Once a year, on the May long weekend, the Canada Farming Gallery puts on its Lamb Shearing Celebration. It takes place on Saturday, Sunday as well as Monday of the Victoria Day weekend. After my excursion to the see the Flotilla on Dows Lake, one of the trademark events of the Tulip Celebration, I took a slow walk on the western shores of Dows Lake past a serene nature area towards the Canadian Agriculture Gallery. As you ascend up a little hill from Dows Lake towards the gallery, you get a beautiful sight of midtown and the eastern part of Ottawa as well as it's a wonderful area for a bike ride or a walk.

Coming Close To the Canadian Agriculture Gallery from the eastern you initially see comprehensive decorative gardens that right now featured a variety of spring blossoms as well as entire rows of blooming lilacs. The Lamb Shearing Festival was kept in among the major buildings and I made myself comfy in the first row of seating appropriate beside the stage.


It had to do with 10 mins prior to the following round of lamb shearing which happens every half hour throughout the May vacation. The commentator introduced me to a male called Dave, among the herdspersons at the Canadian Agriculture Gallery who cares for the various animals, e.g. cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs as well as rabbits. He clarified to me that the Canadian Agriculture Museum is a working farm and part of the Canada Scientific Research and also Technology Gallery. Its mandate is to teach farming recognition, especially to kids that have never ever even gotten on a ranch.


Dave went on to discuss that the cows raised at the Gallery are there for recreation, milk and also as meat. Milk from the Gallery is sold on the market and the revenue from these various tasks aids to counter the expense of running the gallery. Dave mentioned that at Easter about 12,000 people attend their unique occasions which include an Easter egg hunt in addition to a display screen of Easter bunnies.


There is no question that Dave is an expert in agriculture: along with working as a herdsman for the Museum he also runs his very own farm, time ago he converted a very labor intensive dairy farm right into a much less demanding meat producing farm, located about 20 mins south of Ottawa. So I was listening to this intriguing introduction to the globe of farming, while the sheep shearing demonstration was nearly to get underway.


The announcer asked the crowd, many of whom included families with young kids, what the function is of shearing lamb. A variety of intriguing answers came forth, specifically from the young participants in the crowd: "the sheep get too hot", "we need sweatshirts", lastly somebody said that lamb obtain sheared because we need their wool. Ross, a tough-looking however mild professional sheep shearer came up on the stage, accompanied by an at first unwilling animal buddy: a really woolly looking full-grown female lamb whose body position suggested that she had not been whatsoever pleased regarding getting on this stage.

With the experienced hold of a professional shearer, Ross grabbed by its legs, turned it around as well as rested the animal down on its back side, sustained over his lowered legs. What I impressive was that the sheep, that had actually initially been battling him as well as really did not wish to come on stage, turned into an absolutely manageable and also compliant, once it was remaining on its back side, with its front legs up airborne.

Ross and also his woolly pal were quickly prepared for their demo. The commentator clarified that in addition to the haircut, the sheep would get an inoculation, an anti-parasite treatment as well as a manicure as well as pedicure throughout this procedure. Indeed, Ross pulled out sturdy clippers and the lamb's toe nail clippings were soon flying into the first row of the audience. Then the electrical shearer came out and Ross began shearing the her from the neck down. The announcer asked the group how long they approximated it would require to shear the sheep. A variety of replies came back, however the proper solution was 4 minutes. 4 minutes to shear a whole sheep!

Based on Ross's many years of experience, the shearing progressed smoothly from the neck sideways, the back and also the stomach, and lastly the whole lamb's fleece came off in one big cozy piece. The commentator described that the entire fleece weighs concerning 4 to 5 extra pounds and also asked the audience to estimate the buck value of a fleece. Solutions flashed, $5, $10, also $60 for a fleece, however the correct response is $1.50 CAD or roughly $1.20 USD. I can not believe it when I heard it, that a whole fleece would certainly deserve less than $2! We learnt that sheep are raised mainly for their meat, and that wool is simply a spin-off that doesn't generate any type of substantial profits. Then the commentator described that the sheep's fleece feel a little oily as a result of its lanolin material, a natural skin lubricating substance, additionally often used for hand creams.

Well, after the event I continued right into the nearby areas as well as I happened upon a group of ladies that were relaxing, knitting and showing a whole variety of home-knit sweaters, vests, gloves, socks and also other garments. Wendy Steinbach from the Ottawa Knitting Guild told me that their company has around 120 members (one of them is male), they meet once a month to knit in groups as well as talk about different knitting jobs. The women were using a varieties of materials, strong wool, cotton thread as well as one knitter even utilized cut-up strips of plastic bags to knit! One more woman described that she takes out her knitting when she is stuck in a traffic jam.

Obviously weaving has significant therapeutic benefits if it is able to relax you down in a traffic jam.


We  continued to discuss about everyone's very first knitting projects: the "partner sweater". Even I, that's obtained absolutely no talent or patience for crafts, have knitted such a garment after a long while after when I was 16 back home in Austria. Apparently knitting a coat for your puppy love is a time-honored ritual even on the other side of the globe!


Obviously I learnt few terms like "frogging",  "tinking" ("to tink" is the reverse of "to weaved", therefore the link) and so on.


Dale, one of the women from the Ottawa Knitting Guild and Guide at the Canada Farming Museum, showed the spinning procedure and she told me just how to utilize a "decrease pin". This hand-operated procedure spins the wools without the use of a spinning wheel and Dale demonstrated that you can produce a one-ply round of wool, or you can also link 2 threads as well as spin the string in the contrary instructions. She after that showed me a set of weaved mittens that had been washed in very warm water, and the woolen fibers had come to be intertwined, almost like boiled wool, a material that obviously has remarkable cold-insulation capability.


In the following area I met Karen Treasure, who is a full-time "woolen musician". Karen is an expert in all the techniques of wool handling: rotating, coloring, weaving, knitting and also felting. What makes her job really one-of-a-kind is that she does not only work with standard materials such as sheep's wool or cotton thread. She actually makes use of dog hair to produce wool which she then weaves or weaves into coats or various other garments. She said a number of her clients comb their pets and offer her bags filled with the soft fine hair that come from their dogs' belly. 


Karen had set up an impend on which she was weaving an elaborate patterned headscarf made of silk strings. She told her existing job involves 508 strings, and also it takes her about 40 hrs of preparation to set up the strings on the impend while the actual manufacturing of the headscarf would certainly take around 20 hours. Entirely with one collection of strings she is able to create 7 different products, all of which remarkably end up having various colors and also patterns. When I asked about the cost of among these scarves Karen said that they are around $150 which I thought was not surprising, thinking about the remarkable effort as well as work involved.


Karen told me that she has 20 years of rotating experience and also 18 years of weaving and that she takes part in a studio scenic tour called "Crown & Pumpkin" throughout Thanksgiving Weekend. I was astounded at her skills and the lovely headscarf and also garments that she makes. For a person like me that has extremely little dexterity, persistence or talent in regards to hands-on crafts, I always appreciate individuals who are able to produce such gorgeous things with their very own hands.