Baa-rmy! Savvy sheep courting fame at Cannon Hall Farm

To celebrate the farm’s first ever Shear Genius Sheep Shearing Festival, the farm has employed actors, story-tellers, and crafters to come in to the farm and showcase their amazing sheep to visitors.

The rhyming story - which will be delivered by colourful character Farmer Hall at several sessions throughout the day - tells listeners about a young male sheep who was born bald, and his adventures through life with his fluffy friends. It culminates in a dashing escape plan to shear themselves and avoid Farmer Dave (the one with the clippers who gives terrible haircuts.)

The event will be supported by daily sheep shearing demonstrations and a ‘secret sheep search’ where children can follow the clues to be in with a chance of winning a prize.

Cannon Hall Farm, in Cawthorne, Barnsley is run by the Nicholson family and employs almost 200 staff. Farmer Robert Nicholson, director, said: “There’s always so much interest in our farm when we do Lambing Live that we wanted to make a bigger thing of the sheep shearing time. It’s really important to us that we educate people about farming, but deliver it in a way that makes it fun for children to understand.

“We had plenty of people come and spend the night with us to watch our shepherds lamb - so now we thought it would be great to talk about where our sheep fleeces go once they are shorn - and showing them the skill it takes to shear a sheep and why we do it.

“We thought it would be fun to pop a story in because Farmer Dave sheared an alpaca last year and it looked like he had done it with his eyes closed - so he wanted to prove he could do better with the sheep. We’ve been teasing him about it ever since, so we thought we’d go one further and get a story about how the sheep want to shear themselves instead of letting him do it.”

The Shear Genius - Sheep Shearing Festival will run at Cannon Hall Farm from May 28 to June 5. All details are at Click here