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Sunday, Apr. 05, 2009

Australian shearers ply their trade in midstate

The Australian shearer and his helper returned Saturday to White Gates Farm on Limestone Road.

As is customary this time of year on Linda and Donald Willis’ 15 acres, the men were there to shear the wool coats of about 30 registered and cross-bred Suffolk ewes.

The wool would be bagged and boxed and sent to a mill in Prince Edward Island, Canada, to be made into blankets for laps and beds, and then shipped back to Cochran to be sold by the couple.

“We shear once a year in the spring,” said Linda Willis, a native of England and vice president of the Georgia Sheep and Wool Grower’s Association. “We usually try to get the ewes after lambing so that they’re not stressed.”

Twenty-five ewes had been lambed by Saturday, producing nearly as many sets of twins and triplets at White Gates Farm in the last few weeks.

The lambs, not having grown their first winter coat, were not sheared.

Willis, who then had been farming sheep for a couple of years, was referred to Bill O’Connor’s shearing services about 2001.

“I only had two (sheep) then and made a right mess myself, nicking them up,” she said.

A conversation with a doctor acquaintance from Fort Valley led to a meeting with a fellow sheep farmer out of Watkinsville.

“I know somebody who can shear your sheep and they talk just like you,” is how the introduction came about, Willis said.

“We met and he’s been coming since.”

O’Connor, a 69-year-old champion shearer from Euroa, a country town about 100 miles northeast of Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria, travels to the United States with his wife and an assistant yearly.

“Bill’s a shearing contractor over home for 30 or more years. And we do this as a kind of holiday and catching up with friends with the shearing tacked on to one,” said Jan O’Connor, his wife.

The group has become somewhat sought after for their shearing expertise.

Having tapped into a network of American sheep farmers, they spend about a month from March to April on the shearing trip.

Traveling in an older, red Chevy Silverado they leave at a friend’s home near Atlanta during the off-season, the O’Connors had been to a farm in Florida before arriving in Cochran on Friday afternoon.

They were next headed to south Georgia, north Georgia and South Carolina.

“Every year, we tend to go to another country to have a look around at the end of our trip here,” O’Connor said. “We’ve been to Jerusalem, the south of France and all over Europe. But we’ll head to Australia directly this time.”

It’s rather unique how it works — shearing.

Alone or in twos, the mother sheep, ranging in age up to about 9, were pulled by their front legs from an outdoor pen into a covered shed.

Bill O’Connor and Ned Lister, also of Victoria, next would force each sheep into a position of submission on the ground.

“Twist the head, press on the romp,” Lister said. “Of course we’ve had to deal with animal rights groups in explaining this, but it doesn’t hurt them.”

Once down, the ewe’s barrage of “baaahs” ceased. Using handheld wool clippers resembling large human hair clippers, the shearers started at her belly.

In three minutes or less, patches of a coat about 6 inches thick had been removed.

Coat after coat, the yellowish, waxy wool — covered in lanolin produced by the sheep to help shed water — was stuffed into a large plastic bag hanging from a nearby tree.

“Bill has probably shorn a million sheep over his lifetime and I’ve probably shorn 600,000,” Lister said. “It’s quite unusual to come out here and shear sheeps with all names. Pets and things.”

O’Connor, who has represented Australia in the Golden Shears shearing and wool handling championships in New Zealand, said shearing is widely competitive in Australia, where he estimates there are about 80 million sheep and 6,000 professional shearers.

“My grandfather was a shearer and my father was a shearer and I have brothers who are shearers and we have sons who are shearers,” he said. “You can’t enter the work force as a shearer without two to three years of really painful application.”

Donald Willis and his wife moved to Cochran three years ago from a 3-acre farm in Pulaski County.

“We’re building a log cabin on 60 acres in Dodge County,” he said. “We’ll have more sheep to shear soon.”

Nancy Dyksterhouse, a friend visiting from Grand Rapids, Mich., was one of a few people invited over to watch the sheep get their haircuts. She purchased a blanket last spring and said she found the wool delightful.

“They are warm and light and gorgeous. When you see the beginning of that product and how much time and work it consumes, you appreciate the final product a lot more,” she said. “Most people probably don’t know where things come from anymore because we’re so far removed from farms.”

To order a blanket, e-mail Linda Willis at whitegatesfarms@bellsouth.net.