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.

"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.

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.

Revisiting the pasture

I have irrigation water coming on tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.  (It comes through Solano Irrigation District and I have to call when I want the water "on"--in my ditches.) Irrigation has been a struggle this year. Even with the water on for 36 hours there are some paddocks that have died back because I can't get water to them. Part of the problem is probably the old culvert--too deep and too small. It is half filled with mud that I can't get out. I taught a weaving class today but after that we went out to tackle the problem. Dan dug the culvert out with the tractor.

For tomorrow's irrigation the water will be running through the ditch. Eventually we need to replace the culvert with a bigger one.

After setting up the tarps to keep the water in the ditches I checked the paddock where I experimented with burning medusahead. This is the plot that my son burned early in the season. He didn't think it was effective but the medusahead is still gone.

The area of trefoil is where I burned the medusahead that was growing over it. This is some of the area that got water but that medusahead is still thick. I hope the pasture plants will choke it out.

This is some of the area that I haven't been able to irrigate. Not much forage there and look at the medusahead cover.

Medusahead closeup.

Here is the trefoil that would be a wonderful replacement for the medusahead. Hopefully irrigation will go a little better tomorrow and we'll get water on those dry areas.

Generations

I have been spending a lot of time learning how to work efficiently in i-photo. I still have about 30 G of photos to move from the PC to the MacBook. I won't bore you with dozens and hundreds of photos of my really cute kids as they were growing up, but here are two photos I like. This is my Mom at about the age that I am now (notice no gray hair) with Marie, the Merino and other friends. That goose is Honky if I remember correctly.

Here is the whole family 20 years ago. The kids are now 30, 22, and 20. The rest of us are just older. Dogs = Brandy, Flash (adopted Border Collie) and Dog.

OK. One cute picture.

A Typical Day...

...or why I don't get everything done that I have planned for a day.

First up is morning chores and spend some time admiring Hudson, my new ram from Mud Ranch Jacobs. Joan brought him yesterday and took home a couple of ewe lambs. Hudson warrants a blog post all by himself, but he'll have to wait for that. Hudson is a lilac ram and by breeding him to my lilac and lilac-carrier ewes I'll have lilac lambs next spring. (Lilac is a Jacob color different than the more common black and white.)

One of the risers in my pasture water line pulled out a couple of days ago and I had to wait for the water to subside to be able to fix it. I left the hole open awhile to make sure that there are no more leaks.

Here is the result of a repaired pipe line--drinking water in the pasture so the sheep don't have to come into the barn for water.

I will have irrigation water tomorrow so I needed to set up tarps in the ditch. The water is provided by the Solano Irrigation District, not my well. The tarps allow the water to back up and fill the ditch and then flow out into the pasture. 

The green forage is the result of irrigating. Even with all the rain we had recently it wasn't enough to keep the desirable pasture plants growing. Notice the brown part on the left. My 24-hour irrigation hasn't been enough to get water to the all the pasture and that brown area is part that wasn't irrigated when I had water on last month. I have asked for 36 hours for this irrigation and hopefully I can get water to the rest of the pasture. Otherwise I have lost about a fifth of my forage for the summer.

This small green area is a section in the eastern paddock that my son burned earlier in the spring. He didn't think that the burn was successful because the medusahead was green and didn't catch fire readily. However, the burning killed it allowing other plants to grow. I want to burn the rest of it but I'm a bit worried about burning now--even if the burning would be permitted now. Maybe next year.

Throw in a littel bird watching in the morning.

Spend some time petting Stephanie...

after trimming her feet which she considers to be an insult.

More bird-watching.

Scrounged and cut wood to fit inside the feeders so that hay won't fall onto the backs of the sheep.

Jackie and Chris came out about 1 to help with halter breaking. (By the way, thanks to all the help, the lambs are showing remarkable improvement after only 3 days.) I thought a couple of them had rather droopy ears.

I pulled these out of one ear and found one other lamb with foxtails bothering her, although not lodged like these were. It makes me wonder how many I'm missing.

That's about half the day, but a long enough post.

Halter breaking

Black Sheep Gathering is coming up at the end of next week so it's time to halter break lambs. A few friends came to help.

The lambs behaved fairly well for their first time on halters.

Bottle-baby Nellie had other ideas.

She was a true drama queen. Halter breaking-Day 2 is today.

Something is up there that shouldn't be.

There are only two reasons that I know of that Rusty doesn't want to go to the barn. One is THUNDER, which we don't have very often. Here is the other:  

Now that the rain has stopped (and, by the way, it is supposed to be in the mid-90's next week) this is Balloon Season. I had another Border Collie who was also afraid of the balloons. I'm not afraid of them but I resent them. If some of you like the romantic idea of floating around in a balloon then stop reading this. I don't want to tarnish your image of them and spoil your fantasies.

