Jul 22, 2025 By Garrett Neese 4 min read

One by one, the sheep were led into the barn at Ralph and Carol Adamson’s farm — some more reluctantly than others, but all sporting a year’s worth of accumulated wool.

And just as surely, their entrance was followed by the buzz of clippers and the sight of piles of wool lying next to the newly sleek animals.

The biggest variable was the shearers themselves, who depending on their experience level, could have been shearing their first sheep, or their 5,000th.

It was another iteration of what’s become a decades-long tradition: the annual shearing competition between the FFA clubs from Waynesburg Central High School and West Greene High School.

Ralph Adamson’s been providing the sheep since the 1980s, when he took it over from a neighbor down the road getting up there in age.

At one point, his herd numbered 1,000 head, though depredation by coyotes took its toll. He’s now got about 160 sheep, split evenly between adults and lambs.

“It’s a dying art,” he said. “It’s very few people that can do this. With 18 or 20 kids, I think it’s a good thing to try to teach them.”

Students were out practicing at his barn on a Tuesday in advance of the next day’s competition.

Tuesday had also included students from Bedford, whose teacher gave a shearing demonstration for newer students.

Despite the sheeps’ bulk and sharp hooves, students were quickly able to get the sheep under control.

Daniel Brookover, an 11th-grade student at Waynesburg, described his strategy simply: “Get it on its butt and everything, make sure it’s tamed, and just shear it.”

The winner of Wednesday’s competition got a pair of Premier clippers. In 2025, as in 2024, that honor went to MacKenzie Whipkey of West Greene. The same was true of Tuesday’s informal session.

She’s been shearing sheep for about three years, unburdening 5,000 of them of their coats over that span.

“You can’t be scared,” she said. “You just have to keep going.”

After her experience in FFA, Whipkey is now planning to raise sheep. She’s no stranger to livestock, having raised beef goats and market goats.

How do sheep compare?

“Sheep are stupid,” she said. “But once you figure out the way that they are, you just go with it.”

Once she was done shearing, Whipkey also helped Waynesburg ninth-grader Esabella Culp-Day, who was handling her first sheep.

Culp-Day said being in FFA had helped her come out of her shell.

And that day, a new connection also helped her absorb some practical advice about shearing.

“When you’re doing the neck, try and keep the head straight, because you don’t want to cut there,” Culp-Day said. “She’s definitely a good teacher.”

Of about 20 students who’d come out to the farm Tuesday, six were shearing for the first time, said West Greene teacher Matt Snyder.

At the end of the practice run, a towering heap of wool stood packed into a wooden container, periodically tamped down by Cameron Wendell, an 11th-grader at West Greene High School.

All told, it was about five pounds, Ralph Adamson estimated. It wasn’t much on the balance sheet — and wouldn’t have been even back in more profitable days when wool could fetch $1 a pound. But it was a good testament to a day’s work.

Greene County had once been the top merino producer in the country. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Snyder said, shearing sheep was a popular way for kids to make money on the side, akin to mowing lawns.

There’s still a fair demand, if they can get good at it, he said.

“It’s just a really good experience for the kids doing something they might never have done or that, other than now, they might never do again,” he said.