Spring has kicked in and out in Willow Paddock the alpacas are sweltering in their burly woollen coats. Time for a visit from the Tony and Glen Act.
Tony and Glen are two burly men in sweaty singlets with “Perth Shearing Supplies” on the back who come to shear our alpacas for us each year. They are just about the only people in Tasmania who do this, so if you can’t find a way through their terse wit to the special brand of Tasmanian geniality underneath, you’re on your own. With some very hot and woolly alpacas. Not a good place to be.
Coming as he does from a do-it-yourself farming family, My Other Half seriously considered shearing his own alpacas himself. In the world where MOH grew up, you raised your own animals, sheared them yourself, spun their wool, knitted your own jumpers, and every ailment, animal or child’s, could be treated with a home brewed mix of udder cream and haemorrhoid ointment.
I advised strongly against shearing our small herd ourselves, envisaging lots of kicking and spitting. And not just from the animals. But that wasn’t enough to stop MOH. “We can just tie them up in the paddock,”’ he insisted. Diligently he enquired after the cost of the equipment. The shears were fairly pricey at $600. The sharpeners for the shears were extortionate at $1200. That was enough to stop him.
If the cost of the equipment wasn’t reason enough not to shear one’s alpacas oneself, it would be a shame to miss out on Tony and Glen’s company once a year. Now in our third year of alpaca ownership, we’ve got used to their terse wit and seen through it to the warm hearted souls underneath, equally kind to children and dogs and with a touching respect for camels and women, in no particular order. “You’re so good at that” says Glen as he hands me a plastic bag to open for Sophie’s fleece.
“You know what you have to do?” I reply, getting ready to impart my secret – just lick your fingers.
“Just give it to you,” he responds.
It’s hard to make out who’s in charge between Tony and Glen, so perfectly balanced is their allocation of duties and so subtle and unspoken the communication between them. Where Tony is the owner and inventor of their equipment, it’s Glen who leads the way in banter and instructions to the incompetent alpaca owner. It’s possible to feel very tardy and inadequate in the face of Glen’s barked commands. But we’ve come to realise that his bark is notable for the absence of bite.
In our first year of alpaca husbandry we didn’t understand their sense of humour, mostly because it was at our expense. “I didn’t realise you sheared them by hand,” I said, arriving late in the shearing shed when they were already underway.
“Oh yiss, priddy good with the old hand shears, aren’t we Tony?” commented Glen, with a dry chuckle. I was impressed but didn’t see what was funny.
“Yiss, priddy good,” replied Tony with another dry chuckle.
“Actually the electric shears are over there,” pointed out MOH helpfully. “They only use the hand shears for finishing off the tricky bits.” So that was funny.
Nowadays we wouldn’t miss their visit for the world, not just because of the comedy act, but also because their alpaca wrangling feats are a sight to see. Especially for those of us who have been spat at by Lorna. We quite enjoy seeing her hefted manfully to the floor.
Tony has designed and built a shearing rack, patent pending, specifically for the handling of reluctant alpacas. A steel frame sits in a gentle curve on the floor with one upright in the middle to hold the electric motor driving the shears. At one end of the curve there’s a winch. At both ends a couple of pieces of rope feed out to a short bar.
Tony and Glen stand companionably inside the curve while the snorting beast is dragged in by the owner, who is usually spattered with green alpaca spit. Tony and Glen don’t approve of your alpaca spitting at them but are sympathetic to the animal if it spits at you. Once the alpaca is level with them, they step forward as one and flip it neatly onto its side grabbing handfuls of fleece. The front feet are roped to one bar and the back feet to the other. Then the winch is wound so that the front feet go one way and the back feet the other, and the alpaca is stretched out looking very much like it’s about to be tortured on a rack. Which it is. To complete preparations they slip a sock over its nose to contain the spitting. No patent is pending on the sock. With that, they shear at their leisure and the alpaca’s displeasure. Although after a day when they might have sheared up to 85 animals, there’s nothing leisurely about it and if you’re not ready with sacks for the fleece and any injections you want them to give while they’re down there and so is the alpaca, you’d best prepare for a tersely delivered rebuke.
After shearing the body of the alpaca with electric shears, Tony uses the old fashioned hand shears to clip legs and head. This year our young wether Charlie was left with a goatie, on account of having spat up some semi-digested grass into the sock as a mark of his disgust. Tony didn’t fancy trimming around Charlie’s chin after that. So Charlie has a goatie, but any macho connotations of this are offset by the fact that a wether is a male alpaca whose testicles have been removed.
At the end of this ignominious process, your alpaca is released from its bonds, helped to its feet and given a ceremonious slap on the newly shorn rump by Glen, who is keen to get it out of the way so he can sweep up the last of the fleece, deftly wielding the broom like some sweaty, sun-kissed hairdresser.
