I was tagged

I was tagged by Shannon at Kenleigh Acres. That means that I was to find the 6th photo in the 6th file in my photo folder. The 6th/6th for last year is this photo. This was taken at Black Sheep Gathering in June. The ram lambs on the left are both mine. That's Jacob breeder, Lynette Frick in the checked jacket and I'm next to her. Shannon is showing her ram lamb on the far right.

Handspun & handwoven Christmas present

I flew to Texas Christmas night to see my daughter, Katie. I spent the previous 2 days working on her Christmas present, after finally finishing all the weaving orders that I needed to get out before Christmas. Katie used to join our spinning nights and was a participant in Sheep-to-Shawl competitions. This is back  when she was in junior high and she's a junior in college now. When she cleaned out her closet the last time she was home Katie gave me a box of her handspun yarn that she was never going to use. This included singles, 2-ply, slubby "beginner" yarn, thin yarn, thick yarn, and everything from Angora bunny to Navajo churro, all in a variety of colors.  I decided to weave her a blanket using her yarn. I wish I had a good photo of the pile of yarn before I started. I used about 20 different yarns, winding them in random order.

I wove the blanket using one of my mill-spun singles Jacob yarn in a dark gray.

I don't have a photo of Katie with her blanket. I need to get her to send one. The blanket turned out better than I could have hoped for. It is soft and has a wonderful hand.  This has inspired me to weave more like this!

St. Fleecia Day Celebration

I belong to the Spindles & Flyers in Berkeley. I don't get there very often because it means LEAVING HOME and going to THE CITY. But I did make it to the annual holiday celebration on Sunday. This is the day that the group honors the great Saint Fleecia, a spinning saint (sprung from the creative mind of a past president of the group) who brings fresh fleece to diligent spinners, but leaves sheep droppings in the shoes of negligent spinners. As is the tradition at the St. Fleecia Day celebration, the legend of St. Fleecia is read, eggnog is consumed (except by designated drivers), and wonderful food is shared. There is also a challenge. This year it was to make a fiber avatar using the fiber it represents.

These are some of the entries. In the back is a handspun, knitted llama. There is a pair of felted bunnies and a knitted bunny, all of Angora. The pair of bunnies was 3rd place.

This opossum is felted from wool and opossum. (This is fiber from the Australian version, which is different from that found in the U.S.)  I love the babies hanging from the tail. This was 2nd place.

First place was inspired by the recent program by Linda Cortwright of Wild Fibers. This is a yak diorama with an actual (well, sort of) yak in the foreground.

Can you understand why I like the people in this group?

Baby pictures

I had the opportunity to have my flock ultrasounded last week. The senior students had a chance to practice sheep ultrasound and I found out who was pregnant. A win-win situation. As I expected all the sheep were pregnant (except for 3 I held back to breed for State Fair lambs next year). Most sheep except for the 2008 lambs, have twins. That was also expected.

By the time we were finished I could even pick out the lambs, although I can't tell on this photo. It is fascinating to see the little rib cages and see the little feet moving around. 

Marathon, anyone?

This has nothing to do with sheep or weaving or anything about my business, but it's how I spent Sunday. The Sacramento International Marathon was Sunday and 4 family members ran (along with 6000 other people).

Sometime last August, my 17 year old son, Chris said that he wanted to run in the marathon. My husband, Dan, said that he'd train with him, to a point. When my husband's brother from Colorado said he'd come out for the race, Dan decided to enter too. That's 3 family members in. Then my 28 year old son, Matt, decided to run.

A marathon is not something to be taken lightly. It's 26.2 miles! Rob has been training for marathons and Ironman length triathlons for years--no problem for him. Dan and Chris have been running, but had to work up to this distance. Matt is in good shape from his Forest Service firefighting job, but had run only a couple of 10-K's in training. All of them finished well and close to the times they anticipated. Don't think it's easy. None of them were walking too well when it was over. Matt sent me a photo Sunday evening of him sitting in the recliner with ice packs on his knees and ankles. Dan spent the rest of the day in the recliner and Chris slept. This is Tuesday and they are still having difficulty going up and down stairs.  But they say they'll do it again!

