One Year Later

Most of you know about the could-have-been-fatal accident I had last year. That was October 14, 2019. Things started to get back to normal about March during lambing time. Then the pandemic hit. So life has not been normal, but I’m doing great.

I will celebrate my health and the smoke-free skies tomorrow with a trip to the mountains to go on a hike. But I wanted to acknowledge this milestone tonight. I had the unwavering support of my husband and my kids and kids-in-law…and of my Farm Club friends who helped during the darkest hours and days immediately following the accident. They pitched in to help with the fiber business, holiday sales, planning shearing day, and other support.

At the time of the accident my rink was cut off and I never got it back. Both Dan’s and my rings had become thin and misshapen from 33 years of wearing them. On our anniversary last summer Dan suggested that we get new rings and we talked to one of the jewelers at the Artery. Meg Blacksmith made new rings with subtle hammer marks that we picked up last week.

With the pandemic happening it feels as though life is not normal. We don’t have the events that we used to have or people coming to the farm. But the fiber work and farm work carries on and I’m learning to do more in the tech realm to develop classes and promote products. I am grateful to be here and to have recovered 100%.

Lambtown was held virtually and Farm Club members wanted to compete in the Sheep to Shawl Contest. Because as a virtual vendor I didn’t have to sit in a booth on S2S day I was the weaver. We were thrilled to place second out of 10 teams that competed. Here is a blog post with photos of some of the process.

I’ve spent more time weaving than I am able to some years. This is a blanket that is for sale on the Fibershed Marketplace website.

These are examples of scarves that we will be weaving in an on-line class in which I’ll teach weaving on a rigid heddle loom.

I recently wove some plain white fabric that I used for botanical printing. The story of this blanket is in this blog post.

Then of course there are the sheep. This is Ruby Peak Tamarisk. I told the story about traveling to Oregon to pick him up earlier this month in a blog post you can find if you scroll back a little ways. Breeding season started when we sorted out groups on October 1. That is two weeks now and almost all the ewes are marked. Tamarisk has half of them.

Meridian Rambler is a ram lamb that I chose to keep. His markings aren’t as good as I would have liked, but I love his fleece and his horns look very promising. He has a few ewes in his group.

Peyton always gets a half dozen ewes in his group. They produce crossbred lambs which are easy to sell earlier than the Jacob lambs.

Meridian Axle has bred most of his ewes at this point. I missed getting a photo of Jasper but he is the fifth ram we used.

Introducing Meridian Quora, a lamb who by chance I hadn’t sold and is now in with Rambler’s group. For those of you who like to keep track her parents are Axle x Quartz (Jade’s daughter).

The last random photo for the night is of the non-breeding group. This includes the goats and three ewe lambs. This could be filed in the why-we-don’t-get-rid-of-anything department. The goats seemed bored so Dan dragged the old staircase from my shop into this paddock for their use.

Thanks to those of you who have supported us through this year of trauma, pandemic, and smoke-filled skies.

Ecoprint Experiments

I don’t think there is anything except an experiment when doing ecoprint (or maybe more correctly called botanical printing(). Mine are certainly not predictable. Here is a blog post about the last time I did this on September 2. The wool fabric did not come out how I had hoped it would, so I was ready to try again.

I wanted to print on two throws that I wove specifically with this idea in mind. They were woven in plain weave using a mix of natural colored white wool yarns (more of a cream color). The wool fabric was washed and fulled after weaving and then mordanted in alum.

Here is the selection of leaves for throw #1. The last time I did this the most interesting effect was from those pecan leaves—the ones with multiple leaflets. They left brown tones on the fabric. For this one I also used maple and oak leaves, which have printed well on cotton and silk. There is a bit of sheoak as well and I sprinkled on some chips of madder root for good measure.

I used cotton fabric for the “blanket” layer. This fabric was soaked in an iron solution.

The layers of wool, plants, and cotton are rolled up in plastic around a PVC pipe and tied tightly.

The next step is to steam the whole thing and I used the contraption that I got Dan to put together when I wanted to do a piece that was too large to steam in the canning kettle (shown in that last blog post). The PVC roll is hanging from the dowel that is at the top of the chimney made of roofing metal. It sits on top of the canning kettle that is on a propane burner. I steamed this for about 90 minutes.

While the first throw steamed I prepared the second. This one has redwood. locust, maple, and redbud leaves. After the first bundle was finished I put this in the steamer. I waited until the next morning to unroll them.

This is what the first bundle looked like after I unrolled it. That is the cotton fabric that was on top.

I took the cotton fabric off and this is how the wool looked with the leaves still there.

The final unveiling.

Here is what I find surprising—the pecan leaves “printed” brown but all the other leaves only acted as a resist. It is the reaction of the tannin (in which the wool soaked) and the iron (in which the cotton soaked) that causes the fabric to turn gray. All of the leaves prevented that reaction from happening. I wonder if the brown color from the pecan leaves was a result of the sticky honeydew secretion from aphids in that tree or from the ash that coated the leaves, a result of the wildfires that have burned in California for weeks.

Another thing I didn’t anticipate was the red spots left by the pieces of madder root. One could think that someone was wrapped up in this blanket while eating something that dripped catsup.

On the second blanket all the leaves acted as resist.

These are photos that will be used to put these for sale on the Fibershed Marketplace website tomorrow.

Breeding Season is Here

I wrote a blog post about picking up the new ram in Oregon a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t ready to turn him out with ewes at that point, but today was the day. Yesterday I went through registration papers and made my lists. This morning we started sorting sheep. We brought all the ewes into the barn and as we looked at the list we either marked the faces or moved them through one gate or another. Then it was time to catch the rams, fit the marking harnesses and put them with their ewes.

Peyton is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) and the crossbred lambs he produces are ready to sell for market earlier and at a higher weight than the purebred Jacobs. Peyton gets the few ewes who are not registered and a couple of very freckled ewes. Freckling of the wool is a trait that is very heritable, and I don’t want to be tempted to keep lambs from those freckled ewes. There is also a 50:50 BFL:Jacob ewe that was sired by my previous BFL ram. Her lambs will be 75% BFL. Peyton has 7 ewes.

Ruby Peak Tamarisk is the new ram and we gave him about half the flock. I think he ended up with 30 ewes. He now gets to go out on the pasture instead of being cooped up in a smaller area.

