I’ve seen plenty of film clips of sheep- shearing. But – OMG – have you ever seen it in the flesh?
I recently went with a friend at 6.30pm to watch the last hour of the day’s shearing. The three young shearers were on the front of a raised platform in a field. The penned sheep were herded up a ramp onto the back of the platform and, one by one, through gaps in a wooden wall to the front.
One of the lads would grab the sheep by the fleece and yank it through the gap. Two or three minutes later, the shorn sheep was shoved back through the gap and down another ramp gap into the field.
The whole thing was a pleasure to watch: a timeless bucolic scene of fit young men, stripped to the waist, doing something as old as time on a lovely day, with the lush fields and hills of Northamptonshire as background. The only modern innovation was the electric shearing kit, with the big shavers powered by a generator.
What skill! With one movement, they’d pull the sheep onto its back, straddle it, lock its head or a front leg between their legs and, with rhythmic, smooth strokes, shave off the fleece without a single nick.
The animals hardly moved. I guess they couldn’t, but they were calm and didn’t struggle.
That was until the shearers got to the enormous rams, or tups – especially the Charolais, a breed famous for its intractable ways. Sometimes it took two men to hold one down.
I was worried for the tups’ equipment, but the shearer would gently shield the ram’s scrotum with one hand as he shaved each side of it. I met the mum of one of the shearers the next day and she said her lad had been showing off his multiple bruises at breakfast.
The fleeces were dropped into huge sacks fixed to the side of the platform.
Full sacks were removed by one of the shearers’ wives, a nurse by profession, taking time off to help. She’d close the sack and lug it to the pile, to await removal to the Wool Marketing Board’s collection point. There was much enjoyment and camaraderie. One of the shearers is not even a farmer; he’s a policeman. One is a neighbouring farmer, and another just enjoys shearing.
It’s relentless, hot and thirsty work. The farmer’s wife, my friend, had fed them lunch. She was worried about her 81-year-old husband, not long out of hospital, doing a 12-hour day herding sheep from pen to pen. Farming is tougher than even Jeremy Clarkson makes it look.
Sadly, fleece cost more to shear than they sell for. Those 550 sheep were sheared because otherwise they’d get flystrike (maggots round the bum) or die of heat in the summer.
Prue Leith presents The Great British Bake Off
