HLCO Tour at Placerville Airport

Posted on October 29, 2026 by Robin

We were invited by my son to visit his current workplace, the Placerville Airport. That is where the helicopter and pilot Matt works with are stationed right now, although that changes every few weeks or as fire activity changes. I wanted to describe his job and when I looked up HELCO I found Hawaiian Electric. When I added fire to the search words I read that HELCO “has frequently been associated with utility-related power line and transformer fires”. You never know what you might learn when you read my blog posts!

I finally found what I was really looking for: Matt is the Helicopter Coordinator (HLCO) who “coordinates helicopter mission(s) and incident airspace, manages incident air traffic, and is the link between ground personnel and incident aircraft. The HLCO is an airborne firefighter who coordinates, assigns, and evaluates the use of aerial resources in support of incident objectives.” In other words he is air traffic control over fires.

This is the helicopter Matt has been in lately. The dogs aren’t part of the crew, but they were extra visitors on this day. Ralston lives with Matt and Kaleena and is a qualified First Responder Therapy Dog. He has his own Instagram account @ralston.furriestresponder .

This is what Matt’s office looks like. He monitors six radio frequencies at a time as well as several different layers of maps on a screen. On this day he demonstrated the IR sensor that is used to find hot spots when in the air. On the ground we identified that the hottest spots on the dogs were their noses and mouths.

Sky-crane helicopter with its service vehicles nearby.

We walked across the airport to see the Sky Crane.

This is a huge helicopter. Notice the people in the foreground and fuel truck in the background for scale.

Sky crane helicopter with people and two dogs in front.

Looking up Sky Crane: “a twin-engine, heavy-lift helicopter famous for its distinctive, skeleton-like frame instead of a traditional enclosed cargo cabin…Built around a narrow central backbone for maximum strength and minimal weight.” Where ever this helicopter is stationed, the fuel truck and the maintenance trailer and truck (in the photo above this one) go with it. Three mechanics are part of the staff and one accompanies the two pilots on each flight. The water tank can carry 3000 gallons (I think).

Door with sign that says "Warning. NO stupid people".

Sign on the door of the service trailer.

Mechanical parts of the sky-crane helicopter.

A close-up view. I don’t know what to call any of this, but I was fascinated by how complicated it all is…and this is just one small part of the whole system.

Dan sitting in the pilot seat of the sky-crane helicopter.

We were invited inside.

Robin in one of the sky-crane helicopter's seats.

There are seats for two pilots in the front and a third seat that faces backwards with a clear view of the ground to watch as while lifting or placing cargo.

Overhead controls in the sky-crane helicopter.

Besides all the controls in front of the seats, look at what is above! Can you imagine learning to use all of this?

Family photo in front of the sky-crane helicopter.

A family photo.

This has nothing to do with HLCO, but Matt and Kaleena took us to lunch at Tommy’s Brown Bag in Placerville. Described on-line as a “quirky sandwich shop” and a “creative sandwich shop serving unique flavor combinations and generous portions”, both of those descriptions are correct. We each ordered a sandwich and traded halves. Mine is on the left. Guess the ingredients! See below:

PB&J&B&TP&CTC&HB!!!

PB&J
Peanut Butter
Strawberry Jelly
BACON
Toffee Peanuts
Cinnamon Toast Crunch
HONEY BUN!!!
on TEXAS TOAST BRIOCHE

Believe it or not, this was a fabulous sandwich. I would order it again, except that I think I should try some of the other quirky choices!

Foxy’s Fall Century – 2026

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Robin

Foxy’s Fall Century is my annual bike ride. I say this with equal parts of sarcasm and regret. Years ago I rode regularly or at least enough to consider myself a recreational cyclist and to maintain a level of fitness that comes from cycling.

Dan and I bought a tandem when we were first married forty years ago, and we rode it in several (or a few?) Double Century rides. Now it’s the annual Foxy’s when we ride it. We always get remarks that are similar to what I would expect if I still had my gold ’67 Camero with the black stripe across the front. Here’s a photo from 1973.