Jasper (third from right) bred the largest group of ewes last year and produced some nice lambs, but he is also related to many of the ewes. He has 7 in his group.

Axle, a 2-horn ram near the front part of this group has 8 ewes and gets to go to a paddock in the south pasture. One of the challenges of using multiple rams is keeping them apart. Ideally they should not share a fenceline because they may fight through it. I’m taking my changes at the beginning of the season thinking that these rams will have enough to keep them happy until all their ewes are bred. Then I may have to do some rearranging.

At first I didn’t plan to use five rams but I wanted to see how this ram lamb (Jasper’s son, Rambler) would do. So he has a group of five ewes. One of the ewes is a big one (on the large size for a Jacob) and I almost wondered if we’d need to provide a ladder.

I have to allow some space for the non-breeding group also. I put a few 2020 ewe lambs out with the rams but saved some back. I may reevaluate these and put a couple more of them with rams. The ewe lambs usually breed later than the mature ewes and almost always have single lambs instead of twins. If we are going to shows next year I’d like to have a few of these lambs to show as yearlings and not worry about their condition and weaning lambs. But who knows if that will happen.

The goats are also in the non-breeding group, along with a few more lambs that are still for sale.

It didn’t take long to see some action. This is Jasper and Dilly.

Tamarisk and Terri and Betty.

Zinnia is one of Tamarisk’s ewes but I don’t know if she is bred. She certainly has green marks but they aren’t as solid as the others. Time will tell if this is adequate. I will change the markers to another color in about two weeks and I’ll be able to tell if ewes are marked again. They won’t stand for being mounted unless they are in heat.

Peyton and Anise.

Anise isn’t the only one with color everywhere.

Another view of Axle. The green mark on Ginger is more on her side than her rear, but it’s a nice solid mark.

Rambler didn’t mark any yet. There are only five ewes so it’s likely that no one is in heat yet. He’ll get his chance.

I know where I’ll be February 26. The barn will be a busy place.

Making Horn Buttons

I have been making buttons from Jacob horns for years but I’m not sure that I’ve shared that process here. Sheep have horns with a bony core that is attached to the skull. The horns don’t shed like antlers do. So the first step to making buttons is to have a horn that has been cut off a sheep and that is normally a sheep that has been butchered. It take awhile for the outer part of the horn to come off the bone.

I usually soak the horns in a bucket of water for a couple of days. It gets smelly and disgusting but hopefully the horn loosens from the bone. If it’s a large horn from an older animal that doesn’t always happen.

These are some of the horns from the last ram lambs to be butchered. That is a skull from an older ram that was butchered last year. Those horns never did loosen and come off the skull.

I used to make the buttons in the barn, but Dan has been trying to create some space for more of my farm stuff in the garage. He brought the band saw and the sander to the garage and found a spot for them on this tool bench that was something he made for the kids when they were much younger. He added wheels to the bench so that I can move the whole thing outside to work on the horns. It’s a very dusty (bone dust) process and it will be nice to be able to clean off the work surface outside and then wheel the tools back in.

I decided to use one horn to illustrate the process.

The bony core goes up 4 or 5 inches into a horn this size and the end is solid horn. When I cut the horn on the band saw I slice pieces off the solid part and that gives those curvy oval shapes—not very many from this horn. The bony core is where the horn is wider and hollow. I get squares and rectangles from that part of the horn.

The next step is to drill holes. I used to use a Dremel to drill the holes but Dan just got a drill press, and he showed me how to use it.

This is how the buttons look after drilling and before sanding.

This is a batch from the day before to show you that some of the horns are black and white.

Sanding is next.

I can’t sand these perfectly smooth on all surfaces because of the odd shapes, but I try to knock off the loose bits on the outside of the horns and remove the marks left by the saw.

I put a light coat of shellac on the horns to help protect them. I have figured a process that works for me. I put several on a piece of wire and then dip them in the can of shellac. Then I poke the ends of that wire into an old piece of Styrofoam that came from packaging something. (Another reason that I don’t throw things away—at least these get some more use before they end up in a landfill.)

Now the horns are ready to sell. When I go to a show people like to search through the basket of buttons and choose their favorites. If I’m trying to sell these on-line I have to organize them in a way that they can be displayed and they do look nice that way. I have some on the Fibershed Marketplace site and others on my own website.

I’d like some feedback here. I cut these off the ends of the horns in the photo near the top of this post. They have not been sanded yet. I’m thinking that they would great napkin rings. Does anyone use napkin rings? Do you even know what napkin rings are? I just googled and found napkin rings so I guess people do still use them. That will be my next project—sand and shellac these and figure out how to offer them for sale.

Sheep Delivery Road Trip

I was excited to plan a sheep delivery trip and think that we could make it a Road Trip. Many have read the blog posts about our annual Road Trips. We camp along the way, visit National Parks, and stop at all the road side markers about historical events and natural wonders. Last year we visited Rocky Mountain National Park and ended the trip at Schacht Spindle Company’s 50th anniversary dealer weekend. I just looked back to find the posts about that one. I wrote the first in September not long after we got home, but got distracted by breeding season, Lambtown, and then a severe injury in October, and I did’t complete the stories until March, 2020.

It turns out that it doesn’t make much sense to combine sheep and the kind of road trip we like—back roads, through National Parks, hiking when we feel like it—especially when there are active wildfires and horrible air quality (and besides there is a pandemic going on). So the sheep part of the trip was successful—but I can’t really call it a Road Trip. I don’t have great photos of beautiful scenery, but there are photos of the experience.

We were on our way at about 7:20 Wednesday morning, only 20 minutes after our planned departure. By this time we were used to seeing an orange sun in a gray sky.

This is not how the Sierras are supposed to look. It didn’t get any better. The majestic views we are used to just weren’t there.

We chose the route that was supposed to be the most direct to get to northeast Oregon—I-80 to Nevada, turn north at Winnemucca.

Driving across Nevada.

Air quality in Oregon wasn’t any better than Nevada and California. I assume that anyone who is reading this is aware of the devastating fires that have been burning all along the west coast.

My attempt at acting like this was a normal road trip. The map showed that there was the Vale Project Grazing Interpretive Site and Overlook. It amounted to this sign and a worn out shade where there probably used to be a picnic table. If there was an overlook I didn’t see it and there wouldn’t have been much to look over anyway.

