Athena lambed ahead of schedule. Unfortunately the biggest twin (12.2 lbs) was dead when I went out this morning. Although it looks as though it was born alive (or at least was full term) there was something wrong with it. It's belly was full of fluid so I think there was probably a congenital problem with it and it never could have survived.
This lamb is 8 pounds.
It's obvious who the dad is:
Lambs are due in about a week.
This is Sparkle.
Sweetie
Spring
Jazz.
Bella.
Our first Farm Day of the year was on Saturday and five Farm Club members helped me get ready for lambing. I forgot to take photos at the beginning but started with vaccinating all the ewes. In the meantime we kept an eye on the two ewes who were supposed to be bred that day so that they will lamb at the fair in July.
There was no question about Miller and Donna, but ZZ left me wondering. He seemed more interested in his buddies in the adjacent pen than he was in Clover although she was doing her best to entice him. I decided that I'd better try another ram so Faulkner was the one. He knew just what to do.
While the rams were otherwise occupied and I had plenty of help it was time to clean the ram pen.
Rusty usually keeps the rams away while I clean so he took his usual position although the rams weren't there. 
The ewes watched through the gate while we moved wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow load. Those red marks are just from the marking crayon we used as we vaccinated.
After cleaning the ram pen it was donkey play time! Lisa discovered the bliss of brushing a donkey.
Amaryllis had to hold still for me to measure her. She is about as svelte as she ever gets and I wanted to have a baseline measurement for her (670 pounds according to the tape, which is really meant for horses). By the way, I looked up svelte because I wasn't sure how to spell it. Svelte, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: thin in an attractive or graceful way; and a. slender, lithe. b : having clean lines : sleek. Hmmm. So maybe svelte isn't quite the right word to describe a donkey.
I just wrote a post using photos that I took Across the Road from our mailbox. I started that to document the changes in the field that we see from our house everyday. The photos themselves are kind of boring and not all that attractive. Here is some of what I see when I walk Across the Road. (And here is Rusty's version.)
Last year the main crop was sunflowers but there is a corner of land owned by someone else. Last summer's crop on that parcel was corn.
Hot dog.
Irrigating the sunflower field.
Pollenating the sunflowers.
Stickers in someone's fur.
Sometimes our road seems like an alfalfa highway.
Swarm of bugs.
Another hot dog. 
Irrigation water. This sure looks appealing when it is 100+ degrees.
Signs that I'm not the only one Across the Road. 
Hope of the next harvest.
We don't have very much acreage, but across the road is a much larger parcel. We appreciate living here and being able to walk, run the dogs, and just a enjoy the view across the road. In 2013 I planned to take photos from the same location, of the same view, and at the same time each week to document the changes through the year. You probably don't mind that it didn't work because who would want to see 52 photos of the same thing? This field has been planted to alfalfa for several years but in 2013 there were sunflowers. Here is the year Across the Road:
January 10
January 25
January 31
March 7
March 26
April 4
April 11
May 5
May 21
May 28
June 13
July 4
July 12
August 8
September 30
October 10
October 18
November 24
December 31
There you have it. I stood at the mailbox for each photo. But the photos are obviously now always the same view or even using the same camera.
The most striking thing in my mind is how dry it was last year. The Central Valley of CA enjoys a Mediterranean climate which means hot dry summers and cool wet winters. We rely on winter rainfall to replenish aquifers and reservoirs to provide the water that keeps the valley from being a desert in the summer. This link shows graphs of the average precipitation and temperature for our area. According to accuweather.com the average annual rainfall for Sacramento is 18.5". We have had only 30% of that (5" in all of 2013). The hills (and the field across the road) should be green right now with the growth of the annual grasses that germinate from fall rains. Grass started to grow with each of the two (only 2) rainy days that we had but has mostly dried up.
On the bright side, I'm not slogging through calf-deep mud when doing chores and we don't have to run the sump pump to keep the the water heater in the basement from flooding.
Hoping for a wet 2014!
Rusty has never been a willing partner in taking cute holiday photos.
His friend, Moby wasn't much better. 
Nor was Ozzie.