Dan got the tandem out a couple of days before the ride and pumped up the tires. A couple hours later one of the tubes exploded he bought new heavy duty tubes. We took the bike out on our training ride the afternoon before the ride. The goal was to make sure the gears and the brakes were all working. Everything seemed fine. We got to within about 20 feet of our driveway and one of the tubes went flat. It turns out that the valve stem was faulty. So Dan replaced that tire and the other one as well.

Chris got here from Boise on Friday night because he was going to ride with us. Dan and Chris went out in the morning to load the bike. The white truck wouldn’t start. This was the same truck on which we had just replaced the radiator because it failed not far from home. At least we’re lucky these episodes aren’t happening far out on the road. They loaded everything into the green truck–the one that had failed us big time on the road a couple of years ago and now won’t make another road trip, at least not with me in it.

That truck made it to Davis safely and we checked in. This is the map of the metric century since we’re not doing the full century and the climbing it involves. For perspective our farm is right about where the “D” in Seventh-Day is in this map. That’s why it was easy for Chris to leave the course and go home for forgotten water bottles, meeting us as we got to the rest stop.

Leaving Davis with the sun low in the sky. Since this is a tandem I can take a few photos along the way.

This is not my normal view because I’m really looking right at Dan’s back and can see off to the side. The phone could see this view if I held it up.

Here’s the view behind me.

Dan told Chris that if he wanted didn’t want to be bored while we took so much time getting up the hill on Gibson Canyon he could go ahead to find Cantelow Road, turn off the course and ride to the top to get a good hill work-out. He went ahead and met up with us later at Rest Stop #2.

Rest Stop with 20 miles to go back to Davis.

Riding through the orchards east of Winters. This is the view I’d see if I could make my eyes go wide-angle.

This is Stevenson Bridge, locally known as the Graffiti Bridge, connecting Yolo and Solano Counties over Putah Creek. It is over 100 years old, had been closed since May for retrofitting, and just reopened a week ago. The Solano County website reports, “The bridge is a rare example of a reinforced concrete through tied arch in California and is the oldest bridge of this type in California and possibly the United States. Often referred to as “Graffiti Bridge,” it is also the only bridge of its type that will remain from its era.”

The bridge connects popular cycling routes west of Davis. After crossing the bridge we were only eight miles from Davis where we had lunch and then came home

We are so glad that Chris made the trek from Boise to share this event with us!

Random Farm Photos

Posted on October 15, 2026 by Robin

I have skipped over so many ideas I have had for blog posts, but was out of time. So this is a random glimpse of some of them.

Lambtown was a week and a half ago now and it took me several days to get the shop organized again. I went into deep-cleaning mode and now everything is as organized as I can get it. For those of you who are local, the shop is open during Spinners Day Out (usually first Friday, but check the website) or if you call/text me and I’m here!

Last Thursday and Friday we irrigated. The irrigation season is over as of this week, meaning that there will be no more water available from the irrigation district. This was the smoothest irrigation yet this season because we finally figured out the best combination of amount of water (2 acre-feet) and time (noon to noon). The goal is to have enough water, but not so much that it stands on the field too long or we pay for so much water running off the field. And it’s easier to plan around the timing of mid-day turn-on/turn-off and I can do nighttime irrigation of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Speaking of the pasture, thankfully the mosquitoes are gone now but there were periods of time this summer, including a week ago, where they were awful. This is my mosquito garb, trying to be as completely covered as possible.

I ungloved long enough to take this photo. Later I marked all the mosquitoes in the photo.

Back to Lambtown. I was finally able to access the photos and videos that were taken during the Lambtown sheep show and I listened to the judging. Thanks, Doris! Farm Club members showed the sheep while I was in the vendor hall. There was one other Jacob breeder with two ewes and a farm showing Karakuls. Sparky still wants her turn to say something so there will be another post at some point.

Last weekend I taught Learn to Weave. Here we have two new weavers!

Breeding season is going on behind the scenes. After Lambtown I ended up with one ram lamb that needed a companion. I sent three ewes his way and they were all bred within two weeks. These marks are so extreme, as were marks on some of the other ewes, that I decided to not change the markers as they wear out. I don’t want to see the wool looking like this.

A friend was using this ram lamb, Gus, to breed some of her ewes. When she wanted to bring him back I needed to figure out where he would go. So I pulled the other two lambs from their ewes to put them all back into one area and not have to deal with reintroduction more than once.

