Ginny's First Lessons

Ginny is 11 months old and a few weeks ago I took her for "instinct testing" at Herding-4-Ewe, a training facility just a mile from my house.This is a photo that Dona took on that day. Clearly Ginny is interested. Debbie, the owner of Herding-4-Ewe, makes a determination if she thinks a dog is ready to begin training. Ginny had her first lesson last week and today  was the second.Here Ginny is waiting outside the arena while Debbie gets the dog-broke sheep out.Pretty soon I'll be the one in the arena with Ginny and we'll both be getting a lesson (and I won't be taking photos), but for now Debbie is the one working with Ginny. Look at how controlled Ginny is. This is the look of a dog that is thinking and can learn something new.  She starts off with her favorite direction, "come-by", or clockwise. Her tail is down and she is focused. Dogs have a direction that feels better to them (similar to people being right- or left-handed). They avoid going the other way. One goal of training is to eventually get the dog willing and confidant in going in the less comfortable direction. (By the way, Rusty's best direction is "away", the opposite of Ginny's.

In this photo Ginny is heading "away" in the less comfortable (for her) direction. Notice her tail up. That's a sign of a dog that is not thinking. She's in "play" or "chase" mode like in the first photo.

This is a calm dog.

 This looks good for Day 2.

Rams...

...wouldn't life be peaceful without them? The rams were giving me so much trouble with the fence in the pen I'd used for years that we switched them to a new space about six weeks ago. It's been working OK but now breeding season is upon us and they are getting harder to deal with. Welded wire panels alone are not enough. Here is what happens when ewes flaunt themselves just across the fence. Not only are the rams ruining the panels, but the electric fence on the ewe side is immediately grounded out and that means that all the electric fence on that system is out. Dan had an idea that would hopefully solve the problem for the short-term in the areas where the rams were pushing on their fence and bending the t-posts.He put in extra posts that we happened to have around and welded rebar between the posts on the two sets of fences to help make things sturdier. We hoped that it would make the whole thing more secure.

Here is what Ginny thought when she noticed the welder in the corral.

 There was a shirt hanging off of it so maybe she thought it was a short person.

Lots of reinforcement should keep them from pushing those t-posts over, right?Fence posts look good. The wire, not so much. He was completely stuck in the welded wire and the high tensile wire. This is Alex, by the way, whose horn I just trimmed in the last post.

 The only way to get Alex out of this was to cut the welded wire panel in two places. Now I have the ewes completely separated, but that isn't a long-term solution. Unfortunately I don't have a big enough place to have the rams in a pen that is isolated from everyone else so we'll be moving to Plan C when we have time (that would be when Dan has time).

Views on the Farm

Taken over the last week or so.Sheep coming in from the pasture.Amaryllis following.Dallisgrass. Ram lamb that I'm keeping. He'll be at the Lambtown sheep show. This is Meridian Nash (Meridian Crosby x Mud Ranch Ginseng).

Love this guy's horn spread (Meridian Crosby x Meridian Sophia). I wish I had room to keep all the promising ram lambs for several months, but most have to go before breeding season. In fact there has already been at least one major ram break-out involving the ram lambs and I'm sure that I'll have at least a couple of early lambs (mid January instead of late February when the planned lambs will come).Here are the yearling and two-year old rams. Puddleduck Ringo, Meridian Crosby, Foley, and Alex. Foley is sold and will be picked up soon I hope. Before we went to Texas these rams switched places with...

...Faulkner, the BFL ram, to give them more room and so that they couldn't keep getting tangled in the electric fence. It worked for awhile, but the ongoing saga is a subject for another blog post.

Egrets looking over the pasture.Hot LIps.

  Another ram issue. Notice how this horn (which has already been trimmed) is starting to irritate the skin on Alex's shoulders.

Another trim was required.Fresh water after cleaning the water trough. I so hope it rains this fall. I'm so tired of being dusty, hot, and dry. I don't know when I've looked forward to winter, but I sure am this year. I just hope it's not a disappointment.Ginny in her watching the road spot. She likes to chase trucks from her side of the fence.

Splash Dog!

This is the favorite Jump for the Toy spot. I took these photos with the iPhone.

