Raising Connections
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Raising Connections
Honey, I Shrunk the Sheep! 04-20-2026
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Ever wondered why George Washington was obsessed with his sheep? This episode of Raising Connections offers a fascinating look into the history and heritage of shepherding.
This week, we step into the world of Elaine Shirley, President of the Leicester Longwool Sheep Breeders Association, as she shares why sheep are the perfect "triple-purpose" animal for modern small farms. Plus, we get a sneak peek at what to expect at the upcoming Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - May 2nd and 3rd, 2026.
Leicester Longwool Sheep Breeders Association
www.raisingconnections.com
A lot of people want to have a horse. A lot of people would love to have cattle, but you might not have enough space for cattle, but you do have enough space for sheep. And they're better behaved than goats.
SPEAKER_01Well, as a former goat owner, I think I can absolutely confirm that. We had little cashmere goats, and then we graduated to Romney Sheep. So, yes, I can definitely confirm that. Today's podcast is brought to you by Mariah Bell Manor Kennel, offering dog boarding, bathing, and daycare in an eco-friendly environment. Our pet care with a personal touch is not just a motto, it's really what we do. Our touch extends to the food without preservatives, quality and natural shampoos, inclusive boarding, and a green living environment. Sounds like I might want to check in. Visit us anytime on our Facebook page, Mariah Bell Manor Kennel, or Mariah Bellmanor Kennel.com. Enjoy your program. Today, as always, we have a fun and interesting guest who you've recently heard from the Carroll County Farm Museum. Elaine Shirley, welcome. Thank you very much. It's nice to be here. Today you're joining us to talk about your other favorite historical passion, and it is related to the Farm Museum.
SPEAKER_00What is it? It is. It's the history of sheep and why sheep are important to us. When I was working at Colonial Williamsburg, I did a great deal with the sheep. I worked with sheep cattle and poultry, but the sheep were one of the main things I worked with.
SPEAKER_01You are currently the curator of the Carroll County Farm Museum. Correct. And the sheep, is that part of the museum or is that a personal passion?
SPEAKER_00For the farm museum, there are sheep that are there, but I'm not really in charge of them. I'm in charge of the stuff, the static stuff, things that don't move or are alive. That would be a lot of stuff, but at least you know where it is when you put it there. Right. It stays in the same place usually.
SPEAKER_01Where did your passion for sheep come from?
SPEAKER_00Well, several different places. I was very lucky when I was in 4-H and I did a program called International 4-H Youth Exchange or IFE. And I was very lucky and I went to New Zealand. And I was in New Zealand for eight months. I lived with 16 different families, and 14 of them were sheep farmers. I grew up on a dairy farm. I had friends who had sheep in 4-H, but I really had not had a huge amount of time with sheep. And so being on this exchange was really wonderful. I was there just after lambing, and so we were bringing sheep up out of the pastures and taking tails off and castrating young males and putting ear tags in and doing a lot of hands-on stuff with those sheep.
SPEAKER_01That's a lot of work. Yes, it was. It's a lot of work. And I have two questions for you. One is about heads or tails, and the other is about dairy versus sheep. So let's start on one spot or the other. Growing up in dairy and then taking the New Zealand trip. What a phenomenal trip. Yeah. Dairy care and sheep care, shepherding are very different beasts, or are they?
SPEAKER_00Yes and no. You know, they're both ruminants, so they're similar in that instance. But sheep do need a little bit more TLC. They need a little bit more hands-on, particularly the very beginning of life, because sheep are born with almost no body fat. And so they need to get up and nurse and know what they're supposed to be doing and get a belly full of milk. Whereas calves can kind of lay around and be a lot slower about it because they have more body fat, they have more reserves.
SPEAKER_01I have to ask this because sheep and cows both graze. Are they born with teeth?
SPEAKER_00They are. Sheep and cattle, because they're both ruminants, have an odd set of teeth in their mouth from what human beings think about. In the front of their mouth, they have eight teeth on the bottom, but no teeth on the top. They have a hard pad that they essentially rip grass. They grab the grass between the hard pad and the eight teeth and rip it. Then they have a space where there are no teeth, and in the back of their mouths, they have upper and lower molars that meet, and that's where they chew their cud. So technically, a sheep or bovine cannot bite you with the front of their mouths. They can bite you really hard in the back of their mouths.
SPEAKER_01If they're born with some teeth, does that mean they're grazing as well as consuming mother's milk?
