Trying to be Organized and Why it Doesn't Always Happen

If this is the first time you’ve seen one of my blog posts it is probably because you clicked a link in a newsletter sent out by Spin Off. Some of my posts are about weaving, some are about fun adventures and many are about sheep and farm life. All are filled with more photos than text, and soon there will be posts about lambing.

Today the post is full of photos I took today (now yesterday because I didn’t finish it last night) while still trying to get my website updated for the Spin Off partnership. I have been overwhelmed by the work involved in maintaining a decent website while dealing with the rest of life. So this post has a lot of disjointed random photos, but this was my day—the part of it when I wasn’t sitting at the computer.

An important component of the campaign is my fiber. We sheared just two weeks ago and I still have a lot of fleeces to skirt and photograph and list on-line. This has been my work space for the last week when I have time to get to it. The last fleece I skirted was Dilly. That green mark is from the ram’s marking harness and that fiber gets put into a separate bag. The red barrels are for coarser britch wool, skirting (less desirable wool), and fleeces that I’m sorting into black, white, and gray.

I photograph each fleece from the top side and the bottom side and with samples of locks.

Another thing to update was the handwoven page on the website. I got the photos of the latest v-shawl but it is not listed yet. I have to keep track of what things are at the Artery and here. I’ll be working there today (Monday) so will make a list and decide what I can post here.

While I was at the barn I thought about the previous day. That was a Farm Day and Farm Club members came to vaccinate all the sheep two weeks before lambing. I didn’t get photos. One member continued the job leftover from a few weeks ago of organizing and labeling all the net fences to make it easier to find the one I want when I want it. These are wrapped up and labeled with color coded tags.

While back and forth between the barn and the house I’m watching for chickens. The chickens are “free range” right now, but we want to limit that to the barn area and not at the house. We have two chicken populations (if you can use that word for a group of two). There are 2 chickens that are mine (the two darker ones in the first photo). When Chris and Meryl moved they left three which I integrated with my two. The two sets of chickens don’t really like each other, but they’ve had three months to figure out how to live together. Lately one or more of the three has been getting through a fence and then we have to go track them down and guide them back the right way to the barn. I don’t know where the last chicken was when I took these photos today, but they all showed up in the chicken house at nght.

We have had a plumbing problem since Friday. We think that the septic tank needs pumping. We don’t remember when it was last pumped—maybe 15 years ago? Dan brought the tractor around to see if he could find the clean-out lid.

Found it! But I would worry that those handles will break off when we try to lift the lid.

I just got this delivery. I like to support my local feed store, but they have stopped selling the iodine that I use for dipping navels—too much paperwork and tracking because people also use it for meth labs. I also have to get scrapie tags that are printed with my flock ID. The white tags are the ones printed for the baby lambs. I may not use all 99 of them but over 50 ewes will lamb and if a lot of those have twins…you do the math. The neighbor whose sheep we sheared here had a halter that I hadn’t seen before and I think I like it better than the old rope halters, so I bought one of those too.

While working on fleeces in the barn I heard the rams rattling this fence. If you’re familiar with hog panels then you know what effort it takes to damage the fence to this extent. Add that to the job for “Maintenance Guy”, Dan. The plan is to construct a pipe fence here.

Our pasture situation is a whole other story. Normally the sheep wouldn’t even be out in February because the pasture is soggy and wet then. When have we last had a “normal” year? After a record-breaking storm in late October and then more rain that followed we were 2/3 of the way to our usual annual rainfall. But it has been dry now since January 4. Growth has slowed drastically. The other challenge is our species composition which has changed over time. There are two grasses out here that are dormant this time of year and in some of the paddocks they are so thick that there is hardly anything green.

This is Hazel, one of the pet sheep. The faces have purple marks because we marked as we vaccinated on Saturday.

Heading to the barn.

It won’t be long before this is the view that is most interesting. I keep watch on udders to figure out who will be lambing soon.

All five chickens back in the chicken house for their bedtime. This is how they always roost—the three together on the left and the two on the right.

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