The lamb on the left is Farley who was with those heavily marked ewes. You can still see some blue on his legs. The other is Helix who was at Lambtown. Now all are together, but I’ll still have to deal with the big rams when breeding season is really over.

You were warned by the title of this post that these are random photos.

Lambtown 2026 #2

Posted on October 6, 2026 by Robin

I am writing this post just to be complete with the Lambtown story. I need to include my booth if for no other reason for my own record.

The booth looks a bit cluttered. That may be an understatement. That’s because I have so much STUFF. The right side was all farm produced items, starting with handwoven pieces on a rack you can’t see in this photo. Then there were horn buttons and shawl pins, locally produced yarn from my own sheep and Timm Ranch, including natural dyed yarn. I included farm photos and notecards on the table. In the corner there are skulls on top and dye plant packets on the bottom. Sheepskins are on the other half of the table and Jacob fiber is on the center back wall. Notice that there is a big obstruction. I have had this space for a couple of years now and I have learned how to work around that big wood support beam

Notice also the number of people in a small booth. It was that way most of the weekend. The left half of the booth has Schacht and Ashford weaving equipment and commercial yarns that I carry.

By the end of the first day I had sold all but one of the skulls in the corner, so I filled in the space with some of the bandanas I had dyed. Most were hanging on the backside of the booth. Because I’m at the end of the row of booths, I have some flexibility about what can hang outside the back wall.

While I was talking to handing sales and talking to people all day, the Farm Club crew was showing sheep. I think Sparky may have something to say about that but she has to wait her turn at the computer!

Here is what my shop looked like when I got about half way through organizing everything. That was yesterday and tonight it still looks like that.

Lambtown 2026 – #1

Posted on October 6, 2026 by Robin

Large letters spell out LAMBTOWN and are propped on bales of sutra with orange pumpkins around.

Lambtown is the largest Sheep and Wool event in California and it is only ten minutes away from here. Lucky me!

Lambtown is open to everyone on the weekend. Before Lambtown officially starts there are full day classes on Thursday and Friday. I taught on Thursday because I spent all day Friday setting up my vendor booth and bringing sheep to the fairgrounds.

Five women holding looms with clasped warp projects they are working on in a class.

These are five of the nine students in my Clasped Warp and Clasped Weft class. They learned to dress the loom with clasped warp and spent the afternoon weaving a variety of ideas using the clasped weft technique.

The only time I have to see the Lambtown vendors and sheep is before the festival opens in the morning. On Saturday I parked near the vendor hall and walked to the barn to feed my sheep that we delivered the previous evening. This is a sheep who lives at the fairgrounds permanently.

Wooden sheep with an arrow pointing to shearing demonstrations.

This sheep came just for the weekend.

Signs about Sheep Dog and Shearing Demos on straw bales with three pumpkins.

There are numerous events going on through the weekend.

Meridian Jacobs display pen with signs about Jacob sheep and the business.

We brought sheep to the barn Friday evening. Farm Club members set up the display early Saturday morning. They also showed the sheep on Sunday because I was in my vendor booth. There will be another blog post when I get photos.

Two Kerry Hill sheep looking up at the camera. They are white with black noses and eye spots.

There are a variety of breeds represented. The show for meat breeds was on Saturday and for wool breeds on Sunday. These sheep have Jacob markings on the face (sort of) but are Kerry Hill, a breed I had never seen.

Dorper sheep, white with black heads, in pens made of blue panels.

The Dorper is a hair sheep.

Naturally colored Shetland and California Red sheep.

Shetland sheep and California Reds shared a pen.

White faced sheep with green coat protecting fleece.

I did not have time to walk around the whole barn. From knowing some of the people showing I think there were a lot Corriedales and Merinos represented, but I don’t know which other breeds.

Sign about Traditional Tanners in Oregon advertising local , natural tanning services.

I had to get back to the vendor hall and was able to visit this booth in the barn only while they were still setting up. This is the tannery that is tanning all my lambskins now. Now that Lambtown is over I will list more on the website soon (I hope).

There is plenty of shopping in the Vendor Barn and two buildings. There was plenty of dyed fiber to spin or felt.

