Claire spent most of her day at the Bake Sale table; her favourite place to be. She wowed her Junior 4H leader by her ability to add up long lists of prices in her head. Alison did a few different jobs, but spent most of her day helping the shearer along with Bill's hired hand Matt. She received kudos from him at the end of the day for her sheep wrestling abilities. Other positions the 4H kids circulated through were welcoming committee, parking attendants, gatekeeper, field supervisor (engaging visiting children so that they didn't chase the lambs through the fields!), cook at the barbeque, tour guide, skirting table assistant and clean-up. Kevin even helped out despite his allergies; he brought hamburgers for the girls and I, extra coolers and Iain out for a visit as well.
After emphatically telling someone earlier this week that "this year, I will NOT spend the day at the skirting table" ... heh, heh ... I spent the day at the skirting table. Skirting is the less than glamourous but oh-so-important task or readying the sheared fleece for storage until it can be processed. Vegetative matter, tags, felted areas are removed and then it has to be rolled "just so" and placed in an open bag in the shade. This year, however, it was FUN since Bill set it up outside in lovely dappled, breezy sunshine and beside the petting zoo area. So I skirted, taught 4H members to skirt properly, met some really great fibre people including a lovely woman who owns a MILL just 40 minutes from here (She purchased 12 fleeces! And we've already planned the road trip!), and picked up lambs so that guests could pat them. One woman took several photos; unfortunately she then asked for my name and informed me that my photo would be in the local paper. *sigh* ... I just don't care about that sort of thing and I begged her to retake with one of the 4H kids instead. She grinned and ignored me. So I then begged her to not choose one that emphasized my ... uh ... size but rather the lamb and the small children. She continued grinning and continued to ignore me. Photoshop, anyone?
Our 4H club CLEARED a whopping $534; our most successful fundraiser ever. Bill raised about $35o towards World Vision's "Mother to Child HIV prevention" program between donations and fleece sales (he took no money from fleece sales other than that necessary to pay his shearer; all the rest went to World Vision).
Afterwards, Patti had a meeting with the kids, who ALL did a fabulous, professional job with their duties, and spoke to them about what this means to the visitors. She described one family who were standing by the coverall gazing in, all excited. Patti went by to make sure everything was okay. They were staring at ... hay. Bales of hay. These folks were visiting from Toronto and had never seen bales of hay before, but had read about them in kid's books. Wow. Patti went on to say that we, or our parents, make choices to live in the area we do. In most cases, we choose to make less money by living here, but that in fact, we are rich. The kids have opportunities that other kids only dream of, opportunities in our small community to experience things, to "learn to do by doing" (4H motto), to make change and make a difference. It was a "moment".
It was a great, great day.
No photos, unfortunately, because we were all far too busy! I've included two photos of the mini-shearing day we had at our own house on Saturday. Our shearer, Dave Jones, is a lovely man and a neighbour (for the uninitiated, neighbour means in the general vicinity of the county; next-door neighbour means within a couple of km :
This is an excellent photo of Dave shearing Latifah ... you can see that he's doing a great job of getting the fleece of in one piece. This despite the fact that Latifah's fleece was a mess (definitely a second). The goal for an accomplished shearer is that there are no "second cuts"; i.e. that the clippers never once go over the same area if skin. He was also hampered by our very long extension cord, which reduced the electrical power he was working with. Only minor use of Blue Stop on Elizabeth :).
Here he is taking off Billie Holiday's lovely moorit fleece. Fleece ends get bleached by the sun, so now she and her baby are back to the same colour (moorit gulmoget).
This is an excellent photo of Dave shearing Latifah ... you can see that he's doing a great job of getting the fleece of in one piece. This despite the fact that Latifah's fleece was a mess (definitely a second). The goal for an accomplished shearer is that there are no "second cuts"; i.e. that the clippers never once go over the same area if skin. He was also hampered by our very long extension cord, which reduced the electrical power he was working with. Only minor use of Blue Stop on Elizabeth :).
Here he is taking off Billie Holiday's lovely moorit fleece. Fleece ends get bleached by the sun, so now she and her baby are back to the same colour (moorit gulmoget).
Off topic ... Alison's babysitting job will not occur until after track and field on Saturday since Pastor Andrew hadn't booked their date yet and Tuesday was not available.
Blesssings to you all!
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