I could be strong enough to handle this.

I had never planned to shear for other people. My soul purpose of learning how to shear was purely selfish. I decided many years ago that I was going to have sheep. ( believe it or not, before I wanted to learn how to spin) I also decided that I was not going to call all over in a panic trying to find someone to shear my sheep. So I asked K to start teaching me how to shear. It started slow. I would finish off the back of a rather large ram or take the first pass on one that we decided to do standing up. Always with him watching over me and giving me tips on what to do or how I should hold something.

A few years later I started watching youtube videos and watching demonstrators at events. I wanted to know how other people did it. How did they hold the machine, the animal, their bodies. I was getting the hang of it. I would shear the occasional animal at home and still help out where needed on the road. Over time I began to be the one to do the alpacas and llamas. It was much easier for him to hold them and me to shear them. I am a little more agile and can move out of the way easily when they decided to jump, and he is stronger and can  hold the heads and front shoulders more easily.

Last year I started to do more sheep at the house, but was more than happy to still let him shear other people's sheep. I just didn't want to deal with most of them. Lets face it. We shear a lot of pets. That and I'm always scared of nicking the sheep. I hate doing that in front of other people. I would do the occasional one as his knee would give out or his sugar would spike.

Then this last year the inevitable happened. After years of hard labor parts of your body just give out. I waited and waited for him to say let's go out. It was getting later and he simply just said "You go do it". So I started at home. I would grab a couple and shear them. It started to become more than the little bit that I had been doing. Then the people started to call and I just decided that instead of losing the income all together I would bite my fears and go to the mat. Literally we just started going out. Now he still stands over me and directs some things, but as we've gone through this year (what could be classified as my first year) I've gotten better and less afraid of what I was going to do to other people's sheep. I'm still learning and I'm learning that it's going to be a continual process. I'm never going to be one of the people that do a hundred in one day, but I'm okay with what I can do.