Snow may have been falling this morning, but it was a breath of springtime at Catapano Farms in Southold, where sheep were sheared, and thousands of plants are beginning to bloom.
Sheep shearing day is an annual tradition, said Dorothy Catapano. Sheep shearer Andrew Rice travels from Brattleboro, VT for the big day, with 45 East Fresian dairy sheep ready for their spring haircuts and “hoofie-cures”.
Watching the shearing were 46 baby lambs, some only a few days old, bleating in a chorus.
“It’s a noisy job,” Catapano said, smiling, adding that some of the animals are still young and not yet familiar with the shearing process. “It brings new meaning to the word ‘sheepish’,” she said.
Each sheep was not only shorn, but each received inoculations and hoof trimming, important so they do not develop diseases that can kill them, Catapano said.
Rice, as he examined each sheep, said his job, which he’s done proudly for 35 years, said because the process is “labor intensive,” it’s easier to do the shearing, shots and hoof examinations all at once. “It’s one-stop shopping,” he said.
Once the sheep are shorn, the wool, which fills up a 32-gallon bag per sheep, is cleaned of grease — the wool is rich with lanolin —then sent to Prince Edward Island, where blankets are made that are sold at the farm. Some knitters, Catapano said, come to the farm to purchase raw fleece.
Catapano said for both she and her husband Neal, as well as Mike and Karen Catapano, who run the Catapano Dairy Farm on North Road in Peconic, spring is the busiest season, between sheep and the blossoming greenhouse, where 300,000 to 400,000 young plants are currently bursting into life.
The baby sheep are numbered, she said — although one particular favorite sheep, “Martha,” has won Catapano’s heart and has her own name — so that it’s clear which baby belongs to which mother. Some male sheep are culled, she said, because they tend to fight.
Once the sheep have produced milk, it’s sent to the dairy farm to be made into cheese, she said.
Because the sheep are meant to produce milk, their yield of fiber, while still plentiful, is less than other breeds, Rice said.
White and black sheep are separated for shearing, Catapano said, because when the fleece is blended, the product is gray.
Catapano also has the two babies of a rescue sheep who was found wandering and emaciated last year and taken to the Riverhead Animal Shelter. Although the mama sheep did not survive, her two young have grown and flourished under Catapano’s care; she bottle-fed them for the first few weeks.
When Rice comes to visit, Catapano said, his services are shared with Tom Geppel of 8 Hands Farm, who introduced the Catapanos to him. “It’s farmer cooperation,” she said.