SPEAKER_00Well, they don't start grazing for a few days, but they see their mother's grazing and then they start playing around with it. And after, oh, probably about three to five weeks, then they start to chew their cud. So in the beginning, the only thing they can eat to survive is milk.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. So they really are made to get up and get going, get some nutrition, and start their lives.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And they have baby teeth in the front of their mouth. So you actually can look in their mouth and tell their age, sort of, for the first kind of three or four years, because they erupt adult teeth at a specific pattern, just like we lose our baby teeth, they lose their baby teeth.
SPEAKER_01There's so much to learn. Docking of tails. You said you were in New Zealand, and there is a reason that tails are docked.
SPEAKER_00Can you share with us that reason? Well, because the tails are at the end of the sheep where the poop comes out. Absolutely. And a sheep with long wool, a long tail, and diarrhea is just asking for something called fly strike, which is not pleasant for anybody, the animal, or it's pleasant for the flies, I guess. But when you remove the tail, you allow that area to have more air circulation. And so if they get diarrhea, they have a much better likelihood of drying up. The flies need moisture. And so when you've got that long tail, long wool, and diarrhea, you've got a perfect place for the flies.
SPEAKER_01That would not be good because the precursor of the fly is a critter that's commonly known as a maggot. Exactly. And that's a larva we don't want to have happen around that area. So it's part of husbandry, it's part of the shepherding.
SPEAKER_00It is, and it's something that's been going on for a long time. So it's not a new idea, and it really makes their lives a whole lot better to take the tails off.
SPEAKER_01So you started life in dairy with the bovines, and then you went to New Zealand and you had this experience and you came back, and you're pretty involved in sheep when you come back. Enough to pick a breed that you decided to become the president of the sheep breeders association.
SPEAKER_00And whether it was an active or passive decision, that's always the story. What breed? The breed of sheep that I've been working with are called Lester Longwolves.
SPEAKER_01And what makes a Lester sheep? What are the characteristics?
SPEAKER_00Lester Longwolves are a medium to large breed of sheep. They're a slow maturing breed of sheep. They produce a fleece that can be as much as 12 inches in a year. That's pretty good. More like kind of eight to nine, but they produce a long fleece that's fairly heavy and it's lustrous. It has a shine to it. And that's because on each individual strand, there are overlapping plates, just like there are overlapping plates on your hair. And if the overlapping plates are large, they reflect light back to us like a mirror. So those sheep, the Lester Longwool, look very shiny. Most breeds of sheep do not. They have small plates, and so they look kind of dull, but you can have a dirty Lester Longwool and you open up that fleece and it almost blinds you. It's really amazing how much shine they have.
SPEAKER_01Does the shine give a silky feel as well?
SPEAKER_00To a certain extent, the Lester Longwool is a coarser wool, a stronger wool. And that wool is really designed primarily for things like outer garments, heavy coats, upholstery fabric, things like that.
SPEAKER_01So the different breeds have a different coat, and the different coat when shorn has a different use.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. We use wool for everything from baby garments to carpets. And you wouldn't want to take a baby and roll it up in a carpet, and you wouldn't want to lay a baby sweater down on the floor and walk over it for months and months and months.
SPEAKER_01So just because you have sheep and then you have wool doesn't mean it's the quality of wool that you might be looking for in the end product.
SPEAKER_00Correct. You need to think about the wool that you have and think about the finished garment. Because not all wool, you can use it to make lots of different things, but it's probably not the best use for it. What we humans have done is we have selected sheep to produce wool that is desirable for whatever the finished product is.
SPEAKER_01And that finished product, like you said, can be a thing from carpet to baby garments. Yes. Merino slacks, it's often used in dress goods and consumed. So there's also sheep that are consumed as part of the food harvest. In the cattle world, there are beef cows and there are dairy cows.
SPEAKER_00In the sheep industry, is there the same sort of food source and fiber source? Yes, there is. But the thing to remember about the cattle world and the sheep world is that originally they were multi-purpose animals. You didn't select something just for dairy and not worry about what the quality of the meat was. And you didn't have a sheep that you just selected for very, very high quality wool and not worry about the quality of the meat because it's eventually going to need to have an end to its life. And so you'd like the end of its life to be useful.
SPEAKER_01And is this where the heritage breeds come together? Because as a conservation, as a historian, you've been highly involved with both Williamsburg and other locations. Are the Leicester Longwol sheep reflective of the breeding and the heritage and the uses?