 

Matt (in gray) almost at the finish line

 

What about the support crew and photographer (other family members & me)? We got up at 4:30 along with the runners, dropped them at the start, drove to the first pre-arranged viewing point (5 miles). That was one way the runners could get rid of a layer of clothing--toss it to the pit crew along the side of the road. The runners pass and then the pit crew piles back in the Explore and heads along city streets to the next spot--13 miles. At this point our runners are spread out--Rob is on a 3:10 pace and Dan is aiming for 4:30--the boys are in between at about a 4:00 pace. That means that after staying to see Dan we have to hurry to the finish area to catch Rob come across the finish line.

The weather can be an issue for this January race. It could have been worse--at least it wasn't raining or windy. But the fog was thick. The temperature at 7 a.m. when the race began was 39. It stayed in the low 40's all morning. We of the support crew were very glad to get back in the car in between viewing points!

Rams and lambs

I had my camera with me this morning in the barn. I meant to take pictures of the fog. You know those postcards that are black and say "Hawaii at night"? So I can have something that is gray--"Sheep in the fog", "Sheep herding in the fog". This time of year fog is common in the Central Valley. Thick fog. Wet fog. Cold fog. People that live in the foothills look down on the top of the fog in the valley. There are days when the high and low temperatures only very by 2 or 3 degrees because of the fog. Fortunately we are at the edge of the valley and somedays don't have fog at all when there is a thick blanket of it less than 1/2 mile away.

These photos are some I took--but not of the fog. This is Meridian Moonshine. He is one of two ram lambs that I kept from this spring's lambs.

Here is Meridian Ranger, who will be 2 in February. He still has a great personality and has never shown any aggression (although I still don't turn my back).

 Chicory Lane Houdini, below, is another story. He has nice fleece, horns, etc, but his personality leaves something to be desired. He can't be trusted at all. 

 All three of these rams will have lambs here in March. That seems a long way off. Usually I am getting ready for lambs in late January.

Shearing Day

Shearing Day was a week ago now. What a great day! The sun was out and a lot of people came to watch and buy fleeces. I sold 28 of the 60 fleeces we sheared! I started to worry that I wouldn't have enough left for me! Here is a photo of Judd shearing Houdini.

Judd doesn't mind a crowd of people watching.

A couple of friends (Joan in purple and Toni in black) helped all day at the skirting table.

Freshly shorn ewes.

Donkey, Amaryllis, is now out with the sheep full-time.

Tribute to Mom

My mom died on Monday. This is not as tragic as you may think. After all, she was 92. The tragedy is that she spent the last several years in the haze of Alzheimer's. She lived here until, after breaking a hip and losing a lot more mental capacity, I couldn't care for her. For the last year and a half she lived at a place called Summerfield House in Vacaville. The following is part of a thank you letter that I wrote to the care-givers at Summerfield. I thought I'd share it before I go on with the usual ramblings of my blog.

I wish that you could have known Mom before she moved to Summerfield. She was one of the first women in the Army—the WAC’s—during WWII. She was always very proud of that service. After she moved to Summerfield I found letters that she wrote to her parents while in the service and letters to her from her Mom. My daughter and I have been transcribing them because they are a fascinating insight into what was going on in the lives of everyday people back then. I think they are worthy of a book.

Mom married a University of California professor, my Dad, was divorced when that was quite a difficult situation for a woman to be in, and raised my brother and me. We moved to a couple of acres in Sonoma County and my brother and I raised a variety of animals—horse, cows, sheep, pigs, etc—thanks go to Mom for letting us venture in to all of that when she had absolutely no experience with any of it. She developed her skill at pottery,  taught pottery classes, and sold pottery at her Pot Shop on the property. She had quite a following of potters and other crafts-people.

Mom retired from pottery when Dave and I went to college and she moved to Healdsburg. She took up spinning and weaving  (she had always been a wonderful knitter) and finally had time to tackle all the old family papers and photos that we had stored for years. She wrote three books about her ancestors, researching additional documentation of all the names and dates and places. Mom’s great grandparents were pioneers who settled in the Stockton area and her grandmother was born in a log cabin on banks of the Stanislaus River so there is a lot of interesting history. Mom meant to write a fourth book to finish up the stories of all her ancestors, but Alzheimer’s overtook her before she could work on that.