This route took us into a sliver of Idaho. I had seen this sign last summer on the way to visit our smokejumper son in McCall. I don’t think there are any long-lost relatives here, but it’s sort of an unusual name. It would be interesting to pursue someday.

It was interesting to see hops growing in Oregon.

We knew that it would be well after dark when we arrived if we continued the drive all the way to our destination, and I really couldn’t face another three hours in the truck anyway. I always follow our route in those big map books and I found Farewell Bend State Park on the Snake River. We got there around dusk and were able to stretch our legs a bit after selecting a campsite. All we really needed was a place to park because we weren’t setting up a tent or cooking (cold homemade pizza for dinner). At home we decided that we wouldn’t both fit well in the trailer so Dan had fixed up a platform so that I could have a sleeping area in the trailer above the sheep and he would sleep in the bed of the truck.

This is the view from my sleeping bag. There were some unanticipated problems. There was kind of a tight fit with four sheep on the right and three on the left. The ewes on the right weren’t much problem once I figured out how to secure one of the loose gates so it didn’t clank against the wall every time one of them moved. The rams were another story. They didn’t fight but every time one of them moved his head a horn would clank on the wall or a gate. That gate that is separating two of them from another was NOT closed when the night started. With their movement the catch was released and it shut sometime during the night. There was continual clanking of horns against walls. There was pawing as they either were looking for food or trying to bed down. And they are actually pretty noisy when they are chewing. The clanking was the worst though. Needless to say I slept only on and off that night. I had planned to read and could have done to kill the time, but the light of the iPad drew all the bugs in the area. Does this sound like complaining? I know that there were a lot worse things going on in the world (and in all the fire zones) but I’m just telling the story they way it felt. I did like my special platform, but having sheep with horns below was the problem.

This is the view of our “camp” the next morning.

On the road again. heading to the Wallowa area. The last time I was in this part of Oregon I was on a camping trip with friends in college. I have always remembered that it was gorgeous country.

We got to our destination about 10:00. This is the ewe flock (and a goat) at Ruby Peak Farm.

I had brought three ram lambs with me so that Kate could choose which she liked best. It’s hard to choose a lamb from just looking at photos and they change quickly as they mature. I felt a lot better offering a choice. This is the lucky ram who got to stay in Oregon.

This is Ruby Peak Tamarisk, a yearling ram, who made the trip back to California with us.

Driving along the Wallowa River.

There were miles of hay fields with big barns. The smoke still hung over the landscape.

I am reminded of those postcards that say “Hawaii (or anywhere) at night” and they are black. This is driving right next to the Columbia River. You can barely see the other side of the river right across the middle of the photo.

We turned south at Portland and met up with another sheep buyer in Albany in the late afternoon. We transferred the ewes from our trailer to hers and then got on the road again. The original plan had been to be gone three full days, returning late on Friday. By this time we knew that conditions didn’t lend themselves to the leisurely trip I had thought about. There was smoke, less than perfect sleeping conditions, and covid concerns. We both decided that we really just wanted to be home. So we drove. Well, Dan drove. I slept a lot in the truck. We both slept for awhile at a rest stop near Redding, but for the most part just drove. We pulled into our driveway about 5:30 a.m. on Friday.

I’ve made a big deal about the smoke throughout this post. That was most obvious to us and was a major factor in decisions while we were on the road, but of course the most important aspect is that the smoke was there only because of the horrendous fires that were (are) burning. With two sons and a DIL on the fire lines and friends who were directly affected here in California I don’t forget that the fires are the real story.

I also hope that we’ll be able to take a real Road Trip next year and maybe focus on that beautiful part of Oregon in the northeast corner and make it to some National Parks along the way.

We slept a few hours and then unloaded sheep at home. I didn’t dare put Tamarisk with the other rams right away because they would fight. I found a wether to be his buddy and put him in a stall for a few days. This is Jade welcoming him to the flock. Tamarisk and the other rams will be turned out with ewes October 1. That will be another story

Maggie's Story - The End

If you’re a regular blog reader then you probably know the dogs who live here. Rusty and Ginny are the Border Collies and Rusty wrote his own blog for several years until he got too tired to do it. This post is about Maggie, who came here in 2013 and died today. Rusty was the only dog here in 2013, and I thought he could use a companion. I searched the rescue and foster sites until I found Maggie who seemed like a suitable companion. She was about his size and, although timid, did not have any aggressive tendencies—important since so many people come out here to visit the farm. The only thing I knew about her was that she had been rescued from a hoarder (almost 200 dogs) and had lived at this foster home for at least a year. She was extremely shy and timid but eventually overcame most of that.

Maggie had lived here a couple of years when I got Ginny as a puppy. Here is a blog post with photos of Maggie babysitting Ginny when she was a puppy.

It turned out that Maggie wasn’t as suitable for a farm dog as I would have liked. She was completely overstimulated by activity with sheep and she barked frantically at them when we worked with the sheep. That made it difficult to teach Ginny appropriate sheepherding manners. To this day I think that Ginny’s habit of barking at sheep who defy her authority when she is trying to herd them came from Maggie. Nevertheless I tried to give Maggie a decent life here. She liked it best when we all took trips Across the Road.

I’d take all three dogs Across the Road on leashes.

Once there I’d let them off the leashes. Ginny mostly wants to chase the ball and Rusty wants to chase Ginny. Maggie was usually off on her own just doing dog things.

Maggie didn’t see any point in playing with a ball or chasing a stick.

She wasn’t thrilled about swimming either but would use the canal to cool off on particularly hot days.

She would have been a good dog for someone who wanted a running companion but she got me instead. We used to go Across the Road several times a week, a mental health time for all the dogs.

None of the dogs are big fans of car rides even though we did get up to the mountains for occasional hikes.

But sometimes a car ride meant a trip to the vet.

They were never happy about that.

There was the time that sheep panels leaning on a haystack fell over on Maggie and broke her foot. She needed a vet visit that day but fortunately the wound healed well.

Overall Maggie did OK here. She put up with the people who came for field trips or on shearing day. She didn’t mind being out in the barn with us as long as people mostly ignored her. She presented a good lesson for kids on field trips because I could use her to teach them to think about what a dog was telling them with her behavior and body language.

The dogs always have been able to sleep in the house at night but during the winter Maggie didn’t mind sharing the dog house to keep dry during the day.

She was OK with other dogs, mostly leaving them alone. Finn and Sawyer are my son and DIL’s dogs and live next door. This is how dogs celebrate a birthday when they have wait their turns for the puppy cake.