Maybe it would have worked with a smaller hat.
Some of the sheep are OK with it. This is Noel.
Here is Paulette. But now we have a new star.
Spinners' Day Out was yesterday. Most of the people here were part of Farm Club (which, by the way, anyone can now join as an e-Farm Club member) and they were willing (more like insistent) on getting photos with Amaryllis. Dona and Mary took these photos.
"Would you get that thing away from my eye?" 
Sunday was Shearing Day and we sheared 71 sheep (61 ewes and 10 rams and wethers). I said "we". Not really "we", but John, my fabulous shearer. The sheep looked great, the fleece looked great and he finished shearing in two and a half hours! Shearing was finished by 11:30.
Here are sheep ready to be shorn.
Clover.
Mary.
John started with the rams...
...and moved on to ewes.
Farm Club members were the other wonderful helpers who made it all work.
Alison spent the morning at the skirting table explaining skirting and helping buyers skirt their fleeces.
Shelby and Gynna were our sheep wranglers, making sure that there was always another sheep for John to shear.
Mary and Carol bagged fleeces while Anna swept and Jackie worked the exit gate.
Linda weighed and recorded fleeces. Other members helped too but I didn't get photos.
What would shearing day be without chili...
...and Dona's brownies (and Lisa's Jacob sheep cookies, Jackie's corn biscuits, Mary's wonderful tangy chicken and fancy rice krispie treats and more).
After shearing the sheep look so much thinner. This photo looks as though it was stretched vertically, but it wasn't.
Lila.
Cascade.
Gynna looks happy with her Farm Club fleece.
And look at this gorgeous one!
After shearing we (Farm Club again and other friends) did demos of all kinds of spinning and fiber prep, but that's another story, especially because it's too late to write more.
We really need rain, but I must admit that the weather is sure nice. I spent an hour in the pasture yesterday morning enjoying the fall color.
It's not just the trees that are colorful:
Red and yellow and green are pretty...
...but black and white are two of my favorites.
I am always behind, but this year I feel more behind than ever in the weaving department. I read the blog of a production weaver I know and she commented that any weaving she does now through the end of the year is "extra". Everything for this season's sales is finished. What? I should have woven my scarves and blankets LAST January? I thought about it. I also thought about it in March and July and August and September. I knew that I'd get to it in October. What have I been doing when I should be weaving? Here are a few examples beside the obvious sheep farming, Lambtown, etc.
Last week I hosted a field trip of middle school home-schooled kids and their families. We spent a couple of hours in the barn and at the shop. After lunch I guided them through a needlefelting project.
They all made up their own designs. This is one student's work. Cute, huh?
I taught a Learn to Weave class a couple of weeks ago.
Here is the scarf woven by a brand new weaver. She used Zephyr Jaggerspun yarn and doubled it in warp and weft. It turned out great!
One of the students couldn't come back on the second day of the class and she finished her scarf today. This is a close-up. She used Jaggerspun Maine-Line yarn.
I taught three students in a Rigid Heddle Scarf class, which, by the way, I will offer again once in December. No more other classes until January. 
This is the blackberry jungle growing (for those of you who know the farm) just north of Faulkner's pen--in fact part of this IS the fence-line for Faulkner's pen. There is an engineered septic system under those shorter blackberries that is supposed to be maintained and inspected every year. 
This is what I did on Sunday after working another several hours on the final Lambtown reports and finances. There is still a lot of blackberry work to do but at least the septic guys can get to the valve covers.
Farm Club was here all day on Saturday and helped with the list of chores on the clipboard. We didn't get to all the barn cleaning, but did a lot of other stuff. Maybe I'll ask Rusty to write a post about that since he hasn't done much writing lately.
It's the time of year that the pomegranates need to be picked or they will split (if we ever get any rain that is).
When I take the dogs for a run across the road I see all the black walnuts going to waste. Here is what to do with them.
Boiling black walnuts.
Add white yarn.
End up with brown yarn.
Maybe I'll get to the loom tomorrow...after I take my kids to the airport.
