Author Archives: Robin

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About Robin

Owner of Meridian Jacobs, farm and fiber shop. I raise Jacob sheep, teach fiber arts classes, weave handwovens for sale, and manage the store.

What’s for Breakfast?

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I moved the sheep to a new section of pasture this morning.

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They immediately buried their heads. This is like a salad bar for the sheep–something for everyone. In the photo below you can see clover, trefoil (yellow flower), Dallis grass (broad-leaf grass), yellow foxtail (that grass with the foxtail-looking head), bermudagrass, dock, and other plants.

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Some of these plants make summer grazing tough. The bermuda and yellow foxtail are late summer grasses and take over the pasture, crowding more desirable plants.  The sheep choose to eat the plants they like and leave the less desirable ones.That’s why, to graze properly, you put more livestock on a small area and move them frequently. When the sheep are in a small area they eat even  the less palatable plants while eating the ones they really like. Then you move them to the next area. This also helps with control of internal parasites.

Dallis grass has been a problem too. It is a perennial grass that originated in South America and can be a good pasture grass if grazed properly. If I can’t keep it grazed low it gets so tall and coarse that the sheep won’t touch it. Then it takes over and nothing else can grow. If you go back to older posts in the blog you’ll see where last year at this time I was doing everything I could think of to get the sheep to eat the thick stand of dallis grass. In the spring we finally burned it.

So what did I see in the salad bar pasture this morning?

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Amaryllis went right for the yellow foxtail! Nobody else eats that.grazing 4-donkey-w

Here is another undesirable plant. This grass is medusahead. It is an annual grass that grows in dry areas and has these nasty seed heads. Sheep don’t want to eat it even when it is still green. The medusahead started growing in this side of the pasture when I couldn’t get irrigation water to this area. The last few times I irrigated I have been more successful at getting water here so that’s why it’s green underneath. I hope that if I’m successful at irrigating this area next year the medusahead won’t be able to take over.

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But look who is eating it!

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So what are the sheep eating?

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This is Della with her mouth full of dallis grass. (That’s the dallis grass seed head in the foreground.)

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Ebony is eating trefoil and dock.

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Linda is eating dallis grass.

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The goat, Chloe, is eating trefoil and…

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Jasmine is eating dallis grass.

One way to join me in a “pasture-walk” and photo shoot is to join the Farm Club and spend some time here. It’s on my website–see the link on the right.

State Fair Nursery

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I delivered Mary (4-horn) and Madeline (2-horn) to the State Fair Nursery this morning. They are both due on September 2 with twins and triplets. They will entertain thousands of visitors that go through the Nursery run by the UC Davis vet school. The sheep for the show don’t go in until Labor Day weekend.

Weaving odds & ends

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I won’t say that I’m catching up with my things-to-weave list, but I’m plugging away at it. I have sold about half of the baby blankets on the PURPLE warp.

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but have enough left to put some on the website and maybe resurrect my etsy listings too. I have a new baby blanket warp on the loom ready to thread. Not everyone wants a purple blanket for a baby gift and that’s all I have right now!

Here’s a full-size blanket that I finally finished for a customer using her yarn.

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This is a blanket for another customer who sent me her Jacob wool.

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And here’s a funky bag. I’m experimenting with felting up some odds and ends of wool fabric to create bags. I think they’ll get better as I perfect it.

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I have taught a couple of weaving classes in the last few weeks as well. Here are the participants and their scarves:

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It’s sure nice now that I have room in my shop to have 5 people weaving at once!

Fun with sheepdogs

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I was at my sheepdog lesson Thursday (the lesson is more for me than the dog) and found out that there was a trial this weekend. The trainer encourages a few of us to go and the facility is only a mile from my house so, why not? Here is a picture of Rusty before:

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I had to worm all the ewes this morning and at noon I had Rusty gather the rams for their treatment and then do some more work. Just trying to take the edge off so that maybe he’d be calmer in the trial.  That photo is how is looks after a dip in the wading pool and then a roll in the dirt.

