Sheep, pups & more - Busy spring events kick off this week
Sheep-shearing days to begin this Friday
A sheep gets a haircut as visitors watch during last year’s sheep-shearing event at the Museum of Appalachia on Andersonville Highway in Norris. This year’s event will take place over the next three Fridays, starting this week (April 26). (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
For anyone who’s never watched sheep being sheared, now’s the chance.
The museum’s annual sheep-shearing exhibition will be held on each of the next three Fridays, beginning this week (April 26), followed by two successive Fridays, May 3 and 10.
Each day, the event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with at least two-dozen of the wooly beasts getting haircuts for the visiting crowds each day.
“We’ve done this for nearly 15 years,” said Will Meyer, the museum’s marketing director. “We say it’s to help welcome the warmth of spring.
“And as for the sheep, just like us they need a haircut, too,” he said. “This also gives kids an up-close, first-hand look at where their clothes and blankets might come from.
“It’s an excuse for us to welcome tons of school kids, and bring artisans and craftspeople to the museum to demonstrate their work,” Meyer said.
“We’re expecting about 1,000 students each day,” he said. “We’ve even had some to come here from parts of Kentucky and Virginia.”
Because the museum doesn’t have a huge population of its own sheep, there will be some brought in for the event, Meyer said.
“We have some here, but not that many,” he said.
“This is something the sheep actually welcome. It does not hurt them, and it cools them off for the summer.”
Admission this year is $10 per person, age 6 and up. Tickets are available through a link on the Museum of Appalachia Facebook page or at museumofappalachia.org.
That price also includes tours of the museum farm and village, “which contains some three-dozen historic log structures, exhibit halls filled with thousands of Appalachian artifacts, working gardens, and farm animals,” according to the museum’s website.
There also will be “spinners and weavers” on hand “so visitors can see how wool is made into finished products,” Meyer said.
“We will have other things going on, too,” he said. “There will be live music the entire time, and sheep-herding demonstrations.
“We have a beekeeper coming, as well as a blacksmith and a potter,” Meyer said. “There will be soap carving, food vendors, and other animals to see and greet, including mini-donkeys, mini-horses and goats, and, of course, the museum’s ever-present peacocks.”