RSS

Tag Archives: wool

Loading the 2023 Wool Clip

Bales of wool ready to load

After we finished shearing the sheep in early May, we stored the wool bales in a shed at Cottonwood. In early August, the wool buyer sent a truck so we could load the bales and send them to San Angelo. They will eventually make their way to Italy to be turned into fine woolen clothing. We loaded the bales, two high, onto the skid steer, then drove them to be loaded onto the flatbed trailer of the semi. We loaded 102 bales. The driver strapped them onto the bed, then secured tarps over the whole load. We had a great crew, all working together to get the job done.

Aaron contemplating the job

Aaron using hayhooks to move the bales, Juan in the driver’s seat

Tarping the loaded wool bales

Simon, Juan. Aaron, Samuel, Lalo

 

 
2 Comments

Posted by on August 8, 2023 in Events, Folks who help us out

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Wool Away

San Antonio bound

We just sold three years worth of wool. In 2020, the Trump trade war with China, and Covid 19, caused the previously decent price of wool to plummet. We decided to keep that year’s clip in hopes of higher prices in the future. We’d heard stories of sheep producers who had held their wool throughout the Depression, then sold several year’s worth for good money when the United States entered World War II and needed wool for uniforms and other strategic goods. In 2021, the wool market and the trade situation had not improved, so we kept a second year’s clip. We have a large shed where we can store the wool, so were not accruing storage charges at a wool warehouse. This year, we visited with the wool buyers, who advised us that the world political situation was not improving, but that prices were up somewhat. We decided to sell the 2020, 2021 and 2022 clips, which required two semis with long flatbeds. The first truck driver was from Uzbekistan, and spoke limited English. He was very cautious and conscientious, and when the wool was loaded, strapped and tarped, it looked as neat as could be. The second truck driver was from Denver, but spoke fluent Spanish, which was very helpful with our Spanish-speaking employees who were loading the truck. He even helped load the bales of wool, which weigh 400-500 pounds each. The wool was secured and headed for San Antonio. Our fine Rambouillet wool is usually sold to another buyer who uses it for U.S. military uniforms. We think this fine wool will end up in mills in Italy. The blackface wool goes on to become blankets and sweaters. The shed looks empty without three years worth of wool bales stacked up.

Aaron with hayhooks

Juan with skidsteer, Aaron ready to load

Juan, skidsteer and bale of wool

emptying the shed

Loading the trailer

Lalo making sure the bales are in the right place (33 on each layer, fewer on the top)

bringing up the tarp

Lalo tarping the wool bales

securing the tarps

ready to roll

 
1 Comment

Posted by on August 1, 2022 in Events, Folks

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Shearing at Badwater

wooly ewes waiting for the shearers

It’s that time of year again. The shearers have shown up and shearing is underway. Each year it takes a lot of moving parts for fleeces to roll off the sheep and into the big bales. Our shearing crew are contractors who come out of California. We are their last client of the season. This is good because they are not under pressure to move on to the next producer, but nerve-wracking because we want to have the ewes shorn in time to trail to the lambing grounds north of Dixon. Lambing starts around May 10th.

We were fortunate with the weather this year. We had a snowstorm right before we were ready to start. The weather cleared and was warmish and nice for most of the week, allowing us to get through the “main line,” as the wool buyers call the running age ewes. The yearlings were next, followed by a brief, but not killer storm–always a worry for freshly shorn sheep.

Our crew packed up their portable shed–the shearing equivalant of a food truck–and moved to Powder Flat. The early lambers and the rams were there, and soon they too had given up their winter coats. Beulan and Maria the llamas were also shorn, much to their spitting disgust, but they are ready for summer.

wooly ewes with wagons

waiting in the corral

shorn ewes, ready to lamb

Frank and Gramps, son and father, on the job

Modesto and Eamon counting sheep

shorn ewes with birds

Edgar with unshorn llamas at Powder Flat

 

shearer at work

Meghan and Maria

Megan with Beulah

Beulah, freshly shorn

the wool packer baling the fleeces

bales of wool

fleeces in line

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Shearing 2019

ready for the shearers

 

 

heading up the chute


Alejandro helping ewes up the chute

bucks ready for a fleecing

shearing with skill

 

down the ramp

Ten pounds lighter!

shorn sheep

 

Cora with wool packer

wool ready to pack

Oscar and Meghan

Pepe processing ewes

all hands and the cook

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photo Op

Our Peruvian employees took photos with the wool truck and the truck driver

Our Peruvian employees took photos with the wool truck and the truck driver

 
 

Tags: , ,

Loading wool

Filo, trucker, Antonio, Pepe and Jenri with the loaded wool truck

Filo, trucker, Antonio, Pepe and Jenri with the loaded wool truck

After all our adventures with shearing (and we still have a few ewes to shear and lambs to dock!), we loaded the first load of wool today. Most of it is bound for the U.S. military. Here is our intrepid loading crew, including the Utah trucker who came to haul it. One more load to go!