Hendrix and his group of ewes have been in the back pasture since breeding season started and they have been at the north end of that pasture for a couple of weeks. Since hardly anything is growing (start the rain dance please) I figured that they couldn't do too much damage leaving them that long. I thought that maybe that could take down the dallisgrass and they actually did a pretty good job of it in most of the pasture. It is still a challenge however along the ditch and the fence-line. (If you search dallis in the blog search you'll see several posts about my attempts to conquer it.)
This is the north end of the property. Notice the blackberries on the north fence. I cut these away in the spring to uncover the electric fence wire on the inside of the field fence. The sheep could help in that job except that this time of year the dallis grass growing in and around the ditch keeps them from going over there. It may seem hard to believe that a grass keeps sheep from something, but this stuff is so coarse and strong it's like hacking your way through a jungle. And it's very sticky now from a fungus that grows on the seed head. Several years ago I found a ewe whose horns were so tangled in it that she was stuck upside down in this ditch. The only reason that I knew she was there was that she was baaing. The sheep in the photo above are in the ditch because I trampled some of the grass and put alfalfa there. 
This photo shows that they are making progress. Now I can actually see a ditch and the sheep can get through it to the side with the blackberries.
They are finding the hay in the blackberries and it makes it worth their while to work their way through the grass.
After about a week we have worked our way through the ditch and I'm putting the hay near the fence. 
Then I moved beyond the blackberries and had them trample the dallisgrass along the rest of the fenceline.
This is the east fence and it looked almost as full of grass before I started this project. It is more overrun with blackberries. The sheep have eaten some of the leaves off. I think I have to get in there with clippers now though. There is an electric fence hiding in there somewhere.
Molly was the garage cat. Many of you who come to work in the barn or to see the sheep never saw her because the dogs are usually with me and Molly avoided the dogs. Molly's hangout was the garage. She was Dan's cat.
Dan rescued Molly in 1994 when she was a tiny kitten and we had a dairy. He found Molly trying to lap up milk leaking out of the dairy cows who were waiting to be milked. A baby kitty wasn't going to last long while standing under the cows so Dan brought her to the house. I've been looking for photos of her and this was the only one that I found.
This was an attempt at a family photo for our Christmas card. Molly is the little kitty in the middle. Katie and I are holding Stripes and Myrtle, two cats rescued from the Barn Cat life. The calf was one that lived on the back porch for a couple of months after being born as a premie. I named her Sequoia to give her a name to live up to. We had dogs, but I guess we thought it would be a bit tough to get this photo with dogs too.
Fast forward to 2012 or so when these photos were taken.
When we first moved here in 1999 Molly went missing. I was driving the kids to school and saw her up the road running between haystacks. I brought her home and we made sure that she had a safe place in the garage. Dan uses the upstairs of the garage as his office/man-cave and that became Molly's home base. 
I probably had the dogs with me when I took this photo because that is how Molly stared at them while holding her ground. 
Molly lived a good life for 19 years, but a couple of weeks ago it was time to say that final goodbye.
I put the rams in with the ewes on October 1. This is Day 16 so it's time to change the marker. The ewe's heat cycle averages 17 days. If one of the previously marked ewes is remarked then I know that she wasn't bred in the first cycle. If multiple ewes are remarked I may have a ram fertility problem. 
I changed the markers for all four rams from red to green.
Hendrix was not very happy about being tied up.
All he wanted was to get back to the ewe in heat.
The young ram, now named Santana, (second from right) wasn't put in with the ewes until October 7 but several ewes have been marked. 
As I was working with the sheep I heard geese honking. It's that time of year.
And here is the gorgeous evening sky.
It's time to think ahead five months to lambs. But that won't happen if I don't do something about it now. What with events and classes the last few weeks it was hard to get all the rams and ewes sorted into the right places but they are there now. 
Faulkner's ewes were first to sort because at least I knew where I would put them. They are staying in Faulkner's pen. He has 7 ewes.
Hendrix, with 18 ewes, tried to get started right away.
He didn't choose the right ewe.
Miller, with 9 ewes, had no problem figuring it out. Each ram wears a marking harness so that I know when each ewe is bred. I will change the markers to another color after two weeks. If the ewes are marked again then there may be a problem with ram fertility. 