One of Maggies’ traits was her obsession with small animals. Ground squirrels chirping in a woodpile set all the dogs off

Maggie’s method of attack though was to chew her way through, whether it was a pile of wood or the wall of the chicken house. I’m surprised that she never had teeth problems.

Speaking of chickens, I always had to be careful if I had let the chickens out for the day that I didn’t let Maggie our on her own near the barn. She occasionally ended up with a chicken in her mouth—usually I got to the scene before the chicken was killed but I could never trust her with the chickens. During “baby bird season”—the time when baby birds seem to fall out of the nests in the barn almost daily—I’d see Maggie trotting by with legs sticking out of her mouth. I guess I couldn’t blame her for that one. We called her the Dingo—listed as an opportunistic predator on a sign seen at a zoo in Australia. This is a blog post that Rusty wrote about a chicken escapade that had a happy ending.

We were never sure how old Maggie was. If she was 3 or 4 when I got her then she was 10 or 11 this year. That’s not that old for a dog but over the last few months she had started to look old. Her coat was rough, her hearing was poor, and her hips were getting weak. She just didn’t look good and over the last couple of weeks I thought that she didn’t seem as aware of her surroundings or activity as she used to and didn’t seem especially happy. This week we noticed that her belly looked fluid filled, her throat seemed swollen, and she wasn’t eating well. The vet I’ve known and respected for years once said in a discussion about euthanasia that “it’s better to be a week too early than a day too late”. This vet has shrunk her practice and works mostly with large animals now so I’ve been taking the dogs to another clinic. But when I called that clinic with my request for euthanasia I was told that there would need to be a consultation and they might determine that the dog wasn’t ready and they wouldn’t do it. I respect their rule and there have certainly been times when I’ve wanted to extend an animal’s life for a positive outcome. But I also have worked with animals long enough to have a pretty good feeling about when the outlook is not so good. I am not saying that I could look at someone else’s dog or sheep or whatever and tell them what is wrong with it, but I think I have paid attention to my own animals to be able to read the signs and pretty much trust that I am making the right decision. Besides a dog here and there, I’ve made decisions to euthanize a goat, a donkey, a sheep, and a horse—these were never easy decisions, but I still believe that they were the right decisions at the time.

I knew that my previous vet would trust my decision and I called to see if she was available. She was in the area and able to help. I took Maggie to her barn office and Maggie didn’t even have to get out of the car. Like I said before, she seemed unaware of her surrroundings and not even stressed to have been put in the car. The doctor at a glance agreed with my assessment of Maggie’s condition. She said that the swelling I saw in her throat was likely cancer and this was definitely time.

Maggie is now buried at the edge of the pasture near a friend’s dog who we recently buried when his time had come and not too far from the pet goat.

Virtual Sheep-to-Shawl Contest

Like everything else in our lives this year Lambtown, our local fiber fair, has become virtual. The festival will be held (virtually) on it’s regular dates—the first weekend of October. The sheep-to-shawl contest was changed to try it in a virtual format. Normally in a Sheep-to-Shawl contest teams of 6 or 7 people gather on one day and in 4 or 5 hours, depending on the contest rules, prepare and spin the wool and weave a shawl that is judged at the end of the contest. The loom is warped ahead of time and teams have procurred and washed their fiber, but no other work has been done until the contest starts.

How does a virtual contest work? My friends who manage Lambtown and created the first ever (as far as we know) virtual sheep-to-shawl contest decided that if in a regular contest there are 7 people on a team and they have four hours to complete the work then the same time should be allowed vitually. Seven people worked for 4 hours means 28 people hours were used. They decided that teams could be from 2 to 7 members and they could choose to compete all together on one day or separately over several days—after all the whole reason for this is because of Coronovirus requirements for social distancing. Zoom meetings were set up for the weekends in August and September and all work needed to be on Zoom—teams could choose which days to work and how many people would gather. Everyone who put in time had to record their time in half hour increments and each team had a maximum of 28 hours to complete the shawl.

Last year the Meridian Jacobs Farm Club put together a team and competed at Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon in July and at Lambtown in October. I couldn’t be on the team because at BSG I was showing sheep and at Lambtown I was a vendor. This year I am a vendor at Lambtown but, being virtual, there was no conflict with dates.

There were six of us on the team and we hadn’t planned on this ahead of time. So the first task was to figure out what fiber to use. Jacob wool, of course, but I didn’t have any left from the last shearing. Some of the Farm Club members had fiber left from previous years (imagine that, FC members with stashes of fibre!) so our weft fiber would be a combination of contributions from Jacob sheep. We decided to use white because I wanted to weave a pattern that I’ve been doing lately and it would best show up with a white weft on a dyed warp. I warped the loom with some of the Timm Ranch yarn that I dyed using coreopsis. I wove a couple of sample shawls to get an idea of the time to allow for the weaving (about 3 hours).

This was our first day back on August 8. One of our members couldn’t come on this day so there were five of us prepping fiber. We worked under the trees near the shop and spaced out over two picnic tables to maintain our social distancing.

The first step was to open up the wool locks by “lock-popping”.

That is a term that Clemes and Clemes used when they developed this handy tool. Then we carded the popped locks.

This is an electric drum carder but the rules of the sheep-to-shawl contest prohibit using electric carders so we attached the handle to this one and hand cranked.

The rules also included showing all work on Zoom. We set up the iPad to view all the team members. Some of the team started spinning but I didn’t get more photos. The missing team member stopped by to pick up the bobbins from the day’s work. She did her own Zoom session a week or two later while she plied the yarn—that would give us some yarn so I could get started with weaving right away at our next session.

We worked until about 1 that day and then Dan and I had to meet a livestock hauler in Sacramento to deliver sheep that would be going to buyers in the midwest.

This is the trailer that the sheep were to go in. This is the same brand as our new trailer (on the left in this photo) but this one is huge. The livestock are in the silver part and the tack room/living quarters take up the whole front of this one. It’s quite the rig!

Here is the trailer interior showing some of the travel companions. They included goats and little pigs.

Back to the Sheep-to-Shawl contest.

All our team members were able to gather yesterday (September 6) and our plan was to do all the work necessary to complete the shawl. We had 13 hours left of the 28 total hours we could use for his. So the plan was that i would start weaving while the others spun and plied with a little more fiber prep thrown in. The spinners would go “off the clock” when it was determined that there was enough yarn to finish the shawl.