SPEAKER_00The Leicester Longwolves are really the first breed of any kind of livestock that's looked at like a specific breed, like we would do that today. This happens in the 18th century. A man named Robert Bakewell, who lived from 1725 to 1795. So the thing to remember is he was a contemporary of George Washington's almost exactly. Robert Bakewell lived in England, and Bakewell realized that the population was shifting. People were starting to move off the land and move into cities to run the factories, primarily the woolen factories. And so he realized that farmers had to become more efficient because they were going to have less help on the land. So Bakewell said, I need to make our livestock more efficient. And Robert Bakewell is a fascinating man who very, very few people know of. Although, if you were paying attention in your Animal Husbandry 101 class, he was the first thing they talked about. But Robert Bakewell worked with sheep, cattle, horses, and pigs and tried to make all of those animals better. His real shining glory was his sheep, the Lester Longwol, which he basically did very heavy selection for rapid maturity with the breed that was from his area, the old unimproved Lester. And over about 30 to 40 years, he dramatically changed that breed of sheep. And then that breed of sheep went around the world and helped create a lot of new breeds of sheep. There are probably 80% of the sheep in New Zealand can trace part of their ancestry back to the Lester Long Wool. It's a foundation breed. It's a very, very important breed.
SPEAKER_01If we want to see and touch and kind of connect with our history and that modern and the history comes together at an event that's coming up.
SPEAKER_00Right. One of the most wonderful sheep and wool festivals in the world is here in Maryland, the Maryland Sheep and Wolf Festival. It's in its 52nd or 53rd year, right at the Howard County Fairgrounds. It's always the first full weekend in May. So even if you don't go this year, you could go next year. So it's May 2nd and May 3rd from 8:30 in the morning. On Saturday, it goes till 6. On Friday, it goes till 5. And one of the wonderful things that they've always done at the Maryland Sheep and Wolf Festival is a breed barn. And in the breed barn, every single pen is a different breed of sheep. So it's a great chance to learn the history of sheep because sheep live all around the world. And a sheep who lives in a dry climate is very different from a sheep who lives in a wet climate. There are natural colored sheep. There are sheep that grow great big horns. There are big sheep. There are little sheep. And when I get somebody who says to me, Oh, I want to raise sheep, I always say, what you need to do is go to the breed barn at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and walk through that barn and say, Oh, that sheep's too big. Ooh, that sheep's too little. That sheep's too funny looking. There's the perfect sheep for me. It's a really good chance to see the variety of sheep. And we're really lucky in this area that there is a huge variety of sheep breeds being raised.
SPEAKER_01Is that because our environment is good for them? Is it because of the history? Is it just because we have a lot of shepherds in this area?
SPEAKER_00I think it's a lot of different things. And I think the fact that we have a lot of shepherds in this area is part of it. This area has the Maryland Sheep Breeders Association, and that group and also county groups like the Frederick Sheep Breeders Association work real hard to get new shepherds in the fold as it is. And if you buy a little farmit, a lot of people want to have a horse. A lot of people would love to have cattle, but you might not have enough space for cattle, but you do have enough space for sheep. And they're better behaved than goats.
SPEAKER_01Well, as a former goat owner, I think I can absolutely confirm that. We had little cashmere goats, and then we graduated to Romney Sheep. So yes, I can definitely confirm that. We even learned that there were different calls: a Mah versus a Ba. Who knew? The Sheep and Wolf Festival is unique to this area. And you said something very important. It is the sheep and wool. It is the biggest. How did this come to our area?
SPEAKER_00Well, it basically started out because some of the folks who were spinners and weavers couldn't find good quality fleeces. And so they started networking and saying, well, maybe if we get together on a weekend and encourage the sheep farmers in the area to produce high-quality wool, we can all benefit from that. Because unfortunately, sheep farmers get very, very little money for their wool. An awful lot of people who raise sheep just throw the wool away because you get nothing for it, which is tragic because it's one of the best fibers known to man. Now you do have to think about it all year long when you're feeding those animals and caring for them, but there is nothing like high-quality wool. I'm wearing wool socks right now to keep my feet warm.
SPEAKER_01But they also keep your feet cool. Yes. So not only does it heat, but it also cools depending on the type of fiber.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. And wool has gotten a bad wrap for a couple of reasons. One is as human beings, we tend to buy the cheapest thing we can find. And when you buy cheap wool, it's not good quality. It's going to either be a low-quality wool for whatever kind of garment it is, it will have been washed in very harsh chemicals, and it will have been dyed in very harsh chemicals. And so it is not comfortable to you. But you come to the Maryland Sheep and Wolf Festival and try on some of those hats and sweaters and scarves, and you will find stuff that is just absolutely wonderful.
