Day 41: Giving a sheep a haircut
We had just finished watering the trees at the front of the farm when one of our neighbors in his white pickup truck (a “bakkie” here) pulled into the gravel drive.
Rob, the farmer in question, got out to talk to Riette, one of the owners of the farm who has put up with us for these past weeks. When they were finished, he mentioned that he had to get back to his farm because they were shearing the sheep that day, and when he had left, the ram was still waiting for his haircut.
And so, in a continuation of my suburban-girl-working-on-a-farm education, I ended up in the back of the bakkie, bouncing along to Rob’s farm where, after brief introductions and brief instructions, I was handed a pair of clippers and told that I could go for it. One of the farmhands asked me if I had ever sheared a sheep before.
I shook my head. “Never.”
So much of the past two and a half years of my life have consisted of me doing things that I never thought I would do in my life. But, after 24 and a half years, I’m starting to figure out that’s what life’s all about. Sometimes, the things that mean the most are the things that you never thought you would be doing.