Peter and Sam shearing sheep. Photo by Robert Corkery.
Besides the obvious change from winter to summer, I have also switched from city to country living in New South Wales. At Uncle Peter’s sheep station, I have felt far, far away from Stockholm. On Monday and Tuesday, we watched Peter and his grandson Sam do a shearing technique called crutching. Apparently, a full shearing will be done in July. For this technique, the sheep are rounded up into the shearing shed and then using mechanical clippers, hair is trimmed a bit from above their eyes and their bottoms to prevent them from getting flyblown.
The clippers were hooked up to the wall and Peter would pick up a sheep and carry him from the pen to the clippers, sitting him up like a person and rolling him around as necessary to take care of the job. At the end, the sheep would drop down a chute out to the yard, where they would all group together in a worried-looking mass. It was quite the learning experience for a city girl!
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