Smoky Sunday Morning

I have fielded dozens of texts from concerned and well-wishing people to ask about how we are faring in the fires that are reported in Solano County. The LNU Lightning Complex fire has been burning since thousands of lightning strikes hit the area 5 days ago and the fires eventually merged into one massive fire, at over 340,000 acres as of this morning (Sunday).

The story of this fire is not mine to tell however. Yes, we live north of Vacaville where the initial reports showed devestating destruction of homes and property, but we are to the northeast and in a different landscape. The fires are burning through grassland and chapparal, and oak-woodland. Our place would be typical of the grassland ecosystem except that we and most of the surrounding farms are in an area supplied by irrigation water. So there are alfalfa fields, row crops, orchards, and irrigated pasture. This is very different than the land to the west of us where everything is dry. And DRY it is. That is typical for a California summer, but we have also just had the experience of a record-breaking week-long heat wave with daily temperatures reaching 110 degrees in some spots.

I have friends who live in the area where the fire raged in the first days and they had to evacuate suddenly in the middle of the night. I know other farmers who have lost everything, tragically including their livestock, in this fire. There are so many other fires burning now throughout California, many also a result of the unusual lightning event we experienced that’s its hard to keep track of what is going on. I like to keep up though with two sons and a daughter-in-law all involved in wildland fire fighting with the U.S. Forest Service.

This post is not about the fires (although you can’t tell from the first few paragraphs) but just random photos from Sunday morning as my life goes on here. The preoccupation of the fires is always there however, even overriding the coronavirus worries, as I know that they are still going on and know that I have friends and family all over the state who dealing with the disaster one way or another.

This is a view of how our place looks in the spring (small lambs and trees not yet with full leaf cover), looking northwest. Those hills run north-south.

This is almost the same view although now there is a young almond orchard to the north, but smoke is hiding the hills.

Other random images from this morning:

The ewes are off the pasture right now because we are just irrigated. I have to wait for the fields to dry out before I put them back out there. While we irrigate I feed in the barn.

Do you see what has Ginny’s intense focus?

That is a custom dog toy holder that Dan made and mounted on the fence, just refilled with balls that I had forgotten about but I found when doing a deep cleaning in the house. (Maybe I should do that more often.)

Jasper is a yearling ram waiting for breeding season. However I am going to be getting another ram unrelated to the flock and I have limited room. Jasper will be for sale.

This is a ram lamb who isn’t feeling too well. Yesterday he broke one of his lower horns. I don’t see signs of damage on other lambs so I don’t know how he did it—probably fighting. I had to cut the dangling horn off so that I could clean it up and try to prevent fly strike. I packed the wound with gauze and used vet wrap to keep it in place. We’ll be able to take that off tonight and hopefully the bleeding won’t start up again.

This is a chicken who has used up 2 of however many lives chickens have. She is the one that Maggie (dog) grabbed while I was Zooming a barn field trip during our recent Lambtown virtual Sheep to Shawl competition. It wasn’t really Maggies’ fault because the chicken sort of flew into her mouth. However, I do blame Maggie for yesterday’s mishap—although it’s probably my fault for picking blackberries and leaving the dogs unattended while the chickens were out. I found a pile of feathers with the chicken lying on top unable to get up. She wasn’t dead yet though. I moved her to a safe place, dribbled water into her mouth with a syringe and figured I’d see how she fared.

I was surprised to go out for chores in the evening and find her up and walking around. This photo is from this morning. She looks a little bedraggled but is eating and drinking.

One more random photo. I trimmed my hollyhocks way back because all the stalks had finished flowering and dried out. Look what a little water will do. The plants are regrowing and I’m getting another crop!