Shearing at Timm Ranch - part 1

Every year I get wool from the Timm Ranch, about five miles from here, and have it made into a really great yarn. I sell the yarn in skeins and on cones and I use a lot of it for my own woven products. I could probably substitute blog posts from previous years for this one and you wouldn’t know the difference. Same place. Same sheep. However some of the Farm Club people have changed. So here is the 2022 Shearing Day last week.

The Timm Ranch sheep are what I like to call a ranch blend of Polypay, Rambouillet, and Targhee. That means that those are the original breeds in the flock but over the years, as the Timms have raised their own replacements, the individual breeds aren’t so recognizable. The sheep have traits of all, but most of what we are happy to see is the fine wool traits of those original breeds.

The sheep moved into the lane on the north side of the barn.

Last year there we tried to keep up with two shearers. This year there was only one and we were able to keep pace with him.

The shearer is known as Junior and this logo is a new one.

Several Farm Club members came to help evaluate and skirt fleeces.

We worked at two skirting tables.

The goal was to check the fleece for soundness (most were fine in that respect) and then skirt. Skirting is to remove the parts of the fleece that are of lesser quality—wool at the edge of the belly and that with excess VM (vegetable matter). The timing was just right for shearing and there was very little VM in the fleeces. All waste was bagged for a friend with a project in which she will make a product from wool that will otherwise be discarded. That will be a blog topic later on.

We kept a running tally of the weight so that I could make sure I reached my 200 pound minimum and I could figure out how much to pay for the wool. The skirted fleeces varied from 4.5 lb to 9.5 lb. and I ended up with 222 pounds in one pile and 50 pounds in the other.The wool will go to two different mills.

Some of the sheep after shearing.

The sheep were in two groups. The largest group had fall lambs, but there was one group with lambs born more recently—including the previous night (although that pair was still in a lambing pen). At one point Susan and I walked over to the group with young lambs and they followed her to the barn.

These are locks from some of the fleeces we chose. The yellow paper is 5” wide so you get an idea of the fleece length. There were a handful of extra long fleeces. One was from a sheep that was missed last year so that was a two year fleece—too long to combine with this batch. Some of the other long ones were from replacement ewes born in the fall of 2020 and not shorn last spring. We tried to sort by length and most of the 200+ pound batch is about 3 to 4 inches. The longer ones are mostly in the other batch of wool.

Stay tuned for another post with more photos.

Shearing at the Timm Ranch 2021

This is the sixth year that I have purchased wool from the nearby Timm Ranch on their shearing day. Here is an example of the yarn that is spun from the wool and there is a little bit of info about the ranch and the flock at that link.

We were so lucky with the weather. The shearing had already been postponed because of potential rain and if there had been the north wind as the day before it would not have been nearly as pleasant.

The sheep are what I call a ranch blend of Rambouillet, Polypay, and Targhee, all fine wool breeds.

There are not individual sheep of those breeds, as the ranch has raised their own replacements for quite awhile.

I’m glad that so many Farm Club members were able to help because there were two shearers working and we needed to keep up with them.

As a fleece was shorn Alan took it from the shearers and put it on a tarp near the skirting tables.

After the first few years of working at the shearing we figured out that we’d better bring canopies or we’d be in the sun the whole day. It was looking very festive here—the canopies cover three skirting tables.

We kept up the safety protocol and everyone wore masks. Some of the Farm Club members had been to this shearing in previous years and it was new for others. Susan, Marina, Kimber are in this photo (I think that I’m able to see who is behind the mask.)

Teresa and Doris are here.

Beth, Carol, and Sylvia.

Thanks for this photo, Doris. I am in this one.