SPEAKER_01There's something really unique about the Sheep and Wolf. I've been for many years. Our listeners can find the links to various programs where we've toured the Sheep and Wolf. It's not just the sweaters, it's not just the spinners, it's not just the fleeces. There's great big plastic bags of fleece. There's the barn with the breeds, like you mentioned. But then there's the show going on where we talk about the genetics. And you look at the genetics and you see and you feel and you touch, and then you go into the barns and you see the animals, and then you see the product, and then you see the process of making the wool. And I think every person who knits or spins or does a handcraft is drinking something out of a hand potted mug, I'm pretty sure. Yep. If we're in the barns and we go to see the sheep show, and there's the ram and the you, the mother and father, and then they get the lambs, what would a judge be looking for? Is he looking for the wool?
SPEAKER_00Well, it depends on what the class is. He very well could be looking to show that the ram and the you are throwing consistent lambs because they'll quite often say these look like peas in a pod. They want them to look very consistent. But if it's a wool class and they're trying to decide who has the best wool, you're looking for cleanliness. Now, the sheep doesn't have a lot to do with that. That's the shepherd's job is to keep that fleece clean. Don't let a lot of hay get into it. Don't let them have places where they can rub against things and mess up their fleece. But they're also looking in the fleece for consistency as well. On a sheep like a Lester Longhole, they have crimp, which you can physically see. There are, you know, four, six crimps per inch. So you can physically see that crimp. And they want that to be consistent from the body to the tip of the lock. They don't want it to be real kinky at one end and flat at the other. They also would like the fiber to be the same diameter from the front of the sheep to the back of the sheep. Sheep can have something called britching, which is very, very rough wool on their rear ends. Ideally, you want no britching. Sometimes that's impossible to achieve, but that's what a fleece judge is looking for is consistency, cleanliness, and is the fleece consistent with the breed?
SPEAKER_01That would be important. And you've been very instrumental in bringing the Lester breed back. You said that it was a foundation breed. So when you walk through the barns and you're looking at the breeds, are you looking with an eye that says what?
SPEAKER_00I'm looking and saying, Oh yeah, you're our offspring. You're the great-granddaughter of the Lester Longwol, which actually came to this country in the 18th century. George Washington had some Lester Longwolves at Mount Vernon, and it's a kind of a long story, but basically he talks about Bakewell sheep, which are the Lester Longwol, developed by Robert Bakewell. And George Washington realized that this country was gonna make it on agriculture because we had unlimited agricultural resources. And so he tried all kinds of things to promote agriculture and he really enjoyed sheep. He has a letter where he says, When I return home, the sheep are one of the first things I go to visit. So he enjoyed his sheep an awful lot. And when he was at Mount Vernon and was kind of paying attention and didn't just have overseers caring for them, his sheep actually did very well. And the kind of cool thing is his stepgrandson, because the father of our country actually was never a father, he raised his stepgrandchildren, and his stepgrandson George Washington Park Custis produced the first American breed of sheep using some of the general's Bakewell sheep and a Persian ram and produced something called the Arlington Longwolf, which he raised at Arlington House, which is now Arlington Cemetery. So when I go to Arlington Cemetery, one of the things I think about is I look at all those white gravestones and I think of them like sheep.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. There's a lot of thought there.
SPEAKER_00Are all sheep white?
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, no. Heavens no. So you're visualizing white sheep in the pasture, but what What colors do sheep come in?
SPEAKER_00Well, if you talk to a color sheep breeder, they'll tell you there are like 40 different colors of brown, and you have black, really, really true black is very hard to get, and your sheep, the tips of their wool can get sunburned. So even if down by their skin they're black, the whole fiber might not be black. There are numerous colors of brown from a very, very dark brown to a very light, light brown. There are some beautiful grays. So wool comes in lots and lots of different colors. Colored fibers were really kind of discriminated against for many, many years because if you had colored fibers in a pool of white fiber and you dyed it, it could mess up the quality of the finished fabric.
SPEAKER_01And so white gives a clean slate to start with dye.
SPEAKER_00It does. Although there are people who will dye grays and browns, and it gives you some spectacular color.
SPEAKER_01We talked earlier about the Lester sheep having a luster to the wool itself. When you're dying the wool, does the way the wool look prior or the growth pattern of the wool make a difference to the dye uptake?