Wool yarn of all colors in boxes for viewing.

And of course there is plenty of wool yarn.

The back of a woman shopping for wool with a backpack carrying a small dog whose head is poking out the hole in the backpack.

I will share photos of my booth in another post, but for now I’ll show that shoppers come in all shapes. (This is my booth, but you can’t see much.)

Dyeing with Cosmos

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Robin

Cosmos flowers are gorgeous and the cosmos dye is one of the most reliable and easy-to-use natural dyes I have found.

Bright orange cosmos flower with green leaves behind.

I have grown cosmos in my dye garden for at least three years. I don’t plant them now. They are already growing by springtime, and at that point there are so many that I need to thin them aggressively.

Bright orange and yellow cosmos flowers after picking.

I pick off the flowers every three days or so to keep them flowering. I use some myself and I dry the rest to package for sale.

I wanted to do as valid a test as I could for this year’s cosmos collection. The three pots have two skeins each–Brown Sheep Co. Nature Spun wool yarn and Timm Ranch wool yarn. Nature Spun is U.S. grown and spun and Timm Ranch is even more local, five miles away.

These are the yarns in no particular order after hanging them to dry.

I’m glad that I kept such good track of the yarns and the process because I was surprised by what I found. Each pair of yarns in this photo were in the same dye pot. The darker yarns are Nature Spun and the lighter yarns are Timm Ranch. They all had the exact same treatment. In fact I had tied each pair of skeins so they stayed together through the whole process including the final rinse.

Every time I picked flowers I weighed them fresh and dried. I used all those values to calculate the ratio of dry to fresh flowers and found that dried flowers are 18% of the weight of fresh flowers. If I want to use 100% WOG (weight of goods) I would use 10.2 grams dried flowers for a two ounce skein. To dye with 75% WOG, use 7.65 grams, and to dye with 50% WOG, use 5.1 grams dried flowers. I wound 210 yards from cones for each skein, based on the yards/pound of Nature Spun yarn. The actual weight of each Timm Ranch (TR) skein was 2.3 ounces for 210 yards. I used the actual weight to calculate the amount of flowers for each pot.

Here they are grouped by type of yarn. I can’t see a difference between the 100% WOG and 75% WOG dye pots. The third skein of each group (50% WOG) is somewhat lighter, but not by much. That dye pot had little color left in it at the end. It looked as though there was still dye in the 100% WOG pot and after I finished rinsing these six skeins I added a four ounce skein that was already mordanted.

That four ounce skein is the one at the top right in this photo.

For more fun with cosmos try shifting parts of the skein with a dip in base or acid. This was a previous batch that I dyed. These are all TR yarn and the skein on the left is right from the dye pot. The middle two were dipped in a dilute lemon juice solution and the two on the right were dipped in a solution with the addition of washing soda. Yay!!!

The previous batch of cosmos dye flowers are sold out. I will have the new ones at Lambtown and on the website sometime next week.

Showing at Pleasants Valley Open Farm Days

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Robin

It’s been over two months since the last newsletter (through the website, not this blog) and I have too many items to share in the newsletter I need to write. I think it makes more sense to write a blog post and link to that. It’s important for me to get a newsletter out before Lambtown in Dixon which is a week away. Besides there are other things I want to share here.

Last Saturday was Open Farm Days in Pleasants Valley, just north of Vacaville. Seven farms were open and some hosted other vendors. I was at Brazelton Ranch.

Lambskins, yarn and other products in the Meridian Jacobs booth.

I will have all these things and more at Lambtown. I have twenty new sheepskins back from the tannery. I will have the 2026 roving after I pick it up from the mill next week. I also plan to package up more dye flowers.

I will have handwoven blankets, towels, shawls, and scarves with me.

I have been dyeing and I’ll have those yarns and more at Lambtown. This will be the last of the 2025 Timm Ranch yarn and caps and I’m not sure when the 2026 yarn will be finished.

Speaking of Timm Ranch yarn, a visitor came to the farm and bought yarn a few days before this event. She came to this farm on Saturday and showed me the headband she had knitted. Isn’t it beautiful?

