Shelby in the news

By the way, Robin wrote this post, not Rusty. I'm trying to get wordpress straightened out. Farm Club member and friend, Shelby, nonchalantly  told me the other day that she was going to be featured in the Wall Street Journal! We'll have to wait for the story to come out to find out what they write, but the photographer who spent the day with Shelby did some of his photo shoot here. I think the fiber and sheep world was new to  Jason Henry .

Paulette is always a good ambassador.

.The sheep were fairly cooperative.

I wish I could have spend the day with Jason, gleaning more photography tips. I look forward to seeing his photos.

Sorting ewes

This is getting confusing. This post is by me, Robin, even though it says it's by Rusty. He has his own blog and did not write this post and this is not his blog. Rusty's blog is here. Today was breeding group sorting day. Many thanks to Dona, a Farm Club member, who helped me all afternoon (and brought cookies).All the lilac ewes or those with lilac parents went to Hudson's paddock. He didn't waste time. Three of seven are marked.

Clint whispering sweet nothings to Delilah.

Faulkner  wasn't to be left behind.

The Puddleduck ram lamb (I still haven't decided on a name) is on the left in the picture. He isn't quite 6 months yet and was given a challenging group of girls to work with. He's starting to get the hang of what he is supposed to do, but the ewes are giving him a hard time.

Ruby Peak Linden and Meridian Clapton are the other two ram lambs I'm using. Linden seemed more interested in food tonight but Clapton got right to business although he had to work hard to reach the adult ewes in his group.

It's fun to see the colored rears and know to expect lambs in 5 months, but I hope we have some good rains before shearing day so the marks won't be so obvious.

A plethora of rams

It's almost time to put the rams in with the ewes. I've been looking at my sheep list to match up ewes and rams. It makes the most sense for me to use only 2 or 3 rams. Keep the biggest group in the pasture and smaller groups where they will need to be fed hay. But I have an exciting stable of new rams to try. So I think that I'll have more groups than is really smart.Faulkner is going to be used on some older ewes . This is an experiment to see how crossbred lambs will do for the meat market. My guess is that they will be ready for market sooner and at a higher weight. There may be some interesting pelts as well. Faulkner is a character. Dan says that he reminds him of the Grateful Dead. "truckin', just keep truckin' on"."Hey, man, good grass."

Mud Ranch's Hudson is a lilac ram with spectacular horns. He will be bred to all my lilac ewes or those with lilac parents. It's been several years since I've had lilac lambs and Hudson will give me plenty. (Most Jacobs are black and white. Lilac refers to a color other than black--usually a brownish-gray.)

This is the yearling, Sweetgrass Clint, ready for some ewes. He came from Michigan last year.

Clint's son, Clapton, out of Meridian Jazz. He will be 6 months old the first week of October. I hope he'll be ready to work soon. His horns and fleece look great. I would have shown him at State Fair but somehow he knocked out 3 teeth just prior to the show. You can't take a sheep with a bloody mouth to the fair. Clapton is an "E" generation lamb and I'd like to breed my unrelated E ewes to him.

Here is one of the new ram lambs, #337 is from Ingrid Painter's Puddleduck flock in Oregon. He needs a name.

Ruby Peak Linden is also from Oregon. These two rams lambs will be 6 months old in mid-October. I'm going to give them both some ewes and see what happens.

If I haven't forgotten anyone that is already 6 rams, which is more than enough. So these ram lambs may have to wait until next year unless someone buys them this season. This is Meridian Siskiyou, sired by one of my favorite rams, Tioga.

This two horn ram has a great horn spread and I'll probably keep him around to see how he turns out.

I like the horn spread on this ram also. I like his color, also, even though he is on the dark side and should not be used with ewes who are also very dark. His wool looks quilted in this photo but is is not when you see him in real life.

