Vol. 5 - A Good Clip: Vermont Sheep Shearing with Gwen Hinman

Words: Jillian Conner | Photography: Julie Richards

If you buy a wool product, there’s no way around it: that wool was hand-shorn off a sheep by a skilled sheep shearer.

For millennia, shepherds have clipped the wool off of their sheep. Before electricity, shearing blades were the tool of choice (and sometimes still used), but today, electric shears are the more common option. Either way you shear it, the fact remains: sheep need a yearly haircut and the textile industry needs wool.

Here in Vermont, there are only a few well-known career shearers around. One of them is Gwen Hinman, a New Hampshire local with 26 years of shearing behind her. Year round, Gwen bounces from farm to farm, big and tiny, to trim the wooly fleece off of sheep. Some clients turn their wool into yarn, others into house insulation, others toss it in their compost pile. From her home in Acworth, she travels as far west as Syracuse and as far east as Maine. Her largest client, a sheep dairy, has 1,600 sheep. It’s a 6-day job.

In early April, we were invited to attend one of Gwen’s shearing jobs in South Royalton, Vermont. Bob Slattery, the farmer who hired her, has lived on his farm since 1993, relocating to Vermont in the 80’s as the next chapter of his booming career as an architect. He has a flock of 55 Navajo-Churro sheep, a breed from the American southwest known for its high quality rug wool. Bob sends his wool directly to an artist who creates stunning, felted, sheep-colored tapestries. 

Bob and Gwen have a long history, their throughline being what brought us here: sheep shearing. Gwen’s father, David Hinman, was a well-known shearer in his time and eventually found a student in Gwen, who first learned the ropes from him. When David was still in business, he would come to shear Bob’s sheep. When David passed on, Gwen took over. Taking her father’s wisdom and teachings with her, Gwen eventually traveled to New Zealand a few times to attend a week-long shearing intensive and work with a contract crew. 

What could sheep shearing really entail to require such rigorous training? To result in a shorn fleece that is usable and wool-mill approved, it must be shorn with precision. Shearers spend the majority of their time bent over, physically manipulating a sheep weighing upwards of 200lbs, while expertly handling a large electric clipper with a set of sharp, chomping teeth. The activity is so athletic that shearing competitions exist around the globe. 

Gwen is as expert as they come. At every job you’ll find her dressed in wool layers head to toe, in her shearing mocassins, hazily lit by whatever utility lights can be found in whatever barn she is in. She begins each clip by seating a sheep on its rear so its hooves are elevated off the ground. From there, she’ll often give the sheep a hoof trim, which is a necessary measure for domesticated sheep that spend very little time on rocks and hard surfaces as their ancestors did, which act as a natural file. Then she’ll click on her shearing clippers which require an electric outlet and produce a meditative hum as she works.

Moving with incredible grace and respect for the sheep’s comfort, Gwen begins trimming the unusable belly wool from the sheep. After it’s discarded, she tactfully moves her shears around the sheep in congruous strips so that the fleece falls off in one piece, connected by fibers and lanolin, a sticky substance found naturally in wool to keep it waterproof. As she trims, she maneuvers the sheep with impressive dexterity, placing one foot there in order to turn the sheep 30 degrees or moving her hand from one leg to another to maintain control of the animal. She makes it look easy, which is the perfect testament as to why she is so skilled at her craft. Once the sheep is fully shorn, it hops up from the plywood board, gives a quick shake, and ambles over to rejoin its flock, now a few pounds lighter. The shorn fleece is scooped up and bagged for inspection later. Gwen, who has about 29 more sheep to shear today, is already reaching for her next. 

Between the hard manual labor and constant travel more than half of the year, shearing is a tough gig. It requires repeatedly pulling your tired body out of bed in the morning, still smelling of lanolin from the day before, ready to shear yet another flock of sheep day after day. But to Gwen, it’s more than that. “I feel better when I’m shearing,” she says, when asked why she continues to choose this career. “I’m doing a service for the animal, and the result is this beautiful product with so many possibilities.” 

At Johnson, we believe in the hard work and humility it takes to keep the wool industry alive. After the alchemy of sun, water, and pasture has done its work to produce a natural, durable fiber, all you need is a good shearer, and we count ourselves lucky to know one.