Presley is another adult ram but I don't plan to use him because he is closely related to the others. (He is for sale.) He was hopeful when I moved him to another pen, but he gave up after finding that there were only ram lambs. 
I wanted to use one of this year's ram lambs for the fourth group of ewes. I had a hard time choosing among the rams I have saved. My first choice was a four-horn ram lamb who I think has promise and also placed well at the summer shows. Unfortunately, he was very sick with bluetongue (insect transmitted virus common in the fall) a few weeks ago. He pulled through (I lost two others) but with the 106+ temperature I can not be sure that he is fertile. He may have his chance next year, but this year I needed to find another ram. 
I chose a two-horn ram whose wool I like. He wasn't happy about the whole thing. The ewes were a little rough on him the first day. I could just hear the comments under their breaths "little pipsqueak", "a lot of gall thinking he can handle us", "take that" (rib-bashing)
There were times when I thought that this ram would do OK, but most of the time I found him lying down away from the ewes. I started to wonder if he also had bluetongue because he acted so depressed and showed no interest in food or the ewes. I finally removed him and chose a second ram. Now I think that he just wasn't ready to breed and the ewes knew that and beat him up. Most Jacob rams are ready to breed at six months, but not always. 
This guy seems to be interested and ready to go.
He weighs less than all these ewes but that doesn't seem to bother him (or the ewes).
Hendrix has been with his ewes for a week and seven are marked.
Miller has five marked.
Poor Amaryllis is exiled for the moment. I don't want the rams fighting through the fence so they are all in areas with no fence-line contact. Besides the four ram groups there are the non-breeding ewes (spring lambs, summer-lambing ewes, cull lambs) and non-breeding rams. That doesn't leave much space for Amaryllis since she has to be on a grass hay diet without pasture (she broke the grazing muzzle) or alfalfa. So she has her own corral for the moment.
The sheep follow me, always hopeful that I'll switch them to a new paddock.
They are in luck this morning.
The young lambs don't always figure out going around the post.
Now they're going the right way. 
Sheep aren't the only thing in the pasture.
Can you tell what I'm looking at?
The mosquitoes haven't been too bad this year, but that has changed now. The pasture mosquitoes are out in force. I don't go out in the pasture without my long sleeved "mosquito shirt".
Farm Club (and others) came through again. Expanding the shop has been an ordeal that started five months ago. The last step was to paint. Farm Club friends volunteered to help so I set a date. If they hadn't offered I'd probably still be procrastinating.
I have been looking at these paint samples for months and finally chose one.
But first everything needed to be primed. This is where the new section joins the old. 
This is part of the original building. It's actually an old mobile home, which hasn't been mobile in decades. I painted it about a dozen years ago after we first moved here. 
This is at the south end. The window trim on the south end and much of the east side was rotten. The wood beneath was also rotten in some places. It has been very discouraging and overwhelming--trying to figure out how to deal with it. (Don't look up dry rot on Google unless you want to get depressed.) Some of this still has to be fixed before the whole project is completed, but we moved on with what we could do. 
It was extra nice that a couple of husbands also volunteered to help. The more the merrier!
I don't know if Mary overcame her dislike of ladders, but she persevered anyway to paint the eaves.
We worked all day yesterday with brushes to get that primer into the wood. Today I got out the new paint sprayer.
I don't have photos yet of the completed job. There are still windows to fix and more trim to paint, but I am so grateful to my friends for their help that I wanted to write this now. In addition to giving up their weekend days, most of them had to drive an hour to get here. I can't thank them enough. There will be another post when the job is completely finished.
The view from the top is interesting, but not always reality.
Gravity is your friend...
...but when that doesn't work, use leverage. 
Don't wear your best jeans. 
You get what you pay for. (Don't be fooled by the duct tape. This is a great hay hook.)
Be aware of your surroundings.
Dogs aren't much help when moving hay.Use brains when you don't have enough brawn.
That's 80 bales of hay, about 100 pounds each. If you don't use it, you lose it. But if you use it too much, go for the ibuprofen.
