Exploring our County

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I've lived in Solano County for 25 years but I had never been to Lynch Canyon until today. Lynch  Canyon is only about 1/2 hour from our place and offers an "open space" experience just minutes from urban centers. It is about 1000 acres managed by the Solano Land Trust and open to the public for hiking, horseback riding, and mountain biking.

The Lynch Canyon property is just off the freeway between Vallejo and Fairfield, both good size cities. As we approached Vallejo we saw the fog lingering over the hills. Coming from our end of the county we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts and couldn't imagine being cold. It's easy to forget how different the weather can be when you get closer to the S.F. Bay. However, the fog was burning off, and even with the wind we didn't stay cold long.

I can imagine how pretty this area must be in the spring when everything is green and the wild flowers are blooming. It is very dry now, but the sky was a gorgeous blue and the views were amazing.

The green valley below is where Hwy. 12 enters the Napa Valley.

Not too many wildflowers right now--or at least not much variety. There was plenty of yellow star thistle...

...and purple star thistle...

...and tarweed. None of these are desirable plants, but the sweet smell of the tarweed brings back thoughts of riding my horse in the dry hills during high school. Isn't it amazing how smells can trigger memories?

Surprise! There were two dry ponds where these purple flowers (mint family) gave a valiant show of color.

This view is looking north.

Can you get the feel of the prevailing wind from this photo? Those are bay trees which are sculpted by the constant wind.

Even though the dry hills are not as appealing as hills covered with green grass and flowers  there is beauty here.

State Fair Wrap-Up

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The CA State Fair is still open but the sheep show was just through yesterday. Between having sheep with horns, putting up a lot of signs and visuals, and demonstrating, our area is the busiest in the sheep barn. I think I talked to more people here than I talk to all the rest of the year.

Here are my  sheep pens. I was shorted one sheep pen so I couldn't use all the large signs I had made. Small signs on the gates answer the most frequently asked questions: "Why are some of the sheep covered?"  "Is he normal?" (on the adult ram pen), "Are these sheep or goats?", and "Where are the pigs?"

This is the other part of the display.

I truly appreciate help from friends. This year Joan came on Sunday and Monday and shared the task of Educating the Public.

On Sunday Shelby helped let people pet the sheep and helped me show. Jackie was there also, but I don't have photos. She took all the show rings photos.

Shelby went out looking for deep fried Snickers or something like that but came back with chocolate-covered bacon. As weird as it sounds it actually wasn't bad but just one bite made me incredibly thirsty.

Dan likes to avoid the show ring, but he was pressed into service this year, starting with the yearling ram show.

This is Shelby helping show the yearling ewes.

This is our flock entry--4 ewes and one ram.

I chose the young ram, Meridian Granite, for this entry because I think the judge liked him the best of my sheep. Granite placed third in his class, just behind the Tunis sheep. Those of us in this show have decided that 3rd is the new 1st. This year the "Primitive & American Breeds Show" entries were Tunis (meat breed) , Shetlands, Jacobs, Icelandics, and St. Croix (a hair sheep). That's a tough class to judge and I don't know if any of us will ever get to first or second as long as the Tunis breeder comes. Not only is the breed hard to compete against in a traditional show, but this breeder shows all over and has a very competitive flock.

Here is the champion Tunis ram. Hard to compete with that. The judge, however, said that he thought my fleeces were the nicest Jacob fleeces that he has seen. He commented several times about the fleeces, so I was pleased with that.

I know it's going to be hard to win with my sheep so I'm trying very hard to win with my display.

I ended up with some fancy ribbons after all...and some good prize money. That's Best Program and overall second in the Open Sheep Show Best Marketing Program,  second in Sheep Herdsman, and Best Educational Presentation over all the livestock exhibits at the fair this week. I put a lot of work into this and spent 10 -12 hours at my sheep exhibit each day but it paid off in these awards.

Weaving projects unearthed

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I think I have figured out how to link WP and FB but to try it out I should have a real post. When I reorganized my shop I unearthed boxes and boxes of yarn, etc. Here are some scarves from a warp that I wound and space-dyed quite awhile ago. I like to plan warps and design projects but sometimes there are those days when you don't want to have to think. What fun to pull out a warp that is ready to put on the loom.

The towels below are from a warp that I remember winding about 19 years ago. How do I know it was that long ago? When my now-19 year old son was a baby and would be awake in the middle of the night sometimes I put him in the backpack and kneading bread or winding warps would put him back to sleep!

Wool samples, wet dogs, and a turkey!

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I posted a photo of my rams yesterday. Here are the wool photos:

This is the fleece of Meridian Tioga.

Here is Kenleigh's Savor's wool. Tioga's wool is crimpy and soft. Savor's wool is lofty without visible crimp. Both are good fleeces for spinning, but have different character.

Portrait of Savor.