The Latest from the Loom

In preparation for Fibershed's Grow Your Jeans event I wove six shawls using locally grown Timm Ranch wool yarn.   I showed photos of these before they were washed in this blog post. Quite a dramatic change. With the exception of the second blanket the weft is all the same as the warp, but naturally dyed.  From left to right: Osage orange (exhaust), Jacob wool, osage orange, black walnut, pomegranate, not dyed.  One shawl will be worn in the fashion show and they will all be for sale at Grow Your Jeans.  After that they will be for sale  at the Fibershed Marketplace website and at the Artery in Davis.More locally grown wool. These scarves are woven using Solano County Anderson Ranch wool. Not locally gown, but one of my best sellers--chenille scarves. You've seen this before but I hadn't taken a photo with the magazine cover.Here's is one of my photoshoot locations. Hard to find a smooth surface in the shade.

Farm Club Appreciation Day

I love my Farm Club, so I hosted a day just for them when there was no work (although Stephany came early just to help me stack hay in the barn), just food and visiting...oh, and party games. Thanks to Dona for all these photos. There is always good food when Farm Club does a potluck. No skimping on desserts. Kathleen shared her treasures from a recent trip to Russia that included seeing sheep and visiting with the shepherd in Gotland. Stephany charted an old Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern and is knitting it up in Imperial Yarn Company's Columbia. Prizes were awarded to the winners of the party games. How many sheep pellets in the container? 660.  Stephany seems stumped (or frightened) by the contents of the bag--things gathered from the barn. I had told everyone that there was nothing disgusting or dangerous.Mary shared the warp just off the loom. This is four towels from the Friendship Towel Kit supporting the Natural Dye Project in Guatemala. In the background is the preview of my big Estate Sale that will be over Labor Day weekend.

Across the Road Again

No big story here. I'm just sharing photos from this evening's walk with the dogs. First Ginny had to find her toy. She knows which toy we take on walks (the one that floats). While I stayed near the gate she ran through the bushes, around the garage and found it at the barn.

The sheep are in the pasture closest to the road right now.

It's dry and dusty now.

 

Maggie coming when I call.Egrets in the alfalfa field.

Ginny now expects me to help her out of the canal at the steep areas.

A field of green beans.

Beating the Commute

For the last couple of weeks I've seen helicopters transporting equipment and parts for work on the high voltage power lines that are about a mile from here. I get a good view from the haystack, but even with my 300 mm lens I have to do a lot of cropping to bring in the image and then it's not sharp. Today it wasn't just equipment. They were transporting people from one tower to the next. There were two helicopters going back and forth. The yellow one has equipment in this photo. This was fascinating to watch. Here is a very grainy close-up. That looks like a giant picnic basket. Do you suppose it's lunch time? Off to the next job.

Views from the Pasture

This morning in the pasture.

White-tailed kite.

Back at the Loom

It's been awhile since I talked about weaving. There was Texas and the fair and sheep and dogs. But I have been at work in the shop. After the fair and before the shooting of the video documentary I worked for a couple of days cleaning. This was the kind of cleaning where you Throw Things Away...or at least put them in a different building (in the room of a kid who no longer lives here) with the designation to go to the upcoming Estate Sale. After all I couldn't have a videographer in that shop where I couldn't even get to a loom without stepping over mountains of boxes and moving piles of Stuff off the bench. Now that the space is organized I feel like my brain is a little more organized too. One of the major accomplishments was to finish an order that has been hanging over my head for a really long time. These are one full size and three queen size blankets woven out of the customer's wool. I am anxious to get them shipped off. (And there is still one more custom order--that person may have given up on me but I will contact her this week.) Looking ahead to Fibershed Grow Your Jeans Event in October (same weekend as Lambtown by the way), I wove 6 shawls using wool I had spun last year from the local Timm Ranch flock. One of these will be in the fashion show and all will be for sale. The colored shawls use weft yarn dyed with osage orange, black walnut, and pomegranates. This are how the shawls look just off the loom. I still need to fringe and full them. This is one of the shawls after fulling.

I am teaching a class this weekend called Color on the Loom. I haven't taught this one before and I am still working on content. I wanted to weave another sample that also included combining weave structures. This is the kind of thing I rarely take time to do. Instead I have been working to meet deadlines. The creative part of weaving (as in everything else) takes time to think, absorb, mull over ideas. This week I took that time--I think it helped that the space was clean.

