Kelvin Fletcher and Liz ran into a dead battery while trying to shear four sheep themselves on Fletcher's Family Farm. The job stopped halfway through, and Fletcher ended up saying he felt like crying.
By the 11-minute mark, the pair were already behind the pace they wanted. Liz had told him, “Let’s time it and see how quickly you can do it. On your marks, get set, go,” but Fletcher said a trained shearer can take off a full fleece in under a minute and that they were nowhere near that speed.
Fletcher's Family Farm setback
Fletcher said, “He’s so big, so strong, and he’s got such a big fleece as well,” while the attempt was still under way. The clippers then failed before the fourth sheep was finished, and he said, “Battery’s gone.”
Liz laughed at the scale of the mess and said, “We might have done… We’ve only done two and a half sheep. It looks like someone’s been murdered.” At that point, the numbers told the story better than the mood did: both batteries only last 90 minutes, and their usual shearer gets the whole flock of 40 done by the afternoon.
Two and a half sheep
Fletcher did not soften the outcome. He said they had messed it up, called the situation “embarrassing,” and said he could not decide whether to laugh or cry.
Liz’s back-of-the-envelope calculation put their pace at around 80 hours for the full flock of 40, a gap that turns a small farm task into a much bigger one. That is why the unfinished work now has to be handed over to their professional shearer instead of being left as a half-done job.
Professional shearer next
Fletcher said they would have to call in their professional shearer and joked he might send a photo with “SOS”. On a repeat of Family Farm and, the scene works because it shows the difference between trying to do the job yourself and needing someone who can finish it quickly and cleanly.
