When Joanne Devaney said she lived at the foot of Ben Bulben, she wasn’t exaggerating. The mountain dominates the skyline as you drive towards her family home, the plateau covered by cloud on this summer day that feels anything but. Pulling into the yard, sheep are visible on the steep side like a smattering of snowflakes.

Despite the weather outside, inside the Devaneys’ house is warm and welcoming. There’s tea in the pot and food on the pan. Joanne and her family are sheep shearers and sheep farmers. To say that for the three months of summer shearing around Sligo and further afield keeps Joanne, her father Pádraig and brother Karol busy, is an understatement.

The norm at this time of year for the 21-year-old would be shearing roughly 200 sheep a day, six days a week. An upshot of today’s weather is that Irish Country Living doesn’t feel too bad taking up time calling; shearing wet sheep is a no go.

As well as running a flock of 800 Blackface sheep and shearing commercially, the Devaneys are also no strangers to shearing competitions, with a scatter of All-Irelands between them. Joanne won Queen of the Shears in 2016, 2017 and 2018, losing out to legendary shearer Breda Lynch from Kerry at the All-Ireland and All-Nations Shearing Championships in Cashel last month. Both Pádraig and Karol have won senior All-Irelands previously.

In two weeks Joanne will travel to Le Dorat in France as part of the Irish team for the World Shearing Championships. She and George Graham will represent the country in woolhandling, with others taking part in the machine and blade competitions. She will also compete in individual senior woolhandling, ladies shearing and intermediate shearing.

Over a cup of tea and a salmon darn dished up by Pádraig (he’s feeding us all ahead of a big job), Joanne explains the inception of her shearing career. Pádraig was a huge influence on both herself and Karol. Now vice-president of the Irish Natura and Hill Farming Association (INHFA), he started off with a hand shears at the age of 10.

“Growing up, dad was always shearing. Then my brother took it up. I was always out packing wool and filling the trailer. One day they just handed me a hand piece and I gave it a go. I tried a competition and it’s almost like an addiction really. I took it up and started getting better.”

Joanne is from a family of nine children, Pádraig and his wife Anne have six girls and three boys. Heather-Anne, the youngest, is eight and not on her summer holidays yet. Michelle has just finished first year and disappears down the hall, returning to the kitchen laden down with a selection of Joanne’s trophies.

Talking technique

On the Irish shearing circuit there aren’t many women at the moment, Joanne and Breda being the main competitors. Contending among the boys doesn’t faze Joanne. She’s proof you don’t have to be physically big to shear; relying on technique is her forte.

“I suppose a man would have the option to handle a sheep with pure brute strength or technique, but I had to learn a good technique from the start. A lot of it is keeping your toes in under the sheep. We learn ways of keeping the sheep upright and a lot more comfortable.

“Say if you let the sheep down too low, they feel like they’re getting away and will start kicking. We learn to keep them upright and to put the blows into the right place on the flat parts of the sheep. That’s important for competitions too, because you have to do a really clean job.”

When shearing on farms, the Devaneys take a trailer with them, but they also work from a shearing shed in Joanne’s grandfather’s yard. Today, in spite of the rain, they’ve managed to get 50 sheep in and dry, so we head the short distance across the road and get to work.

In the shed there’s a crush with side gates. Alongside it is the wooden platform on which they shear. There are three power points that hand pieces attach to. Joanne, Karol and Lexie Philips, a visiting shearer from New Zealand, begin their preparations.

They carry over what is essentially their toolbox. Sitting on it they lace up their moccasins, before starting the intricate process of setting up their hand pieces. Oil is put on the blade before hooking it up. Joanne’s hand piece is adorned with green, white and gold tape.

They use the bone method to shear; sheep out, turn it on its back, start on the belly, finish on the backside. Turning the sheep, their footwork is intricate.

The speaker hanging above Lexie plays Robbie Williams (notwithstanding a slight kerfuffle over music control). Pádraig cleans up and generally oversees his proteges. Michelle is in charge of filling the crush and bagging the wool, a job Irish Country Living takes over after time. Everyone has their own role and they’re all perfectly in sync.

Joanne’s personal best for the most sheep shorn in a day is 213. Karol’s is 415. As to whether or not there’s much competition between them, the answer is no at present, due to a recent undertaking by Karol, who is 25 and just finished an ag degree in UCD.

Both siblings are left-handed writers and Karol a left-handed shearer. Shearing is generally set up for being right-handed. On your left hand at competitions you lose time turning the sheep around. But, the disadvantage really became apparent to Karol when he went to work in New Zealand after his Leaving Cert.

“He was over in New Zealand,” explains Joanne. “It was all geared towards right-handed shearers, so he rang home to tell me: ‘Joanne, switch to your right hand’. I had probably only about 50 sheep shorn altogether. So I just changed a lot earlier.”

“I must actually try one on my left hand to see how bad I am. It’s not only your shearing hand that’s important, your other hand is important for turning the sheep. It’s just getting your head around it.”

Inspired by a shearer he knows who damaged his left hand and retrained on his right, Karol is at present in the process of switching hands. “It’s slow, but I did my first 100 sheep on Monday, 106, so I’m starting to get up there. It’s a big challenge,” he reflects.

“You have to really think about what you’re doing. I’m gone from not having to think about anything to having to think about everything. You’re just there and you don’t know what to do with this hand or that hand. It’s a good challenge. It’s character building.”

Around the world

It’s almost a rite of passage for Irish shearers to spend an eight-month season in Australia or New Zealand, Joanne informs me, seeing as there’s only work here three months of the year. She went to Australia in September 2017. Karol also did a number of seasons in New Zealand after completing school and prior to starting college. They always return to shear at home for the summer.

Down under, stamina and fitness really come into play; being a shearer is a form of athleticism really. The system is more structured there. Due to scale, you work set hours and have your breaks at certain times.

“You could be in a shed for weeks because there are so many sheep,” says Joanne. “Whereas here, farmers have 100 or 200. You could be on three farms one day, two farms the next day. It’s also a different breed of sheep. Australia is mostly Merinos, they’re very different. They’re a lot wrinklier and the wool is worth a lot more money.”

In September Joanne is to start her Green Cert in Ballyhaise, with a view to getting her own flock number. When finished, she plans on going to New Zealand shearing. Last year she worked on a stud farm in Cork and has two horses of her own to keep her busy alongside the sheep.

While others in Karol’s class stressed about what they would do after college, it wasn’t an issue for him. He already firmly knew he was heading for a few seasons in Australia come September.

With all the sheep shorn, for now, the hand pieces are put away once again.

Many names are spray painted on the shed’s walls. This conveys a lot of history, the countless hours of work many people have done here. Joanne explains that anyone who has shorn in the shed adds their name. There are plenty of Devaneys and others too. Lexie finds space high up and adds “Lexie 19” to the collection. We pack up and head back to the house where tea, sandwiches and bananas greet us.

Chatting, it’s asked of Joanne what’s the most valuable piece of advice she has ever gotten about competition shearing. Ruminating for a few seconds she replies: “Go in like a lamb and out like a lion.”