This is a warp in which stripes of wool  alternates with stripes of cotton. My idea was to purposely create a seersucker like effect. The wool is stretchy and the cotton is not. In addition wool and cotton react differently to wet finishing. I wove several samples of all different combinations of weave structure (plain weave, twill, basket weave) and cotton or wool weft. These are before and after photos of just a couple of the samples:Each of these samples are woven the same (plain weave cotton stripes alternating with basket weave wool stripes and vice versa and the same in squares--to the left of the samples). I wove one sample with wool weft and one with cotton weft. This is how the wool one looks after wet finishing (five minutes in the washing machine). It definitely has a different feel but isn't all that appealing to me. The most dramatic change and the one that I think I'd most like to repeat in a larger project is this one, the simplest. The photo above is plain weave throughout. One end is woven in wool, the other in cotton, and it's hard to see, but in the middle wool and cotton alternate in bands--like weaving a plaid but without changing color. Take a look at this one after finishing:

 This is felted (the next step past fulling). This sample had a five minute wash and then went into the dryer. I love the puckery look of where the cotton and wool alternate in the middle in both warp and weft. I think I want to weave a blanket like that. So I wove these as a color idea but love the texture most.

As an immediate follow-up to that experiment I used the same cotton yarns as in the samples and wove three scarves using the combination of plain weave and huck. I didn't like that so much in the wool/cotton samples but I love the look in these scarves. These are also "samples" as they each use a different color weft (subtle difference) and are woven at two different setts (the number of warp threads in an inch). So I'll use them as samples in the class and then they'll be at the Artery for sale.

I  hosted a field trip of Japanese agriculture students on Monday. They have been in this country for several months staying on different farms but have now come together for some class time at UC Davis. We spent most of the time in the barn but I also wanted to show them how I combine my weaving business with farming. I quickly put a scarf warp on this loom and wove and finished a sample to show what the scarves would look like after fulling. Isn't that difference amazing? I have now finished the scarves. Wait until you see them!Also this week I asked my husband to help me figure out a "warping trapeze". No I won't be swinging from the ceiling but my yarn will. I have been wanting to do this for a long time.  The idea is that you hang weights off the warp and wind it on smoothly under even tension. The tricky thing is that I need to get the warp yarns to go through a raddle to help keep them spaced properly. In most of the warping trapeze photos I see on-line the warp goes through the loom from the front. That won't work here so I'm working on other configurations. I think this will work out OK. This warp is for more shawls using more local wool yarn (Anderson Ranch). I may use the same pattern as those scarves I just wove. Well, this post just keeps going on and on. I also uploaded this photo. Thinking of what weft I'll use for the shawl warp in the photo above I got out the dye pot and the wolf lichen that I collected while at Lake Tahoe a couple of months ago. I kept thinking that something smelled funny but I was at the computer and forgot that I had something on the stove. Oops. Fortunately the yarn wasn't in the pot yet.

One last thing. This magazine came a couple of weeks ago. I knew that my contest entry was in the magazine but I didn't know that I had made the cover!

Road Trip to Texas - The End

In the last post we had come home to California about sunset, but we were still a long way from home. We had decided to camp at Joshua Tree National Park, but arrived there after dark. Mid-week, mid-July. No problem finding a camping site. I woke up before sunrise and walked in the desert to get some photos.I didn't have much luck with great sunrise photos but the good thing about sunrise (besides that another great day is starting) is that the light is great for other photos.

Have you ever seen so many spines?

We had slept in the truck so it didn't take long to break camp. We had entered the park from the south and planned to drive through to the northern exit.We stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden, a nature trail constructed through the cholla with warnings to not touch...for your own safety!

I was not tempted to touch. This "jumping cholla" is known for it's tendency to attach to a passerby without much provocation.

This is what the park is known for--the Joshua tree which is not really a tree, but a species of yucca that can grow to 40 feet tall. The park protects 794,000 acres of Mojave and Colorado Desert.

We drove to Keys View. At 5185 feet, its not the highest place in the park but I think it's the highest spot you can drive too. You can see the Coachella Valley to the southwest and Mount San Jacinto and Palm Springs to the north (just out of this photo)

Joshua Tree Park has plenty more to come back to, especially if we could take a vacation in the spring. Can you imagine what it would be like for early settlers? There were miners, homesteaders, and ranchers who tried to make a go of it here and there are remnants of those homesteads and mines.  We stopped at the visitor center on the way out and saw this statue and mural when driving away. After seeing the interesting public art in southern New Mexico and Arizona I wish that I had been on the lookout for it in the earlier part of our trip.Leaving Joshua Tree NP and driving through the town of Twentynine Palms, now the plan was to just head home. California is a big place. The iPhone map showed almost 8 1/2 hours to go.

