As we bring this spring season to a close I wanted to share some pictures and the reason Seth and I shear.

In the fall of 2017 Seth and I were both still at A&M. I was a senior and he was a junior in the Corps of Cadets. On top of a few other jobs I worked at WC Mercantile, a local yarn shop, on the weekends. One of the owners of the yarn shop had gone to the shearing school in San Angelo put on by AgriLife Sheep & Goat Extension and Research. She told me that I was going in January of 2018 and that she was paying my way.

I told Seth I was going and he responded in typical Seth fasion “not without me you’re not”. So we both ended up in San Angelo in January of 2018 freezing our butts off in a little barn full of sheep and the mechanical whiring of the shearing machines.

I didn’t know it then, but shearing would become a huge part of our lives over the next two years. We went into out first shearing season in March of 2018 not knowing what we were doing. We stumbled a few times and left some pretty bedragled looking sheep at a few farms, but we got better with each job and with each sheep we sheared. I left for Philmont and Seth took on jobs alone. When I got back we did a few fall jobs in August and then settled in for the winter, me working and him finishing up his senior year in the Corps at A&M.

We did go back to the shearing school in 2019 and really enjoyed it and got even better with professional shearers standing right there telling us how to prefect our techunique. Seth claims we go back every year just for the food which is lamb for lunch all three days.

Our spring 2019 shearing season started with gusto and we are ending the spring having shorn 171 sheep at 20 different farms. We have shorn Tunis, Columbian, lots of Babydoll, and many breeds inbetween.

We have enjoysed this spring shearing season and look foreward to the 2020 season.

-Kathryn