Look at what my friend, Jackie, made for me.
She got Rusty’s markings just right!
Heart-FELT Christmas
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Author Archives: Robin
Christmas photos
I had this idea to take photos of a sheep and my dog with a Santa hat. The sheep were in the pasture yesterday, but I thought we’d try the dog since Jackie was willing to help. It’s not that easy to get a good photo.
Rusty is not looking very enthusiastic.
Ok. Now he’s obsessed with shadows on the ground. Let’s try again.
In the meantime, Jacki’s dog, Mobi, cooperated a little better.
Rusty, Take 3. At least he doesn’t look too unhappy when he’s watching shadows.
This is the best we could do for that day. Maybe I’ll try a sheep.
Holiday Open House
Does it bother you when people call an event the “First Annual…”? Well, we had such a good time today, that I can say that we had our First Annual Holiday Open House. We WILL do it again. Two friends joined me with their wares. Jackie’s business is Jack’s Wool/Isabelle’s Items.
This is one of Jackie’s signature paw-print felted bowls and a felted sheep.
How about a felted hot-pad?
or felted ornaments?
Diane’s family are commercial bee-keepers. She has recently explored local marketing of their honey and beeswax products.
Diane had sage, wild-flower, and clover honey. We sampled them and there are definite differences in the flavors.
Jackie and Shelby taught visitors needle-felting throughout the day and everyone took home a needle-felted ornament.
One of the best things about the day is that my shop is clean and orderly.
Thanks to Jackie and Diane for helping me with that. It is such a relief to have that done. What a pleasant place with Christmas lights sparkling and Christmas music playing. This was our big advertised day, but I plan to be open again next weekend even though Diane and Jackie won’t be here. I really love my shop and it’s a great place to spend the day!
Not quite winter
When it’s raining and foggy and cold it seems like winter. But winter is still officially a couple of weeks off. Yesterday was a day that reminded me it is still fall.
New Yarn
Isn’t this a beautiful sight?
This is Jacob yarn and some black Rambouillet from a sheep rancher in Rio Vista. The light gray Jacob in the lower corner is already sold!
This is white, lilac, dark gray, and black Jacob yarn, labeled and for sale .
Here is the Rambouillet. I sent this batch to a mill that said that they could work with the fine, short-stapled Rambouillet, and they did a great job. It is very soft and I knit up a small sample on #6 needles. I don’t have this yarn on the website yet, but it’s available in the shop.
Here is some white yarn from sheep that live up the road from me. I can’t wait to start weaving with some of these yarns!
What’s your sign?
Re-establishing the pecking order
This is ram jail, where the rams spend time getting re-acquainted after being shorn and having been taken away from their respective groups of ewes. Putting them in close quarters prevents the serious injury that could occur if they had room to back up and bash each other. The rams spent about 36 hours here and another 12 in the double-size pen. This morning I let them out into their regular ram pen. There was still some tussling, but it was relatively mild.
It was obvious to figure out who was #1. Savor and Tioga are the yearling ewes and Savor has the top spot. He didn’t let anyone forget it.
Tioga didn’t put up much of a fight. If he acted as aggressive as Savor there would have been trouble.
Tioga protected himself but did not challenge Savor.
Savor thinks he’s hot stuff…
…but he’s not finished yet. Granite is the two horn ram lamb who is shying away from Savor’s show of authority. Granite is #3 under Tioga but there were a few challenges between them. I think that Granite will be ready to try again for the #2 spot after he is a little bigger. Tioga comes from mild-mannered ancestors. His sire, Ranger had his skull fractured by Houdini, a very aggressive ram I had a few years ago. Ranger healed and was always a well-mannered ram, as was his father, Rocky.
Savor is still not satisfied.
Savor and Tioga are still tussling here. Notice that Granite is confronting Diego, another 2-horned ram lamb (in 4th place ranking). Do you see the lowest ranking ram? That’s the 4-horn ram lamb from Michigan. However, what the other rams don’t realize, is that Clint actually had the last ewe to breed to himself. While the rams were in “jail” one of the ewe lambs approached the pen wagging her stubby tail. I took Clint out and he took care of the job quickly before he had to go back in with the bullies.
