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.

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.

Light My Fire

If you are a faithful Meridian Jacobs blog reader you may remember my attempts last fall to get the sheep to eat and/or trample the shoulder high dallas grass. Dallas grass is a late summer perennial that takes over the pasture. There is so much thick dead grass that nothing grows under it.In this photo see the little bit of green with all that dead grass that takes over the field. (That's a hay field in the background.)

My oldest son is a firefighter for the U.S. Forst Service and I talked him into burning the fields for me.

These are my two sons. Chris is lighting the fire here--he will be working on a hotshot crew this summer after graduation.

This is oldest son, Matt, and his friend, David. Matt is lighting the fire and David is hosing down the fiberglass posts to keep them from melting.

As the fire crew (also included my brother and a friend of Chris) was working I was working with a previously scheduled class. Talk about double-booking. In the shop we were  winding warp, warping looms, etc and I made a couple of quick trips out with the camera. Some of the class participants enjoyed the time spent in the barn watching lambs. The last 3  people here were treated to watching a lamb being born. However this was more interactive than observation as the lamb turned out to be a huge ram--over 12 lbs! Thanks to Chris for helping and  getting her  hands slimey (but not spotting her white shirt!).

Chris also stayed to help me get the electric fence back up so I could put the sheep out on the pasture. Unfortunately some of the insulators at the south end of the pasture were melted by the fire and the wire broke (burned?) So I need to do some fence repair in the morning.

More photos tomorrow to show the results of the burn.