A sheep adventure with 2 friends and a dog

I heard via e-mail that there were a couple of sheep in need of rescue. The owners had lost their property and had moved out of state. They needed someone to pick up the sheep. I don't normally take in unwanted sheep, but these were two that had been purchased from me as lambs and had never been around other sheep or goats. So I rounded up my friends (Chris and Colleen) with the enticement (bribe) that there was another fiber event going on in the area and my dog and we drove to Placerville. The first hard part was finding the place. We had very detailed instructions, but I'm glad that there was someone to read them as I was driving. I knew that Rusty couldn't effectively herd these sheep with a cone on his head so I found a rib band from our collection of arm/foot/shoulder injury paraphernalia and put that around his middle so that the drain tube wouldn't get hung up on a bush.  The sheep gathering itself went surprisingly well (you can read about that on Rusty's blog as he described it fairly well, if you can get over his know-it-all attitude). What Rusty didn't say is that, even with his skill and expertise, we never would have got those sheep in without the extra friends and the panels.

Next stop was the Yarnival, a celebration of the opening of the PluckyFluff workshop at a winery in Placerville. It seems like I usually recognize everyone at out local fiber events, but the PluckyFluff following includes a different group of people. There were vendors, live music, and pizza on the winery grounds. I don't usually take my dog to events like this, but I couldn't leave him in the hot car (the sheep were OK in the back with the shade) so he came along.

The yarns are wild and crazy. I'm not sure how you actually use most of them, but they are certainly fun to look at.

This is a collection of handspun yarns from around the world made into the "world's largest skein".

Here is a detail of that yarn.

There were a few sheep and goats around. Isn't this a beautiful colored Wensleydale? Do you notice the color of the dirt? Dirt in the Placerville area is red. That sure makes for a beautiful sheep, but I'm told that under that red color this sheep is really a brilliant white.

A huge Angora rabbit.

The little girl at the end of the bunny' leash was walking it right towards Rusty. I told Rusty to lie down and cautioned the girl to avoid the dog.

An amusing sign.

Ideas for my husband since we have at least 3 places that need handrails.

Same lesson learned again

Before I start this post I should say that Rusty was not supposed to publish his post to MY blog. He has his own now. I don't know what gibberish he was thinking when he wrote that. It must have been the drugs he was given. MY BLOG POST: What lesson is that? The one about not putting off things that should be done now.This may look like a gate, but it is not. It is a welded wire panel that I open to get in this pen. A gate has hinges and it swings. But enough of that. This panel has to act like a gate in that I need to be able to get into the pen and let my dog into the pen. Here is another view of the panel.

Do you see a problem? If a Border Collie (or a person) goes running through this opening solely focused on sheep he might run into those points. I used to have this covered, but the covering fell off a couple of days ago and I hadn't bothered to find the wire to fix it. This is the result:

It could have been much worse. Several years ago we had an emergency vet visit for a pig that tore open several inches of skin and fat and was supposed to go to the fair the next day. I guess I could have sewn this up myself but I live only 10 minutes from the vet and she happened to be in and I didn't want to be bitten and I don't know what I'm doing. So Rusty had a vet visit. (When he wrote his blog he didn't seem to know what had happened to him. I didn't even know he had been injured until later in the day. He ran right past that fence and worked the sheep like he was supposed to.)

So here is the fix for the fence. (Now you know why you haven't thrown away all the hoses with bad ends.)

Here is the fix for the dog. There are staples and a rubber tubing that acts as a drain. Isn't that one sad puppy? He wants back in the sheep pen.

Dreaming, wobbly, what's on my head?

No one is in the house and the computer is free. MY TURN. I know that Robin set up this blog for me, but she said that she'd need to help me with it... Things are fuzzy. Spinning. I'm up. Chasing rabbits through alfalfa fields...walking around in the kitchen...can't see to the side...daisies...

I remember getting in the car with Robin. We went to the sheep vet's place...

Little pink sheep floating through the sky...drool is running out of the thing on my head...biting the old tire swing and flying, flying, flying up in the air...pawing at the plastic thing on my head.