Speaking of headbands–that could be to keep your ears warm or to hold your hair in place. That makes me think of these horn rings I make from the Jacob horns. I label them as shawl pins, but maybe if I had long hair one of these would work for that too. I will have a whole new batch for Lambtown.

Other horn products are the buttons and skulls.

Here is a new product. I have been dyeing bandanas and will have about forty with me. What fun! They are listed on the website. I should do a blog post of all the ways a bandana could be useful in your life.

This space was near mine. There were eight painting students. They started with a lesson in preparing the background on the canvas and were guided through the color of the sky before I took this photo.

I got a kick out of looking over occasionally and seeing mountains…and then later, trees. It turns out that the teacher is a Bob Ross, Inc certified instructor who lives just up the road and leads painting parties and gives lessons. I remember Boss Ross from the PBS show, but had no idea that there was a business based around his work. The students all walked away with a finished painting that afternoon, and a t-shirt.

I thought I’d throw in this photo. It reminds me of what I say in weaving classes. Anytime you use a new yarn or draft it’s an experiment, even though you may not think the accidents are always happy, at least at the time.

Back home that evening, with Jade who wanted a selfie.

Today’s Random Farm Photos

Posted on September 11, 2026 by Robin

This seems to be a recurrent theme now. There are a lot of moving parts. Maybe I should call this A Day on the Farm.

Dan ordered a load of sand. It’s hard to imagine right now, but when we get a lot of rain all at once, the water gets ankle deep here. Dan is thinking ahead.

Water flowing out of orange valve in green pasture.

I am irrigating today. We asked for water for 24 hours so we need to get the whole pasture irrigated in that time. I am still figuring out the best way to manage this with the Goldilocks plan (not too much and not too little). Last time it worked and I hope I have it right this time as well. So my main task today is to continue to check water and open and close valves as necessary. There are 28 valves along the pipeline.

View into a green barrel with frothy liquid inside.

I am working on a variety of other things between checking the pasture. This is the look into a barrel that holds some heads from the latest harvest day about ten days ago. We’ve had some very hot weather and that should hasten the progress on these skulls. It’s very disgusting and, even more disgusting, those white things are maggots.

Two sheep skulls with horns that are not cleaned.

This is how the heads looked after I dumped the barrel. The horn sheaths on the smaller skull have loosened and are easy to get off. The big one went back in after I pulled off a lot of gunk. I can’t get those horn sheaths off yet, and I hope another week in the barrel will do the trick, but I sort of doubt it.

Three sheep skulls with horns and other small bones draining in a red tray.

These skulls just came out of a bucket with peroxide and water.

Bright white sheep skull with five horns.

This one has had further treatment. Now I have to get those horn sheaths back on. I wonder if I overdid the cleaning process because that seam has separated more than I’d like.

Plastic bin and green plastic tub containing white fabric folded into different shapes arranged to fill the tubs. Photo shows dye canisters with labels.

In between irrigating and working on skulls I prepared another batch of bandanas for ice dyeing. Results in 24 hours.

Two dozen skeins of blue or blue-green yarn on a brown wooden background.

I also finally organized the latest skeins dyed in indigo. The earlier ones (on the left) are more blue while the rest have a blue-green cast. I don’t know if it’s due to time in the indigo bath or stage of growth of the plants or some other variable.

I’m preparing yarn for dyeing tomorrow, but realized that to dye with wolf lichen I don’t need to mordant. I weighed the lichen that I gathered off fallen branches on our last visit to the mountains and the wound three ounces of yarn to match the weight of lichen. The yarn and the lichen are in the pot now.

It’s 11:20 p.m. right now. I plan to check the water in about ten minutes, so I just looked at the readings from the soil moisture sensors. The red line shows the water flow onto our property. We were supposed to get it at about 10, but early in the morning I looked at the ditch that carries the water, and it was more full than when we order water. It was the “leftover” water from someone at the upper end of the canal and it runs out of an overflow pipe adjacent to our property. I wish I had known and could have opened our valves sooner. As it was I opened the valve at 6:30 a.m. and that’s when our meter picked it up. The water tender must have made a drastic change at 7 a.m. and we stopped getting that water, but the water we’re paying for followed at 11…so 12 hours ago. The blue, purple, and green lines are the soil moisture levels at 4″ (green), 8″ (purple), and 12″ (blue) at two different stations. The darker lines are from the west sensor and the lighter ones are the east sensor. This shows that it was about 5:30 when water reached the one on the west. It shows the east one is also wet, but it might be from the water accumulating at the south end of the field.

