Gwen Hinman

While in New Zealand, Gwen entered a shearing competition in the junior division at the Stratford Agricultural & Pastoral Show. Contestants were judged according to speed, skill and precision, with the score being lowered for wool or ridges that remained after shearing, cuts in the flesh, or going over the same area more than once while shearing. Gwen took first prize in a field of twelve contestants.

Gwen returned to Acworth in February 2006, then turned around in November 2006 and went back to New Zealand for shearing season. She took another training class at Tectra and worked for the same contractor who had employed her the year before.

Back in this country, Gwen travels all over New England for shearing jobs. Sheep shearing is a lonely vocation in this country, where shearers are few and far between. Gwen explained that most flocks in the western United States are sheared by gangs of New Zealanders who travel to this country every year for the work.

When it’s not shearing season in New England Gwen works for Bascom’s Sugar House, cleaning, hanging and checking tubing, and tapping maple trees.

Gwen owns a small flock of sheep that she keeps in Acworth, consisting of nine Scottish Blackface ewes and one brown Icelandic ram.

Gwen’s Acworth history began when she was eight months old and her parents, David and Debby, backpacked her into their property on Hill Road in November 1975 in snow and freezing ice. The property sale was finalized just before Gwen’s first birthday. Hinmans became fulltime residents of Acworth when they moved into a tent on their property when Gwen was almost 2 1/2 years old.

Now it is thirty years later and Gwen is once again living in a tent on the Hinman property. Gwen’s grandmother has pondered her granddaughter’s current living situation, in which Gwen lives in a tent while her ten goats are housed in a small wooden structure with a roof and windows.

Gwen is looking forward to returning to New Zealand, possibly in autumn 2008 at the beginning of their shearing season. If she encounters more of the intractable mongrel composites during her next visit, she is sure to say, "Get the flock out of here!"

By Gretchen Abendschein

Gwen Hinman knows what it’s like to look deep into the eyes of demon sheep and with shears in hand reign victorious over the wooly critters.

In New Zealand Gwen has encountered catch pens filled with brazen ewes that are anything but sheepish. New Zealanders have a name for these cross-bred mongrels that are the result of genetic experimentation gone wrong: composites. Gwen explained that there are certain farms in New Zealand where mobs of mutant composites are so unruly that farmers have a difficult time finding any shearers willing to take on the beasts. And New Zealand is the land of world-class sheep shearers, where shearing is considered a rugged national sport and home to such shearing superstars as David Fagan, fifteen-time winner of the International Golden Shears Competition.

Gwen first traveled to New Zealand in 2000. Her father, David, who is a sheep shearer, had given Gwen a hand piece shearing tool to take to New Zealand in case she decided to give shearing a try in the sheep shearing capital of the world.

During her first trip, Gwen spent six months backpacking across the verdant hills of New Zealand. After months of toting a four-pound shearing tool in her backpack Gwen decided to enroll in a sheep shearing learners’ course. When Gwen returned to Acworth she was fired up to shear some more.

Gwen attended Cornell University Shearing School in New York State where she met Matt Kyle, a fellow shearer who became her friend. Matt had just returned from shearing school in New Zealand and encouraged Gwen to return to the land of forty-million sheep for some serious shearing.

In November 2005 Gwen returned to New Zealand and enrolled in the Tectra Shearers’ training course in Toko, a small farming town in the Taranaki region of the north island.

After finishing the Tectra training course Gwen got a job working in a shearing gang, the common vernacular for a shearing crew in New Zealand. She was the only woman in her shearing gang and, at age thirty at the time, was by far the oldest. The younger men in the gang didn’t razz her for long when they realized Gwen was a shearing force to be reckoned with. As Gwen’s speed and skill improved an amicable competitiveness ensued among the gang, which increased the gang’s overall productivity, much to the delight of the contractor, who gets paid a percentage per sheep.

Shearing gangs work eight-hour days in New Zealand. Gwen’s record for the most sheep she sheared in a single day is 350.

Physically demanding, it takes skill, strength and endurance to wrestle sheep all day while maneuvering a sharp shearing tool without seriously injuring oneself or harming the flocculent four-leggeds. During her stint in New Zealand Gwen took a hoof to the face when a recalcitrant ewe balked over being fleeced. On rough days, shearers feel more like they have survived a barroom brawl than shaved hundreds of cute fuzzy sheep.