On Medieval shearing

Last time I tried to start a blog, the only post I submitted was my mission statement - then I was too intimidated by the mission I had set myself and abandoned it. So here we go straight into the content that my brain wants to go into... current blather mode: medieval shearing of sheep.

We sheared most of our sheep beginning to mid June (some medieval and some modern), but as we did a wool-focussed day on the 23rd there were two remaining sheep to shear. Medieval shearing is not shown too frequently, so we publish shearing dates and then shear for an audience to see - as far as possible with explanation, though our focus is always to give the sheep a clean cut without injuring it as quickly as possible (to not stress them uneccessarily) while still maintaining the wool quality for spinning. That's quite a lot to focus on at once, sometimes we need to drop explaining in order to get on with the rest.

As a brief pretext: historically sheep were shorn with metal shears. The shears accurate for our time and period look approximately like this. This style of shears is widely spread throughout Medieval Europe and have an elastic steel arch rather than a hinge. In practice, this means that the shears open on their own and you need to apply a little more pressure to close them than you would need to apply with hinged shears. They appear to be less susceptable to getting stuck with dirt or dust (which would get the hinge stuck in hinged shears), otherwise I cannot see much practical advantage in using these.

Our shears are professionally sharpened bevor each shearing season, as frustration over blunt shears is actually more likely to tire you out so you make more mistakes.

We shear in a team of 3-5 people. As we are clipping with shears it is quite difficult to maneuver a sheep on its bum, so we initially lay it on one side. One person holds the front legs and the head and one person holds the hind legs. These can all be held loosely, most of the time the sheep doesn't object much, we hold the legs only in case the sheep does decide to stand up. The people at the head and hind legs also have the important task of ensureing that ears and tail are well out of the way!

Our sheep, Skudden, are conveniently bread for medieval shearing. They are not very big, naturally have short tails and a wool-free face, belly and legs (at least this is the case if they follow the breed standards - which they do to a varying degree). This means that they are quite easy to handle and quite easy to shear: the fleece has a nice edge that you can start cutting along. You start at the side of the belly because the goal is to get all the wool as one big "blanket" (=fleece). Essentially, you are clipping the wool going row by row, each row about 1-1.5cm wide. If there are more than 3 shearers then we often have two people clipping, one focussing on the the ruff and one on them bum. However besides the matted edges (=ruff and bum+back thighs for most sheep) we try to clip rows of wool along the length of the sheep. This avoids double-cutting wool, which our spinners hate (double cutting the same fibres means that they are short and stubbly, which makes them awkward do spin and scratchy in the yarn).

Sheep (and other mammels such as cows) have this thing where they go into a semi-paralysis if all four feet are off the ground (it's as thought they think "my default function doesn't work... erm... error?"!). Even quite timid sheep automatically relax, which is why we don't have to hold them very tightly. As they don't go into full paralysis they will, however, sometimes wriggle and try to stand up - some of them will actually wait until you let down your guard and then try to stand. So a loose but attentive hold is important, despite semi-paralyzed sheep.

Once we've sheared the first side across the back we will roll the sheep onto it's other side, tucking the already sheared fleece underneath it and pulling it out on the other side. Though it looks wierd, the woolly bump in this picture is the sheep and the blanket left of it is the fleece it has already lost. For this sheep, 5 shearers was actually a little exaggerated (it was easy to shear, calm, not matted and generally a very nice sheep), hence my colleague is standing there explaining to the audience what's happing. If anybody was worried: she's actually a trained vet, so we were well prepared should something go wrong. Nothing did.

Nearly done, final bum trims, then we sit the sheep on it's bum for some belly-styling and then it gets to go back to it's flock.

The bits the sheep dislike being trimmed most is usually their back thighs. Not only is the wool most likely to be matted there (and who likes to have matted hair fussed with?), sheep also seem to be strangely ticklish on their back thighs. Sadly, wriggling while somebody is cutting matted fleece just extends the procedure, as with matted fleece it is really hard to see where the hair ends and where the skin starts, so you need to go slow and careful anyway - and even more so with wriggles.

Here come the belly trims - mainly around the ruff, as Skudden have wool-free bellies but their ruff (or mane, depending on how you look at it) goes all the way round and it tends to get matted. In this picture you can actually see the shears and their size quite well.

Note also the gaze of the sheep - here you can really see the semi-paralyzed and quite relaxed state. This is also the time to tidy up other corners that may have been missed. Also, if they had not freshly been clipped, we would have clipped his hoves now.

Some of the wool yielded from this final tidying is double-clipped, so it's not suitable for spinning. However it does contain a lot of lanolin (the natural oils produced by sheep, you can see it as the orange colour on the sheep) and it is otherwise very clean and pure. This wool is ideal to rub as a lotion (modern cosmetics often artificially add lanolin).

Finally, 15 minutes later, our sheep can go! (Yes, our sheep are sometimes maneuvred with leashes - some enjoy this more than others).

The fleece (sorry, no pic) is passed on to the wool group where it is grated, assigned to a purpose and processed for the selected process.