Time to go look at water and see what is really happening. Hopefully I can close some valves and open others and then not go back out until about 5 a.m.

Today’s Random Projects

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Robin

I could say Today’s Random Projects Other Than the Computer because that’s what I did all morning–always trying to catch up and clear the desk.

Handwoven fabric samples in white, green and gold.

This is part of clearing the desk. I am working on a weaving article and this is one set of samples that I need to mail. I needed another photo so that I can see the sample numbers as I review what I write.

This afternoon I decided to catch up with a project that’s been hanging over my head and I want to have done before upcoming sales–Pleasants Valley Open Farm Days just north of Vacaville and Lambtown in Dixon. I have been avoiding dealing with skulls. One of these days I could share photos of the whole process, but that might turn some people away–at least the first couple of stages.

These skulls don’t look too bad, but they still aren’t ready to present for sale. The one on the left is the best, but I had already worked on that one. Now was time for them to all go in a pot to simmer in a solution that will help remove tissue that I couldn’t get off. I had been avoiding this because this solution is caustic and I don’t want to risk leaving them too long. I know that if I go away and do something else, even with a timer set, I’ll miss it. So I decided that I could do two projects at once in the garage where I was going to set up this pot.

While I was waiting for the pot to heat up I prepared bandanas for ice dyeing.

When the pot was ready I put a few skulls in and set the timer for five minutes. That’s not really very long to get much else done, but I worked a little more on the bandanas.

After five minutes I took those skulls out and put others in, setting the timer again. At that point all I could do is work on the skulls–cleaning with a small bristly brush and rinsing them thoroughly. Those skulls will be in the sun tomorrow and then will be ready for the horns to go back on.

Two plastic tubs that hold fabric covered with ice and dye powder.

After the skulls were finished I could apply the dye in the ice-covered bins. No quick turn-around on those. I have to wait 24 hours before peeking!

Several rows of cards that hold buttons made of sheep horns.

This evening I sorted the buttons that I finished yesterday. They are on cards now, but not attached. That will be a project for tomorrow.

Random Farm Photos Again

Posted on September 6, 2026 by Robin

This is my life–trying to work on everything at once, because it all seems important.

I just finished this scarf to have at Lambtown where I’ll be teaching Clasped Warp and Closed Weft

Spinning class Saturday morning. Three new spinners!

I’m trying to organize my life. The basket where I put gloves when I come in from the barn has been NOT organized. I spread all the gloves out to match them up. Then I gathered gloves from the barn. There are pairs on the left. All on the right are single gloves. Most of them are left-hand gloves, so where are all the right-hand gloves? I know that if I get rid of all the singles I’ll start finding others that should have matched. So I’ll probably put these in another box and hang on to them for another 10 years or so. Notice the boots at the top. They have had their last trip to the barn. I’ll salvage the shoe laces to use as ties on the net fence but the boots are going away.

This may not look like much, but it represents several hours of button making. First there is cutting on the band-saw. The cups hold groups of buttons that are all from one horn. I try to keep those together through the process so that they can be sold as sets.

This is the same batch of horns, but now with holes drilled. Now they will go back to the sander and then they will have a finish appleid.

The last three days I have sorted out ewe lambs I’m keeping and put halters on all. I’d like them to be at least semi-halter broke–then if I have to use a halter the sheep won’t panic .

While doing so I led some outside to get a better look at color. There is an obvious difference between the black and white lambs and all the lilacs.

Lilac twins, the last born this spring. I named all the lambs last night. These two are Cosmos and Dahlia.

I spent time today inventorying the hedgerow after replacing some of the plants that didn’t make it. These are rhizomes from Johnson grass a very invasive and obnoxious grass. I can’t dig it out of the whole pasture, but I can dig it out of the fenceline along the hedgerow. It is important to get the clumps and these tubers out. they continue to grow and sprout new plants–I’m sure that I didn’t get everything.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.