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A Private Shearing

This past month has been a busy one, with the past week being especially packed. As farmers, we don't get to choose when some of the big stuff happens. We moved chickens out on December 23rd, and have about a week to clean the coop out in preparation for the next batch of chickens. Not our choice; the layer farm gets to choose when they'd like the hens to arrive.

So it is with shearing. The sheep must be shorn now because it's about a month before lambing. More about shearing here. Not much room to wiggle on the scheduling.

With all of this (plus the standard family gatherings) falling during the week of Christmas and New Years, we haven't had a lot of extra time. So we made the decision not to hold our traditional Open Shearing Day in December. It was kind of nice to just shear the sheep and not worry about demonstrations, crowd control, parking and sales. Even the photos we took reflect the relaxed attitude we enjoyed (in other words, sorry about the poor quality of the pics!).

Don't worry--we'll still host an Open Shearing Day the last Saturday in February. Mark your calendar now for the 26th.

Hopefully we'll be rested up from our busy-ness by then.
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