At a commercial shearing operation, the classes and skirters have seconds to spend with each fleece if they hope to keep up with the shearing when 6 or 7 shearers are working. We are a lot slower. The reason is that I feel compelled to send wool that is as free of VM (vegetable matter) and other faults as possible. When we skirt we remove any part of the fleece that isn’t up to a chosen standard. We pull off wool from around the edges where there is going to be more debris or felting, wool with paint markings, wool that has more VM, and wool that may be tender (brittle) or short. The huge mills have processes that deal with VM chemically: Carbonising is a continuous process which combines scouring to remove the wool grease and a chemical process which removes vegetable matter such as seeds, burs and grass. Carbonising occurs if the greasy wool contains a high percentage of vegetable matter (%VM), typically in excess of 2% to 3%. There is more info at this link. My wool is going to a mill that doesn’t do that process so it is important to send only wool that is as clean as possible.

I also needed to keep track of how much wool we had because I needed to meet a minimum of 200 pounds for the mill where I’m sending this wool. So after skirting fleeces we filled bags to be weighed. After recording the weight the wool was piled on a tarp to be baled at the end. The reason that we had to keep up with the shearers is that they brought the wool press with them. They would press our wool and any that we didn’t take into bales before they left. It was important to not have to stuff this pile into bags and boxes, but to get it into a bale for shipment.

Much of the ranch property burned in the devastating LNU Complex fire last summer, but the buildings at this location were spared, probably because the sheep graze the 80 acres that is right around the headquarters.

They were certainly lucky that these old barns didn’t burn.

Our pile got to 230 pounds as the shearers were finishing. They dragged it over to the wool press.

Shearing Day 2021 - Part 1

Shearing Day was 5 days ago on 1/29. I can’t believe that I haven’t shared photos yet. I often think in terms of photos and blog posts, but they don’t always make it to the computer. The first post I meant to write was about getting ready for Shearing Day.

Tuesday night the area was hit with a wild storm and huge winds. On Wednesday we drove to a friend’s farm about 5 miles away to bring her sheep to our place so they would be dry for shearing. We now know how many sheep we can put in our trailer—that would be 20 in full fleece. The sheep were soaked but by bringing them here they had a chance to dry out and our shearer added them on after shearing our sheep..

Tuesday night our power went out and stayed out for almost 24 hours and we were luckier than many to be out of only that long, especially since I didn’t think John would want to hand shear 88 sheep.

Wednesday morning I got the barn organized for shearing. I found the plywood we save for shearing next to the stack of straw. It looks as though last year someone labeled it so that it wouldn’t be cut up and used for something else before this year. Good idea.

We started with the rams. This is 2 year old Jasper.

Shearing Day is usually an Open House and we have a lot of visitors and fleece buyers. This pandemic year was an exception, but I was glad that some Farm Club members could come and help. In fact they did most of the work of moving sheep and handing them off to John.

Sheep-eye-view of the holding pen.

The whole day went so smoothly. Everyone had a job and knew what to do. The few brand new Farm Club members jumped right in as well and the “old-timers” showed them what to do and talked about handling sheep.

John sheared 8 rams and wethers and then moved onto the ewes.

Mary scooped the fleeces off the shearing board and her husband, Russ, held the bag open for the fleece.

Kathleen was happy to do her regular job of weighing fleeces.

As usual Ginny entertained herself with the ball. This time she put the ball through the fence where John was shearing, hoping that someone would throw it for her. This time John’s dog, Oakley, picked it up and they both ran off.

Later Oakley found a piece of horn which I think he liked better than the ball.

John sheared all 68 of our sheep and then took a break before shearing the my friend’s 20 sheep.

While John ate lunch we held a raffle that was open to those members who had renewed their membership. We raffled off the shawls that our Meridian Jacobs teams had woven at 2019 Black Sheep Gathering and 2020 Lambtown Sheep-to-Shawl contests. It was fitting that Marina won the shawl woven by the team she was on in 2019. Two other members who couldn’t be at shearing will pick up the Lambtown shawl and another that I wove as a sample before the Lambtown competition.

The ram lamb (almost a year), Rambler and his wether buddy in the background. Remember this look—you’ll never see him this white again.

Stay tuned for more shearing photos tomorrow!