We set up two devices. My ipad showed the spinners sitting to the south and a phone was aimed at my loom and one person who was still prepping fiber at the picnic table.

It is shady under the trees, but we set up canopies to be more fully protected from the sun. It was predicted to get to 110 by later in the day and it was hot even in the morning. In addition it was another smoky day. The air quality had improved over the last couple of days but this day it was dramatically worse again—we could smell smoke and there was ash on the tables we had just cleaned.

This was my view all morning. I was under a time deadline so I didn’t take very many photos. We started at 10 and I wove until 11:30 when I ran out of weft yarn and had to let the spinners catch up. Then I started weaving again at noon. I finished weaving about 12:30 and then we cut off the shawl and two of us worked on twisting the fringe. We finished with minutes to spare.

Now I need to pack this up and mail it off. It will be judged on the Lambtown weekend in a virtual venue.

Thanks to this great group of friends for coming together for this event and for your support of me and the farm throughout what has been a trying year.

Trial and Error

There is a lot of trial and error when I am developing a new idea or product. This time it seems like a lot of error. I have done successful ecoprinting in the past. This is the technique of soaking fabrics in tannin and iron solutions, applying leaves or flowers, rolling into a tight bundle and then steaming. Images of the plants remain on the fabric. Here is a blog post of a previous ecoprint day that turned out successfully.

These are some examples of using this technique on silk scarves.

The last time I wove a long warp for blankets I wove some in plain weave with white (natural sheep color) yarn with the plan to ecoprint the resulting blankets. The challenge has been to find a way to steam the fabric without folds. I had an idea and I talked Dan into creating a custom steamer contraption.

This is a canning kettle on a propane burner. At the top of it is the lid from an old enamel canning kettle. When placed upside down on this pot it fits perfectly and Dan cut out the center circle to make room for the “chimney” he created using corrugated metal roofing. (This is why we rarely throw things away—you never know when you will need them.)

This is the wool fabric laid out so that I could measure the plastic I needed and the “blanket” fabric—cotton yardage. The next step was to wet both fabrics. The wool was soaked in an iron solution and the cotton fabric in a tannin solution. I’ll tell you more later about the steps I forgot that may have made a difference in the outcome.

The wet wool was spread out on plastic. Notice the uneven coloring. That points to one of the mistakes. The wool should have been damp before I put it in the iron solution. As it was I put dry fabric in the solution and the wool resisted a thorough wetting. I’m also not sure about the color. The wet areas look rusty (after all, we’re talking about iron) and I don’t know if the iron should have been better dissolved or if I even used the right amount.

I arranged leaves. I looked at one of my sample pieces from last year to decide which leaves to use. These are eucalyptus, locust, sheoak, and redbud. My garden is pretty well gone right now so I didn’t have coreopsis flowers or weld, both of which I used successfully before to add some color.

Next the cotton “blanket” soaked in tannin goes on top. As the tannin soaked fabric touches the iron soaked fabric, a reaction occurs that makes those dark gray spots. I thought I took photos of all the steps, but I forgot a photo of the fabric rolled onto a 45” piece of PVC pipe.

When I print on scarves, they are rolled onto short lengths of pipe and they fit into a kettle on stop of a rack for steaming. In this case we filled the pot with water and started it heating.

WE made sure the water was boiling and then mounted the custom made tube to act as the steamer.

We lowered the PVC tube wrapped with fabric into the steamer tube.

A dowel at the top kept it from sinking down into the boiling water.

We put the lid on. Notice the handle on the tube. Dan riveted the tube together and then put handles (left over from something other project) on it for ease of lifting it (with hotpads).

The final arrangement.

When the pot was boiling hard the whole contraption was kind of rocking—probably because of our uneven floor. We turned the heat down to keep the water simmering. I know there was plenty of steam because it was dripping off the lid at the top. I took a video and here it is on Youtube. Hopefully that link will work.

I let this cool in the contraption overnight. I had to work at the Artery the next day and it wasn’t until I got home that I had time to unroll the fabric.

The cotton fabric certainly changed color indicating that the reaction of the tannin and iron was complete. I think the splotches are where the wool fabric was still dry.

UhOh. Not the result I had hoped for. Refer to that other blog post to see the potential of this if it is done right.

This is the whole piece of fabric spread out on a terry cloth towel that I use for drying blankets. Not a success. Back to the drawing board. In reading through that post from last summer it occurred to me that maybe the biggest mistake was not putting the wool fabric in a mordant bath first.

So the steamer contraption worked. I now can steam a large piece of fabric without folding it. But there is something missing in my technique of mordanting, soaking, applying leaves, etc. I’ll keep working on this and report back.

Color From the Garden

I started weaving 40 years ago and I think I learned the most about it from trial and error. I am a member of the “full-size-sample club”. I have woven plenty of 4” or 6” or 10” samples to find out how the combination of weaving draft, sett (number of threads/inch), and yarn will work. But I have also woven plenty of blankets or scarves and decided to experiment as I went. That doesn’t mean that every project has been successful, but many have, and it’s certainly way to learn.

I wanted to design a weaving kit using my naturally dyed yarns and I wove several to make sure that the amount of yarn in each skein would work for the pattern. The great thing about these scarves is that they illustrate one of the principles of designing with color—that of value.

I have found that value (referring to the lightness or darkness) of a color may be more important for the success of a piece than the hue. Notice in which of these pieces the weave pattern stands out the most. It is in the scarves in which the dyed yarn has the greatest contrast with the natural (white) yarn.

Notice the two shades of green in this scarf. (Running out of the lighter color of green led to a good example of what I’m talking about.)

This yellow is certainly bright, but it is still a lighter value than some of the colors above and the weave pattern doesn’t show up as much.

This is one more illustration of the importance of value. That weave structure is the same throughout this scarf, but it only shows up where the contrast is great between the light (white) and the dark (purple and blue) colors.

By the way, all of these scarves are for sale either on my website or the Fibershed Marketplace.

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!

Spring Lambs--a Few Months Late

I was going to write a blog post and use random farm photos. I started back through the photos that I had never edited and sorted and found this batch from spring, 2019.

This cute lamb from 2019 is one that is still here as an adult.

Here she is at about four months old in a photo I took to send in to register her. Meridian Jingle.