One down, more to go.
DISCLAIMER: You wanted it real, right? At least that's what I hear from some people who say they want to know what it's like to raise sheep. So this post is real. No pretty pictures; in fact, some down-right yucky ones. A few sad stories. It's the other part of life on the farm. Skip this post if you don't want to know. Over the last couple of months I have had to deal with several relatively minor veterinary issues. If I had to call a vet for each of these I might as well give up raising sheep. There are some things you just have to do on your own. But also note that if I hadn't dealt with these issues as they arose they would have become much more serious. As it is, they are mostly nuisances, taking time away from other things on the never-ending list of things-to-do.
Problem: Ram horn growing too close to jaw.
It doesn't look too bad here but...
...here is how it looked after I cut the horn. There was already an open sore on the skin which is the perfect place for infection and fly strike to start. This ram was never registered and destined for butcher because of his horns and his personality. In fact I had counted on using his very cool striped horns for dozens of fabulous buttons. The sad story is that his horns were lost at the butcher facility and no one seems to know what happened to them. Discouraging.
Problem: Ram horn growing into skull.
This is Miller. He started life out with nice looking horns, but after one broke it started to grow in the wrong direction. (Those photos will be another post.) This is looking down and you can see the horn going into the top of his skull behind his ear.
This is the kind of saw that you use to cut horns. It's a wire piece with two handles. I can't find mine so this belongs to a friend (thanks, Jackie). 
Here is a close up after cutting the horn. It's hard to tell but the horn had already gone into the flesh making an open wound.
This is the same view covered with Swat, an product that keeps the flies away. It comes in clear or pink. I like pink because I can see that it is still there. Sorry boys. I took these photos in mid-June. It's early August and this horn needs to be cut again. I just looked up the wire saw on-line because I need to buy one. I read that the wire gets dull with use. No wonder that when I tried to cut this horn again I couldn't get anywhere. I will buy two of these wire saws (with the wire that can be replaced) and give one to Jackie.
Problem: Ewe depressed (not in the psychiatric way), not eating, getting worse quickly
One morning I found Hattie, an otherwise healthy 3 year old ewe who was in a group of ewes I had recently weaned, not wanting to eat and not responding to much I did. I was teaching a class that morning and couldn't do much other than put her in her own pen and get back to her later.
Do you see Hattie's posture in the photo above? That is known as star-gazing and sometimes is a result of a thiamine deficiency. I didn't think Hattie could see--not a problem with the eyes, but a neurologic problem. From Sheep101:
Polioencephalomalacia (PEM, CCN, polio, cerebrocortical necrosis) Polioencephalomalacia is a disease of the central nervous system, caused by a vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency. Since the rumen manufactures B vitamins, polio is not caused by insufficient thiamine, but rather the inability to utilize it. The most common symptom of polio is blindness and star-gazing. Polio most commonly occurs in lambs that are consuming high concentrate diets. Polio can also occur in sheep that consume plants that contain a thiamase inhibitor. Polio symptoms mimic other neurological disease conditions, but a differential diagnosis can be made based on the animals' response to injections of vitamin B1.
I knew that an injection of thiamine would clear this up if that was the problem so I called my vet (Dr. M) to get some. I gave Hattie the injection and saw no response. I talked to Dr. M and she asked if she could come out and bring some students who were helping her. (She said that if nothing else, I would be adding to the students' experience.) In the long run, we gave Hattie thiamin, calcium, and glucose to no avail. She died within a few hours. I took her to the Food Animal Health and Safety Lab at UC Davis and the necropsy report showed copper toxicity. That could also be the subject of another post someday. There have been a few other deaths associated with Cu toxicity and I don't know the source of the Cu.
Problem: Ram lamb with broken horn (and lots of blood and flies).
That is not the normal position of a horn. The lambs often break horns when they play and fight, but they usually break the outer covering off the horn, leaving a bloody core. It's messy, but if you do nothing (except use Swat on the head to keep flies away) it will dry up and heal and the horn will continue to grow. But not this one.