The trucker said his Dad helped him buy this semi after he returned from eight years in the Marine Corps--three tours in Iraq and one in Afganistan.

The trucker said his Dad helped him buy this semi after he returned from eight years in the Marine Corps–three tours in Iraq and one in Afganistan.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Docking and shearing multi-tasking

Docking and shearing on Cottonwood Creek

Docking and shearing on Cottonwood Creek

This spring, for the first time in our experience, we have lambed our ewes in the wool.

This situation occurred, in large part, because shearing contractors cannot get enough foreign shearers through the broken H2A visa system, and not enough American shearers are available, even though shearing sheep pays very well. In our particular situation, our usual shearing contractor was not honest with us as to when his crew could realistically arrive, which left us with no time to find another shearer—a nearly impossible situation anyway.

By mid-May, we realized that we could not get the ewes sheared before lambing. I tried explaining the difficult situation to the ewes, but they refused to wait another week before giving birth. As a mother, I can relate to this. And also it was raining every day.

We did manage to find an American crew out of California, but they were able to shear only a day and a half before the rains and the lambs really set in. This left us with 6000 or so sheep left to shear, including the yearlings. The California crew said they could come back in June, after things slowed down, sort of. This was good, because the shearing contractors who depend on foreign (mostly New Zealand) shearers lose their crews as the visas run out in late May. I will say that hardly any American crews exist, and the industry needs its foreign shearers to “get the clip out.”

We did get through the lambing, which was inevitable due to the certainty of birth. This left us with several thousand wooly ewes, with lambs at side. At this point, we not only needed to shear the ewes, but we had several thousand lambs to dock.

We decided that we could shear and dock at the same time—in fact, that we had to. Luckily, our California shearing crew was flexible, and was willing to move their portable shed every day to the site of each ewe and lamb bunch. We set up corrals so that the ewes could run straight ahead into the shearing shed, and the lambs could be drafted off to side pens and into a docking line.

Usually, to minimize stress on sheep and human crew alike, we bring the ewes with lambs in in bunches of 300 or so. With the shearing/docking situation, we had to do each entire band at a time—typically 850 or so ewes, and their lambs—usually about thousand. We had to do this because we couldn’t separate the ewes and young lambs for more than a few hours. As I told the wool buyer, “Take a good look, because you’ve never seen this before and I hope you never see it again!”

Pepe, Richard, Meghan, Oscar, Cassie, and Jean Carlos on the docking side of things

Pepe, Richard, Meghan, Oscar, Cassie, and Jean Carlos on the docking side of things

waiting for the blades

Waiting for the blades

Siobhan at the cutting gate at Badwater

Siobhan at the cutting gate at Badwater

All hands, AND the cook!

All hands, AND the cook!

docking,shearing crew eating lunch

We all line up for Cassie’s hot lunch!

wool packer moving the bales of wool

wool packer moving the bales of wool

Tiarnan branding for Pepe

Tiarnan branding for Pepe

Antonio truimphant

Antonio truimphant

the view at Cherry Grove

the view at Cherry Grove

Ten pounds lighter

Ten pounds lighter

shearing at last!

shearing at last!

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wool

Raw wool

Raw wool

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 13, 2014 in Sheep

 

Tags: ,

Loading the Wool: Destination China

Loading the Wool:  Destination China

Most of the sheep were sheared last May.  Since we didn’t receive any bids on it, we stored it in our new hoop shed, north of Dixon.  Our friendly wool broker, Mike Corn of Roswell Wool, advised us that the market should be active come fall, so we waited for that time.  Sure enough, we sold the wool to a buyer who will ship it to China for further processing.  Here are photos of the wool being loaded onto a truck for California.  Due to California’s Byzantine regulations, this truck will take it to Bakersfield, where it will be reloaded for transport to the port, where it will be loaded again onto a ship.

Wool bags stored in the hoop building

The truck got stuck in the mud and we used the tractor to pull it out.

Timeteo loading the bales onto the tractor

Loading the wool into the semi, where our employees stacked it in an orderly manner.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on November 17, 2012 in Events, Folks, Peruvian sheepherders

 

Tags: , ,