Allan Appel Photo
Sensing fresh lanolin on your hand. Feeling that wool is “jagged” yet smooth at the same time. Spinning yarn and making felt. Learning that to shear is to leave some hair above the skin and to shave is to cut it all off. Just getting outside on a sunny day and appreciating nature’s creatures.
Those were some of the lessons, large and small, provided by twin 3‑month-old lambs Frank and Grace as they gave up their wool for the first time at thefirst-ever sheep shearing ever conducted in a New Haven public school.
The pioneering farm-in-the-city event took place Tuesday morning at the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy in the Hill. There 89 kids in Clemente’s K‑5 summer school went out into the school’s courtyard to greet the sheep, brought by Farmer Peter and Farmer Carol, more formally known as Peter and Carol Sepe of Sepe Farm in Sandy Hook.
The sheep shearing is part of an enrichment curriculum complementing the basic literacy and math going on during the July 1 to July 29, 8 a.m. to noon voluntary summer school. This is the first year in the last three in which enrichment activities are being added to the basic math and reading.
Jose Rivera, a science teacher at the school, is friends with Peter Sepe, who, in addition to being a sheep farmer, was a science teaching colleague in the Stamford schools. That’s how Frank and Grace came to visit Clemente Tuesday morning.
The second graders have been reading a book about sheep. The real thing arrived to wow them.
Other activities – such as kite flying and dissection of owl pellets – are also in the cards for the balance of the science-focused enrichment curriculum later in the month, said Maritza Rosa, building leader of Clemente’s summer program.
From the instant they ba-aed their way into the capacious interior courtyard at Clemente, the twins won the kids’ hearts. The student petted the lambs and gave them half a dozen names, including “Sheepie” (second-grader Gabriella De la Cruz’s moniker). Students noted that the twins did smell a bit.
Grace, without a hall pass, is carried by Sepe to the courtyard.
The animals — two of about 30 on the farm — were exceptionally tame and lovable for the kids in no small part because their mother died in childbirth and Carol Sepe herself bottle-fed them.
Rosa said that the funding for the sheep shearing and all such activities for the balance of the summer are coming not from the cash-strapped school system but, in the case of Clemente, the Fair-Haven based Latino cultural organization, Arte Inc. Arte founders David Greco and Danny Diaz were also on hand to help with the shearing and bead making.
First-time yarn maker Isaac Ayala said he’d like a spinning wheel of his own.
As the kids gathered around and Peter Sepe prepared for the shearing, Carol Sepe interpreted what the lambs might be experiencing on this occasion, their first ever off the farm.
They ba-aed. Sepe said that meant, “Where am I?”
Having spent most of their lives on straw, grass, and dirt, the twins were also wondering what concrete is, she suggested. And, of course: Where is the food?
The first feeder, Carlos Munoz, is wearing blue glasses.
“This is so new, our first trip to the city,” she translated.
It was also the first shearing for the three-month olds. As Peter Sepe took the Shear Master to the wool, he assured the kids that the lambs weren’t in much discomfort — although it was no fun to be, as he put it, “plunked on their butt” between his knees, the favored position for the operation.
“Oh my god,” said one child as the lamb’s belly became bare.
Anna Nalleran and Tariq Watkins transfixed by the shearing.
Kindergartner Anna Nalleran was certain this sheep was the female, Grace, and she wasn’t being hurt. “The girl sheep likes it,” she remarked.
Her friend, Tariq Watkins chimed in, ‘The sheep is thinking, ‘Where is my wool?’”
After the procedure the kids gathered round and examined the bared body of Frank … or was it Grace? “Does he bite?” the kids asked. “What does he eat?” “Does he mind touching this [the exposed ribs] part?”
Hill Central second-grader Carlos David Munoz figured that after the ordeal Grace (or was it Frank?) might want something to eat. He extracted some green weeds from between the concrete in the courtyard and tentatively offered them to Frank (Grace?). The sheep ate, and other kids followed Carlos’s example.
Relating the experience to the children getting haircuts, Peter Sepe then showed how human hair is smooth, while sheep hair — that is, wool — feels smooth but under a microscope appears “jagged.” Filaments are coming out at all angles, which is what permits it to hang together as yarn, and then to be pressed as felt or made wet and rolled into beads.
Arte co-founder Danny Diaz and teacher Blanca Rivera help with the beads.
That’s precisely what the kids did for the after-shearing activity, with each of the 89 making a bead and hanging it on a piece of yarn, a jewelry treat to remember the occasion.
In addition to Clemente, a half dozen other elementary schools have enrichment activities mandated for their summer sessions. Arte’s Greco, whose group has been supporting such enrichment work for a decade, said he is sending a message that the system should be supporting more outside-of-the classroom activities where the kids both learn and have fun.
Chris Gomez liked his takeaway.
As he displayed his Kool-Aid-dyed rolled wool bead, John C. Daniels fourth grader Chris Gomez was in total agreement. He’d been on farm trips, as had a good number of the other kids, and had seen shearing before, but had never made a bead.
“We don’t have much play outside,” he said, and then added that his yarn bead necklace was a bit itchy; yet that wouldn’t keep him from wearing it to summer school tomorrow.
Sepe Farm supplies grown lambs to the city’s restaurants including Heirloom, Christopher Martin, and Caseus, said Sepe. That aspect of farming, of course, did not come up during Tuesday’s event.
