Lots of bleating in the Gooi at the sun-drenched sheep shearing festival in Blaricum on Saturday. Young and old witnessed with great interest and in a very friendly atmosphere the shearing (or is it cutting?) of the Drenthe heath sheep in the Gooi.
Shave or cut
It will not be as busy as last year, the 90th anniversary year with 6000 visitors, but a good 1500 visitors come today to watch the traditional way of shearing sheep. There is no shaving with the electric clippers today.
‘Shaving’ with scissors is also more pleasant for the sheep than with electric clippers. With the scissors, a small layer of wool remains, so that the sheep suffer less from the sun on their skin. Not a superfluous luxury on a day like today.
Gooi Nature Reserve has two herds with a total of about 400 sheep. Mirjam de Hiep, shepherd and sheep shearer, explains that ‘cutting’ the sheep is calmer for the animal. “You have to be careful not to cut into the skin and you have to hold the animal well, of course,” says de Hiep about her way of shaving. De Hiep started shearing sheep, only to become a shepherd afterwards.
Erik Bijlsma, team manager of the Dutch shaving team, indicates that the difference between ‘cutting’ and shaving is that you use the scissors slightly differently. Confusing, because you also ‘shave’ with the scissors.
World top
“It takes about six to nine minutes for a sheep,” says Bijlsma. “Usually about 45 to 50 sheep a day”. In 2019 Bijlsma came 18th out of 35 countries at the World Shaving Championship in Scotland. “As the Netherlands, we belong to the world top of shaving, but unfortunately there are no competitions in the Netherlands.”
The price of wool is starting to rise again, thanks to increasing interest in natural materials. “But we sometimes gave it away to schools”, says Mirjam de Hiep, “they use it in the vegetable garden. Wool retains moisture well. Granules for the garden are also made from it”. Several applications of wool were demonstrated on the festival grounds. But it usually starts with the thread. For example, ‘spinsters’ at the spinning wheel showed how the thread is spun.
From eight to eighty
Shearing is so pale for all ages: a bench was unveiled on the square in front of the sheepfold for Piet Kelderman. At 82 years old, the oldest sheep shearer in the Gooi. Today’s shearers have learned their trade from him. At eight years old, the youngest shearer was also present: under the watchful eye of his father, Dries shaved his sheep as if he had never done anything else.
After the sheep had taken off their ‘coats’, the spectators were given another sheep herding demonstration. A trained Border Collie, despite the noise and bleating around him, listened carefully to his owner’s whistle. The boss’s whistles are commands and in this way the dog keeps the small herd of shorn sheep well under control.
Stalls and workshops
On the site next to the sheep shearers, visitors could enjoy a market with organic products, there were food trucks and various stalls with information about, for example, scouting, archeology in the Gooi or about the Erfgooiers. There were also a number of workshops to follow. Which of course dealt a lot with (the processing of) wool.
Because shaving and cutting was the theme, it turned out that as a person you could also have yourself cut and shaved on the festival site: there was also a ‘regular’ hairdresser present.
There was plenty to do for children. There was a storyteller, children could make a shepherd’s crook under supervision and they could be put in make-up.
Wool is in demand again, now that the interest in natural materials and ‘vegetarian’ wool rugs has increased. That is, the sheep that provided the wool for the rug is still alive.
A few years ago, wool still had a negative purchase price. After the corona crisis, the demand for creative products and workshops has increased. Wool is therefore ‘hot’ again.