At that time of year (March through June)The lambs spend a lot of time every evening running back...

…and forth. And I spend a lot of time trying to get that perfect shot.

---

---

---

---

Today’s random farm photo. There are three juvenile turkeys that hang around the pasture and the barn.

Hiking in the Sierra

Last week we drove to Pollock Pines to meet up with our son and then chose a spot to go for a hike. We drove up to Highway 88 and stopped at the trailhead to Shealor Lakes. The trailhead is at 7440’ elevation so we were up in the granite landscape.

Once we got up away from the trailhead we could look back towards Silver Lake.

Along the trail a little further we could look down into the first Shealor Lake.

The lakes were surrounded by granite…

…some of which was flat enough to sit on.

Matt’s dog, Kirin, enjoyed the water. It’s hot enough here in Vacaville tonight as I write this that I wish I could immerse myself in that lake.

We had left hot valley temperatures and it was to be a hot day in the foothills as well. However, cloud cover built up in the mountains and there was some wind. This made for a very comfortable temperature, but we didn’t linger too long at the lake because these were thunderheads building.

As we hiked out we heard thunder to the south.

With the luck o 2019 and 2020 I didn’t feel like we should risk lightning on top of it all. I would like to do another hike here or on one of the other trails in the area. We live near such beautiful country. Right now I’d love to be near (in) that lake.

Kirin would probably like to go again too. Maybe I’d bring one our dogs next time.

Hiking Again

Normally we would choose to visit Stebbins Canyon in the spring when the temperature is mild, the hills are green, and there are wildlfowers everywhere. But as many of you know we had complications this year. So this is my first hike since last summer (and thinking back that one would have been in September in Colorado.

We usually take the Blue Ridge Trail which is about 5 miles. When you look closely at this map you see that most of it is considered “moderate to difficult” or “difficult to hazardous”. We took our regular route which was to start with the southern part and walk up the trail above the creek which is dry this time of year.

That is the easy part.

Everything is very dry right now but that doesn’t mean that its not interesting.

Pipestem Clematis gone to seed.

What an amazing plant!

The part that is described as “moderate to difficult” is mostly UP. There has been a lot of tail maintenance since I was there last. There was a very destructive fire a few years ago so some of the maintenance has been to replace the steps that were destroyed. There is also a lot of new signage which is appreciated.

Some includes plant ID like this.

There is also plenty of this plant…poison oak.

Speaking of hazards and signs, do you see all the potential hazards in this area? We didn’t see very many people on the trail but I got thinking that right now people (who may carry Covid-19) may be more feared than mountain lions or bears.

After you finish the “moderate to difficult” part of the trail you get up to the ridge and the “difficult to hazardous” part. From this point we still had to get to the top of the part to the left in this photo and the trail continues on to that point in the center of the photo—you can barely see the trail going up the ridge. That is not yet the end of the UP part and there is another smaller rise right after that. Then you descend on the trail that zig zags down the slope just to the right of that point in the photo. The first part of the trail is mostly shaded but there is no shade on this part of the trail along the ridge and then back down.

When you’re on the ridge you can see Lake Berryessa to the north.

This is a better view of the trail that continues up the ridge before you get to the downhill. It doesn’t look particularly hazardous here, but a lot of the trail prior to this involves climbing over rocks and not falling down.

Dan said that if I was getting a grade for my first hike this year he’d give me an A for perseverance and effort and maybe a B for agility and stabliity. We’re going to do it again next week so I can try for straight A’s.

Lessons from the Dyepot and the Pasture

The subtitle of this blog is On the Farm and At the Loom. So here is some of each—well as I look through the photos I selected a few days ago I realize that they aren’t “at the loom” but related to that part of the business.

These are some of the latest batch of buttons that I made. Shoppers usually like to dump out the basket of buttons and sort them, choosing as they go, but we have no shoppers in person now. The only way I can think to offer these for sale is to sort them myself and put them on cards. Now they can be posted on the website here and on the Fibershed Marketplace.

I’ve also been dying. I cleaned up my overgrown and wilting dye garden. The yellow is dyed with weld, the blue/green with hollyhock flowers, and the greens are the weld or hollyhock dyed yarn dyed with the opposite (hollyhock yarn dyed with weld and vice-versa).

The next step is labeling the yarn and putting it on the website.

This is yarn that was put in the weld dyepot after the first batch was out. A little toned down.

Now to the barn. This is what happens when I feed the ram lambs. I went in the pen to clean a feeder. Notice what Ginny is waiting for.

I always get help when cleaning the barn.

The two chickens are let out of the chicken house during they day. They always find somewhere to lay their eggs. This seems to be the current favorite spot.

These next photos were from yesterday. This could be its own post but I’m going to continue with this one. In between taking photos I did some Facebook Live recording that is specifically to bring the Cyber Fiber Farm Club to the farm. Then I thought I could include a bit about the pasture in the blog. This is field bindweed, an undesirable weed in most cases, but very pretty here. This is growing on an area that is different than most of the pasture because there is an old cement floor under the dirt in a long strip in this field. I have no idea when there used to be a barn out here but long long ago.

This is the clover that we like to see. We strip graze the pasture. That means that the sheep go into each section for a period of time (2-4 days) and move to the next when we change the electric net fences to allow entrance into another strip. That way each paddock gets at least 30 days of rest to regrow the above-ground and below-ground portion.

Birds-foot trefoil, another desirable pasture plant.

Where we want to close off a strip of the pasture we set up sections of the electric net fence and use these clips to connect from one “hot” wire to another.

A length of net fence set up. The opening is between the white net fence and that wooden post. It’s hard to see but there is a 3-wire electric fence that goes from the wooden post to the wouth (right in the photo). The sheep know it’s there and respect it.

Even though field bindweed is a “weed” sheep like to eat it.

So do goats.

But the clover is even better.

I want to add something to this post. I went to school in Range and Wildland Science at UCD—that was my first degree back in 1977. It was in those years through the early 2000’s that the concept of intensive grazing managment (once called rotational grazing) was developed. One of the leaders in the field was Stan Parsons. That’s who my brother started to work with, eventually buying his business and teaching Ranching for Profit schools all over the country and overseas. Dave was asked to write a tribute to Stan, who died of complications from Covid-19 this week. He wrote a touching and very powerful statement and I want to share that with you. Maybe it means more to me because it’s written by my brother and I know how heartfelt it is. To me it also is sad proof that this pandemic is REAL and it can touch everyone.