Suddenly your animated woollen bales on furry pillars for legs are transformed into gawky deer-like creatures with spindly legs and necks and Bambi-like bodies. The experience seems to shear them of their attitude as well. When my alpaca-whispering Other Half goes out to Willow Paddock to see them the evening after, Sophie runs to him making her curious Granny-Nodding-Off-After-A-Sherry noises, and Charlie kneels before him in a supplicating gesture.
Back in the shed, Tony and Glen are keen to see off the last animal and reach beer o’clock. Since we’re always their last port of call for the day, that’s usually spent with us.
“Do you want light beer or normal?” I enquire, which meets with silence. To a Tasmanian man, this is a question of some social ineptitude. “Normal,” I nod, and scurry off to fetch it.
Meanwhile Tony and Glen cross the Vegetable Garden to the outdoor tap. Every year I exhort them to go inside through the laundry door, right in front of them, and use the comforts of the laundry sink. Every year they will hear none of it, insisting that the garden tap is perfectly adequate. “Good enough for us, and better ‘n some places,” Glen will say. This year he tells me the story of shearing a vast herd of alpacas up beyond Scottsdale, an hour into the hills in the north-east of Tasmania. It was a hot day and the property had a beautiful creek flowing through it. “So two sweaty shearers stripped off and went skinny dipping,” he chuckles.
“And it was beauuuuudiful!” Tony adds with some feeling.
Beer o’clock is spent perched on makeshift boxes in My Other Half’s workshop. The last few wisps of alpaca fleece drift in the breeze coming through the roller doors and the late afternoon sun filters through the gum trees outside. After all the terse wit you wouldn’t think conversation would flow freely. But it does when we discover Glen’s love for camels, two of which he has brought down from the Northern Territory in a trailer, to the amusement of the Tasmanian quarantine inspectors. With some pleasure, Glen and I discover we have a mutual admiration for Robyn Davidson’s seminal book Tracks, about her camel trek across the Gibson Desert. It’s not what I had expected from a burly country bloke in a shearing supplier’s singlet. But it’s probably not what he expected from a poncy English lady with pretensions as an alpaca farmer.
All too soon beer o’clock is despatched, with as much swiftness as a newly shorn alpaca, and the Tony and Glen act is gone. We won’t see them for another year, unless we’re passing Westbury and see a couple of camels. In which case we might drop in for a beer. Normal, of course.
Tony and Glen are two burly men in sweaty singlets with “Perth Shearing Supplies” on the back who come to shear our alpacas for us each year. They are just about the only people in Tasmania who do this, so if you can’t find a way through their terse wit to the special brand of Tasmanian geniality underneath, you’re on your own. With some very hot and woolly alpacas. Not a good place to be.
Coming as he does from a do-it-yourself farming family, My Other Half seriously considered shearing his own alpacas himself. In the world where MOH grew up, you raised your own animals, sheared them yourself, spun their wool, knitted your own jumpers, and every ailment, animal or child’s, could be treated with a home brewed mix of udder cream and haemorrhoid ointment.
I advised strongly against shearing our small herd ourselves, envisaging lots of kicking and spitting. And not just from the animals. But that wasn’t enough to stop MOH. “We can just tie them up in the paddock,”’ he insisted. Diligently he enquired after the cost of the equipment. The shears were fairly pricey at $600. The sharpeners for the shears were extortionate at $1200. That was enough to stop him.
If the cost of the equipment wasn’t reason enough not to shear one’s alpacas oneself, it would be a shame to miss out on Tony and Glen’s company once a year. Now in our third year of alpaca ownership, we’ve got used to their terse wit and seen through it to the warm hearted souls underneath, equally kind to children and dogs and with a touching respect for camels and women, in no particular order. “You’re so good at that” says Glen as he hands me a plastic bag to open for Sophie’s fleece.
“You know what you have to do?” I reply, getting ready to impart my secret – just lick your fingers.
“Just give it to you,” he responds.
It’s hard to make out who’s in charge between Tony and Glen, so perfectly balanced is their allocation of duties and so subtle and unspoken the communication between them. Where Tony is the owner and inventor of their equipment, it’s Glen who leads the way in banter and instructions to the incompetent alpaca owner. It’s possible to feel very tardy and inadequate in the face of Glen’s barked commands. But we’ve come to realise that his bark is notable for the absence of bite.
In our first year of alpaca husbandry we didn’t understand their sense of humour, mostly because it was at our expense. “I didn’t realise you sheared them by hand,” I said, arriving late in the shearing shed when they were already underway.
“Oh yiss, priddy good with the old hand shears, aren’t we Tony?” commented Glen, with a dry chuckle. I was impressed but didn’t see what was funny.