After he dries off he doesn’t look so bad if I brush him. Here he is waiting in anticipation for his turn.

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We watched the Advanced competition, the Open competition and then we werer third to last in the Started dogs. Lots of waiting. Rusty did very well and came home with a third place out of 16 entries!

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We’ll go back tomorrow for another round of this. If he gets a qualifying score again then he gets a certificate of some kind.  (And according to the Wizard of Oz its those certficates that are important–don’t ask me where that came from–too much sun?)

Hot chick!

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This is Goldie, the chicken that likes me.  She runs to me and expects to be picked up when I open the chicken house door. She is hot, like the rest of us. The TV news people love it because they get to say “triple digits”.  Of course they’re inside their air conditioned offices.

So what am I doing on these hot days? Plugging away at everything that needs to get done. We’re mainly working on getting the shop put back together. No photos until it is done! I’m taping and painting and putting down floor. Dan is building a deck, doing electrical work, etc. I have a spinning class this weekend so I have to be able to get in the door!

I’ve been sorting sheep again. State Fair entries are due this week so I needed to figure out who to show. I have a lot of lambs from which to choose. I sorted the lambs into groups based on sire so that I could choose 4 lambs with the same sire for one of the group classes. These are Houdini’s 2-horn ram lambs…

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…and these are his 4-horn ram lambs.

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These photos are in the dark because it was night before I got to this task. Hard to evaluate fleece in the dark. So I looked again in the morning.

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You can barely see Rusty behind the rams. They are so dog-broke now that I can work with them in the field.

They are going into one of the pastures that was so swamped with tall grass last year. We burned it in the spring. Look at the trefoil growing in what was a 4-foot tall sward of grass.

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Here is a close-up. This is one of my favorite flowers–bright and pretty and good forage for sheep.

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Some parts of the pasture are starting to get overrun with that Dallisgrass again. I’m hoping that the ewes can make a dent in it if I keep them out there longer. I’ve been letting them in the barn during the hot part of the day. If I don’t make them go back out they’ll bed down in the barn at night, but they will have more of an effect on the pasture (bedding down, manure deposited, etc) if they are out all night. So I’ve been moving them out at dusk.

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Do you see that big round one–third up from the right? That’s Madeline. She is pregnant and due to lamb at State Fair just before Labor Day.

I can’t believe I sheared in November and I still haven’t processed wool. I sold a lot of it, but I have some to process. Wait until you see the new products I’m going to have! (I’m not telling right now.) Three bags full:

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These guys are waiting for something fun to happen. They are ready for the girls, but we’ll wait a few months.

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That’s Rubicon on the left and Moonshine on the right.

Back to more painting!

When things don’t go as planned

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What had I planned? I planned to have my newly remodeled shop ready for a weaving class on Tuesday. Didn’t make that, but of course I’d have it ready for Farm Day on Saturday (see my website for info on the Farm Club if you want to find out about Farm Day). Here’s what the shop looks like today.

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Not too bad. It’s ready for paint and then the floor.

But what’s this?

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I was removing the discolored trim around the A/C unit and the hammer went right through the sheetrock. It turns out that the A/C has been leaking and the wall is damp inside. One thing led to another and now there is a big hole in the wall and we spent hours trying to figure out why he unit was leaking. That side-tracked my husband from the job he was working on–moving another electrical outlet so I don’t have extension cords draped everywhere.

My sons goats are still here–well, 2 of them. And I’m still milking them. I have been giving milk away but the refrigerator was full tonight and I decided to try making cheese. I’ve been planning to do this, but I never have time. This is 1 1/2 gallons of milk heating on the stove.

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The next step for this simple cheese is to add vinegar and drain the curds into cheesecloth. OOPS. Wouldn’t you know? I finally decide to make cheese and I can’t find the cheesecloth. Can you tell what I used instead?

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That’s my cheese hanging in pantyhose! I’d say that’s a better idea for the pantyhose than it’s intended use.