Stay safe.

Weekend at Home

A weekend at home is the norm for us—not pandemic related. We don’t live in a scenic forest or near a beach, but we are grateful that we live in a place where we can be outside and enjoy whatever is around us. I’m sharing photos of our world.

One of the last hollyhocks from the dye garden.

Here is what the hollyhock plot looks like now. Well, it did. I cut down all those dry stalks and left the base of the plants to regrow. The plot to the right is the weld which has all dried out also. I will water that and let it regrow from seed.

The wisteria is blooming for a second time this year.

Crepe myrtle.

These are two of the three young turkeys that have been hanging around the barn. Dust bath time.

Yesterday morning this plane made it rounds over us and then I think dropped down over the almonds up the road.

This is Meridian Ruthie. Doesn’t she have beautiful horns? She has been selected by a breeder in Pennsylvania and will be on the road in August along with a couple of lambs.

If you read this blog regularly you know that horn configuration is one of the Jacob traits that I care about. This ewe lambs horns are not as desirable as the ewe above although she will still be registered. She is a four horn ewe but the horns grew close together and the two on her right have fused to look like one horn. On the other side there are two horns, but there is no space between them and the lower has broken off.

Speaking of horns, this ram lamb has a nice looking head with two horns. It is important to have a wide spread so that the horns don’t start growing too near the jaw.

Here is a 4-horn ram with nice potential—space between the horns at the base and a nice shape. I just listed him on the ram lamb page. I had him marked down on my list as a ewe so hadn’t put him on the ram page. That was obviously wrong.

I’e been spending a lot of time out in the shop weaving.

This is a confusing photo, but I took it to show how I can use a mirror to help with a warp that is problematic. There is a better view below.

I can easily glance at the mirror to make sure that the shed (the opening between the different layers of threads) is clear and there won’t be a mistake if I throw the shuttle through. This is a double width project so the warp is more dense than usual and that can sometimes cause trouble.

Introducing...

I will introduce some of the lambs who have been chosen to stay here as part of the flock. I’ve been trying to get decent photos so I can get these lambs registered and also update the website for those that are still for sale.

I have sold so many 4-horn sheep that my goal was to keep some for myself. But there are certainly redeeming features to 2-horn sheep as well.

We often have a naming theme for the year. One of the Farm Club members suggested nuts because this year’s lamb crop was so NUTTY. This was due to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders and I had no field trips or farm club days. The lambs had minimal handling and every time I caught one of them she acted beserk. I have worked with all of these that I’m keeping and they are all halter broke and calmer now. The rest of the lambs are also calmer as I have handled all of them a little more.

This is Hazel (as in Hazelnut). She is the daughter of Jade, our friendliest sheep, and she has learned from her mom that it is a good thing to be friendly. You get head scratches and grain treats. Her sire is Axle, a ram with two horns.

Another two horn ewe, but look at that nice spread to her horns. She is out of a ewe with great 4-horns and a beautiful fleece but mom is going to go live with a breeder in the Midwest. So Coco (think cocoNUT) is on my Keep List. (Meridian Jasper x Meridian Ruthie)

Here is Pistachio. She is unrelated to most of the flock (Windy Acres Zeus x Unzicker Shenandoah). It I ever get another ram for elsewhere she would be a good candidate to breed to him with the hope of getting a ram lamb that is unrelated to everyone. That is always a struggle with a small flock. I have three adult rams right now and I don’t have any (adult or lamb) that aren’t related to many of the ewes.

Meridian Cashew (Meridian Jasper x Meridian Dilly). The parents are both 4-horned sheep with lovely fleeces. She is growing nice strong horns.

Meridian Sandie (as in Pecan Sandie)…

…and her sister, Pecan. Meridian Axle x Meridian Ginger. Both are beautiful lambs. Notice the color of these sheep. Sandie is black and white and Pecan is a good example of what Jacob breeders call lilac—a gray/brown color instead of black in the facial markings and the wool.

Here is a pretty lamb that wasn’t originally on my Keep list but could may be now. The problem is that I can’t keep them all. (Meridian Jasper x bide a wee Marion). Her mom is from a well known Oregon flock and stayed here when they visited in 2018 for the Jacob Sheep Breeders annual meeting that I hosted.

From the Loom

On thing to say about the Stay-At-Home during the pandemic I’ve been weaving.

The latest baby blankets.

This is the cutest little 8-shaft loom, Ashford’s Katie loom. It is very portable and VERY functional. It folds up and fits in a carrying bag. If I were traveling in an RV this loom would come with me. I took it to our Farm Club Retreat in January 2019 with a Theo Moorman project on it. For you non-weavers that’s a technique to weave images without using tapestry. Things got in the way. I never got back to the project, but now it’s out in the middle of the shop and I don’t have customers or classes. There is nothing to stop me from finishing the project. It has been fun to get back to it…but the project is a secret for now.

This is the latest project to come off the loom. I wanted to try one of the kits that I sell but did not design. This is Lunatic Fringe’s Handmaiden’s Towel Kit, woven with naturally colored cotton (yes, the cotton lint is green and also comes in brown!). The really amazing thing is how this color darkens with washing.

Unlike sheep’s wool that is washed before spinning, cotton goes straight from the field to the carding and spinning process, and this cotton hasn’t been washed yet. A bit of baking soda in the first wash water helps to bring out the true color of the yarn.

This is what the yarn looks like on the cones. That is the natural white, light green, and dark green. Look at the difference after those towels were washed!

Here is another view.

I’m working on threading this project right now. I’m not telling what it is. You’ll have to wait for it. I’ll just say that it’s double weave so it will be about 48” wide even though it’s woven on a 26” loom.

On the Loom, In the Shop, and Grazing the Pasture

Do you remember this blog post with the photos of the heart scarves?

This is a blanket that uses the same weave structure. After washing the wrinkles in the stripes mostly disappear.

The hearts show up best in where the color is in high contrast to the white. This is a good example of the importance of value (shades of light to dark). These blankets are on my website and the Fibershed Marketplace.

These are the most recent buttons. They are listed for sale on my website. They will be on the Fibershed Marketplace website when I can overcome my procrastination.

This is what the sheep do when I call “Hey Sheep!” if there isn’t a reason for them to ignore me.