More public art...or is this private art...or art at all? Amusement.

More amusement. This is the only souvenir I bought for myself (other than the National Park patches, which someday may be sewn to something but for now are on my bulletin board with others). This bighorn sheep now is on my big loom with a collection of other sheep.California oak woodland. Many hours still to go.

 Looking west from near Rio Vista. We live on the western side of the Central Valley and those are "our" mountains in the distance.

Road Trip to TX - Day 11

This was a long day of driving. We woke up in a campground in New Mexico and ended up...well, you'll have to get through this post to find out. There are lots of photos.We camped at Organ Mountains National Recreation Area in New Mexico. Leaving the campground we stopped for a couple of photos. This is prickly poppy......and here is my first tarantula seen "in the wild". It was actually on the road and Dan pulled over to point it out. Turning back onto the main road from White Sands to Las Cruces we spotted this flower-festooned, white bike above the road. I will admit that I am annoyed by the preponderance of "memorials" along our California roads but this seemed a poignant statement.There was the water tank with a mural commemorating the space industry the previous day. We saw more driving back through Las Cruces.I googled and found that there is a website describing these murals that depict historical events in New Mexico.Back on Interstate 10 heading to Arizona.I love this giant roadrunner. I looked this up also. It's 20 feet tall and 40 feet long and after it was constructed in 1993 "it was stationed at what was then the Las Cruces Foothills Landfill, as a kind of encouragement to creative recycling projects". Now it is along the freeway for travelers to see.This is the Border Patrol Inspection Station west of Las Cruces. Can you tell what is behind those orange cones? .I guess the weren't going to ask about the two Texas peaches that were still in our truck.You never know what you'll see on the interstate. This truck was carrying a dismantled airplane.  Entering the Lordsburg Playa. A playa is a "desert basin with no outlet which periodically fills with water to form a temporary lake". No danger of dust storms today.

I was enamored by more Public Art in unexpected places.

Driving into Tuscon I spotted the Saguaro National Park on the map. We decided to take a couple of hours to investigate. Two hours isn't enough to see a 91,000 acre park that is split into two halves, one on each side of Tucson, but at least we got an impression of it.

I didn't take many photos of saguaro because I couldn't do them justice......but there were plenty of other spiny things to photograph.I caught a glimpse (and a photo) of this zebra-tailed lizard running away just as we got out of the truck to walk on one of the trails.

We drove the loop in the eastern section of the park and then stopped at the visitor center.

Look back at those couple of photos of saguaro and imagine how old they are. Saguaro depend on nurse trees such as palo verde or mesquite to survive the first several years. Each plant produces tens of thousands of seeds each year but very few survive to grow into mature plants.At least one herd of javelina (herd? flock? gang?) have figured out a safe and shady place to spend their afternoons. This is in back of the visitor center.On the road again.

 More public art? Being something of a realist, I'm not so sure about this one.

There was plenty of art around the Phoenix area which is good because we missed the cutoff to avoid the whole metropolitan area. We hit Phoenix at rush hour (slow hours).

West of Phoenix we crossed the Arizona Central  Project Canal that diverts water from the Colorado River to central and southern Arizona. According to Wikipedia "The CAP is the largest and most expensive aqueduct system ever constructed in the United States." I can't help but think, what have we got ourselves into? Whether we're talking about Arizona, Las Vegas, southern California, or Central Valley agriculture, it seems there is no going back without disastrous consequences. Our infrastructure is based on major water diversion and our population requires that these systems function. But, these are deserts, folks! Now what?...But I digress.

Dusk in Arizona.Blurry in the fading light, but I can read it.

 Sunset in California. Now to find our camping spot. No photos after dark so that will be for the next post.

