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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015
Team of sheep shearers has only one speed — fast
Dusty McCord
can shear 400
sheep in a day
By JAN JACKSON
For the Capital Press
JUNCTION CITY — If it takes you longer
than 1 minute and 20 seconds to shear a sheep,
your chances of beating Dusty McCord are nil.
McCord and his fellow shearing team mem-
bers decided to stage an impromptu eight-hour
shearing contest last month as they started on
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ing to Wall 3 Ranch in the southern coastal Or-
egon town of Langlois.
The winner hands-down was 26-year-old
McCord, who sheared 400 sheep in 8 hours.
He was followed by Mike Cowdrey with 260
sheep, Chris Mayorga with 245, Woody Bab-
cock with 206 and Morgan McKenzie with
185.
It’s not a world record for McCord, but his
team thinks it might be U.S. record.
“We just thought it would be fun so we did
it,” McCord said of the last-minute contest.
They started at 8 a.m., took 30-minute breaks
every 2 hours, took an hour off for lunch, and
sheared until 6 p.m.
“I was excited and nervous all through
it and got tired a few times but I didn’t slow
down,” he said. “I didn’t let myself think about
the other guys, just raced the clock.”
McCord, who was born and raised in Mon-
roe, learned to shear from his father and grand-
father.
“I watched my dad and grandpa shear and
it looked like fun to me,” McCord said. “I
got them to show me how to do it and started
shearing for hire in 2008. I love it. I get to com-
pete with my friends every day and have fun
traveling on top of it.”
He’s gone to New Zealand a couple of
times, but mostly travels around Oregon, Idaho
and Washington shearing sheep.
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regularly in Ireland, the United Kingdom,
South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
While speed and skill are key, International
Sheep Shearing Association judges also check
the quality of work and animal welfare.
Mike Cowdrey, a third-generation shearer
who claims an over-age-55 record of 260 sheep
sheared in a day, participated in the contest.
“My son shears, and my dad was still shear-
ing 100 sheep a day when he was 74, so I can’t
let up,” Cowdrey said. “After Dusty hit 400
sheep in eight hours, we spent three days on
the Internet trying to see if he broke a record.
Jan Jackson/For the Capital Press
Dusty McCord sheared 400 lambs in eight hours to win his team’s sheep-shearing contest.
‘I watched my dad and grandpa
shear and it looked like fun to me. I got
them to show me how to do it and started
shearing for hire in 2008. I love it. I get to
compete with my friends every day and
have fun traveling on top of it.’
Dusty McCord
26-year-old sheep shearer
New Zealand has the world records tied up, but
we think Dusty holds it for the U.S.”
The team works together through the sea-
son.
“Mike and I both have shearing trailers and
it depends on the job which one we use,” Mc-
Cord said. “It also doesn’t matter which team
member gets the call, we pick up the phone and
call the rest of them. We get paid by the head so
the harder we work, the more money we make.
For me it is like a drug addiction, except we’re
only addicted to competing with ourselves. It
is great to get to do this every day with your
friends.”
Dusty McCord, top left, is shown with his his shearing team members. At the top right is Chuck McBeth; Mike Cowdrey is at the far
left; and sitting are Kenny McBeth, left, and Chris Mayorga. They sheared 1,296 sheep in a single day.
Jan Jackson/For the Capital Press
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much? Fracking’s part of it
By RIK STEVENS
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.H. — North-
easterners who are digging deeper
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wood this season can add a new
scapegoat to the roster of usual
market forces: fracking.
Yep, a timber industry rep-
resentative in New Hampshire
said those hydraulic fracturing
well sites in Pennsylvania’s Mar-
cellus Shale formation to suck
natural gas out of the ground are
using construction “mats” made
of hardwood logs — think of the
corduroy roads seen in sepia-toned
photographs from the 1800s — to
get heavy equipment over mucky
ground, wetlands or soft soils.
That increased demand has
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places. Prices in parts of New En-
gland are averaging $325 a cord
and can even push past $400 for
a seasoned, delivered load. That’s
anywhere from $50 to $75 more
a cord than last year — or an in-
crease of 18 to 23 percent.
Jasen Stock, executive di-
rector of the New Hampshire
Timberland Owners Association,
said it’s not just fracking sites that
are hogging the logs. Pipelines
and transmission wires — real-
ly any large-scale construction
project — have in the past three
years ramped up the appetite for
the perfect mat log: a hardwood
trunk, 16 to 20 feet long and 8 to
10 inches in diameter.
As a result, the cost of cord-
wood on the stump (that is, live
trees) went from $10 in 2012 in
northern New Hampshire to $15
this year, Stock said.