SPEAKER_00Yes, it certainly does. The Lester fiber is constructed with those larger plates. And once you have dyed the wool, you get a yarn with a shine to it. It's really, really beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Does the dye that's used make a difference?
SPEAKER_00It probably does. I'll admit I don't know a whole lot about dyeing, but I have seen some really gorgeous Lester yarn.
SPEAKER_01But if we wanted to learn about dyeing, then we could go to the Sheep and Wolf. Absolutely. There's all sorts of things at the Sheep and Wool Festival.
SPEAKER_00Right. They do give some classes. Now, probably all the classes are full for this year, but they will do two-day classes, three-day classes, a half-day class. And so you can go and learn about knitting or dyeing or spinning or weaving. There's lots going on at the Sheep and Wool Festival. They have two different auctions. One auction where they auction off spinning and weaving equipment. So you could go buy yourself a loom. The other auction that they do, they auction off sheep equipment. So if you'll decide you want sheep, you could buy yourself some penning or some buckets or some sheep shears. Although I will say, get a professional to shear your sheep. I sheared sheep for 30 some years. This might be the first year I don't shear. And people would always say to me, I want to learn to shear sheep. And I would say, No, you want me to shear your sheep.
SPEAKER_01You know, we have a lot of listeners, I bet, who have doodle dogs that take their doodle dogs to the groomer. That's nothing like shearing a sheep. It's a whole different ballgame.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Shearing sheep is a physical job. It's a really hard job, but I always say there's nothing like seeing a well-shorn sheep walk away from you.
SPEAKER_01There you go. What makes a fleece highly valued?
SPEAKER_00The cleanliness. In most instances, the length. Typically, people like the longer fibers, but it depends on what you're working on. And the weight. You want to buy a heavy fleece. Now you want it to be heavy because there's a lot of wool there, not because there's a lot of dirt in there.
SPEAKER_01That makes a difference. And I'm thinking you shear a sheep every year, but if you want a long wool, do you really shear every year?
SPEAKER_00You don't necessarily shear every year. The Lester, because they're a fairly long breed, some of our members shear every eight months. So they shear more often than a year. If you go to England to the sheep shows, they love their sheep, particularly their wool sheep, in very, very long wool. And quite often those sheep are 18 months before they're shorn. And they're spectacular looking animals, but they are carrying a lot of stuff around for 18 months.
SPEAKER_01I'm trying to picture if I had long hair and I let it grow for all of that time and I'm going about my daily business, how in the world do you keep it from getting knotted and things in it? Am I wearing something? If I'm a sheep, am I wearing something to protect my hair?
SPEAKER_00Well, there are people who put coats on their sheep, and the coats have several benefits, one of which is the fleece stays much cleaner. So if their pen mate is eating hay and turns their head over that sheep's back, the hay will fall off the coat and not into the wool. But when sheep are wearing coats, you do really have to pay attention to them because if they grow too much, their wool will rub against the inside of the coat and that will totally ruin the fleece. So you do really have to pay attention to that. And one of the other things I'll suggest at the Sheep and Wool Festival is go to the fleece sale. It's rows and rows and rows of all different kinds of wool, and you will see colored fleeces as well.
SPEAKER_01So I know there's some listeners out there that have poodles and doodles, and that's maybe the first time that they've run their hands through a long curly coat thinking maybe this feels like a fleece. Does it?
SPEAKER_00No, I think dog wool is a little different, but you can spin dog wool. It is very hot in this climate here. You probably would want to mix your dog's hair with some wool because if you made an all-dog hat, you would be sweating.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. As the owner of a Bichon, yes, I can completely agree with that. If we have someone who's put their hands through their dog and they're thinking this is what it feels like, they take their dog to the groomer. The groomer bathes the dog and blow dries the coat. Do you bathe sheep to keep them clean and then blow dry that coat?
SPEAKER_00No, typically not, because one of the things you want in the wool when you shear them is the oil or the lanolin that's naturally in that wool. People who are showing will sometimes wash their sheep, but they wash their sheep like a week before the show, so the lanolin has a chance to come back up into the wool. Now there are people who, once the sheep are shorn, will put the sheep in something called a dip, and the dip will help get rid of external parasites. So it's not quite like getting a bath, but it does involve liquid.
SPEAKER_01I was thinking, and maybe this is a silly question, but I bet somebody out there's got this question. I've had the most beautiful wool sweater. It was a hand knit. I bought it at the Sheep and Wool Festival, and I love the shades of blue and gray in it. And I washed it. And it doesn't fit me anymore. I did find someone whom it did fit. But is that why you don't wash the sheep?
