Meet the Sheep -- Part 2

Dona took all the photos in the previous posts (this one too) because I was in the shop most of the day. Here are a few that I took when I made quick trips to the barn.Colleen brought roses for all the tables......and set up a booth with her felted creations and dyed yarns.Observed in the parking area.Speaking of parking, here is the Parking Attendant, who doesn't get much  attention in my blog, but is a Very Important Person behind-the-scenes. Bunnies in the barn were a big draw.   Lisa worked on her Cricket loom all day and sent interested customers to the shop.  Alison led a Sheep Portrait class.

 Feeding the bottle baby drew a crowd.At 4:00 everyone pitched in and sheep were put away, pens moved, and signs stored for next year in no time. Wow! What a crew! (What I haven't talked about in a blog post was the huge help that Farm Club members were during the last week when I had severe tendonitis and couldn't use my right arm at all. They did all the pen cleaning.) I think we got the whole Farm Club crew who was here (except for Gynna) in this photo.

Don't miss Rusty's story about Meet the Sheep.

My Weekend in iPhone Photos

What a beautiful weekend we had, although I'd rather be able to say that it's been raining and cold like winter is supposed to be. I wonder if this is the future. That will take some major adaptation. Regardless, here are photos from warm, sunny Solano County. I usually don't put the ewes out on the main pasture until late March when it has dried out. However, this year the water has drained away and I will take advantage of the grass growing now. If it doesn't rain more this will be it until (and if) we get irrigation water.Waiting for me to change the fence.Rear view of one of the ewes due to lamb in about 2-1/2  weeks.More rear views. These ewes won't lamb for a month or more.

 Thatch left over from the overgrown dallisgrass last fall. Nothing grows under it--at least not useful for sheep.This was growing inside that pile.While walking around the pasture I saw something (rodent) scurry across this obviously well-used path from one clump of grass to the next.

Speaking of rodents this is a view I see every morning when I go in the chicken house. Well, not this exact view. There are always new holes and new piles of dirt. There are only 2 chickens and I think I am feeding a whole colony of rats. I posted this photo on FB and was surprised at the number of responses. The overwhelming suggestion was to get terriers. Three dogs is enough and I won't get another. If Maggie gets a chance she will kill rodents but she will also kill chickens, which is why they are in the chicken house. Next suggestion was the old-fashioned snap type of trap. I have used those for mice, but for rats it sounds disgusting. I think I will get some though. I tried a sticky trap under that garbage can but they just covered it with dirt. Faulkner. I sent photos to someone who has been asked to supply rams to participate in a Year of the Sheep celebration in San Francisco this week. I suggested Faulkner because he is easy to handle (relatively). They want horned rams so I sent more photos....but probably not with spots. They are still discussing it and I haven't heard the final word.Even if the rams don't get to go to the city, some of them are having fun. It's time to breed my ewes that will lamb at the State Fair. This is Foley and Isadora yesterday. Today it was Crosby and Clover. I hope that this will be one answer to another rodent problem. This is a trial straw bale garden. The gophers have made it impossible to grow anything successfully in this part of the garden. Last summer I put two bales out here and started watering them the way you're are supposed to. Then I went to Texas to wait for my granddaughter to be born. I gave up the garden idea until now. I have planted lettuce and carrot seeds in this one and chard in another. We'll see what happens.

  I took a quick trip to Sacramento Weavers Open House to pick up the things I had on display there. These are a few of my blankets. This is the first year in many, many years that I did not spend the weekend there demonstrating weaving. It felt odd to show up at the end.A friend's purse that uses my horn buttons for the closure and to secure the strap.I tried this AVL loom with the e-lift. One step on the button and the shed changes. No lifting 16 (or in this case 40) shafts with leg power.

Water and Fire and Water

One of my friends was leaving at the last Spinners Night Out the Friday evening before Thanksgiving. She came back into the shop to say that she was sprayed in the face by water and asked if there a sprinkler on. I went out to look and found that the pressure tank for the well was spraying water from a rust hole. We turned the water off and the next day Dan welded a patch on the tank. That was enough to get us through the weekend (turning the water off at night because it was still leaking), but was not a permanent fix.  After the welded patch--better than before, but only a temporary fix. I picked up a new tank in Sacramento. It's nice to have a son-in-law who is in the well and pump business and could get me a good price on a tank. He wasn't here for the installation but gave tech support on the phone.  That evening I came home from a meeting and found Dan watching to make sure there were no leaks. On the Friday after Thanksgiving conditions were right that we could burn the brush pile that had been getting bigger all summer and Chris came over to do that while I was busy with other things. It was too big to burn in place so we pushed it behind the barn where it was farther away from structures.  This is the aftermath of that pile. As that one was smoldering Chris set the blackberry pile on fire.  He lit a palm frond on fire to get the pile burning. This one was getting a little scary. We really didn't want that palm tree to catch fire. Good thing Chris is a professional. This was a HOT fire. I wondered if our two garden hoses were enough to keep it in check.  It didn't take long to get to this point. Chris dug a line around it and we let it smolder all night. This is the next morning. The other pile was smoking even two days later and after a light rain. Saturday night I heard a leak in the cellar. (This is a low-ceiling room beneath the house with access from the outside. Before the drought years this basement would flood 3-4 feet in the winter and we had to keep a sump pump running so that the water would not flood the water heater.) It turns out that the old water heater was leaking, probably as a result of the higher pressure that our new pressure tank was providing to the house. I won't show a photo of what this room looked like before I cleaned out all the junk that was along these walls because that is embarrassing. Believe me that it was not pretty considering what kind of critters spend time in basements and the fact that it has flooded periodically. Fortunately this incident was on the weekend and Dan was able to install a new water heater on Sunday. This photo was taken this morning (Wednesday). Notice the water in the basement.That is why we have to keep this pump set up in the winter. It wasn't used the last couple of winters, but we woke up to this: The water level was at 2.0 inches since the evening before. We haven't seen that in a long time.