Jackie came back to the fair today to help out with the SplashDog performance and give her dog,  Ringo a lesson. These are photos of Ringo learning the game.

And here are some of the pros:

Obviously NOT a dog.

Another sheep show and new friend?

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Only 3 days after Black Sheep Gathering the crew is together again.  This time it is at the Solano County Fair in Vallejo. Julie (Black Oak Jacobs) and I both have our sheep there right now and today was show day.

Julie and I showed both of my yearling rams. Savor is on the left and Tioga is on the right. They look a lot alike in this view, but they have very different fleece types, both within the Jacob breed standard, but quite different. I should take photos of fleece tomorrow.

After a quick sheep handling lesson, Chris helped me show in all the other classes and Shelby helped with Julie's sheep.  Thanks to both of them for helping out. Thanks also to Jackie for taking photos.

One of Julie's sheep had a surprise baby this morning and Shelby took over baby-sitting.

Back home this evening. What are those dogs looking at?

This kitten has been hiding out under my shop for a few days. I started feeding it to entice it out. I don't want or need a cat, but I couldn't let it starve under there. He has been very hungry and I caught him tonight while he was eating. I don't know if he is truly wild because he has sure settled down quickly--not what I'd expect out of wild kitten. But if he isn't out of a feral cat then I don't know where he came from.  I'm going to have to keep him in the crate for now because I won't be home to deal with the dogs. I could barely get Rusty to eat  because he is so obsessed with the kitten.He has done nothing but stare all night. At least Rusty is entertained.

Anyone want a kitten?

Fun with Friends at Black Sheep Gathering

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What a fun weekend! Three friends and I traveled to Eugene, Oregon for Black Sheep Gathering. This is such a cool event. Sheep show, vendors, classes, and fun events all under one roof.

Everything is packed, sheep are in the truck, and we are ready to leave.

I took only lambs for the show, but was pleased to win first place in a large ram lamb class. My ram lamb, Meridian Granite, went on to win Reserve Grand Champion ram. I'll be showing him at the Solano County Fair on Wednesday.

There is a huge variety of sheep at BSG. This Wensleydale  was quite an attention-getter.

Black Sheep Gathering isn't just for sheep. Shelby helped another friend, Julie, show her goats and I even got in the show-ring for one class.

Each of us took advantage of the classes that were offered. Chris took a sock knitting class and ended up with an almost-finished baby sock.

We also all brought plenty of projects to fill time.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the Spinners' Lead. This entry involves wearing (or displaying) something that you have hand felted or handspun and showing off the animal (or a representative) from which the fiber came. Jackie worked non-stop for several weeks to spin enough yarn for this knitted ruana. Then she helped halter break the lambs and, finally, knit and felted a grain bow. I wore the blanket that keeps my side of the bed warm in the winter and a knit cap. At the last minute I decided to accessorize the ensemble and weave wrist warmers (for me and the sheep) and an i-pod pouch. I also made the lamb's halter out of my wool, using my rope machine. Jackie won the non-owner division and was awarded a bag full of prizes.

Last, but not least, I took a sharpening class on Saturday. I got lucky and the instructor used some of my dull equipment for his demos.

What a great weekend spending a relaxed time with friends. I will have BSG on the calendar for next year.

Trip to Santa Barbara - Part 2

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I left off the last post with only a couple of the dozens of photos I took of Hebe's wonderful creations. Kenna and I took the dogs to the beach in the afternoon. There is an off-leash beach to the delight of dozens of dogs.

This was Rusty's first time at the beach.  It didn't take him too long to figure out that he shouldn't drink the water.

There were a lot of pelicans and it seemed that the fishing was good. I put on my amateur wildlife photographer hat. After I cropped these photos to enlarge the birds I was surprised to see how direct the approach is when they are going after fish.

A group photo of Kenna and her dog, Molly, and Rusty and me.

Next stop for the day was Canzelle Alpacas in Carpinteria, not far from Santa Barbara. Kenna has taught Carol Ann, the owner, to spin  and we're discussing fiber classes for some of Carol Ann's customers.

Kenna lives in an area surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest. When you hear about raging southern CA wildfires, some of them are right here. Two years ago thousands of acres burned in the Gap Fire, the edge of which is just up the road from Kenna's house.

We took a hike through some of the burned area and it is incredible to see the regrowth of vegetation. The CA chaparral can become impenetrable after years with no fire. It is a tragedy when homes are destroyed by fire, but it's probably not a bad thing for wild areas to burn periodically. It is hard to manage an area for both wild ecosystems and human habitation.

There was fog  on the coast this morning but we were above it.

I drove home in the afternoon and visited another friend (since 6th grade!) along the way.

This is a view out my car window. I'm glad to live somewhere that has such a diversity of landscapes. I never tire of the views.