Road Trip to TX - Day 10 (Part 2)

When I left off the last Road Trip post we had just entered New Mexico on the evening of the tenth day of our adventure. When we drive I have a mapbook open on my lap--not because we don't know where to go, but because it is more interesting to see the names of geographic features and points of interest that me might not otherwise know as well as figure out which are public lands where we can camp. I supplement that with looking things up on the iPhone.It was late and we needed to stay somewhere. I saw that if we veered off Highway 10 a bit we could camp in the Organ Mountains. The mountains lit by the setting sun, taken while driving up Highway 70.Water tank outside of the Space Mural Museum at the town of Organ (population about 300 in 2010).This is a photo of the east side of the Organ Mountains, taken as we drove past the entry sign. That is because I was actually looking for something a little different. I don't remember what I googled but what I found on the iPhone was Organ Pipe National Monument which, yes, does have camping, and where we figured there would still be space on a weekday night in the middle of the summer. We had to drive a few miles down the road before we could turn back to the road to the campgrounds.  A view of White Sands at the base of these mountains. White Sands Missile Range is almost 3200 square miles and the town of White Sands is at the southern end. We had considered going to the White Sands National Monument before going to Texas but it was one of those times where even though we drove "right by it" according to the map we weren't really that close. We chose to go to Carlsbad Caverns instead. Here was White Sands again. The map shows that there is a visitor center and a museum in the town that is separate from the National Monument, which is 40 miles or so further north. But this was late in the day and at this point we were on a schedule to get home.

We found the campgrounds which were at the base of the Organ Mountains. What I didn't figure out until I was looking at my iPhone later that night was that the reason the road didn't look right and the other descriptions were a bit off was that we were at BLM's Organ Mountains National Recreation Area, not Organ Pipe National Monument which is in southern Arizona. OOPS! Good thing it all worked out or we might have found ourselves trying to find a motel back in Las Cruces.

Searching for the Perfect Ram

It's the time of year when I need to sell sheep. I want to get numbers down to 50 or so ewes by early October when breeding season begins. I have just separated the March ram lambs from the ewes and am now evaluating them as prospective breeding rams. It's hard to find that perfect ram.  Unfortunately I don't have the space to keep these rams around for 6-8 more months to see how they look as they get a little older. That's too bad, because I'd rather be able to choose by seeing them with a little more maturity. (By the way the red in all these photos is marking crayon, not blood.) This ram (15045) has a fabulous horn spread--no chance of those horns growing into his face. He has lilac (gray-brown) markings and a good spotting pattern. But my notes say his fleece is so-so. I think I'll have to check again because everything else looks great.  This ram's horns automatically disqualify him for remaining in my flock. They are fusing at the base and I don't like the "weepiness" that happens at the join between the horns--it is an area that attracts flies and that can lead to flystrike. Besides if they are already fused at this young age there is a good chance that the upper horns may cut off the blood supply to the lower ones which will weaken and be broken off.Here is another one with the same problem. No matter how much I might like his markings and fleece, I don't like the horns. I had my eye on this ram (15054)  because I like his wool but his horns are all white which makes him ineligible for registration... ...and I aso discovered that he is missing something down below. Well, it's not completely missing, just about half size.So here's a ram (15061) with nice horns and a decent fleece, but to register a ram he needs between 15% and 85% color.

Looking from this side he doesn't have that and he doesn't have much more color on the other side.This ram (15062) has plenty of color, but his horns are much too narrow. They will grow right into his neck or face as they grow larger.

Here is another with good color, but those horns are even more fused than the ones above. See that 5th horn on the right (the ram's left side)? People like to say that Jacob sheep can have 6 horns, but I have never seen one with 6 good horns. This is more my experience. Here is a ram (15030) with decent horn spacing and nice fleece. There is a bit of a problem with the lower horns because at this time they look as though they are going to grow right into his jaw. Sometimes horns with a tight curl like that get broken off when the ram is still young and then they grow out OK. Whether or not his horns would turn out all right, upon closer inspection (hands-on) I discovered that this ram has freckled fleece. That makes a gorgeous handspinning fleece, but it is not appropriate for a breeding ram, and in fact, the JSBA Breed Standard states that "excessive freckling in the white wool of young animals" makes them ineligible for registration.

How about this ram (15070)? Widespread horns. Not a lot of color but it is over 15%  and passable (I think). But I haven't really considered him because he is so much smaller than the other sheep. Granted, he is younger than many, but I don't want to choose one of the smaller rams in the lamb crop as my breeding ram. This is where being able to keep them awhile longer might aid in evaluation.That 2-horn ram (15022) in the middle is a good sized lilac ram and we all had our eyes on him from the beginning. Unfortunately I think that his horn set is also narrow. This is another one that could benefit from time to find out how the horns actually do grow out.

