ALTAMONT — Donald Otterness was a middle-aged man when he saw a slide show of New Zealand and promised himself that, one day, he would go there.

That was 20 years ago.

He is now 74 and just returned from a month-and-a-half of sheep- shearing in New Zealand.

Otterness grew up on a farm in Minnesota and has a farm of his own in Altamont, where he is raising, among other things, about 55 sheep.
His New Zealand odyssey began with a letter from the head of a sheep-shearing company, Al Cummings. "He must have seen my name in a magazine," said Otterness of a trade journal. "They are short of shearers."

New Zealand has 40 million sheep, he said, which account for a quarter of its economy.

From the start, Otterness was struck by New Zealand’s beauty. His plane landed in Auckland, on the North Island. And on his first day there, he rode by bus across the entire island to the farm where he would stay.
He felt so filled up with beauty that first day, Otterness said to himself, "I can go home now."
He went on, "One tree was so beautiful, I couldn’t bear to look at it."

He described it as a pine tree in a perfect triangular shape with all its needles pointing up.

"A pleasure to shear"

Otterness paid for his flight over, and then earned a dollar for each sheep he sheared. The oldest in his crew, he sheared about 80 a day, while others sheared 200 or 250 sheep each day.

He lived in a farmhouse on Cummings’s land with shearers from Norway, England, South America, and different parts of the United States.

The man from England was a professional shearer and travels all over the world, practicing his craft.
"They all spoke English," Otterness said of his housemates, so communication was no problem.

Each day, work started early, at 7 a.m. and — with an hour break for lunch and two half-hour breaks besides — lasted until 5 p.m.
"I got better at shearing," said Otterness.

The operation was a model of efficiency, he said. All of the sheep were of one kind — crossbred.
"The wool was so uniform, it was a pleasure to shear it," said Otterness.
The sheep were shorn at stations, and a "rouser," using a long tool, would circulate, taking each layer of cut wool to be baled.

A Maori Christmas

Otterness had arrived in New Zealand on Dec. 1 and was worried he might be alone for Christmas. He had laughed with others, listening to songs about a white Christmas in the midst of New Zealand’s summer season.

He had called his wife, at home in Altamont, on Christmas Eve, and slept in late, till eight, on Christmas morning.
"A rouser called and said, ‘You’re coming over to my place; I’ll pick you up.’"

And so Otterness spent Christmas with a family of Maori, native New Zealand people of Polynesian descent.
"I felt right at home with them," he said, describing their modest home. "They cooked all their meat over stone — there was lamb, beef, chicken, fish...It was wonderful. And the salads. They kept bringing out the salads; they filled a table, a two-decker table. There were fruits and seafood and crab meat...We ate for two hours."

Although there was no Christmas tree and no gifts, Otterness had come prepared.
"I figured there might be kids," he said. "I made up felt balls of wool. I gave a felt ball to each kid there. They played with those balls all day. The dog and the puppies, too, they all played with them."
The people he met in New Zealand weren’t familiar with felt, said Otterness. "‘Felt — what’s that"’ they’d say," he reported. The shearing of wool is divorced from the spinning and weaving of wool or the making of wool products, he said. "They haven’t seen a crafter make one thing," he said.
Otterness concluded of his Maori Christmas, "There were no other gifts. It’s not commercial like here...The oldest person gave a prayer."

No place like home

Otterness has returned home imbued with a sense of wonder and efficiency.
"I will not forget this time in my life or the people I met," he said.
He went on, "I’m a better shearer now and can do a quicker job. I can do it easier because I learned how to balance my sheep...
"The sheep people in the U.S. look up to New Zealand even though they’re far away...They get more for their wool. It’s cleaner, it’s uniform. Their sheep are never in buildings. They’re always out on the hill; nothing’s mixed in," he said of their fleeces.

He described shearing the all-white wool, and finding a single black spot only once; that spot was discarded.

One thing, though, didn’t measure up to home — the dogs. Otterness is very proud of his trained border collies.
"They have so many sheep, their dogs run over the backs of the sheep to move them," said Otterness, concluding, "They do the herding all right, but they’re not as good as the border collies."