Shorn the Sheep

Farmers are immersed in uncertainty but, like surgeons, have to live by their decisions. Actually for surgery, it's the patients who live (or die) by that decisiveness.  In farming, you may go out of business if you knock the hay just before a month of rain but nobody is going to die. Sometimes the prices at the mart seem derisory but you have to sell anyway. And sometimes in farming, good judgment and good fortune and good weather pay off and you make so much money your accountants have to dig up some losses allowable expenses, lest The Revenue takes all the fun out of your Win.

As tractorless, barely competent, micro-farmers (7 ha. 15 sheep), we are prone to a whole other layer of powerlessness. Last year, the grass (and other excitingly diverse species) in our 4x traditional hay meadows didn't get knocked till October! Irish weather runs to rain, or at least drizzle, so when a window of several consecutive dry days is forecast then everyone wants the mower, tedder, baler and wrapper in that order and Now. Mowers-for-hire would rather do big flat fields with good road access . . . so small places like ours get queued last. Then, last year, our preferred mower's tractor blew a cylinder-head gasket and was out of commission for weeks. Eventually, he had to sub-contract the job to someone else, who was fully busy elsewhere etc. etc. Consequencely late mowing, over-grazed other fields, unexpected payments. But at least nobody, and no sheep, died.

With shearing, it's a welfare issue. The price of wool is rock-bottom for the 3rd or 4th year in a row (and perhaps from here on out) at ~20c / kg - less than a tenth what it has been during our tenure on the farrrm. It's barely worth the petrol to haul the bale of fleece into the co-op for sale. But the sheep must be shorn anyway lest they pass out from heat stroke or get fly-struck or roll over get backed and unable to rise the ground. As with getting grass knocked, everyone wants the shearer at the same time and it's the same work to set up the shearing platform and oil up the shears for 15 sheep as it is for 150. 

Last night at tea-time Paddy-the-Clip, our heroic and dependable shearer from just the other side of the hill, called to say he could come, like, Now.  With the sheep-welfare issue and small-return for appearance issue, the Shearer takes precedence over tea, Dowager Duchesses, family zoom-calls, Full Colonels, favorite TV shows, Minor Eastern Potentates and The Match. Accordingly we dropped everything and mustered a) the shepherd's marker-and-meds bucket b) the longest extension lead c) my blue-marker-stained combats and . . . d) the sheep. 90 minutes after the call, the sheep were all lighter by a fleece and we were lighter by a wodge of folding money. Somebody cracked open a bottle of fine red wine to mark the occasion of getting the fleeces off before the dreaded bot-fly got on. Win!