Amanda Launchbury-Rainey wrote:You have made if look so simple and your sheep looks calm and happy, which is so important. Have you ever tried rooing? Do you spin your wool? Or your sheep's wool even!
Regards
This is taken from here.
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/no-wool-no-vikings/ It is a very interesting article.
But first, it’s time to collect the wool. These double-coated sheep shed their wool naturally in late spring and summer, so they don’t need to be shorn. Instead, the wool is plucked, or “rooed”—a bit like pulling loosened hair from a shedding dog. Rooing is labor intensive. In Viking times and for centuries after, the whole village would join in the roundup and rooing. The captive labor force of Fosen students means rooing is still possible on Utsetøya.
The ewes are removed from the pen one at a time. Two people grab a ewe and straddle it, one holding onto its short, slightly curved horns and the other clinging to the wool of its back. They march the ewe to the edge of a big blue tarp and lay it on its side. Four or five rooers sit in a circle, pulling steadily on handfuls of wool until it comes loose and piling the wool on the tarp. When I try rooing, the wool feels oily and gritty with sand and salt accumulated in the year since the last rooing. I have to pull harder than I expected, but the wool comes loose without a flinch from the ewe.
My daughter had soay sheep which we rooed. She still has a Finn / Soay cross that we roo. I actually go video of us rooing him the other day. It is not great quality but you can see what is happening. I will try to get it posted here tomorrow.
"The world is divided into people who do things, and people who get credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class, there is far less competition."
Dwight Morrow
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