No more baaaad hair days

Yesterday Nick asked what I wanted to do today – I said there wasn’t much to choose from! So we were very happy to get a phone call from Daphne Peters who has a farm in Sandy Bay, to say that they would be shearing their sheep today. We got there at about 9.30, and they were waiting for us to arrive before they started. They only had four sheep to do today, I guess they will do the rest another time. Daphne’s son-in-law, David, was there to actually do the shearing. It was great to watch – they have to get a rope around the sheep’s neck and then lead it to the cement block where they do the deed. The sheep are very docile and obedient, bringing to mind the Scripture “as a sheep before its shearer is silent…”. They are arranged and positioned where the shearer needs them, sometimes sitting on their bums, sometimes lying on their backs, sometimes standing – but they pretty much did whatever they had to, every so often having a huge twitch and needing resettling. David did a good job with them and is obviously quite used to doing this. It’s all manual, simply with a pair of shears which could even double as garden shears in an emergency (you know, when your bougainvillea starts attacking you and you have to hack it down quickly, that type of emergency). At one point he accidentally cut the sheep, so when he was finished shearing it they sprayed on some purple stuff, which would help to keep the flies off the wound. The boys lost interest after the first five minutes, but at least they’ve experienced it. We had tea inside, and then while we were inside, William, Daphne’s husband, called for the boys to come outside. They had finally caught the big ram and wanted the boys to see it. The ram was jumping all over the place, but finally calmed down a bit and the boys could get close enough to pet it. Aaron was in his element when William picked him up and sat him on the ram!