Visiting friends and relatives

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I’m home from a 9-day vacation. I missed the 112 degree day in Vacaville–spent it in Vermont where it was raining off and on! My husband took care of things here including milking the two goats that are still here.

I flew first from Oakland to Grand Rapids, MI (with stops in Salt Lake City & Detroit) where I stayed a night with my friends, also Jacob sheep breeders, who had moved from Davis, CA a few years ago. They have a beautiful home and barn and live in a beautiful part of Michigan–rolling hills and farms with huge red barns everywhere. After a night at their farm I went to Kalamazoo to stay with my sister-in-law and her family for another night. They gave me a ride to the fairgrounds in Mason, site of JSBA’s AGM (that’s the annual meeting for Jacob Sheep enthusiasts).

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It is always interesting to meet people who’s names I recognize from preparing registration certificates and it’s fun to see those whom I’ve met at AGM in other places. Too bad I didn’t get very good photos. The event that I’d been worrying about was the Fun Sheep Show. They kept emphasizing FUN, but I wasn’t thinking it would be so FUN since I was one of the judges. The “old-timer” (in Jacob sheep history), Luke Hardy, was to be  the other judge. It turns out that this old-timer wasn’t old and stooped and wearing overalls like I’d imagined. He is about my age and looks younger! Anyway, the show went well. We were to each place the top 4 sheep in each class and he and I were pretty close in all the classes. Sometimes we had the same top placing, sometimes the top 2 were switched, but we chose the same top 4, or at least 3 of the top 4, in almost all the classes. I wish I had a photo of my first (and maybe last) judging event.

After AGM it was on to see my daughter in Vermont. That was a flight from Lansing to Detroit to New York to Burlington.

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This is the only photo I have of me on this trip.

Katie had to work while I was in Vermont so I was on my own for 2 days. I visited the Shelburne Museum–what a fantastic place. You need 2 days to see it properly. I was only half way through when I realized that I had only 2 hours left and I hadn’t even seen the special textile exhibits that I wanted to see.

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This is a Jacquard loom in the Weaving Shed that was built specifically to house it.

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One of the special textile exhibits is  hooked rugs by Patty Yoder, a contemporary fiber artist who died not long ago. The rugs are stunning. I took photos of all of them. I think the one below is my favorite. Here is a link that shows more of her work:  http://www.gmrhg.org/site/features/features_2005/yoder/yoder_p.html

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Below is a carousel horse from an exhibit of the Circus. I love these horses. If I could get my hands on one I’d keep it in the house!

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There is so much to see at this museum. I didn’t even try to see many of the buildings. I had 15 minutes left to see the exhibit of Tiffany glass, Nature by Design. That was only time to glance in each room and snap some photos. When Katie is living in VT after she finishes school in TX I’ll be sure to go back.

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Katie got off work early one day and we took the tour of Ben and Jerry’s. It has given me ideas of what to do at my place to make it more interesting for visitors. Paint my Explorer and add horns? Copy Ben and Jerry’s idea of the Flavor Graveyard? Hmmm. I don’t think anyone would want to see the graveyard at a farm. I’m going to try and get creative–wait and see!

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Isn’t this a fabulous barn? This is not too far off the Interstate near Burlington.

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This is the house where Katie is living this summer. It was built in the 1820’s and there are 5 other residents, including the owner who grew up in the house. Here are a few others from the neighborhood.

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I flew out of Burlington Thursday morning. This trip took me through Detroit and Phoenix before getting back to Sacramento. It’s good to be home although I miss my daughter. My kids are so much fun when they actually seem to like me being around!

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Finally weaving

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I have started to work on the projects that are backed up from BBA (before broken arm). This is a Jacob wool blanket for a local Jacob breeder. The wool was spun at Yolo Wool Mill. It’s very open right now at 4 epi but I have notes from the last blanket I did using this yarn  and the blanket came out great. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But now I’ll have to wait a week (at least). I’m leaving in the morning for Michigan and Vermont! I’ll take photos!