Now it seems that its OK to hang out together. This reminds me of an article that I just read in Smithsonian magazine–it was all about he social hierarchy of male elephants. Lots of posturing. That avoids some of the bloodshed.
Shearing Day
I look forward to Shearing Day all year and this was one of the best ever. That is due to the number of friends who helped and to the outstanding shearer. Farm Club members helped in the barn and two good friends staffed in the shop (unfortunately I don’t have photos of them). That left me free to run and back and forth for things we needed, take photos, move sheep, and thoroughly enjoy the day. Shearer John sheared 67 of my sheep, 19 sheep that belonged to other people, and 7-8 Angora goats. He started a little before 9 a.m. and finished at 1:30! Here’s the photo tour.
Sheep in full fleece the day before shearing.
This is Fran.
Here is Tioga…
… and Clint, the ram lamb I got from the Sweetgrass flock in Michigan.
We gathered all the ewes while John was shearing my friend’s goats.
Farm club members, Tina and Kathy, and Kathy’s friend, Haylee, helped bag fleeces…
…and keep the shearing area clean.
Shelby (and her husband, Greg, who escaped my photos) did a lot of sheep wrangling. This is Shelby with her namesake sheep.
Tina did her share of sheep handling too…
…while my son multi-tasked.
John is an excellent shearer, making shearing look easy (and I know it isn’t). He is fast, the sheep look great, and the fleeces are perfect wth no second cuts. We are very happy to have found him. It is always impressive to watch the rams being shorn. This is Savor being shorn.
Savor’s fleece.
Staple from Savor’s fleece. This fleece went home with Jackie, another Farm club member, who helped skirt and sort fleeces and answer questions.
Jackie, and another helper, Linda, helping a customer skirt a fleece…
…and now I have a lot of fleeces to skirt and put on the website for sale.
Rusty enjoyed the day.
Sometimes I think the sheep enjoy getting that wool off.
We certainly had great weather from the sheep’s point of view.
Thanks to all of my helpers!
Dog entertainment
Every evening here is what is going on while I’m sitting at my computer:
It sometimes looks and sounds brutal, but Ozzie seems to hold his own.
Ozzie is none the worse for wear. He is actually using one of the cat baskets I made from Jacob fiber.
Barn Make-over
It may not be as extreme as the Home Make-over TV shows, but I feel like they just rolled the bus away and I got a new house…almost. This was a Farm Club work day prior to Shearing Day which is next Saturday. I had a list of chores and we checked off a lot. The weather was fabulous too–sunny, warm, dry and it’s November!
I told Tina I had buckets to wash before I put them all away. You could serve dinner out of these buckets now!
I needed to get the salted pelts out of the stall so I could get them ready to ship off as well as empty out the stall so I can use it. Even though the pelts have cured, the salt remaining on them draws the moisture out of the air and they feel wet. A day in the sun took care of that and we put the pelts in big plastic bags which went in the back of my car until I can find boxes to ship them. We counted 31 pelts in all–that will be some shipping order!
I have an appointment on Monday with the State Vet who checks tags, etc to monitor compliance with the Scrapie Program. Tina, Greg, and Shelby volunteered to check all the sheep and make sure they all have their scrapie tags and that my paperwork is correct. They did a great job and found just a couple of sheep that needed tags. In the meantime we found their namesake lambs.
Here is Shelby and Shelby.
And this is Tina and Tina.
Kathy and Kathy. Greg will have to wait. I have two more lambs to name and register so maybe he can pick one of those.
I am so tired of tools falling out of corners, being knocked over, not finding them but I have never put up the gadgets to hang them. This was on the list.
Isn’t this cool?
Try to conceal your envy at my organized tools.
I love my stall barn, but it’s hard to use the big sliding doors with sheep. The doors work, but I feel like the sheep are in jail and in warm weather they get no ventilation when the stall door is closed. I have been using my Shaul’s panels with gates, but wiring them up. Greg and Kathy put eye-bolts into the walls to mount the panels properly.
Shelby found time to play with a chicken. Rusty wasn’t sure that the chicken was in the right place.
Thanks to all of you for so much help! Next Fun Day is Shearing!
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