FARMINGTON – Joe and Judy Miller put halters on their black Romney sheep and took off the animals’ cover jackets.
They plucked small pieces of hay or straw from their wool before they walked them up front, closer to the show area at the Farmington Fair, and tied each of them to the rails of portable pens.
The Millers had brought 25 sheep from three of the seven breeds they raise to show at the fair. Then, after they leave Farmington, they’ll take 125 sheep to this weekend’s Common Ground Fair in Unity. In all, the couple, who own Rivercroft Farm in Starks, has about 250 sheep. They’ve been raising sheep for about 20 years.
When Meredith Kendall of Farmington stopped to check the wool on one of the sheep, Joe Miller parted the wool to show her the natural color all the way to the skin.
“He has the best fleece,” she said about Miller’s sheep. “It’s so clean and lustrous.”
Kendall, a hand-spinner, buys the fleece to make yarn.
After she left, Miller clipped some wool from one of sheep that he would show.
Burdocks, begone
It was early Thursday and when one sheep “baa-ed,” others joined the chorus.
“We sell a lot of wool,” Miller said. “We’re the largest wool breeder in the state and we have more varieties than anybody else. We specialize in hand-spinning fleeces.”
The family keeps its fields weed-free to benefit the fleece. That way, burdocks or other weeds don’t get caught in the wool.
They chose to raise seven breeds so that they could become one-stop shopping for hand-spinners, he said.
They raise their sheep to have the best colors, fiber quality and breed character.
The fleece is shipped around the country, he said.
The flock produces 6,000 pounds of wool a year, and 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of that is sold for hand-spinning, with the rest sold to the state of Maine wool pool.
Fleece is shorn from a sheep once a year, he said, with an exception of Lincoln sheep, which are shorn more often. That breed has long wool that grows an inch a month.
Santa’s beard
Some people want it that long because they make craft items from it, such as Santa Claus beards or hair for Victorian dolls, he said.
A Merino sheep has 10 to 15 crimps to the inch of hair while a Moorit sheep has seven or eight crimps per inch. A Lincoln sheep has one to two crimps to the inch.
Miller said they don’t feed their sheep the morning of a show because they would get pudgy “hay bellies.” The animals are fed after they have been shown to the judges, he said.
Miller pointed out how a jacket had left an indent in the wool of a sheep.
If he had been at a bigger show, he said, he would have trimmed the wool and groomed it so that the wool would have blended.
Then it was time to go.
Miller walked a black Romney to the fair’s show area and the judging began.
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