The Week We Sheared Mom’s 140 Ewes

Why I did not just beg

People have asked me since then why I didn’t just keep calling.

There were crews in the next valley over, and a couple of young men who sheared on their own on weekends. I could have found somebody eventually.

I thought about it. I lay awake that night and thought about it hard.

But every phone call I made was going to start with somebody saying, “I heard those ewes are a mess,” and me explaining, and them deciding.

Begging the crews to come would only have handed Cody one more story to tell.

Kalli’s out there calling everybody, can’t get anybody, told you so. I could hear him saying it at the sale barn.

And I didn’t have time for it anyway. It was already the third week of May. The days were getting warm.

A ewe left standing in a full year of wool through a hot June gets miserable fast, and some of them go down and do not get up.

I work at a vet clinic. I have seen what happens to a heavy-wooled ewe when the flies find her in the heat.

I was not going to let that happen to my mother’s sheep while I waited on a callback.

So I did the other thing. I decided I would shear them myself.

The girl I used to be

I sheared with my dad every spring from the time I was thirteen until I was nineteen.

He taught me on the old board in the barn, with his hand over mine on the handpiece, saying, “Long blows, Kalli, let the comb do the work.”

By the time I was seventeen I could do thirty a day without wrecking myself, and forty on a good day if the sheep were dry and the weather was cool.

I was never fast like Dad. But I was clean, and he was proud of that.

Then I went to school, got married, had my girls, and the shearing became something I told stories about.

The last time I had a handpiece in my hand, Mae was a baby on a blanket in the shade of the barn.

That was fourteen years ago. My back was fourteen years older. My hands knew what to do, I hoped, but I was not sure the rest of me remembered.

I called my mother that night and told her what Olaf had said. I didn’t soften it. She would have known if I had.

She was quiet on the line for a long time. Then she said, “Well. He always did have a mouth on him.”

“I’m going to do them myself, Mom. I took the week off.”

“All 140?”

“All 140. The girls can catch. I’ll shear. We’ll go slow.”

She was quiet again. I heard her set her coffee cup down on the table. “Your father’s handpiece went with the auction,” she said. “You’ll need one.”

“I know. I’ll figure it out.”

“Call Fenton,” she said. “Don’t argue with me. Just call him.”