It would seem that Rusty was worn out from the weekend. However, this is how he always travels. In fact if my ice chest weren't on the floor that is where he'd be. He doesn't pant, doesn't look out the window. He just sleeps.  Not a bad way to travel if the scenery doesn't fascinate you.

Trip to Santa Barbara - Part 1

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There has been plenty to blog about but not enough hours in the day. I keep meaning to share photos I took in Santa Barbara when I made a quick sheep-delivery trip. People from San Diego  met me to pick up sheep and then I spent the rest of the weekend visiting with my friend, Kenna. We crammed a lot into Sunday of that weekend.

Double checking before I left that I had the important things--my dog and my spinning wheel.

We had breakfast and a walk on the beach with my cousin, William, who lives in Santa Barbara.

Next stop was the Santa Barbara Mission where it was the date of the annual I Madonarri festival, a fund raiser for the mission. This is based on the tradition of Italian street painting. Local businesses pay for spaces in the parking lot and then fill the spaces with chalk art. Look at the incredible detail in this design.

This is not just your regular side-walk chalk.

Aren't these incredible?

After this Kenna and I went to her friend's house nearby. Hebe is an incredible person--she is a quilter, weaver, jeweler, felter, painter, and probably more. She was recovering from back surgery but was gracious enough to take her to her basement workshop and show us some of her treasures.

This is a recently completed weaving.

Hebe has completed 10 incredible felted figures and will have a show after she has finished 12. I can't remember the names of these ladies (and men), but the figures are created with humorous themes in mind. Attention to detail is incredible. You can't tell in this photo but the tennies are covered with sparkly red sequins.

The felted rocks alone are amazing, let alone the rest of the creation.

The afternoon's adventures will come later.

Still weaving

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I haven't written about weaving lately, but I'm still working at the loom. I have orders from 3 regular customers for 9 baby blankets. I just finished a warp with 10 blankets.

Last week I finished an order for wool throws. This customer had her yarn spun at Yolo Wool Mill and wanted 5 different blankets. Sometimes it is necessary to add a lot of spinning oil to the wool during processing. The yarn isn't very appealing in that state, but woven blankets aren't truly finished until they are 'wet finished'. In wet finishing  the  oil is removed and the blanket is fulled. Take a look at the before and after photos of these blankets.

I calculated a sett of 5.5 epi. I used a 6-dent reed and left every 12th dent open. After I started weaving I worried that you would see that empty space in all 5 blankets and that would distract from the woven pattern. I didn't need to worry.  In the photo below you can sort of see that line, but when you see the blanket you focus on the diagonal twill and don't even notice the vertical line.

Above is the before and after of another twill blanket.

Plain weave. Before fulling is above and after fulling is below.

This is one of my favorite weave structures. I was concerned about the finishing of this blanket. The yarn that I got from the mill was on cones and in skeins. The skeined yarn was so much oilier than the coned yarn  it almost seemed to be a different batch. You can see the difference in the photo. In fact, there was so much tacky grease that I had to pull a length of yarn out of the shuttle with every pass or my end-feed shuttle would go flying off the loom (guess that's because I have a fly-shuttle loom!) because the yarn wouldn't feed out properly. I was relieved after I washed the blanket that there was no difference in the fulling of the two yarns.

Nostalgia at Feather Falls

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Last weekend my husband and I chose the absolute best day to go hiking in the Sierra foothills. Flowers were blooming in abundance, everything was green, and the weather was perfect. I hadn't been to Feather Falls in years--not since we carried one (or was it two?) of the kids on the trail. (And now the youngest is 19.) I have a lot of photos on my Facebook page, but here are a few of them.

There is a lot of poison oak along the trail. We could avoid it, but Rusty didn't seem to care. I knew that i'd need to give him a bath when we got home.

I wish I remembered all my wild flowers, but I enjoy them even if I don't remember all their names.

This delicate looking flower is a Ceanothus--Deer Brush or California lilac and the flowers cover bushes that are 6-8 feet high.

There were so many lupines that in places you could smell the sweet scent along the trail.

This is another kind of lupine that was closer to the falls.

Sticky monkey flower.

Feather Falls. The photo doesn't do it justice--600 feet of plunging water.

Sorting lambs

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Today was the day to start evaluating lambs. I need to choose lambs for shows, for sale, and the ones that I want to keep. When they are all together and mixed up with the ewes I have a hard time comparing them. Two friends came over today to help with sorting and to find out the criteria I use to select lambs for sale or show.

Rusty and Mobi hoped that they would get to help also.

First we separated the ewe and ram lambs. Then we separated the 2 horn and 4 horn ewes. I sorted out some that I have decided to keep and some that will not be registered because they are too light. We narrowed the field down to lambs that I will offer for sale and/or will show. I need to figure out which lambs to take to Black Sheep Gathering in June, the Solano Co. Fair in June, and the CA State Fair in July.

