Sheep Grow Up

Farm Club came and helped get the barn ready for shearing next weekend. We also made sure that my sheep list was current and we looked at fleeces. The lamb fleeces are gorgeous and it made me think about how sheep grow up. Here are some examples.Ventura's baby picture...   ...in the fall......as an adult. Rosie as a young lamb......half grown......and grown up with her own lambs.  Onyx as a lamb......and grown up.

 This is Jane with her lamb this year who I have named Jean.Jean during the summer...

 ...and a few weeks ago.

Here is one last one. Jerry (Garcia) is the wether who keeps the BFL ram, Faulkner, company. Jerry is a lucky sheep because he would not have been kept as a ram with his narrow horn set and lots of black fiber (too much to register, but great if you like dark wool).Jerry as a baby......with Faulkner after shearing a few years ago...

  ...and now ready to be shorn next week.

The wool is what it's all about.

 Jerry's fleece from last year.Ventura's fleece.

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.