Do I look different wearing a wool sweater?

Maybe you've got a cap or mittens made of wool.

Do you know where wool comes from?

It comes from sheep.

Want to see how they get wool off the sheep and into your sweater?

Let's go.

The hair of the sheep is what gets turned into yarn all summer, fall, and winter.

The sheep grow their wooly coats.

Then in the spring they're given a hair cut.

That's called shearing.

[♪♪♪] The people who are doing the shearing, all professionals, that is their job is to shear sheep.

They travel around to wherever the flocks are, and they shear the sheep.

have you ever been to a barbershop or beauty salon to have your hair cut?

Well, you might say these folks are sheep farmers.

Several farmers bring their sheep together to be shorn.

It's kind of like a special event.

The shearing doesn't hurt the sheep.

As I said, it's like a haircut.

[♪♪♪] This is Jeff Berryhill.

He and his sister Jane are good professional sheep shearers.

That is.

Their job is to shear sheep.

Boys and girls.

Remember that the sheep is not a pet, the sheep is livestock and they help make life better for all of us by providing us wool See, A sheep is only handled approximately 10 minutes during his life on the farm.

Out of that eight years, only about ten or 15 minutes, do you actually touch the sheep.

You're talking about the ten or 15 minutes it takes to shear the sheep.

The few minutes it takes per year to shear it and to give it worm medicine or to help it have a lamb or whatever reason you know, that you had to touch it Oh, you know, a lot of people would hold their pet dog or pet cat for 10 minutes at a time.

So it's okay.

Now.

We're going to let you shear a sheep how about it?

Let's try that out Okay.

My left foot is right under her front shoulder, keeping her supported, keeping her feet off the ground.

Do I replace my left foot where yours is?

Right where mine is.

Okay.

My right foot is right back here between her legs to keep her balanced.

Okay.

Okay.

I think we're about set now.

Now you need, let's to let the sheep roll into you Okay.

Like this okay?

Yeah.

Here's the clippers You want to slide them under the wool Slide it under the wool.

Start back here on the skin and just carefully through there.

don't try to.

push the wool out of your way Just hold there.

Take you a practice stroke on clean skin.

so you just feel it Press down into the skin.

Ah, yeah.

Yeah.

You want it to slide along like a ski, right?

Now, you got it.

Quite smooth.

I've been shearing for about 20 years.

It takes the average shearer about three years to really get good at shearing.

So it's something you just want to practice and work it and don't give up on practice, practice, practice, practice.

Well, maybe with Enough practice.

I'll become a sheep shearer.

Is that the right name for it?

That would be a shearer.

A sheep shearer After the wool is shorn from the sheep, it's dirty, so it gets washed, then dyed, then smoothed out with a process called carding It's kind of like when you comb your hair.

Now we're ready to make yarn.

How?

Let's find out.

This is called a spinning wheel.

Yes, you can see that one part of it just goes around and around like that.

And it works from a pedal.

How do you use this spinning wheel to make yarn from this?

All right.

First we start spinning -- we already have some yarn on here, so we'll attach the new wool to the the old, the yarn that's already on there.

And wool sticks to itself very easily.

If you ever look at wool under a microscope, you'll see lots of tiny little scales and those scales make the pieces of wool stick together so you can pull it apart.

Yes.

And then it just goes right back together.

You can control how thick a piece of yarn you want by the amount that you feed into this.

Exactly.

Yes, yes, yes.

You let it.

If you want real thick like that.

I let it go on and sometimes it needs a little help.

And then I pull it out.

And we're still finding occasional pieces of matter from the farm.

There was a little hay and then we just keep on until we have the bobbin full And this is why we call it two reasons.

We call it spinning Wheel.

First, it has spinning wheels, and the wheels are helping us to make yarn by spinning the yarn around this sort of spindle spindle there.

Yes.

And it comes out looking like this when the spindle's full Yes, We make it into a skein and we're ready to knit.

We've had a great, wonderful, very interesting lesson on what happens to sheep's wool once the sheep are shared, it ends up to something we can all live better with.

It makes life more comfortable for us so we can say thanks to the sheep and this very special thanks to the Remsteads who had us on their sheep farm today to tell us how the yarn is made and where it comes from.

Thank you very much, Mr. Remstead