Ant Farm. That's what I feel like when there are balloons overhead. Am I supposed to look up from what I'm doing in the yard or the pasture and wave and smile for a photo? Or do I go about my normal work so "they" in the balloon can observe what we do in our natural setting? I tend to go in the barn and stay there until the balloons are far away.

This morning's balloons never made it that close, but for Rusty it's enough to look to the west and see this huge floaty thing that hisses and doesn't belong in the sky.

Experiments with Fire

Faithful readers of this blog will have read my whining about medusahead in the pasture. Medusahead is a noxious annual grass, unpalatable due to high silica content. Due to it's later date of maturation, it is noticeable on the hills as the light green color when the other annual grasses have dried out. After it has gone to seed it leaves a dense litter through which nothing else will germinate. Medusahead covers part of one of my paddocks and is increasing in area. During my visit to Jepson Prairie (see pretty pictures in last post) I read the signs about how they had used prescribed fire to control medusahead. "Fire is usually 100% effective at controlling medusahead if done before its seed heads shatter." A couple of months ago I bought a fire-breather tool (I can't remember the real name) that is attached to a propane tank. It is sold for use in weed control, particularly when weeds are small. It's intended use is to heat the  plants and burst the cells rather than actually setting them on fire. I thought I'd experiment in the field. Having just irrigated (in addition to unexpected May rain) the plants were wet and there was even standing water in many areas of the pasture. I wasn't worried about starting any wildfire.

On the way to the medusahead I saw a thistle. Normally I'd just dig this up, but having a propane tank  rather than a shovel, I blasted it with fire. You can see the singed leaves.

This is the thistle the next day. It may not have killed the whole plant, but you can see how it destroys the part that was heated. If the plant was very small that would be the end of it.

I didn't really have a plan but started burning various parts of the medusahead covered area. Because of the moisture content, I wasn't seeing much fire, but I was singing off the bristly parts of the seeds and burning a little of the litter. Then I noticed this.

Notice the forbs growing under the medusahead. I don't want to kill those plants. I want to encourage them. This made me wonder if it would be effective to just burn (or superheat) the tops of the medusahead. This brought up several questions.  Would super-heating it stop the seed from developing? Are the seeds already viable even though the plants life cycle isn't complete? If I heat the top of the plant enough to burn off the outer part of the seed head will it kill the seeds? If I do this will the plant produce more seed heads? I decided I needed a test-plot.

I used fiberglass fence posts to make 5 plots. The two upright fence posts mark two corners. They are hard to see, but trust me, they are there.

My plots are:

1. Flame (superheat) the tops of the medusahead long enough to burn off the outer halo of the seed heads.  Are the seeds already viable? If they aren't, will this stop their development. If they are viable, will this kill them. I don't know.

2. Flame the tops of the medusahead longer than in #1 so that I can see more damage done to the seed head. Same questions as #1.

3. Flame the stalk of the plant in between the base and the seed head. If the seeds aren't already viable will this stop the development?

4. Flame the base of the plant to damage it.

5. Burn the whole *#@&^% thing.

Remember that the plants are wet from rain, the plants are still green, and in some places there is plenty of ground moisture if not standing water. If this were "normal" conditions I'd probably be starting a fire. And it may be that FIRE is the best answer. Even if I succeeed in reducing the seed produced by the medusahead, in much of the area there is still that heavy thatch which probalby needs to be burned off. And maybe I need to completely remove the plant and it's seed by incinerating it.  But that's another issue.

There are too many photos to post here, but I'll give you an example of what I did.

Here is Plot 2 before burning.

This is a close-up of the tops of the plants after burning.

This is a view of the plot the next day.

This is Plot 3

This is Plot 3 after burning.

Plot 3 the next day.

I don't know what all this will tell me. I didn't set this up so that these are permanent plots and I think I want to burn everything to be sure. But I have raised some questions for which I want to find answers. I know a couple of people to ask. I'll report back if I learn something.

Farm Club Comes Through Again

I sent an e-mail Friday  to the Farm Club  in which I said I was going to vaccinate lambs today and did anyone want to help? Dona and Tina were already planning on being here for a spinning class in the morning so they said that they would stay. Jacki, Shelby, and Allison came too.  Wow! What great response with only 24 hours' notice. I bought a new tool. For years I have been vaccinating with single dose syringes. That means that you have to reload the syringe each time you give an injection.