This is looking down on the ram's head. The lower horn broke at the base of the core which leaves a hole in the head. In this case you can't just put the horn back and expect it to reattach...and you have to be careful of infection and fly strike. I ended up taking this horn off entirely and then having to cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding. 
Swat again. I kept the ram in a pen for a day with a fan blowing to hopefully keep the flies off. The second day I decided he was better off in the field instead of the barn. He is now a 3-horn ram and is in the butcher line-up.
Problem: Ram with swollen jaw.
Remember this guy? This is the one from the first photos. I noticed a swollen jaw. My first thought is bottle jaw (caused by worm overload). On closer examination I saw something else.
This is a view of the underside of the jaw. 
Here is the solution. Cut the horn, take a photo, then apply Swat.
Problem: Ram with gooey eye.
This is Miller again. I noticed eye looking gooey and let this one go for a little while. (It's more work to catch the rams.)
After I took a closer look I realized that the gooey eye was a result of a wound (probably from rams fighting) and not due to illness. It was not only gooey, but the lids were swollen.
Clean up was in order.
More clean up and then Swat.
Problem: Ram with swollen jaw. 
This ram lamb has no horns to speak of so that is not the problem. At first I thought this one was bottle jaw also and I think I treated him with worm medicine. The swelling never subsided and then started to change from an even swelling to something that felt more like an abcess. I just realized that I have no more photos of this one and that's probably a good thing. This was a big abcess, probably from a foxtail. I treated it and kept the ram away from the others, but I could never get it to clear up well. This ram went with the last batch of rams who were butchered.
Back to pretty pictures next time.
From a management standpoint having new lambs in July is not very smart. It's like managing two separate flocks. On the other hand, it's always fun to see new lambs. More importantly I like to support the efforts of UCD and the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital in presenting the Livestock Nursery at the CA State Fair. It is a major attraction and helps to provide much-needed education to the public.
This year I took five pregnant ewes to the fair, and I visited the fair yesterday.
Dona has twins. I bred some of the ewes to Faulkner, the BFL, as well as to a Jacob ram. It was more important to have lambs, any lambs, than to have purebred Jacob lambs. I decided that in breeding out of season using two rams would be safer than counting on just one and that by using Faulkner I'd be able to tell which ram sired the lambs. I think that I have one of each here. The lambs are quite different looking.
Phyllis had a single ram and Clover had twins, all sired by Faulkner. 
Isadora was bred to a Jacob ram and has a nice single ram lamb. I had a phone call today that Foxglove has also lambed with a single ram. 
Here is a view of the nursery first thing in the morning. When I left at noon the place was packed.
I wandered around the fair for a little while before I left. I thought I'd check out a few of my favorite spots. I won't get much time to do that once I get there with the other sheep at the end of next week.
There is a memorial to September 11. In the background is a steel beam from one of the towers and in the foreground is a sphere on which is inscribed the names of all the victims of that horrendous tragedy. It floats and spins gently on a cushion of water.
I breezed through the art show. This caught my eye. That is plastic bottles (400 of them) pouring out of a culvert.
Here is a sculpture made of nails.
In the California Living exhibit I saw a crocheted bicycle...or I guess it is a bicycle with crochet touches.
Lots of beautiful quilts.
Solano County always prides itself on winning awards for the exhibit in the County Building. This year's display was a bit different. It not only included the rich agricultural diversity of the county, but told the story of Travis Air Force Base. 
My last stop was The Forest, a relatively quiet and cool spot in the busy, sun-drenched fairgrounds. This time, with the AZ tragedy still fresh in my mind and my fire-fighter sons both working now, I took notice of this memorial.
It always takes so long to get ready to leave on a trip. This time it should be easy. I'll only be gone for 4 days. Dan will be here to feed sheep and dogs. I'm not packing up a vendor booth. I am taking sheep, however. Friends and I are going to Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon for four days.
Dan has been fixing up the box on the truck that holds the sheep. New gates, new paint, new wood.
Pack the tack box. Check.
Match up the coats to fit the sheep so that they don't get full of blowing straw in the back of the truck. Check...well sort of. I found the coats and dumped them out. I'll have to figure out sizes tomorrow a.m.
