A quick word about sheep. To whoever thought sheep were submissive, trusting, gentle creatures, think again. They are wild! They are unruly, and they are stubborn! And, boy, are they poopy...
Ok, now we can continue..
Herding sheep can in a way, bring out the natural instincts of the hunter gatherer in all of us. The chase instantly makes us more agile, swifter, resilient. I feel I was made for this. And it's true, our evolution has made us superior chasers. We may not be the fastest, but we can sure run down other creatures with efficiency!
First is the gathering from the valleys and mountains. We don't know what to expect. The day starts with breakfast, and we head out, getting a free Icelandic four wheeling tour in this car! (Minus the trailer..)
Once the "tour" was over, a brisk hike began! Yay, more tour content! With wind not only blowing our hair, we picked our way through rocky hillsides & narrow sheep trails. Falling was an option, one we often took against our will..
While traversing around on mountainsides after untrusting sheep proved challenging (& they said the next gathering, happening the day after we leave is 5x harder terrain & 5x longer work day! Woooow...), the views were beautiful!
Here's Stephen, after we exited the rocky mountain area, bloodied, bruised, and well exercised. With sheep in the lead, we headed toward the farm:
The farm in the distance... :)
The sheep changed direction very often, in favor of a more effective escape route. Being constantly on your toes, and fast to boot wast the only effective method of countering the problem. Forget sports, be a sheep herder...
The sheep were all gathered up, but 1 lamb was left behind, confused & bewildered. (It had been on a trip in the 4 wheel truck just previous to this part of the round-up... Maybe it was car-sick?? Haha!)
Anyways, we were thinking, "meh... We didn't gather all that many sheep today, maybe 30-ish." So, I asked Joí, and he said probably more like upwards of 100! Wow. And seeing them all herded together at the end...yup. Also, after seeing them herding together, we now understand the whole jumping sheep thing. They jump. Oh, yes, they jump.
After all that herding, we released them into a large field to chow on grass for a few days before giving them all check-ups.
Now, fast forward a few days past more construction projects, etc. (which we will probs come back to)
After some last minute barn clean-up, we were sent out to the fields to gather these sheep once more! (We went to the wrong fields at first--oops..! But we got it straight eventually...)
On the way we met horses & berries! Berries are a tasty snack for a hungry sheep chaser.
But then the fun began again! Running around as human sheepdogs! Sheephumans! We herded those sheeps, we herded them good! Right into that new round-up corral we helped build :D
And they told us many of the sheeps like bread! ...more like one sheep likes bread...
Next, we gathered the sheep into the sheep house barn thing, called a fjöthus (sheep sheds), which took a while. And began sheep check-ups, sheep shearing, sheep getting pooped on, sheep crap all over us-ing!
They do not agree with us cutting off their disgustingly warm, matted wool.. They do not agree one bit. But it must be done if their wool is going to be useful later, because this old stuff is terrible!
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