I just never thought about doing it differently, but I was at Higby's Country Feed Store (my favorite store) and saw this syringe. There is a bit of a learning curve (remember to tighten needle, make sure you depress the handle part all the way, don't drop because the barrel is glass--OOPS!), but what a huge difference it will make after I replace the glass part that broke about a third of the way into the job.

I appreciate all the Farm Club members (who are now friends) who show up for projects like this. Shelby manned the camera, as well as caught lambs and played with the loose chicken.

Alison, Jackie, Tina, and Dona all helped catch and mark lambs and...

fill syringes (after the unfortunate incident with the new one).

Shelby took the following portraits.

After vaccinating I let all the sheep out but then needed to catch one more lamb.

So Rusty had a chance to get involved also.

Thanks to all of you for helping. Wait until you hear about the next unscheduled Farm Day. I think it's coming up soon.

Pasture management revisited

Regular blog readers may know that in the late summer and fall I start complaining about the unpalatable late summer grasses. I'm sorry, but I'm going to complain now even though it is only spring. I only graze about 7 acres so all of it seems precious. We dealt with some of the issues of the thick dallisgrass a couple of weeks ago by burning it. I hope something starts growing where all that heavy thatch was. Today's issue is the condition of the east paddock. Medusahead is a nasty, unpalatable grass that goes to seed in the summer, covering all the soil with thick dry thatch. The medusahead is starting to grow now and the only other thing growing with it is a perennial grass (Elymus--wild rye-- I think) that the sheep don't like either. The rest of the soil is covered with the dry residue from both of these. My goal in this paddock is to  graze it hard enough that they will at least trample and break up the dried up grasses from last year and hopefully eat some of the less palatable grass.

As I was uploading these photos I realized that they don't show what I've been talking about.

This is the view looking south. You can't tell, but it's the east side (left) of the east paddock that has the problem vegetation.  It took them only a day to clear off almost everything in the south part of this paddock (as opposed to 2 days in equal sized paddocks with better vegetation).

They are hungry and ready to move.

I took this photo as I opened the fence and stepped back so I wouldn't get trampled.

Arthritic Stephanie follows the running sheep.

Amaryllis brings up the rear. She will follow Stephanie anywhere.

This view is looking north, from the part of the paddock they just left. In this photo you can't really tell the difference in vegetation between the west (now on the left) and east sides of the paddock. It's much easier in person, but notice where the sheep are. There is no fence keeping them from the east side--it just doesn't have what they want to eat.

Compare this photo to the one where they are running into the new pasture. There is a blue cast to these plants--this is very sparse (although it may not look so in a photo from this angle) and it is so tall because the sheep avoided eating it the last time they were here.

Tomorrow I will start irrigating. I hope for some warm weather to follow so that the clover and trefoil will come in faster.

Meet the Sheep a Success

After a very wet winter, we welcomed fabulous weather (and our first dry weekend) for Meet the Sheep, our annual Open House. Even with the great weather it would not have been such a success without all my friends helping.

Julie set up a dying and drum carding demo area and also brought...

her cute Pygora goats.

Colleen skipped Saturday at he Farmer's Market to bring her Fiber Confections booth here.

Jackie had her booth here and helped people learn to needle-felt.

I don't have photos of everyone but I am grateful to Farm Club members for helping as well as to my friend Chris who worked in the shop.

There were a lot of visitors.

This is Marissa who modeled her first sweater made of handspun yarn, from Jacob wool of course.

New weavers enjoyed the weather, their wine, and a new weaving book.

At the end of an exhausting day Laura finally decided it was time to lamb. Most of the Farm Club members were here watching.

There was relief after Laura delivered a healthy set of twins.

A Rainy Farm Day

Farm Club members braved stormy weather to make the March Farm Day a fun and productive day. As usual I had more tasks on the list than we could hope to accomplish in the morning but we made good progress.

First on the list was a lesson on using a halter and tying a rope, using a knot that can be easily released. I didn't mean that the people had to wear halters, but Shelby is always ready for anything.

Everyone helped catch lambs and record the number of horns and whether or not there were any eyelid defects.  (Split eyelids are not uncommon in 4-horn sheep.)

Next task:  Empty this wagon that has been accumulating electric fence parts and who-knows-what-else for a could of years and sort it.

Good job, ladies! Now the trick is to throw out the true garbage and keep everything else sorted.

Tina, Shelby, and Lily cleaned lambing jugs.

Shelby volunteered to brave the lake and dump the loads.

Can you see the rain coming down in the background?

Shelby holding Shelby, the sheep's, lamb.

Tina's turn.

Dona holding her favorite.

Here is the crew ready to have lunch and spend the afternoon in visiting in the warm, dry shop.

Thanks to all of you for your help and cheerful attitude!