Baaa!

I decided to trek over to Drumlin Farm yesterday to go to Woolapalooza. Drumlin Farm is part of the Mass Audubon "Protecting the Nature of Massachusetts." Mass Audubon was selling their membership, which gives you free admission to 45 Mass Audubon wildlife sanctuaries, a full-color guide to these sanctuaries, a one-year subscription to Sanctuary, an environmental magazine, and to Connections, a member newsletter. Plus you get discounts on programs and courses. It looked like a lot of value for a family.

I got there between the big events, a sheep dog demonstration and sheep shearing. I wandered around looking at their chickens first. I found out that free range chickens produce about 330 eggs per year each, but a caged chicken produces 265. Having considered owning chickens in the future, and pondering a flock of 20...would I really have 6600 eggs in one year? That's a lot of quiche!



I then went and checked out the merchants, which was interesting because they were not your typical merchants. The American Textile History Museum was there, and they are having a grand reopening in May. They were giving demonstrations on how to spin wool with a drop spinner and a spinning wheel. Kids were everywhere at this event, and they sure loved poking at (and trying to spin) the spinning wheels at various booths.

I chatted with a woman who makes angora products at Needle's Eye Angoras. She brought along one of her rabbits and let the kids pet it. She told me that she grows much of her own food during the summer and stores it over the winter. She was selling the yarn, headbands, and cute baby booties. She was delighted by the event, "So many parents with children, and they are talking to their children!"

Then I saw one of the main events: a sheep dog demonstration. There were four dogs, but one is still being trained. All the dogs are trained with voice and body at first, but then learn to respond to just a whistle. They love moving the sheep...one was just itching to start.



Whistling to bring them around:



Into the pen:



I went to the lambing shed. There were twins born the night before, and another baby born while I was there!



Along the way to the sheep shearing show, I walked along the Sheep to Sweater Interpretive trail. They were showing how to wash the wool, comb it spin it, and dye it with natural dyes. I liked the pokeweed, even though the color would look terrible on me!



The yellow is a goldenrod dye, and the brown is black walnut, which I learned about in the Foraging for Wild Edibles workshop I went to last year. They also had several pretty yellow dyes made from onion skin.

I ended with the best part, sheep shearing! I thought that I had to take a trip to New Zealand to see these demos, but no! For $10, this was a better deal:

Big fluffy sheep, dying to take off the winter coat when it's 55 degrees out:



Starting to shear:



Halfway there:



Almost done:



Done! With just a bit of razor burn:



This big sheep had about 10 pounds of wool on it, which would make 2 adult sweaters and a few hats. Hats off to you, sheep!