I like the vet when she comes out because it means we're doing something with sheep. I don't like going to her place. She had funny things sticking in her ears and she touched my side with the end of it. I had to walk past a scary horse to stand on a wobbly platform. "55" they said.

...1 UPS truck, 2 UPS trucks, 3 UPS trucks, 4 UPS trucks, Fed Ex, 5 UPS trucks...I keep running into things...chasing herons and eagles out of the canal...Pawing the plastic thing.

The vet shaved hair off my side and stuck me with needles. Then Robin carried me into the house and the cat came over to bother me. Now this plastic thing bothers me.

...running around sheep, away, come by, away, come by...I remember I helped Robin catch the big ram named Hudson. I think I did it very well and she could get a halter on him to give him medicine. He stays away from me like he is supposed to.

OK. I hear Robin talking to me but I can't see her unless I turn my head and then I bump into something. I give up.

Boys will be boys

You saw the photos of the new girls in the flock and how they ran out to greet the rest of the sheep. I brought home two ram lambs as well. This is Puddleduck 337 (needs a name) and his fleece is below.

This is Ruby Peak Linden.

I put 337 and Linden in the pen with Faulkner and his little buddies (4-horn April ram lamb and 2-horn wether). I figured that there wouldn't be any issues because the lambs are still on the young side.

Linden, however, thought that he could take on the big guy.

 Faulkner finally had enough of the pipsqueak and decided to put him in his place.

One more time for good measure.

That should do it. Now they can be friends.

Wonderful awards

This is the "official" photo of me with Meridian Vicki and the judge, Martin Dally. (Thanks, Shannon.) This is a close-up of the award.

Shannon Phifer created needle-felted awards for the Champion Ram and Champion Ewe of the show. I am so pleased to bring this home. Did Shannon have some prior insight? We think that the sheep on the award looks very much like Vicki.

But there is more! The winning sheep was also awarded a halter with a personalized tag!

New sheep in the flock

When I went to the Jacob Sheep Breeders AGM I took 9 sheep with me. I came home with 10. That was not the original plan. However, five of those sheep are new to the flock. I don't have all the right paperwork yet so I don't remember what Karen named this little girl, but she is from the bide a wee farm in Oregon.This is bide a wee Jewell. Karen and I were going to trade lambs and when I couldn't decide between the two lambs, they said that they would trade for both. They have beautiful fleeces and I can't wait for shearing day! Another new face is this pretty ewe lamb from Mud Ranch in California. I am waiting for her paperwork too and I don't remember what Joan named her.

This is a preview of the Mud Ranch lamb's fleece.

This pretty lamb is one of my flock. I feel kind of guilty for not trading or selling her, but not guilty enough that I can't be glad to have her in the flock. This is the little ewe who almost won Best Fleece in the sheep show. (Is it OK to spend the rest of your life saying I "almost won"? I'm proud of that because she was second to the Kenleigh Acres ram who has consistently won everything he has been entered in (and deserves it).This is my little ewe's fleece. I guess I need to name her now since she is staying here. Her dad is Tioga and her mom is Zip (out of Zelda, whose mom is Zena). How about Zippy? I don't know if that has quite the image that I want for her.

The three new girls plus Z--- joining the rest of the flock.

I brought home some boys too, but i think they deserve a post of their own.

More from AGM

Yesterday was a busy day at AGM but I didn't get many photos as I was involved in many of the events. I did not have room to bring rams to AGM so took a few photos of the ram show. This is Shannon and Joan with their ram lambs. Shannon's ram, who is going to live with Joan, won Champion Ram.

Rams are sometimes challenging to show.

I will have to wait until friends send me photos of the ewe classes. My yearling ewe won Champion ewe. I was also pleased that the ewe lamb I entered in the Best Fleece class almost won that class. The judge looked at my ewe lamb and Shannon's ram lamb, went back and forth between the two, talked about them both, and then gave the award to Shannon (whose ram is truly beautiful). Even though in the real life of livestock production awards don't mean anything (and some of the best producing sheep would never win a ribbon) it's sure fun when you do win!

