Shearing day

I was invited by a friend at the Berkshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers to help out on shearing day. This flock is a conservation grazing flock featuring Shetlands, Jacobs, Black Welsh Mountains, Herdwicks... possibly some other ones? I was very late and when I arrived the shearers had done most of the sheep already, I hung my microphones in a tree to record the last few, and you can hear the clippers; the sheep all going crazy because the lambs and ewes don't recognise each other so easily after the ewes have been sheared; the nearby road; wind in the trees; insects and then the shearers packing up their stuff and driving home. You can also hear us sorting the fleeces, bagging up any that handspinners might like and chucking all the worse ones into a sack for the Wool Marketing Board to collect. Our voices echo in a really strange way because it's such a long, open field. I like how the shape of the field and the surrounding trees also make the sheep baas sound really echoey... oh yes, and you can also hear the sheepdogs running around and the farmer - Bill - shouting out to them and blowing a whistle.