“Yiss, priddy good,” replied Tony with another dry chuckle.
“Actually the electric shears are over there,” pointed out MOH helpfully. “They only use the hand shears for finishing off the tricky bits.” So that was funny.
Nowadays we wouldn’t miss their visit for the world, not just because of the comedy act, but also because their alpaca wrangling feats are a sight to see. Especially for those of us who have been spat at by Lorna. We quite enjoy seeing her hefted manfully to the floor.
Tony has designed and built a shearing rack, patent pending, specifically for the handling of reluctant alpacas. A steel frame sits in a gentle curve on the floor with one upright in the middle to hold the electric motor driving the shears. At one end of the curve there’s a winch. At both ends a couple of pieces of rope feed out to a short bar.
Tony and Glen stand companionably inside the curve while the snorting beast is dragged in by the owner, who is usually spattered with green alpaca spit. Tony and Glen don’t approve of your alpaca spitting at them but are sympathetic to the animal if it spits at you. Once the alpaca is level with them, they step forward as one and flip it neatly onto its side grabbing handfuls of fleece. The front feet are roped to one bar and the back feet to the other. Then the winch is wound so that the front feet go one way and the back feet the other, and the alpaca is stretched out looking very much like it’s about to be tortured on a rack. Which it is. To complete preparations they slip a sock over its nose to contain the spitting. No patent is pending on the sock. With that, they shear at their leisure and the alpaca’s displeasure. Although after a day when they might have sheared up to 85 animals, there’s nothing leisurely about it and if you’re not ready with sacks for the fleece and any injections you want them to give while they’re down there and so is the alpaca, you’d best prepare for a tersely delivered rebuke.
After shearing the body of the alpaca with electric shears, Tony uses the old fashioned hand shears to clip legs and head. This year our young wether Charlie was left with a goatie, on account of having spat up some semi-digested grass into the sock as a mark of his disgust. Tony didn’t fancy trimming around Charlie’s chin after that. So Charlie has a goatie, but any macho connotations of this are offset by the fact that a wether is a male alpaca whose testicles have been removed.
At the end of this ignominious process, your alpaca is released from its bonds, helped to its feet and given a ceremonious slap on the newly shorn rump by Glen, who is keen to get it out of the way so he can sweep up the last of the fleece, deftly wielding the broom like some sweaty, sun-kissed hairdresser.
Suddenly your animated woollen bales on furry pillars for legs are transformed into gawky deer-like creatures with spindly legs and necks and Bambi-like bodies. The experience seems to shear them of their attitude as well. When my alpaca-whispering Other Half goes out to Willow Paddock to see them the evening after, Sophie runs to him making her curious Granny-Nodding-Off-After-A-Sherry noises, and Charlie kneels before him in a supplicating gesture.
Back in the shed, Tony and Glen are keen to see off the last animal and reach beer o’clock. Since we’re always their last port of call for the day, that’s usually spent with us.
“Do you want light beer or normal?” I enquire, which meets with silence. To a Tasmanian man, this is a question of some social ineptitude. “Normal,” I nod, and scurry off to fetch it.
Meanwhile Tony and Glen cross the Vegetable Garden to the outdoor tap. Every year I exhort them to go inside through the laundry door, right in front of them, and use the comforts of the laundry sink. Every year they will hear none of it, insisting that the garden tap is perfectly adequate. “Good enough for us, and better ‘n some places,” Glen will say. This year he tells me the story of shearing a vast herd of alpacas up beyond Scottsdale, an hour into the hills in the north-east of Tasmania. It was a hot day and the property had a beautiful creek flowing through it. “So two sweaty shearers stripped off and went skinny dipping,” he chuckles.
“And it was beauuuuudiful!” Tony adds with some feeling.
Beer o’clock is spent perched on makeshift boxes in My Other Half’s workshop. The last few wisps of alpaca fleece drift in the breeze coming through the roller doors and the late afternoon sun filters through the gum trees outside. After all the terse wit you wouldn’t think conversation would flow freely. But it does when we discover Glen’s love for camels, two of which he has brought down from the Northern Territory in a trailer, to the amusement of the Tasmanian quarantine inspectors. With some pleasure, Glen and I discover we have a mutual admiration for Robyn Davidson’s seminal book Tracks, about her camel trek across the Gibson Desert. It’s not what I had expected from a burly country bloke in a shearing supplier’s singlet. But it’s probably not what he expected from a poncy English lady with pretensions as an alpaca farmer.
All too soon beer o’clock is despatched, with as much swiftness as a newly shorn alpaca, and the Tony and Glen act is gone. We won’t see them for another year, unless we’re passing Westbury and see a couple of camels. In which case we might drop in for a beer. Normal, of course.
