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Museum of Appalachia draws students, families with sheep shearing event

WUOT | By Pierce Gentry

Published May 2, 2025 at 5:42 PM EDT

Crowds of schoolchildren and families look on as volunteers shear a sheep at the Museum of Appalachia on Friday, May 2, 2025. It was the first of two “Sheep Shearing Days” the museum will host this spring, with the intention of educating locals about historic regional traditions.

The Museum of Appalachia, which boasts a Smithsonian affiliation for its work preserving the region’s culture, hosts Sheep Shearing Days each spring to educate people with demonstrations, activities, music and food.

The Museum of Appalachia hosted the first of its Sheep Shearing Days on Friday, giving kids and their families the opportunity to learn where exactly wool comes from and how Appalachian people have traditionally used the material.

The grounds of the museum are speckled with three dozen historic log structures, including an indoor exhibit stocked with several thousand artifacts from in and around Appalachia. On an average day, a visitor to the museum might find peacocks, pigs or chickens roaming the grounds.

But days are set aside each spring to showcase one animal in particular: sheep.

“Sheep Shearing Days is a springtime pioneer celebration centered around the ritual of shearing the winter's growth of wool from our flock of sheep,” said Will Meyer, the museum’s director of development. “It's something that farmers had to do at least once a year, sometimes twice a year.”

Breeanna Stanford, the owner of B&B Livestock, partnered with the Museum of Appalachia to help with the shearing.

“It's just like a kid getting a haircut,” Stanford said. “Do all kids like haircuts? No. But it doesn't hurt the sheep, and they feel much better once they get all that heavy wool off of them for these hot, 80 degree days that we're getting ready to have.”

Stanford teamed up with some volunteers to wrangle the sheep before crowds of onlookers, shearing large swaths of wool which were then taken a few feet away to be spun into yarn.

Museum of Appalachia volunteer Tina Job cleans freshly-trimmed sheep’s wool to prepare it for spinning on Friday, May 2, 2025. Job was originally inspired to start spinning when she saw a museum volunteer give a demonstration at a Tennessee Homecoming over 20 years ago.

“It’s a chance to – as an adult – do a field trip that I didn’t get to do as a kid, and see the animals, and see how people lived here in the past,” Manion said.

And there’s more than just sheep shearing.

“We also have a lot of other demonstrations and activities going on out here,” said Meyer, with the museum. “From sassafras tea making to pottery, to blacksmithing, to live music – so much more.”

Volunteers staff the majority of the exhibits at the museum. They provide opportunities for kids and adults to learn something new about the history of Appalachia. Some of them even play banjo, and take the stage to allow visitors to hear traditional folk ballads such as “She'll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” or “Magdalena, Hagdalena”

Friday was the first of two “Sheep Shearing Days” the Museum of Appalachia will host in the spring. The second event is May 9 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. More information can be found here.