Workshops were scheduled after the sheep show. I taught a rainbow dye class to about a dozen women.

Shannon taught wet felting...

...and needle-felting.

We enjoyed excellent meals and company and meeting new people and a lot of sheep changed hands. I had a full load on the way back (in fact one more sheep came home with me than I took north) and didn't dawdle on the drive. The temperature hit 100 by the time I was in Redding and didn't go below 90 until I was about 45 minutes from home. (I have A/C, but the sheep do not.) I think this was the fastest trip I've ever made back from the Eugene area. It was about 7 1/2 hours (including my 9 minute nap at the Rogue River rest stop).

Back in California.

JSBA AGM in OR

What is that title--alphabet soup? No, it's the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association Annual General Meeting in Oregon. That's where I am right now. The AGM is hosted this year by my friends, Shannon and Tony Phifer of Kenleigh Acres Farm. I drove here yesterday with 9 sheep and a truck full of fleeces, dye equipment (for a workshop), etc. Most of the activities are at Shannon's neighbor's place. There is a wonderful barn with plenty of room for all the sheep and people.

Jacob breeders came from as far away as Pennsylvania and Missouri.

Before the official start of activities Karen Lobb of bide a wee Farm gave some pointers to people who had brought fleeces to enter in the wool show.

It could be said that Karen really gets into her job. What do you think? Maybe it was this touch that helped present the winning fleece of the show, exhibited by Joan of Mud Ranch Jacobs.

This is Doug Montgomery evaluating fleeces in the wool show.

"What about Me?" says Rusty

"I just read that last post that Robin wrote and the most important face wasn't there! I'll take care of that." "This is me when I first came to live with Robin and her family."

"I remember this day. Robin was taking picture of baby lambs and this one just didn't understand that I'm in charge here."

"Who ever heard of a lamb in the house? I don't know why those people think lambs should be in the house. A lamb in the house...Geeez! (By the way, I think this lamb now lives with my friend, Mobi. I hope Mobi's mom doesn't bring the lamb in the house.)"

"This is where sheep should be and this is what I should be doing about 20 hours/day."

"Sometimes I get to go for runs across the road. Not quite as good as herding, but when there are no sheep around, it's OK."

"Robin and her crazy husband took me on a 14 miles hike. I don't know why they didn't cool off in the water at the end."

"Here I am keeping the Farm Club in line and making sure that lamb doesn't escape."

"Do you like hearing from me? This is kind of fun. Maybe I'll sneak to the computer again sometime."

Faces on the Farm

   A ram lamb with a nice horn spread.

Hudson surrounded by the young rams.

A ewe lamb.

Amaryllis

More amaryllis

Paulette and her lambs born at State Fair.

 Just another pretty face.

Stephanie.

The youngest ram lamb born in the spring and Clint's only son. He would have gone to the State Fair except that he injured his mouth and lost three front teeth the week before.

 Faulkner.

Gravity is our friend

Gravity is a big help when it comes to moving 30 tons of hay into the barn. Chris moved into "favorite child" status as he spent the day moving part of my 6 stacks of hay into the barn. I spent most of the time moving accumulated stuff to make room for the hay, moving pallets, and using gravity at the top of the stack, but I got to take a 2 hour break when I had people here for a weaving class.

This is Chris on top of the fourth stack.Here is what 10 tons looks like in the barn.

Gravity is a big help for my part of moving hay, but Chris gets to do all of the anti-gravity part. He moved about 17 tons of hay today...only 13 to go!

Photos on the farm

I needed to get photos of lambs to update my website. It's hard to sell a 5 month old lamb with photos taken when it was 2 months old. I sorted lambs, took photos and then somehow between the camera and the computer the photos were gone. They disappeared off the card. Take 2. Now the sheep were out in the pasture. I had moved the portable electric fence so that the sheep would graze the ditch in anticipation of irrigating this week.