More about the pasture

This photo is of the same field that is in the last post, but it's taken in the other direction. See that tower on top of the barn? That's where I was when I took the other photo. This 5-acre pasture is divided into 8 vertical strips with high-tensile electric wire. I subdivide those strips with electric net fence and it's that fence that I move when I put the sheep on fresh feed every day or two. In the photo below the sheep see me on the other side of the fence and they are waiting for me to let them in. In the photo you can't really see the green grass and clover because the dry grass is taller, but it's there.

This is a not-so-flattering photo of Ranger waiting with the ewes.

As I open up the net fence the sheep go rushing through.

I spend time just watching sheep eat! I like to see what they go for first.

Pasture observations

Are you going to get tired of reading my pasture observations? Hey, it's what I do. When you raise livestock on the land then you are really a grass farmer first...or should be. My first observation this morning was the dew on the grass that I have learned is called yellow foxtail. It is one of the late summer grasses that is NOT desirable. The sheep don't like to eat it which is why you see so much in the field. But it did look pretty this morning.

Another observation is what has happened to our crop circle. Our crop circle is not like the ones you may have read about. If you see our place from above (which we can do even in the flat Sacramento Valley now that my husband has built a 2 story barn with an additional tower) then you see this area in the middle of the pasture that is a different type of plant. It is some kind of reed, another undesirable plant and one that indicates poor drainage.

 

Do you see that darker area in the middle of the pasture? That's the reed. But do you also see the bright green part of it on the right? That's new annual grass that is outgrowing anything else in the pasture right now. This summer my brother built a prototype shade structure that I could move around to various parts of the pasture. That is where I had the shade while the sheep were in that part of the pasture. A few days of trampling that reed opened that area up to allow grass to grow now that it has started to rain. Here is a closeup.

 

I have more observations, but I'm going to put them in another post. The last couple of times that I included a lot of photos it fouled up the format of not only those posts but all the previous ones too.

Amaryllis arrives

No, I don't mean the flower, Amaryllis. This Amaryllis is a spotted donkey. She arrived on Saturday. She was foaled in a sheep pen in Iowa and has lived with Jacob sheep all her life. She will continue duty as a guard donkey here, but also as my equine buddy.

Zena is a favorite yearling and this is how she came in from the pasture this morning.

What happened?

I don't know what happened. I just wrote the post about the pasture. I finished up with a paragraph about the blankets I wove. That paragraph got attached to the previous one and the photo didn't show up. Here is the photo.

Five blankets on one warp

Also, it seems that the normal formatting of all the previous posts is gone. I don't know why. I sure get frustrated wtih this stuff. Any ideas?

Pasture Productivity

I still have the rams in with the ewes so I have the flock split into two main groups. Ranger and his ewes are in the main pasture and Houdini and his ewes are in what I call the horse pasture. That's because that pasture is where we have had horses and a cow or two in the past. This year was the first time I had sheep in that pasture. If you want to grow healthy pasture there is more to it than just opening a gate and letting the animals in to graze. This pasture has been severely overgrazed in the past, but I was amazed at the amount of clover and trefoil that grew in parts of the pasture after several months of rest. The problem with this pasture is the amount of dallas grass, a summer-growing perennial in the west half. It grows fast in mid to late summer and then dries out in the winter. It was so thick in half the pasture that nothing could grow under it. There was just a thick dried matt of it--that is cutting the productivity of the pasture. The photo below shows this summer's growth of dallas grass. The sheep will eat it when it's young and palatable, but when it gets larger they can't keep up with it and it is not as desirable. The grass in the photo below was  at my shoulder height before the last north winds. Some of it has been blown over. If you look closely on the right wide you see the top of a black plastic post sticking up. There is also a post on the left side but the grass is built up against it. The sheep don't even venture into this thick thatch.

West view of sample plot in pasture

So what to do about it? I could try to get some cows in here. If they didn't eat it at least they'd trample it. But I'm trying to make something work with the sheep. I have started feeding hay out here. I break the flakes of hay into smaller pieces and place it in strategic places in the tall grass. The photo below shows those same posts after 2 feedings in that area.  (Note the wooden post in the background of each picture.) The sheep  didn't eat all that grass, but a good part of it is trampled down and hopefully broken up enough that something will grow through it after the winter rains.

West view 24 hours later

The next two photos show the same plot looking north.  You can barely see the black plastic posts in the first photo, but they're obvious in the second.

