Shearing at Quinta de Serralves - 2015

Last saturday we had fabulous weather, an interested audience showed up, and after the nice shearing done by Martin, the sheep are now much lighter and we have some beautiful fleeces from the Bordaleira-de-Entre-Douro-e-Minho to work with. It was a perfect morning.

Before the event, I asked Marty and Suzana if they could make a good introduction to what was about to happen. Talk about Marty’s background, explain the purpose of the shearing and what it implies, the tools and the technique used. An approach that showed how a good shearing in done in a professional environment, even if small scale, was the most important, and also convey the idea that sheep are domesticated animals, and therefore we have an obligation of assuring their well-being, and shearing is a part of that.

Marty, born in New Zealand, grew up in a farm with thousands of sheep and at the age of 18 was sent by his father to a shearing school - something he didn’t like at the time, but the he has different feelings about that now. He has worked and still works in the wool industry, both in NZ and Australia, but also all over Europe, including England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy, etc.
At the moment he lives in Portugal with Suzana, in Marvão, where he keeps working as a shearer, both in our country and abroad, in different times of the year.
One of the things that makes Marty so interesting for me and the investigation we’re carrying, is his comparative experience. The fact that he has worked in countries with very different wool industries and “fiber cultures” allows him to have an interesting view on the subject. The different approaches, different goals and different expectations of each place.
In Portugal he has been shearing mainly in Alentejo.
He tells me that around here the main difference is that the goal of the shearers in general is simply to relieve the sheep from its wool, and not obtaining the wool for fiber purposes, which demands specific care. In most cases, the fleeces aren’t skirted and no wool grading is done, and this lowers the wool value, simply because the low quality product is being thrown together with the high quality one.

This saturday was the first time he sheared Bordaleiras-de-Entre-Douro-e-Minho sheep (a local breed from northern Portugal) and his comments about them were that they were “very nice sheep” and that they had good wool.
The biggest feedback from the audience were the compliments to the delicate, yet confident and firm way, as Marty handled the animals and above all, how calm and peaceful the whole process was, which seemed to surprise a lot of people, as I could see from the silence during the first shearing and the applause when Suzana opened the first fleece for everyone to see and touch.

I was pleasantly surprised by the type of questions asked by the audience after the first sheep was sheared. Interesting and important questions, all related with the practical and economical side of the activity: “how do you store the raw fleece?”, “What kind of wool is this?”, “How do you wash the fleece?”, “How much does this fleece weight and how much wool will it give after washing?, “Do you use all the wool from the whole fleece?” and others very similar. I think these questions show that Marty and Suzana’s approach to the subject was interesting, and many people were interested in much more that just watching.

I still want to talk about the shearing technique Marty uses - the Bowen technique - and also about skirting the fleece and how to properly store a raw fleece, but I’ll do that in the next posts.
 

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[09.05.2015 / This post refers to the investigation and activities developed during the Saber Fazer em Serralves program]