The dallis-grass is heading out. At this stage it's hard to get the sheep to eat it all. They don't like the stalks and the leaves are getting coarse.

It's kind of hard to get photos of sheep in this jungle. The flowering part of the dallis-grass is also sticky. The sheep get sticky grazing here and then the dirt sticks to them. It will take a good rain to clean off the fleeces.

Amaryllis doesn't seem to mind the dust and dirt.

In fact, I think she likes it.

It's easier to get photos of sheep back in the corral area.

Do you suppose it's time to wean some lambs?

A pretty pose.

Being a Tourist in VT

Katie and I crammed a lot into two days and didn't have to drive more than about an hour away. We spent all day yesterday at the Shelburne Museum. There is too much to see in one day and, in fact, your ticket buys you two consecutive days.  I think it would be hard to absorb any more if you really spend time reading all the signs and looking at everything.

This is just one room of Shaker tools. Behind Katie there are more tools, wood stoves, and a lot of things that I can't identify.

Here is the Jacquard loom in the weaving shed.

How about a two-handed spinning wheel? There are two bobbins and the docent told us that one person used this wheel to spin two bobbins at a time.

This is a portion of a reed from a loom--made with real reeds.

There is an entire house displaying weather vanes, whirly-gigs, and ships' mast-heads.

The Museum grounds are full of incredible buildings. This horseshoe-shaped barn houses dozens of sleighs and buggies on two levels. Other buildings house a 1":1' scale circus train, blacksmith shop, printing presses, dental office, general store, apothecary, toys, dolls, quilts, wooden decoys. Can you imagine entire displays of glass canes, trivets, crystal glasses, hatboxes, embroidery samplers? The list goes on. At the end of the day when we found there was only about 35 minutes until closing we breezed through the Fashion exhibit and had to skip a couple of other buildings.

 We came home exhausted and finished the evening by making triple chocolate ice cream in Katie's new Kitchen Aid ice cream maker and watching the DVD of Cavalia that I had given Katie for Christmas after having seen the show.

It rained last night and that was good, for I guess two weeks without rain in VT in the summer is considered almost a drought. Today we drove south and went to three more tourist attractions.

Living in California, I don't know much about "sugaring" so this was an interesting exhibit. Especially fun was the tasting room. There is quite a difference between the mild and the stronger flavored maple syrup, but all are good.

We drove past and through picturesque  covered bridges on our way to the next stop.

The Vermont Marble Museum is fascinating. It is housed in what was once a huge mill/warehouse and has rooms full of exhibits and marble. Lots of marble. There is a poignant exhibit describing the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The marble for the monument came from Colorado but was designed and finished in Vermont. There are marble portraits of all the U.S. Presidents up through Bush #1. Take a look below.

 This is a huge room full of slabs of all kinds of marble. I had no idea there was this much variety.

Our day wasn't finished. We had passed a sign that said "Castle 3 miles". Why not?

The Wilson Castle was built in the mid-1800's for almost $1.5 million!

It is a spectacular building with an interesting history, but I think I liked the outside veranda best. Doesn't the tile floor look woven?

More VT  tourism reports tomorrow!

Visiting Vermont

Why Vermont? That's where my daughter lives right now. I travelled all day Thursday (4 planes and 14 hours) to get here and spent today hanging around the farm. Katie had to work for a few hours this morning so her landlord, Carl, showed me around the place. The road runs through the property.  The barn and arena are on one side and the houses are on the other. The property goes to the river that is at the base of the hill in the background. The forest on the hills on both sides of the property is National Forest.

This is the house where Katie and Kurtis live. The entrance on the right is a common entrance way. Katie and Kurtis live in the house on the left side and Carl and Leslie live in the back, and have an office on the right, but it is all attached somehow. Everyone shares chores and I don't think Katie could have found a nicer living situation.

