Abraham Shearing is owned and operated by Paerata & Cushla Abraham based in the Wairarapa. Very much a whānau oriented business, both Paerata and Cushla grew up with parents working in the sheds and are sharing these experiences with their two young girls. Many of their employees, are siblings, cousins and wider whānau members.
Their services include shearing, wool handling, crutching with their transportable crutching trailers and Paerata is also an NCEA accredited shearing tutor. Paerata and many of his staff are also Speed Shear Competitors, with Paerata being one of the top speed shearers in New Zealand. Through travelling the country to attend speed shear shows, Paerata noticed the media coverage of these shows to be quite low or non existent.
Paerata competing
Paerata and Cushla created a facebook page called Shedtalk and began live streaming all the speed shearing competitions they were attending around Aotearoa. Their following on facebook quickly grew and attracts a global audience and some of their most popular livestreams have had more than 300,000 views. Leveraging their long standing connections with other shearers and wool handlers in the industry, Shedtalk now have the ability to live stream speed shear shows in Australia via their platform.
The latest venture, has been the launch of the podcast titled ‘The Closed Board’ podcast. With almost 20 episodes under their belts, in this podcast Paerata interviews well known shearers and wool handlers, discussing the sport and the way competitive shearing has evolved over the years. The Podcast has also featured Mavis Mullins, the first Māori woman to be inducted into the Business Hall of Fame, and Olympic Gold Medalist, Sarah Hirini.
In July 2021, Abraham Shearing received PGF funding as a contribution towards the purchase of 13 new hand pieces, a transportable electric wool press and specialised trailer. Off the back of this investment, Paerata and Cushla have hired 4 full time employees and additional casual workers to cover the main shearing season.
