Random Farm Photos

The Random Photos posts mean that I don’t have anything very exciting to report or a story to tell but I don’t want to be so neglectful of my blog. So here it is.

I have been updating the lamb pages and needed new photos. This is one of the five ewe lambs that is still for sale. Her number indicates that she was the first lamb born in 2021.

This is a lamb I am going to keep. This is almost the last lamb to be born in mid-March.

Tamarisk is the sire of most of the lambs this year. All the rams are putting on too much weight. They get alfalfa because in our area alfalfa is cheaper than any of the grass hays. But maybe I need to switch to something else even though it will cost more.

The goats are always so helpful when I’m doing chores.

This is Ellie and her daughter from last year.

How about some weaving pictures? After all, the blog is titled Life on the Farm and at the Loom. I finished a custom weaving job of 44 throws woven with Northern CA grown and spun yarn. The customer ordered 200 throws, but I said that I could do 40 of them. This is how the weaving looks still on the loom.

I wove these in two batches. This is the second batch of 22. Fortunately I don’t have to do the wet finishing. Someone else is taking on that task.

This is another project I’m working on. I will devote a whole blog post to this idea when I have more finished but the short story is that this blanket represents the 2020 weather pattern in our area. The colors indicate the high temps for the whole year of 2020. The grays and blues are 40s, 50s and 60s. Green is 70s. Yellow, orange, and red are 80s through 100+. There are two rows for each day of the year.

That first blanket has the color changes in the weft. In this blanket the warp indicates the temperature. I hope to market this idea as a kit to weavers and/or weave custom blankets for people based on a special year and place. I sell this yarn at the shop and on-line.

These are samplers that are woven in the Learn to Weave class. I have the first in-person class in a year and a half scheduled for the first week of July. Participants range from brand-new-never-touched-a loom to people who have some experience but could benefit from instruction on warping, reading drafts, etc.

I weaned 7 lambs a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been taking Ginny in there to practice her herding skills. It only took a few days for the lambs to figure out that when the dog is there they need to be near me. A Border Collie’s natural moves are to “gather” the sheep to the handler rather than chase them. But Ginny has the tendency to be to close and I’m working on the “get out” command.

Some of the rams were aggressive toward her at first but now they respect her a bit more.

Ginny is always ready for a dip after working the lambs.