Look at how much grass there is behind this plot. I'm working my way north with the hay feeding. The goal is to get all that dallas grass eaten or trampled. Then when it rains i'll get more palatable feed in there.

Power ram?

I took this photo of Houdini and told my husband that I thought he looked like an evil cartoon character. Dan replied that he looked like one of the Power Rangers, which he just happened to see on Saturday morning. (I guess it came on after This Old House.) Now that it has rained and the sheep are walking around in tall wet grass a lot of the color from the marking harness has come off of Houdini, but in the first few days of breeding season I was ready to call him Alien Ram because he had a green tinge all over his wool.

When I'm not dealing with sheep, hay, classes, etc, I'm supposed to be weaving. I finally got a huge job finished. These are 4 queen size blankets and one double blanket that I just shipped on Friday. They are woven from wool grown by the customer's family and she wanted blankets for her family members. They don't look too impressive in the photo, but it was a lot of time.

Now the fun stuff (while my computer is still letting me download photos--don't know what happened overnight). I like making these V-shawls and here are some friends helping to model them.

And this is my son making his escape after I made him take these photos.

Below is a striking shawl made by one of my students in the last v-shawl class I taught. This is her 2nd weaving!

A Gorgeous Day

It rained last night--not a lot, but enough to get rid of the dust and make everything smell fresh. This is the first rain since sometime in March! We were due. The best thing about the rain was that my hay was all in the barn BEFORE it started, thanks my husband and son. I had 440 bales waiting to go in the barn. This is just half of it.

I started did my share of stacking hay, but eventually Dan and Chris got involved and at that point I got to use gravity and throw the hay off the stack while Dan dragged it inside and Chris (age 17) stacked it. We filled 3 horse stalls and part of the aisle of the horse barn. These are HEAVY bales--a lot of them are over 125 pounds and up to 150 pounds.

So the hay was in, the sky was fresh and blue this morning, and the weather was perfect. I spent the day with a ewe and lambs at the local feed store where they were having a Grand Opening for their new store. Nice weather, good food (that's always important), and I sold a few handwoven pieces.

It's finally breeding season. I put the rams in with the ewes on Tuesday and 16 sheep are marked already. Here are some of Houdini's girls. I sure hope that we get some rain before my November shearing date because these ewes are really green. Ranger's ewes aren't marked nearly as much--different brand of marker I think.

marked ewes

Well. I had a lot more photos to post but my computer is running way too slowly. It took me 10 minutes to get this one photo into the blog. I've been shelling walnuts while I'm waiting in between clicks. So I'll sign off for now.

More photos from State Fair

I don't know why my last post didn't come out like I thought. Because I was falling asleep sitting at the computer? Here is the photo of the Watusi steer.

My daughter came home from Texas for a week to help at the fair with my in-laws dairy herd. Katie is on the left and son, Chris, is on the right showing the "Best 3".

This is a photo of one of the ewes that lambed at State Fair. Her lambs are bigger now, but this is when they first came home. These are 3 lilac ewe lambs (for sale)!

State Fair results

         The middle week of the State Fair is Dairy week. If Chris goes to work for the Forest Service next summer like he plans then this was his last State Fair. He showed his 6 goats and Trista came through again. She was not only selected Champion Toggenburg, she also won Supreme Champion Dairy Goat. That's over all the goats shown in the Junior show. Way to go, Trista and Chris! You can't see the belt buckle in this photo but it has a bear in the middle with CA poppies all around it. It's gorgeous.

             The sheep show was over Labor Day weekend. Every since last year I've been trying to plan a display that would win the $750 Marketing Award. I spent an inordinant amount of time in the last two weeks before the show thinking about this display. I knew I needed to upgrade my posters and I learned how to use more of the features of PowerPoint to do that. I even found myself taking close-up photos of cement, sand, fence boards, etc after i learned how to make my own background for the posters.

 

Here are two photos of my display. On the right, friends Mel and Marilyn demonstrate Navajo weaving. They demonstrated on Sunday and drew huge crowds. Several friends helped me staff my display throughout the fair. I had so many items on display (yarn, lambskins, etc) that I didn't dare leave the area unattended. I wove much of the time I was there-got 3 wool V-shawls woven. The work and the time paid off. I didn't win 1st place Marketing Award--I got 3rd. But I won an award for Best Program Directed at the Public. I also won the Herdsman award for flocks of 9 head or less and the most prestigious award is 3rd place for Best Educational Exhibit over all 3 weeks of the fair and all livestock species!