Ellie’s kid. The folded ears are still evident. I am told that is a trait of her Bohr sire.

I ate two blackberries last night. That was all I found that were ripe. They need a couple more weeks and then Blackberry Pies, here I come!!!

Today's Random Farm Photos

This is truly a random batch of photos and thoughts. I am not focused on any one thing except overriding everything is Covid-19 and how that has changed it all. (No, I am not sick, but life has changed.)

Part of my “stay-at-home” endeavor is to use up yarn that has been here for a long time. I used to think I had a yarn shop—and I bought really nice yarn for resale. I am not set up like a real yarn shop and I don’t have the traffic to sell those yarns, especially now. So I will use it myself. (Remember thought that I do have really nice yarn—specializing in locally grown.) These blankets are woven with yarn from Imperial Yarn Company. These will be on my website and I took three others to the Artery.

Another blanket I wove recently. The colored yarn is handspun yarn that I must have spun years ago. This is on the website now.

All local Solano County yarn in natural sheep colors. The gray wool is from my flock. We’re moving into hot days, but I find a nice soft throw a good thing to have when the whole house fan is pulling in the cool night air. It is important to cool off the house at night, but sometimes I don’t want the cold wind on me. This one is on the Fibershed Marketplace website along with a couple of others.

I just wove these scarves today. This is an experiment. Experiment #1: Sett. The scarves use the same warp but the one on the left is sett at 10 epi (ends per inch) and the one of the right at 8 epi. Experiment #2: A new draft. I got this from an Ashford newsletter. Do you see the hearts? They show up better in the rust colored stripe. Experiment #3: Using dyed yarn (naturally dyed) and yarn straight from the cone. The dyed yarn has been in processed in hot water and behaves differently than yarn that has not been washed. The scarves have now been washed and are drying. I’ll see if they still look like seersucker in the morning.

Now I’ll get a little more random.

Ginny focused on the Ball-on-a-Rope. This Rope is now made up of baling twine since the original one is long gone.

The nest of a black phoebe in the garage. This is a problem for Dan because there are eggs and the mother bird is upset if Dan is trying to work down below. He is trying to give her space to let her raise her babies.

One of the triplet kids. These are Nubian x Bohr crosses.

I just learned that the folded ears of this one are typical of Bohr goats.

This is Ellie, the mom of the kid with the folded ears.

That’s Ellie and her kid. The triplets are next to their mom, Amelia.

I had the camera at the barn today because I’m trying to get photos of the sheep that I plan to keep so that I can get them registered. This is one of the ewe lambs. No name yet.

This is a ewe lamb still in the pasture. I need to get photos of these too so I can update the lamb pages on the website.

Here is another that I plan to keep.

A ram lamb in the pasture.

I don’t have as much coreopsis in the dye garden as last year but they are blooming now.

The purple hollyhocks are the most striking flower in the dye garden. These deep purple flowers give a green dye. I have been collecting dried flowers and have them listed for sale now.

It is Fire Season Already and a Post About Dogs

It has been hot and dry and today it was very windy. Those factors all lead up to Fire Season. I am very aware of this because of my six kids and kids-in-law, three are firefighters. My DIL works for the USFS in El Dorado National Forest and is not only a fire prevention officer, fire fighter, and public relations person, but does fire investigation. Her husband, my older son, has worked for USFS for years and just switched positions to Air Tactical Goup Supervisor. That means that when there are helicopters and planes dropping retardant and water he is circling in a plane above all the action and keeping track of everyone in the air and on the ground by radio, and making sure there are no disasters. Whew! It’s hard even to write that. The other son is in Idaho in his second year as a smoke jumper and about seventh year as a fire fighter. Smoke jumpers are flown to fires that are too remote to get to quickly by ground. The role of the smoke jumper is to get those fires out before they get big and out of control.

So when I see smoke I think of my kids. And when I see smoke to the west I think of my friends who live in those dry hills only ten miles from here.

This was the view today from a walk Across the Road.

So that’s not a fire but those turkeys in the alfalfa were what I saw as I walked out of our driveway.

My original intent with taking my camera with me for the dog walk was to say something about Rusty. How many of you know that for many years Rusty had his own blog on WordPress? His blog used to have a good following, but that last post was almost a year ago. If you scroll back through it he had some interesting insights to things going on here at the farm. Regrettably I wasn’t available to help him for a long time and we never got back to it. I was thinking of moving his blog here to this platform or maybe just letting him share my blog.

I’m already distracted. Back to the fire. This is a view from where we were walking to the west. There was a strong south wind so this fire was being pushed north towards Winters.

This is the view from that same spot to the south. That is Mt. Diablo in the distance.

Back to the dog portion of this post. This is Ginny.

Maggie.

Another view of the fire from a different vantage point.

The photo above looks over the alfalfa field. As I walk further south we get into a sunflower field. This view is to the east and you can see how the smoke was blowing and settling over the Davis area.

This is the road to the south. Sunflowers are on the left and the big canal is on the right.

This ditch is to the east (left) of the sunflower field in the photo above this one. There are sunflowers on both sides of this ditch. Rusty, at 14, has a hard time getting out of this ditch now but he like to get in and cool off. And I think that walking in the water along the edge takes the weight of his joints and feels good.

While I was walking I kept watching the planes that were flying retardant drops on the fire.

It made me think of my son. He is either in San Bernadino or Redding right now. But there may have been someone covering that position on this fire.

I saw this plane and the smaller one several times heading west and then going back to refuel. I think they go to McClellan AFB.

That is the same plane flying to the fire just out of the photo.

I missed the actual drop partly because of the trees in the foreground and also I’m not sure where he actually dropped the load.

Heading back east for another load.

Sunflowers are one of my favorite crops over here.

Bees pollinate the sunflowers. While I was walking a van came by with the driver in a full bee suit. He told me that they were bringing in a lot more bee boxes that night and that they were also dismantling some. He said that some were coming from Florida and there may be Africanized bees in the load and that I should avoid that area. I’ve never had a problem with the bee boxes around the fields, but I guess this is a whole different deal and I won’t be walking near the sunflower field for awhile.

This is the view of our place from the road. The fire was about 500 acres at this point. I just watched the 11 p.m. news and they reported 1200 acres with only 5% containment. There are mandatory evacuations in that area. I’m glad we live where we don’t worry about wildfires. They may be in the county but not right were we are with irrigated pasture and crops all around.