Here is a ram (15025) that might make a nice ram to keep.  The two-horn ram in the middle of this photo is Nash, a lilac ram with nice horns and a beautiful fleece. He was Champion Ram at Black Sheep Gathering in June.

The rest of the ram lambs are shown at this link. However I haven't updated some of the listings with new photos. I will be removing some of the rams from that page now that I have evaluated them further.

Ginny and the Drone

We had an interesting day here yesterday. Sarah and Bruce Barker of RightAfterThis.com were here to film an episode of a documentary series called Farm to Table and focused, at least for the first episodes, on women in farming. Farm Club members were here to weigh and sort the older lambs and Sarah and Bruce flimed us as well as other aspects of the farm. The only chance I had to take photos was when I heard Ginny barking at Bruce's drone. Backgrounds aren't great and I didn't have a very long lens so I cropped a lot, but here are the photos I got of Ginny.

 

Road Trip to Texas - Day 10 (part 1)

It may seem silly to go back three weeks to finish up my Road Trip blogs, but I don't want to leave it unfinished. This blog has become my scrapbook that I would never do on paper.  And I have had a lot of feedback that you who read the blog like the Road Trip series. I left off on Day 9, so here is Day 10, split into two parts because that's how the day seemed. I'll warn you now; there are a lot of photos.We were packing the truck. I wondered if Kirby would miss us for a little while because we'd been there for four days. Probably not, but I hope that she will remember me next time I see her.Saying goodbye was hard for Dan and me. Time to leave. I needed to be home by Friday.

Now that it's been so long until I sorted this batch of photos I forget where some of them were taken. I think this is the town of Blanco, the closest town to where we were visiting.

This is peach season in the Hill Country and wanted to make a stop and maybe pick up a few more gifts for farm-sitters.

Here is where they sort the peaches.And here is where they bake pies and other delectables. It smelled wonderful inside. I was so tempted to buy a pie, but instead I bought fresh peaches and jam and......this for the road...trying to ease the sadness of leaving our family behind.I amused myself by taking photos on the road (thinking that I would remember where they were taken).  I have not cropped or edited these photos. They include the squashbugs (as my brother and I used to call them) and glare on the windshield.

Texas is a big place. The country is not all what I had envisioned. There are more mountains than I expected.And more greenery. Even towards West Texas there is agriculture anywhere there is consistent water.

At this gas stop I walked out back......and took photos of the gorgeous Davis Mountains to the south.

The simple descriptor I kept thinking was Big.

Dropping into the Rio Grande valley.El Paso, on the U.S./Mexico border.

The border fence.

The end of this blog post but not the day. More in the next post.

State Fair 2015

I missed the State Fair last year because I was in Texas waiting for a grandbaby to be born. Coming back to the fair this year I decided that I wanted to change my display. The fair offers Marketing Awards for each species for those who put some effort into the displays that are with their livestock. I put a lot of thought and effort into this and Farm Club members also helped with some of the behind the scenes stuff as well as being there every day of the fair.This is what the main part of the display looked like. I used rusty tin (and I didn't have to do the DIY TV shows' trick of using acid on perfectly new tin to make it look that way) for the background as well as additional signage over the sheep pens. I focused on Farm Club and the idea of local marketing of wool, lamb and promoting consumer education while many of the other sheep exhibitors primarily promote marketing breeding stock.  I created a Jacob sheep puppet  as a craft project for kids to take home and came up with a crossword puzzle unique to our farm.

Part of marketing is using social media and the award description even specified use of QR codes. There is this blog, Rusty's blog, a Meridian Jacobs Facebook page, MJ Ravelry group, a MJ YouTube channel and even Pinterest and Instagram (which I didn't put on the sign). This is the fifth or sixth year that I have provided pregnant ewes for the Nursery that is managed by the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. This doesn't have anything to do with the Marketing Award, but the people at the vet school are so appreciative of this that I continue to do it.Isadora, one of the new mom's would probably rather be home, but she really has it rather nice at the fair--always plenty of food and a blowing fan when it is getting very hot.

