Shorn Sheep

It wasn’t just cold, it was crazy cold.  The more the mercury hovers around zero, the more it goes from feeling like winter, to downright post-apocalyptic.  Out in the countryside, the monoscape of white in such a broad space just adds to that notion.  But really, it’s just a Thursday in January.  After taking a wrong turn or two out on the snow-soaked back roads near the ridge in Mabton, Shelley and I finally pull up to the Martinez Lambing Camp.

We see a newly parked hay truck and are amused to find the back side bales with a frozen sheet of ice coating them from the drive.  Pretty soon Mark and Nick Martinez pull up in an old truck to load some of the bales and take them back to the sheep.  They tell us to park out of the way.  With thousands of sheep around, something is always going on.  Today though, is special.  It’s the first day of shearing, and there’s a palpable focus in the air.

As we approach the action, we have a brief chat with Mark.  His grandfather came here from Spain as a shepherd almost 100 years ago.  He dreamed big and worked hard and founded S. Martinez Livestock, a diversified company his sons and grandsons run today. Mark walks us over to the temporary structures used to shear the sheep that are housed under the roof of an open barn and we move in to get a closer look.  Bits of wool are everywhere.  The buzz of many electric shears hum into white noise while soft bleating from the sheep come at us from all directions.  He tells us that about 3,000 ewes will be shorn in the next three days.

Helping with the enormity and specificity of the work are several H-2A workers from Peru and Uruguay.  Moving through, we see that the sheep are led from holding pens into a single file line, up a ramp to the shearing area where several shearers are at work.We get a peek inside where it’s all business as usual, the shearers finding flow as they move from one animal to the next.  The shearing shacks are largely enclosed with openings at the bottom where the freshly shorn wool is placed to be picked up.  The belly wool is the first to go.  Less fine and more dirty, it is grouped separately.  The back wool is quickly graded largely by touch and looking at individual fibers and length and similarly graded wools are grouped together.  It’s then baled up to be shipped out.  As we are getting a lesson on looking at individual fibers, I am surprised that my ungloved hand is noticeably warming up just holding a small piece.

On and on it will go, eight hours a day for the next three days or until the ewes are done.  Allthat wool seems very welcome in this cold world.  The sheep will be put in a covered space until they recoup their insulation. When they have their babies, the lambs will be able to find their mother’s milk that much easier.  I have never seen anything like it.  A pretty amazing thing to witness, and while unique, its just another winter day in the Yakima Valley.