What about the sheep show? After all, that's why we're there. Last year I got the fair to offer a division for "Heritage" breeds. That was a huge show and it was split this year. The wool sheep had their own division, but the "Heritage and American" breeds show still includes sheep that are awfully hard to judge in the same show. I was the only Jacob exhibitor and competed against Tunis (a large-frame meat sheep), St. Croix (a hair sheep), a few Scottish Blackface, and Shetlands. In most of the classes you can enter 2 sheep, so I got 3rds, behind the Tunis. There was only 1 yearling ram representing each breed though. So my ram, Ranger, got 2nd behind the Tunis and he was able to enter the Champion drive. The yearling Tunis was Champion, but Ranger was awarded Reserve Champion.

How about some other fair photos? I always like to see the Watusi and Longhorn cattle that are there at the same time as the sheep.

Lambs in August!

The State Fair is now over. It seemed to consume my life for about 3 weeks. For me State Fair begins with bringing pregnant ewes to the fair. I bred out of season to provide lambs for the State Fair Livestock Nursery that is run by the UCD VMTH (Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital). In March I bred 5 ewes thinking that I might end up with 3 pregnant ewes. Ultrasounds confirmed that all 5 were pregnant!

The Livestock Nursery is one of the most popular exhibits at the State Fair and new Jacob lambs are always a hit. I ended up with 12 new lambs.

Fun at Black Sheep Gathering

Last Thursday I loaded  9 sheep in the trailer and 5 of us crammed into my pickup with all of our stuff in the back, including my tack box and display racks and boxes of yarn and fiber for the vendor building, and we started for Eugene, Oregon. We met a friend along I-5 and transferred her ewe and ram (Meridian Rocky, originally from me) to my trailer. We made it to Eugene about 6:30 and settled the sheep into the barn. This was a first visit for my friends to Black Sheep Gathering. I think this is one of my favorite events. Where else can you find sheep (wool sheep at that!) and shopping all under one roof? The atmosphere is laid back and the weather is mild.  And I get to visit with friends that I probably won't see otherwise. In fact one friend was gracious enough to house all 5 of us at her place!

One of the highlights of the weekend is the Spinners Lead contest. In this contest participants show off their handspun or otherwise handmade pieces and bring the sheep or goat with them in the ring. Click to enlarge this thumbnail. This is me modeling my woven sweater and my sheep modeling her braided Jacob wool halter. I must tell the story about this sweater. I wove 2 blankets of handspun yarn and had a little warp left over. I wove that and thought it would make a great sweater. Not enough! I made another warp and wove enough for sleeves. I cut and sewed the pieces of the sweater together but figured that I could finish the knitted ribbing in Oregon. After all, what else was i going to do? And I didn't have time before I left. When I sat down to work on the sweater I realized that I hadn't serged the neck edge and lower edge. At the suggestion of a friend, I found a sewing machine store (Eugene Sewing and Vacuum) and asked if I could use a serger. They let me use it and I ended up finishing the sweater with time to spare! I also made a halter for my lamb out of Jacob sliver that I had braided.

 I was surprised to be awarded third place in the "Animal Owner" category. My friend, Shannon, won first for her felted vest with Jacob sheep and an apple tree needle-felted on the back. This photo shows all of the Jacob entrants. There is a bagpipe cover, 2 shawls, my sweater, Shannon's vest, and a felted ring-bearer's pillow carried by Shannon's 4-year old son wearing his wedding finery.

 

The trip was great fun, but the drive home seemed LONG. We got back at 3:30 a.m. I think I'm still catching up on sleep. We came home to smoky conditions. There are fires burning all over California and we can't even see the hills near Vacaville, let alone the sky.

I am planning on this trip again next year. Anyone up for an adventure?

I wouldn't want to be that chicken!

Check out the eggs I collected yesterday. The photo almost doesn't do this egg justice. The two smaller eggs are normal sized. They weighed 2.1 and 2.2 ounces. The big one weighed 4.1 ounces! It wouldn't fit in any egg carton so I decided to use it for a batch of cookies. It replaced two eggs in the recipe.