This is the group of 4-horn ewe lambs that  are available for sale or show.

This is the group of ram lambs before we started sorting them.

The ewe lambs were glad to head back to the pasture.

How I have spent 22 Mother's Days

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The Dixon May Fair is the longest-running fair in California. It is always Mother's Day weekend. My oldest son started showing dairy cattle in 1988 and I've had kids at the fair ever since.  The kids can show as FFA members for one year after they finish  high school so this was my youngest son's last show. He was at the fair from Tuesday through Sunday and left Sunday night for his job on a hotshot crew north of Redding.

Chris has shown dairy goats each year since he started in 4-H.  He sold some of his goats last summer when he left for the fire-fighting job, but had two two-year old milkers at the fair this year. Chris is showing Devan and a friend showed Denise.

This was a very small show, but Devan won Champion...

...and Best Doe in Show. Chris showed her dam at the CA State Fair two years ago and won Champion Toggenburg.

On Sunday Chris competed in Supreme Showmanship, in which the showmanship winners of each species compete.

Each participant shows sheep,

beef cattle, dairy cattle, meat goats, dairy goats, and swine. Chris won second place in this event. And then it was over. Chris rushed home to leave for the job. I went back to the fair to get the goats when they were released. That's it! Not as big an adjustment as last year when Chris left home for the job for the first time, but now my years of 4-H & FFA Mom is over.

But I'm still a mom. Here is the Mother's Day present that Chris gave me!!!!

Irrigation time again

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I live on the western edge of the Central Valley in CA.  We get winter rain and it's dry all summer. The only way that things stay green here is through irrigation. One reason that we wanted this property was because it was part of the Solano Irrigation District and we could get irrigation water without having an ag well.

When I order water the water tender opens a valve at the west end of this ditch (left in the photo). This is not on our property, but the water flows down this ditch and then onto our property by opening the valve at this end.

The water flows through a pipe that goes under the fence and the water comes up in this standpipe and out the hole into the ditch in the pasture.

This view is still looking west. The water is starting to flow from the standpipe down the ditch at the north end of the property. The ditch turns south and gets the water to the rest of the pasture. The ditch is supposed to have high enough sides that the water is contained and only flows out where I dig a cut-out that lets the water into the pasture. The idea is to open a few areas at a time and be able to fill those cut-outs in as you open more. Ideally the pasture would have just the right amount of slope so that the water would flow evenly. Easier said than done. One problem with our place is that we don't have the equipment to re-ditch the property. I'm using the same ditch that we had dug (by a neighbor with a tractor and ditcher) when we first started here. I see the alfalfa farmers re-ditch every time they irrigate and I'm jealous. I've looked into a pipeline system in which there wouldn't be a ditch, but a buried pipe with valves that could be open and shut to control the irrigation. Unfortunatly the cost is completely unrealistic for my business. So I keep plugging away with the shovel and hoping for the best.

That is a mowed alfalfa field on the north (top of the photo) and our property is the green field. The standpipe is in the northwest corner of the property and the ditch in one of the photos above is along the north fenceline. You can see the water flowing down the ditch going south and that part of the pasture is already flooded. The sheep have to be in the corrals and barn when I'm irrigating. (So I have to feed them hay for several days every 3-4 weeks. I usually have the water on for 36 hours, but it takes several days for the field to drain enough to turn the sheep back out.)

That ditch that takes the water south dead-ends on this ditch that runs east-west and carries water to the other 5 acres. This view shows the south west corner of the property.

Here is the south east corner. I strip graze this 5 acre pasture. The strips run north-south and are separated by a 3-wire electric fence. You can make out the strips in this photo. See that black thing towards the top? That's a portable water trough that I plug into the water pipeline that we installed a couple of years ago. The water trough is on one of the fencelines. I have just finished grazing the strips on either side of the water trough. The next two strips are more lush. They are ready to be grazed next. Notice the very pale green in the strip above the water trough? This strip is hard to irrigate and for several years I couldn't get much water on it. That light green color is medusahead--a very unpalatable grass. Ideally I think burning it would be good, but I don't think I can do that. We just bought a better heavy-duty weed-eater and I think I'm going to try to stay on top of the medusahead by using the weed-eater. I hope that I can make an impact on it this year. It renders that strip of the pasture unuseable. I noticed tonight that my irrigation water was getting there. I hope that if I can keep the medushead at bay then something else will start growing there.

New Baby Blankets

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I haven't written much about weaving lately, but I'm getting a few things done. I have woven some baby blankets using SuperLamb. That's the washable Merino wool  by Jaggerspun that i am selling in the shop. It will be great for baby blankets--very soft and the added advantage of being machine washed and dried.

Here are some of the blankets still on the loom.

And here they are off the loom. These blankets are at The Artery right now.