Our shearing floor is cluttered. It is piled high, 362 days of the year, with inventory for our Wool Shed. There’s no room for the sheep or shearers.

Over 200 blankets take up lots of room, not to mention the pure wool woven throws and lap robes.

A year’s supply of pure wool bedding, comforters, mattress pads and pillows fluff up greatly.

32 colours of yarn (at last count) in varying quantities fill bin after bin stacked 3 high.

Sheepskins and lambskins, with their lovely loft, don’t just fit in a corner. They take up space too.

And there are many other wool-related items we stash on the usually empty shearing floor, near the boxes of raw honey.

Then 3 days a year the shearing floor must be cleared for woolly sheep and shearers.

We discover a few unlooked-for treasures. We struggle to find places to store things temporarily where we can access them on demand (and remember where we put them).

We invite the public to come to visit and enjoy the spectacle of the annual ‘haircut’ for the sheep – a necessary health intervention. One day in March and two in April, should be enough for over 1000 ewes and rams. The barn will be full of its intended occupants.

How wonderful a cycle, with the sheep, the wool and the wool products, all finding their home with us. That tempting empty space will be refilled with our wool products, created from the fleeces just shorn.