“I also loved the smell of the horse stable”

Stables, Merino Sheep and Wool

Someone once wrote “This made me think of one of my favorite smells, which is not related to food.   I love the smell of a horse barn – the combination of straw, horses, dust and even a little manure”.

            I also loved the smell of the horse stable; it was something unique caused by the horse dung and the ammonia from the horse’s urine in the straw.   You had to go in there just after the horses were taken out in the morning for the stables to be cleaned.   The smell was unique but some people would say that it stank!   The old people used to believe that it was good for children with whooping cough to sit in the stable for a while and that it would help them to get over that nasty illness much sooner.

            Once a year the stables on our farm would be cleaned for a special reason and that would be for shearing the sheep.   A temporary kraal would be erected outside the stable where the sheep could be penned whilst waiting their turn.  There would be special teams of shearers going from farm to farm relieving the farmer of that backbreaking task.

           My dad kept a flock of merino sheep and I would have to guess how many there were.   They would control the lambing time by keeping the rams apart from the ewes and when the little lambs were born it would be a beautiful sight.   They always say “as playful as a lamb” and that is so true.   I do not remember at what age the lambs had to have their tails docked, a very necessary procedure to prevent flies laying their eggs under a full grown sheep’s tail.   If the tail was left long, dirt and dung would build up under the wool and be a perfect breeding place for flies.   The fast growing maggots would then eat into the sheep’s flesh.   You only have this problem with sheep with long wool.

            Then there were the little male lambs that had to be castrated as you could not have a flock of sheep with many rams.   When I was a child this procedure was done with a sharp knife by someone who knew what he was about.   (These days it is done with a tight elastrator band or a burdizzo.)   In a few days the little doctored lambs would be as playful as ever.   Some farmers and their assistants used to consider lamb’s testicles fried like kidneys with onions as a delicacy and I myself tasted these when I was sent to take stock in a hotel in Alice in the Eastern Cape many years ago.   What did they taste like?   Much the same as kidneys and onions!!!!   In Afrikaans these are known as “Skaap Peertjies”.

           We once had a little orphaned lamb, known as a “Hansie” in Afrikaans and we children begged our dad to spare our pet from both these operations.   Our ‘Hansie’ grew quickly into a very strong young sheep and we enjoyed playing all the lambs games with him.   “King of the Castle” was a favourite and soon this robust lamb could knock us down off the castle.   He liked butting us and it was fun while he was still small but it started to hurt when his horns appeared so we had to run away and close the garden gate behind us very quickly.   One day, when he was chasing one of my sisters, she was a bit slow and caught Hansie’s tail in the gate when she slammed it shut behind her.   The result was a lamb with a docked tail and the other operation was performed soon after that before Hansie was sent to the flock to become a Merino sheep again.   He always remembered us and came running whenever we went to the sheep kraal.

            The shearing was done in those days by men who knew how to use the old fashioned sheep shears.   They knew how to catch a sheep, haul it to their shearing spot where they turned it onto it’s rump.   You would hear the ‘click, click’ of the shears and soon the sheep would be turned out, looking quite strange after the big woolly animal that it used to be.   I was there with my dad when the old ram’s turn came and I wondered what they would do with his ‘tobacco pouch’, but Daddy said not to worry, “These men know what they are doing”.   I stood and watched until the ram was let out and with all that wool now gone, his big ‘tobacco pouch’ was more noticeable than ever.

Merino Ram

            There would be a sorting table nearby where the wool from each sheep would be spread out and the dirt and bad pieces of wool removed before rolling it up and putting it into the big bale with all the other wool.   Now it was the turn for a boy to be put into the bale to trample the wool down and many a time I or one of my sisters was put in there as well.   This was a very dirty task to perform as a sheep’s wool is full of oil and dust.   It was oily and greasy to make the animal water proof.   You would be lifted out when the task was done with pitch black feet and legs and very dirty clothes but after a warm bath your skin would be very soft and smooth.  When the wool has been washed for the wool industry, the oil would be removed from it and used in the making of beauty creams and cosmetics.

Note the docked tails

            When all the sheep had been shorn they would go into the field to graze but one had to keep an eye on the weather as a cold and wet sheep could quite easily die.   The shearers would be paid for the number of sheep that each had shorn and then move on to the next farm to do the same thing there.   The stable would be cleared and the temporary kraal removed until the next year when the sheep needed to be shorn.

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