As the winter sun cast its light over Pine Plains on Monday morning, a seasonal ritual unfolded at Black Sheep Hill Farm. The humming buzz of electric shears filled the air, mingling with the occasional baa and the rustling of hay. Inside a big red barn, a flock of heritage sheep stood waiting, their thick winter coats heavy with the remnants of the season, soon to be stripped away in smooth, practiced strokes.
Aaron Loux moved with the precision of a professional craftsman and the ease of experience. He has shorn more than 200,000 sheep over his 23-year career, traveling from farm to farm, field to field. In Pine Plains, his work was both routine and remarkable. In under three minutes, he sheared a medium-sized Black Welsh Mountain ewe — gently placing her in a seated position, his clippers gliding over the contours of her body. The fleece peeled away in a single, curling sheet.
Loux grew up on his parents’ sheep farm in Cummington, Mass., and sheared his first sheep at 11. By 17, he had turned it into a career. “It was a better part-time job than anything else, so I just got into it,” he said.
Though he still maintains a flock with his brother at their family farm, sheep shearing is his sole source of income. Loux serviced 630 farms last year — the majority between late February and the end of June. His service area extends from Western New York to Cape Cod and includes lower Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Long Island.
At Black Sheep Hill Farm, the shearing was timed deliberately. After shearing a small group of rams, 20 ewes, all pregnant, needed to be rid of their heavy wool before moving to the birthing barn. Shearing before lambing helps the lambs to nurse more easily and farmers to monitor the birthing process.
“They’re not purely wool sheep,” said Irene Banning, who along with her husband Jack has owned and operated the farm since 2007. A bundle of freshly shorn wool in hand, Banning sorted sheepskins into plastic bags, as Loux sheared another ewe. “Sheep generally fall into two categories: meat sheep and wool sheep, and depending on what kind of sheep farmer you are, you breed for those particular qualities,” she said. “Black Welsh Mountain sheep are a dual-use breed — they’re meat and wool sheep.”
Unlike breeds raised exclusively for wool, Black Welsh Mountain sheep are bred primarily for their confirmation, size, and structure rather than for the quality of their fleece. “We have a sort of mixed bag here. Some of them have really nice wool, some of them don’t. As it comes off the sheep, there’s a pile for the crappy stuff, and the good stuff gets sorted into bags. That’s really all that happens today.”
Later in the season, the wool will be sorted again through a process called skirting. “You lay out the fleece and pull off the bits that have poop on them — so belly wool is not desirable,” Banning explained. “Anything that’s not desirable gets removed, and the core of the fleece that we want to keep stays. Then, we start picking out the hay bits. Mills don’t like the hay bits. That’s a fairly long and tedious process. That’s all done by hand.”
Once cleaned, the wool is processed into either yarn or roving — a long, narrow bundle of wool fibers that have been carded but not yet spun — commonly used by spinners and needle felters. “We’ve discovered that we do much better selling roving than we do yarn,” Banning said. “By the time we sell a skein of yarn, it’s $25, and we just about cover our costs. It’s an expensive process.” By comparison, an ounce of roving is sold for just $3.
In years past, the farm worked with Battenkill Fiber Mill in Washington County, north of Troy, to process its wool, but this year, Banning plans to send it to Nobletown Fiber Works in Hillsdale. “The challenge for an operation like this is that most mills won’t take anything under 40 pounds.” The farm expects to produce about 10 to 15 pounds of wool this year.
“I love shearing. It’s an exciting time for the farm, it means that lambing is around the corner,” said Zuri Frueh who has worked at Black Sheep Hill for the last two years.
“They’re a really a cool animal to be in a relationship with, you know,” Frueh said, holding a sheep in place, the next in line to be shorn. “You can put on the wool, take care of them and harvest this thing that’s sustainable.”
For Frueh, the sustainability of wool makes shepherding more meaningful. “It’s cool to see that there’s a movement shifting away from synthetics and back toward natural fibers. Trying to be more conscious, like — I’m not going to buy this nylon thing.”
The farm raises two breeds of sheep. Black Welsh Mountain sheep, a heritage breed from the U.K. are known for their resilience and self-sufficiency.
In 2007, Banning purchased four Black Welsh Mountain ewes and a single ram from a breeder in Pennsylvania and later, another ram and six ewes from a breeder in Utica, New York. In 2008 the farm had its first lamb.
Since then, the farm introduced several Clun Forest sheep, another heritage breed from the U.K. They grow faster and larger, making them a practical crossbreed for meat production. “One of the drawbacks for Black Welsh is that they grow really slowly,” Banning said. “So it really doesn’t make any sense to send them to market before they’re almost a year old. Clun Forests are a little bit bigger and grow much faster.”
After being shorn, the ewes were driven by farm manager Trevor Roush to the birthing barn, where, in a few short weeks, they will bring a new generation of lambs — the farm expects around 30 — into the flock.
Only a fraction of the flock is retained each year. “Everything that does not stay to be bred again goes to market. That’s what we eat and sell,” Banning said.
Deciding which lambs are kept for breeding and which are sent to slaughter is a careful calculation. “The breeding moms are selected based on a number of criteria,” Banning said. “One is the way they look, the way their bodies are built. The second is whether they come from a mom that is a twin or if they have twins before. And the third is the ease with which their mom lambs — whether she needed help or not.”
All lambs start on an even playing field, but as they grow, differences emerge. “As they grow up, their genetic quirks show up, they might have behavioral issues, or maybe they catch a bug,” Banning explained. “That’s when we start to see differences. We take those to slaughter before they are a year old.”
For the male lambs, the selection is more straightforward. “Because there are so many more rams than we need, the cut to market is large,” Banning said. Some ewes that show good traits may be retained as breeders or sold to other farms for breeding stock. Breeding ewes have lived up to 14 years on the farm.
Black Sheep Hill sells its meat primarily onsite in its farm store, with additional sales to local businesses like Champêtre and through Farm2Table, a local agriculture distribution aggregator. In addition to lamb and wool, it also produces pork, eggs, and vegetables.
As Loux continued working with quiet efficiency, he adjusted the angle of his shears and finished another ewe, a large pile of wool growing beside him.