I took this photo of the bed I'm using because that is the blanket that I made for Katie after Christmas. I used a lot of my mom's handspun yarn to weave it. I was unhappy with the size and the "ruffly" edges after fulling, but it works great on this bed and is quite soft.

Libby will follow Katie anywhere. I think Libby might even remember me.

Tomorrow we're off to the Shelburne Museum.

Green Gold

It's time to make a deal on winter-time hay. Here is the hay I'm going to buy.

I'm getting 5 stacks (80 bales each). This is what the rest of it looks like:

When you scape away the outer sun-bleached leaves you see the green beneath. This is very fine-stemmed hay and there will be minimal waste when feeding. Sheep don't like coarse hay and they leave a lot behind. At the price of hay this year, these stacks are like gold. The price of hay is a good reason to sell off excess sheep before the winter when I need to start feeding hay instead of pasture.

This the field where the hay was grown.

And here is a close-up of the plant when flowering.

Celebrating 25 years

This is our 25th anniversary. (Chris said "that's longer than I've been alive!...oh, yea.) We decided to spend the day doing something beside working here. We headed west to see the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore. It turns out that the lighthouse is closed on Tuesdays, but it was a beautiful day at the coast anyway. The only thing we missed was walking down (and up) the 300 stairs to the lighthouse.

The signs say that this is the "windiest point on the American Pacific coast" with winds regularly at 40 mph and reaching 100 mph. It is also often foggy in the summer. We lucked out. This was one of the nicest days that I've ever had on the coast.

That's the Farallon Islands in the distance, about 20 miles from Pt. Reyes.

There are harbor seals on those rocks.

After visiting the lighthouse (well, the cliffs above the lighthouse), we drove back through the hills to one of the beach access trails and saw pretty landscape and wildlife on the way.

...and not so wild-life. Within the National Seashore there are several working dairies with signs that say the ranches were established in the 1850-s to 1870's. We were thinking that it would have been a long way to haul milk to San Francisco unless there was boat transport across the bay.

There are 10 miles of beach in this stretch.

I took a lot of photos of waves--maybe not National Geographic quality, but the color is pretty nice.

To another 25 years!

CA State Fair Wrap-up

I have just spent an hour trying to upload photos to Flickr so that it would be easy to share a lot of photos. Every time I do it then I get a message that says I'm deleting the album. Grrrr. So I'll post a few here now and maybe more later.

Shelby, Mary, and Dona helped on show day. Shelby helped clean up and show sheep, Mary held down the fort at the display/sheep area, and Dona took photos.

Dan is showing Meridian Granite and I have Sweetgrass Clint in the Yearling Ram Class.

Here is what the rest of the class was like. Shetlands, Jacobs, and St. Croix (hair sheep). The Shetland at the front of the line in this photo won the class and, ultimately, Champion Ram of the Primitive Breeds Show. Granite was second in this class and Clint was 5th.

My entries in the ram lamb class.

Vickie and Hot Lips in the Yearling Ewe class.

Leaving Shelby with three sheep while Dan and I got two more for the Flock class.

That's Granite on the right, two yearling ewes, and two ewe lambs. We didn't shine in these classes, mostly placing in the middle. That's a little disappointing, but we always tell people new to showing that it doesn't really matter what the judge says. Many judges aren't that familiar with Jacob sheep and it seems pretty hard to judge this kind of class anyway. On the other hand, if you win, you certainly tell all!

This is a view of the sheep pens...

...and the display area.

Notice the ribbons here. This is what I work hard to get. I have been trying for 4 years to win the Open Sheep Marketing Award. I got 2nd this year again (although placed over last year's winner), but was awarded Best Program, Best Educational Presentation (Sheep Herdsman), and 2nd in Best Educational Presentation over the whole 3 weeks of the fair (including all the species shown). So I'm pleased with this and there is always next year to get to #1. Farm Club, are you ready?