shear madness

The organic certification auditor was at Marama all day today, so after doing some indoor work Sabrina and I headed up to visit the farm manager family and try to convince Graeme that he wanted to let us try shearing a sheep. It didn't take much convincing - I'm sure he thought this would be pretty amusing after all our questions over the past couple days revealed our farm naivety - and we were told to come back after their 'tea' (dinner) and he'd have a couple of sheep for us.

We did a couple of errands in Gore, then went up to the shearing shed and Graeme herded about 15 sheep in - very ambitious. He pulled one out, and after noticing the trepidation on our faces and that the sheep was a kicker, he decided to do that one himself. Next one up was ours, and I stood behind the sheep and held it with my knees as instructed...or so I thought, but then Graeme decided it would be better for all involved if he held it, and we just sheared.

I was a terrible shearer - I can cross one more item off the Potential Careers List. Apparently really good shearers can shear a sheep in less than one minute - I took about one minute for one swipe of the shears, going back over the wool several times because I was scared to press them down too hard and hurt the sheep. You're supposed to keep the fleece in one piece - that did not happen, see photo. Sabrina was better, but we still thought it would be a good idea to stop after one sheep between the two of us (okay, plus a lot of help from Graeme).

After shearing, we went back to the main house for a delicious grass-fed free range organic steak dinner (from the farm, of course) - sooo good.

Tomorrow's plan: leave 'early' to head to Invercargill and the Catlins, camp for a night, then head up to Christchurch to look for work.