"The sheep shearers are coming tomorrow?" Freddy asked.  

When his father nodded his head, Freddy yelled, "Yipee!"  

Every spring men came to the farm and sheared the wool off the sheep.   Freddy loved to stand and watch.   The shearers had scissors and they clipped along the sheep's belly, sides and back, as if they were cutting off the sheep's fleece coat.   The wool came off smoothly and lay in a pile on the barn floor.  

Two men brought sheep in for the shearers or took a newly shorn sheep and led it back to the pen.   Two other men did the shearing.  

Freddy's father gathered up the piles of wool and carried them to a long wooden table.   In the middle of the table was a four-sided wooden box.   Each side lay flat on the table top.   It had heavy cord that lay inside the wooden box.  

Pa put the wool into the box, brought up each side and pressed it tightly into place.   He then tied the wool with heavy cord, dropped the sides of the box and took out a perfectly formed squared-shaped bale of wool.  

He carried the bales to the other side of the barn and laid them on the floor of the hay wagon.   At the end of the day, the hay wagon was piled high with neat bales of wool.  

A week later, a man from the wool factory, came to the farm, paid Pa for the wool and hauled it away in his truck.