SPEAKER_00Does the wool draw up? What happens there? No, the sheep won't shrink if you wash it. Well, maybe not their bodies, but with their hair, no. Okay. No. You're fine. You can wash sheep, but generally the thing is when you shear the wool off, it goes then to a place called a wool scour. And the wool scour washes the wool. It also separates the lanolin. And then one of the coolest things I ever saw when I went to a sheep conference, we went to a place where they were washing wool and they were extracting the lanolin and it was dripping into a 55-gallon drum that was going to Nivea for cosmetics.
SPEAKER_01Lanolin's a big deal in cosmetics. The first time I ever understood what the smell of lanolin was was Corn Husker's lotion. And that was lanolin. And when I went to the show and I touched the fleece, I thought, yep, that's the lotion smell.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Now I will caution you if you go to the sheep and wolf festival, don't be sticking your hands in people's sheep unless they say you can do it. Because remember, they're trying to show these sheep. And so they've gotten the fleece just the way they want it. And if you stick your fingers in it, you might mess up a lot of hard work. So it would be sort of like going to the Westminster dog show and saying, Oh, can I play with your dog?
SPEAKER_01And the answer is maybe after the show in a three weeks. Right. If we want to come to the Sheep and Wool Festival, we've heard what's going on. Are we coming to purchase or are we coming to learn? Are we coming for both?
SPEAKER_00You might be coming for both. Well, hopefully you're coming to purchase something. Hopefully you're coming to purchase a pair of hand knit socks which will last you for a really long time, or you're coming to buy some yarn so you can knit some socks that'll last somebody a really long time. Hopefully, you're having a lamb burger because they're fantastic. There are cheese producers who are there selling sheep products because sheep are really a triple purpose breed: meat, wool, and milk. And most people don't think about milk as something that sheep are producing, but they got lambs, so they produce milk. And if you've ever had roqueford dressing, you've had sheep cheese. So get yourself some sheep cheese at the sheep and wool festival. And who knows if you are really into it. Maybe at some point you can buy yourself a sheep. But I will say, don't just buy one sheep. They are herd animals. So you really need to probably buy three. And before you buy any sheep, number one, have extremely good fences. And number two, find someone who raises sheep who's willing to be your mentor because they're wonderful animals. Once you really start working with them, it is pretty much all intuitive if you really think about it. It's really pretty simple. But there are times that things get very scary and you say, Oh, good grief. What am I doing wrong?
SPEAKER_01I have to admit, the very first time I went to the Sheep and Wolf Festival and I was helping show sheep, I learned something really exciting. Are you ready for this? Okay. A lot of folks use hot wire or electric wire to keep animals in specific areas. But if you are covered and your face is covered in wool, which is an absolutely fabulous insulator, it doesn't matter what's in that wire. Yep. You gotta have some mentors.
SPEAKER_00And you gotta have good fences, not always to keep your sheep in, but to keep your neighbors' dogs out. There are a lot of things you have to think about with raising sheep, but I'll tell you, there's nothing like having a lamb whose belly is full laying on your lap.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_00It's really wonderful.
SPEAKER_01All right, you've convinced me we're going to the sheep and wool festival. When do we go?
SPEAKER_00May 2nd and May 3rd. It's a Saturday and a Sunday. It's always the first full weekend in May.
SPEAKER_01One of the things I always enjoy about the Sheep and Wolf Festival is what's the logo going to be? You can get a different shirt every year because the logo is different every year. I love it.
SPEAKER_00True. They do a catalog competition and they do some really beautiful artwork for the catalogs. And you can come to see the spinning competition, the sheep to shaw competition, which is a neat program where a whole team full of people they shear the sheep, they card the wool, they spin the wool, and then they weave it into a finished garment. And they quite often will dress up. And it's all done right there in front of you in one day. Yep. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_01In like four hours. And then you get to purchase the shawl. That's right. This is gonna be fun. We will see you at the Sheep and Wool Festival. Elaine Shirley, thank you for joining us. You're welcome. I hope the connections we've raised today stay with you as you engage your community through critters, companions, commerce, and agriculture. Join me again next week. We'll make some more connections.
SPEAKER_00This program is a production of Raising Connections Media Company, hosted and produced by Rashan Mayer, coordinated by Beverly McElroy, and edited and mixed by Robin Temple.