Following the Spring North

The Shearing Tour is a hard thing to explain. There’s really nothing else like it. It lives somewhere between work and wandering, structure and improvisation. Like most things, you have to live it to understand it.

For 100 days each spring, we’re on the move. 400+ farms. 12 states. 16,000 miles. Two RAV4s. Five close friends. One feisty chihuahua. And thousands of memories along the way. Since its genesis in 2022, Riversong Shearing has evolved a long way from the early days of Bri and Luke shearing late into the night, crippled by imposter syndrome, praying that their work would be good enough to afford their next meal and a place to sleep each night.

Today, the stakes are much less dire. We still work sunrise to sunset, but now the load is shared between five hardy 20-some-year-olds. We sleep in tents, cook on camp stoves, and follow the quiet authority of a sprawling, color-coded Google spreadsheet mapping out where we need to be at every hour of every day for 100 days. And yet still within that structure, we find room for spontaneity: surfing up the Atlantic, freediving in deep blue springs, kayaking with manatees, picnicking with friends on the beach, marveling at rocket launches under the night sky, and sharing long meals with farmers who’ve become something closer to old friends.  

I joined in the spring of 2024, drawn in by friendship with Luke and Bri and the promise of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. I didn’t know then how quickly it would root itself into the bedrock of my year—how each Spring would begin to feel like a return. And for as much as we get sick of each other, I wouldn’t rather spend 100 days of hard grueling work with anyone else. Luke, Bri, Kat, and Kyle are my family.

Jonnah, from Mad Agriculture, and I connected haphazardly after that first season through a mutual friend. In a time where the average age of a shearer is 55, Jonnah encouraged me to document this rare seasonal convergence of young nomadic shearers. The following season, I returned equipped with a stack of disposable cameras and a fresh journal. 

The process was not as easy as I expected. Days flew by faster than I could write about them. Notes were hastily scribbled in the passenger seat driving between clients, letters bent by the jolts in the road. Nights were spent hunched in a tent under the faint glow of a headlamp, retracing the outline of what had already passed. The camera, just as often, stayed tucked away when it mattered most. Striking a balance between capturing the moment and living it fully is easier said than done. 

What remains is imperfect. Fragmented. A record shaped as much by what was missed as what was captured. Still, it feels true to the experience—something like a scrapbook of Shearing Tour 2025, shared here, a little wider than intended.

Christoper Hastings