“If you’re putting in a power
line or gas line over wetlands or
soft soil, they use thousands and
thousands of these mats, and
they’re made of hardwood logs,”
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wood business, that’s your sweet
spot. That’s the log you want.”
About 2.5 million households
Adamson
jiu-jitsu team
members
strike gold
The Daily Astorian
Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo
Clever stacking of firewood on the front porch of Terri and Bob Tomchak’s cozy home in Bridg-
ton, Maine, allows them to enjoy the view from their living room window. The couple burns
about four cords of firewood each winter. Some consumers who may have switched over to
wood over the past several years as heating oil prices ratcheted up are feeling a little buyer’s
remorse but continue to keep the woodpiles stocked even as prices push over $400 a cord.
The Adamson Brothers jiu-jitsu team, Riberio
Jiu-Jitsu, returned from the Seattle International
Open with three local gold medal winners, in the
International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation event
held Oct. 24 at Everett Community College.
Winning gold were: Michelle Johnson (compet-
ing in the White Belt/adult/female/super heavy divi-
sion); Jason Lambert (Purple/master2/male/heavy);
and Nik Gift (Brown/adult/male/middle).
Jason Lambert won bronze (Open Absolute
Male); Tim Cox did not place (Purple/master1/male/
feather).
Team-wise, Gracie Barra Academy took top hon-
ors with 237 points, followed by Atos Jiu-Jitsu (188)
and Riberio (157).
The team is coached by Nate Adamson.
The International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation is
a for-profit company
SCOREBOARD
PREP SCHEDULE
in the U.S. burned wood to keep
warm in 2013, just 2.1 percent of
total households but up from the
1.7 percent that stoked stoves in
2005, according to the U.S. census.
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higher in more heavily forested
New England states like Vermont
(16.3 percent), Maine (12.7) and
New Hampshire (7.7), as well as
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Idaho (7.8) and Oregon (7.1).
While New England shivered
and shoveled through the winter
whomping of 2014-15, the Pacif-
ic Northwest stayed mild, mean-
ing more supply and steadier pric-
es this year.
If the National Weather
Service’s forecast of a warm-
er-than-average winter in New
England holds up, that could
mean fewer logs burned this
winter, more robust stockpiles of
seasoned wood come springtime
and potentially lower prices next
year. But it won’t help consumers
who’ve already locked in their
supplies this fall.
Other uses — pulp and paper
mills still value hardwood and pel-
let producers and biomass plants
also nibble on stockpiles — have
also given loggers more markets.
“There’s only so much wood
around,” said Jonathan Clark, own-
er of Treehugger Farms in Westmo-
reland, New Hampshire. The price
for his kiln-dried cord went up $10
this season, to $360. Demand, he
said, has stayed the same.
“Our calls started early this
year and have continued steady,”
he said. “Even now, we’re getting
people who are having trouble
getting their wood in.”
When oil prices started to bub-
ble up, more people in the forest
states saw wood as a desirable, lo-
cally sourced, cleaner and cheap-
er alternative. But even as heating
oil prices tanked this year, wood
got more expensive.
In Maine, where seasoned
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a cord or more, many customers
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of heating oil prices around $2 a
gallon. A few are even ditching
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“In a year where oil spikes, we
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fast enough. But this just isn’t one
of those years,” said Jeff Lemon
from Four Seasons Firewood in
Searsmont, Maine.
Some of the continued de-
mand is likely coming from
people who converted to wood-
stoves and are sticking with it. In
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man will heat his farmhouse with
about six cords of wood this year
at a cost of $230 each. Vermonters
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TODAY
Football — South Umpqua at
Astoria, 6:30 p.m.; Warrenton at
Portland Christian, 7 p.m.; Ver-
nonia at Knappa, 7 p.m.; Twin
Valley at Naselle, 7 p.m.
SATURDAY
Cross Country — OSAA State
Meet, Lane CC, Eugene, TBA
FOOTBALL
Standings
Cowapa League
League Overall
Scappoose
5-0
7-1
Banks
Astoria
Tillamook
Seaside
Valley Catholic
4-1
3-2
2-3
1-4
0-5
7-1
5-3
3-5
3-5
1-7
Lewis & Clark League
Clatskanie
2-0
3-5
Rainier
2-0
3-5
Portland Chr 0-2
2-6
Warrenton
0-2
3-5
Northwest League
Vernonia
2-0
8-0
Nestucca
2-1
3-3
Knappa
1-1
3-4
Gaston
0-3
1-6
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