I think our CA State Fair has a lot going for it. I did not do my regular pre-sheep-show visit to the fair because of our trip to Texas and the work to get ready, but I looked at a few other parts while I was there. At the other end of the barn there are the longhorns. I am afraid that this is a dying breed--not the cattle, but the people who bring them to the fair. There are only a few exhibitors left now and I hope that someone else will choose to show them because they are always fun to see.Same with sheep, right?I always like to see the part they call the Farm. We have modeled some of our garden ideas from what we have seen here. No reason to throw out tires when they can be used to grow vegies. They had a stack of three for potatoes which I thought was very clever. At harvest time just pull off the tires.I took this photo for my husband. In the Counties Exhibit Hall I saw this cycling jersey promoting the Tour de Manure.Back at the barn, I love to see the beautiful Clydesdales.  They make my yearling ram look rather small.

The fair runs for three weeks and the sheep are in the nursery for the whole time. But the sheep show is only four days. Good thing because it is exhausting talking to so many people. The moderate weather for the last week of the fair contributed to record crowds. I had to bring additional panels to "protect" the rams from people  being too close and not reading the "Do not pet rams. Do not grab horns." sign.

Of course the point of going to the fair is to show sheep although my focus is on the marketing award because it's hard to compete in classes with many breeds of sheep. Those are my two yearling rams.

I was pleased that Meridian Crosby won Reserve Champion ram in the Heritage Breeds Division.  He was not cooperative for the photo but hopefully the official photographer got one.

Both rams were happy to get back in their pen after the ordeal of the show ring.

The work paid off.

I won the Marketing Award as well as Herdsman and Best Program directed at the General Public. I found out later that I also won the Marketing Award over all the livestock species for the full run of the fair! I can't say thank you enough to Farm Club and a couple of other friends who helped at the fair. I couldn't do this without you.A successful few days, but all of us were glad to go home.

So Many Blogs, So Little Time

I am behind on blogs and I don't know which to do first. I didn't finish the blog posts on our trip to Texas. The last one I did was Day 9 but there are three more. I want to share photos of my very cute granddaughter whose birthday is today. I interrupted my Texas posts with a post of the Wragg Fire and now I have more photos of after the fire flared up yesterday.Then there is the State Fair which is worthy of a couple of posts.

However I am too tired tonight to do any of them. I woke up in the chair at my desk, dragged myself and my computer to the other room where the whole house fan is pulling a breeze through the house after our 108 degree day and I may just go back to sleep here.

We Interrupt This Blog...

...for breaking news. I've been writing about the trip to Texas and I think I have four days left. But tonight there are some spectacular photos of a fire that started this afternoon in the hills above Lake Berryessa. I shouldn't even be doing this post because I'm taking sheep to the fair first thing in the morning and I've been working for days getting ready for that. I should be going to bed. This is taken from the top of my haystack and is the view to the west. Lake Berryessa is in those hills and the map on my phone says 20 miles, but that is by road. Maybe it's 10-12 miles as the crow flies. The fire started about 2:30 and this photo was about 6:00 this evening. To the north was a dense cloud of smoke. We have had a south wind all day so the smoke didn't affect us but it is over Sacramento. All of these photos are with my iPhone. This is using the Pano app. I was on my way out to mow two paddocks of the pasture--they needed to be done before I spent the next four days at the fair. So the photos with the barn to the right are from the tractor. I must have taken a couple dozen photos. Every time I turned and drove north the scene seemed to change. This was about 7 p.m. About the time I finished mowing my son, who is on a USFS hotshot crew got home (next door) for his days off. Within an hour his boss called him back to Pollock Pines (about an hour and a half) because his crew will be leaving at 5 a.m. to work on this fire. Last I heard it was 4000 acres.

Road Trip to Texas - Day 9

We had been in the car for 8 days. We stayed in place for most of this day, our last day to visit Katie, Kurtis, and Kirby.I babysat (grandmothered) most of the day while Dan and Katie worked outside. Surprisingly (or maybe not when holding a squirming baby) I didn't take many photos.

At dinner time we went to "get BBQ". I hadn't realized that I'd never had "real BBQ".

Kirby had been asleep in the car. She's wearing one of several outfits given to her by her Aunt Meryl.

At a real BBQ place you buy your main course by the pound......and add "sides" like pecan cobbler, peach cobbler, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows on top) and beans. Katie made sure that we didn't miss out on pickles, onions, and bread.

  I think you'll agree that this is one nice looking family.

I took this photo inside the bathroom because I liked the idea, maybe because I'm using tin (albeit rusty and full of holes) for my upcoming State Fair display. The chalk boards in the bathroom and in each stall seemed to prevent grafitti on the walls.

Not a lot of excitement for this fourth day in Texas, but we were leaving the next day and an easy day was just fine.