Mad about ewe

If you want to get up close and personal with sheep, there won’t be a better time than the next five days.

Wool Days at the Frontier Culture Museum begins today and continues through Sunday in Staunton, while Cestari Wool Fair 2009 takes place this weekend at Chester Farms in Churchville.

The focus on the museum event will be working on wool, showing how sheep are sheared with traditional shears and how wool would have been processed in the 18th century, according to Mike Sutton, the museum’s marketing and sales director. Five of the lambs there are less than a month old, he said.

“It’s another day in the life of what people would have done back then,” Sutton said.

He said the event will be informal, with opportunities for hands-on experiences.

Sheep farmer Francis Chester, who has been putting on a fair since 1971, says his wool fair is the oldest such event in the United States.

“It’s to reacquaint people with the wonderful qualities of wool,” Chester says of his event.

Besides offering various free activities for children, Umaru Sule of Heifer International will discuss the Heifer Project. Sule, from Cameroon, benefited from the Heifer Project when natural devestation wiped out his family’s livestock, but thanks to the project, it was restored, Chester said.

Chester plans to give a lecture on the economics of sheep raising, and Terri Robertson, of Rockbridge County, will lecture about Angora rabbits and shearing. Also, the event is part of the International Year of Natural Fibers, where people will try to create the world’s largest scarf and raise awareness about the importance of natural fibers.

Chester, 73, says sheep raising has not changed much from the time he got into it as a 10-year-old boy, but says it has been impacted by several events.

The introduction of synthetics had an adverse impact on the wool industry, Chester said, because it did nothing to counteract the marketing efforts of companies such as DuPont, reasoning that its natural product would withstand the synthetics.

Also, he said many sheep farmers have gotten out of the business due to the problem of coyotes wiping out flocks.

Chester, though, doesn’t plan to get out of the family business, which goes back to relatives who were sheep farmers in Italy.

“To raise sheep you’ve got to love them,” Chester said. “And you’ve got to have that quality of loving sheep.”

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If you go

WOOL FAIR 2009: At Chester Farms, 3581 Churchville Ave., Churchville on Saturday and Sunday. Free admission and parking, $3 for all-day pony or tractor hay rides, $1.50 for face painting and various prices for crafts on sale. Free lectures and other events. More information: http://www.cestariltd.com