Figure out which fleeces to deliver and have made into felt. Scratch that one. No time. No energy.
Deal with the bills and paperwork. I did go through the piles to find the sheep registrations that I've been meaning to mail and will now deliver. Good thing. I found my AAA membership bill...now expired. I'll call in the morning and get reinstated.
Jacob Sheep registrations. I was going to get a pile of those done tonight. Nope.
Water my pathetic very late-started garden. I finally just threw zinnia seeds in the larger empty area. It would be nice to have something growing even if it is not edible.
Move more boxes into the shop so that it doesn't look so messy outside. No time for that. Tarp it again.
Paint shelves so that they will be useable when I get back. I cut and painted three.
Work on truck. Dan changed the oil and rotated the tires. I cleaned the inside, including the console that collects all the junk--I'm not sure that has been cleaned out since we bought the truck from my son years ago. Notice my little mower there. I mowed one paddock this morning. Dan will irrigate while I'm gone (that's worth going all by itself--having someone else irrigate.) (Chris, if you read this, notice the hood up on the jeep--didn't start.)
Remember that I didn't plan what to do about signs for over my sheep pens. I found a magnetic white board that the magnetic sign fits perfectly. It will hang from a PVC pipe framework painted black.
Getting late. We put the box on the truck about 11:30. I guess we'll be doing more to get ready in the morning.
As much as I love to read, when I look at blogs I'd rather see photos...especially good photos. That is one reason I like Celi's blog, thekitchensgarden . I don't know how Celi finds the time, but she writes a daily post and it's fun to keep up with what is going on at her farm. Celi recently posted a request to see the views from her readers' back porches.
My back porch view isn't too exciting:
The back porch looks directly at the back door of my on-farm shop where I teach classes and sell fiber and yarn and related equipment. It's less appealing right now because we have been remodeling it and it's essentially a construction zone for the time being. Nevertheless, Farm Club members enthusiastically encouraged me to send Celi a photo.
Celi's idea made me think of other views that I thought I'd share. How about the views from the barn? 
From the second story of the barn looking northeast. That's G-2 (Dan's hide-out) on the left, and G-1 is hidden in the trees. My shop is barely visible in the break in the trees on the right and the house is behind that. By the way, none of those trees were here when we moved here in 1999. I'll have to post before and after photos some day.
View from the barn looking south. I irrigated yesterday so the sheep are all locked in to the barn area. Normally they would be in the pasture, which is strip grazed using electric fence.
View from the second story of the barn looking northwest. We are on the western edge of the Sacramento Valley and those hills are the easternmost part of the Coast Range. The mound in right foreground is the all important manure compost pile which features prominently in several Lamb Game Videos.
What about a view OF the barn?
Here is a view of the barn looking west. The sheep are on the non-irrigated side of the fence since the pasture will have to drain for a few days before they go back out. The house and the shop are to my right in this photo.
This is from the pasture looking north. 
And if I turn slightly and look more north I see the end of the shop and the house that my mom used to live in. Our house is right behind that one.
What about a view INSIDE the barn?
This isn't all the sheep. There are about 60 adults, counting rams, and 80+ lambs. There is Amaryllis in the upper right. The sheep can go under that fence, but Amaryllis has to stay on the other side so that she doesn't get the alfalfa I feed to the sheep.
There is another view that is important to me. We have only 10 acres, but it feels like much more because we are fortunate to live across the road from much larger farmland. This year's crop is sunflowers. It doesn't look like much now, but in a couple of months I know I won't be able to put my camera down when I walk over there.
This is the view of the field from my mailbox. I have been taking a photo of this same view once a week since January with the idea that it will be interesting to see at the end of the year.
Remember, without irrigation the Sacramento Valley would be a desert all summer.
At Meridian Jacobs farm we raise Jacob sheep and sell locally grown wool fiber, yarn, and handwoven goods. We teach fiber classes and sell Ashford, Clemes & Clemes, and Schacht spinning and weaving equipment. We encourage farm visits with field trips and our unique Farm Club.
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