You can’t have a fiber festival without paying homage to the shearers. Through the domestication process that has taken place over thousands of years, many fiber-bearing animals have lost their ability to molt. Shearing is the duty of the tender to the tended, whether you are a shepherd of three or three hundred.
In this brief video, taken at Wendy Clarke of Animal Spirit's homestead, you can see the skill required by shearer, in this case “Alpaca Tom” to keep the animal calm and relaxed while expertly removing their fleece intact and without short cuts. Short cuts occur when the shearer takes a second pass with the shears and leave small lengths of fiber in the fleece. This can cause pilling and clog the milling equipment during processing and generally devalues the fleece and resulting yarn and fiber.
If you are interested in taking a peek into the world of growing, harvesting, and the wool processing infrastructure in the U.S., check out "Raw Material" by Stephany Wilkes or "Vanishing Fleece" by Clara Parks, the latter features long time Festival vendor, Elsa Wool.
For more barnyard videos, check out our critter corner.
Негізгі бет A Brief Shearing Demo at Animal Spirit Farm
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