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.

Why Coated Fleeces Cost More …

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…and should probably be priced even higher.

Every year I choose some sheep to coat–it’s usually those that are entered at a show. This year we took a trailer-full to Black Sheep Gathering (photos of the show). I coated most of those sheep because those who aren’t coated end up with straw buried in the fleeces. I kept coats on most of those afterwards so now there are nine sheep with coats.

Why coat?
1. The fleeces are free of VM (vegetable matter) which could be stickers, seed heads, etc from the pasture, but our pasture doesn’t have any of those. Alfalfa is our most likely VM, and is great to spin a fleece that is completely free of that.
2. The colored wool isn’t sunbleached.
Why don’t I like coats?
1. I would rather see the sheep in the field without coats.
2. Coats need changing as the wool grows, at least four times each year, and maybe more.
3. Coats need repair, especially when worn by horned sheep.
4. Coats can cause felting or other damage to fleece if they aren’t changed at the right time.
5. At this time of year with 6-1/2 weeks to go before shearing I’m running out of the larger sizes.
I changed coats last week and took photos of some.

This is Lily wearing a coat that looks snug. I changed this one but didn’t get a photo.

This is how Breeze looks with the coat removed. There is a bit of sun-bleaching because she didn’t wear the coat all year, but you can tell a difference from the neck wool that isn’t coated at all.

Breeze’s fleece.

Breeze with a larger coat.

I didn’t get a photo of Zoe, but here is one of her fleece. Gorgeous!

Harmony with a coat that looks too snug.

This is what’s under the coat.

Harmony’e fleece.

Harmony’s new coat.

Today’s Random Farm Photos

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Green pasture grazed by Jacob sheep.

Checking the pasture this morning. The fog was so dense it seemed dark for longer this morning and I didn’t go out right away. The sheep had already been out eating.

Jacob sheep grazing green pasture in the fog.

This is Day 3 of grazing this paddock but it looks as though there is still plenty of forage.

Mailbox in foreground with sheep grazing alfalfa in the background.

When I walked outside this morning I heard a lamb and I wondered if one of my ewes had an “oops” lamb from when the rams got out (or in with the ewes) but it still wasn’t the right timing. The sheep grazing Across the Road have now been moved to right across from our house.

Black lamb with other white sheep n alfalfa.

There is one black lamb in this flock.

White guardian dog in front of sheep that are grazing alfalfa.

There are two guardian dogs and this one noticed me standing at the mailbox. He barked until I retreated.

Two plastic containers with sheepskin pieces soaking in tannin, making the solution look red.

Tanning is ongoing. Last night was the second session of the “hair-on” class. These will stay in the barrels for a week. They are tanning in mimosa.

A dozen people working on various fiber projects in a small room.

About a dozen people came for Spinners’ Day Out today. I think that today two people were spinning, one inkle weaving, one floor loom weaving, four knitting, one using a blending board, and everyone enjoying the conversation and great snacks.

Weaver holding her finished Vararfeldur weaving she just took of the loom.

Carla finished the weaving she started two days ago at the Weave Like a Viking class!

Christmas wreath with hand spun black and white ribbon.

Sue brought me a gorgeous wreath. She wove the ribbon using hand spun yarn from one of my sheep! Beautiful!!

Grazing in December

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The title is significant. I don’t know that we have ever grazed into December. There wasn’t enough feed and the ground was too soggy. Now we have lots of green feed and need to keep the sheep eating it. The downside is that the rain seems to have stopped and we will need more.

Three Jacob sheep standing in grazed field with net fence as the border.

This is Paddock #1 (west property line) after two days of grazing.

Thick tall chicory and grass covering the bottom wire of a 3-wire fence.

This is Paddock #1 North, just across that fence. Notice that my boot is under the bottom wire, but it’s pretty well buried in foliage. I walked along this stretch of fence to clear that bottom wire.

Jacob sheep eating leaves of chicory in green pasture.

Happy sheep.

More happy sheep. The last time we grazed this paddock was three months ago on September 1.

Sheep eating chicory leaves in thick pasture.

The big leafy plant is chicory and so is the one with blue flowers. It took me a long time to accept that they are the same plant.

After looking it up online I found:
“Forage Chicory: Perennial broadleaf. Up to 18” (flower stalks up to 6′). Tap-rooted broadleaf perennial with bright blue flowers suited to well-drained moderately acidic soils. As annual or perennial forage: well-managed stands may persist 5 years or longer, but also valuable in annual stands for pasture or green chop. Very high digestibility and protein levels up to 50% higher than alfalfa. Digestibility is reduced if plants are allowed to bolt, but the flowers are very attractive! Research shows reduced parasite loads in animals fed or pastured on chicory. “

Green pasture plants after a day of grazing and trampling.

This photo is after grazing Paddock 1N for three days. A lot is trampled, but they were still eating out here this morning.

View down the fence line of a grazed field on the left and not grazed field on the right. Sheep were just turned into the right field.

I opened the fence to let them into the next paddock. I have video and I just spent time on iMovie after not using it for a long time. Let’s see if I can share this on YouTube. Here is the link.

Two four-horned Jaco sheep in tall grass and clover with blue sky behind.

Back to regular blogging. More happy sheep.

Jacob sheep grazing field full of green grass.

This view is interesting to me because this is the area where ryegrass completely overwhelmed the clover last spring. This post is one of several I wrote about that situation. If you pursue the Grazing posts you’ll see the whole story. This is good feed here, but it is patchy, more so than in the rest of the paddocks.

Four horned Jacob ewe in green pasture with blue sky behind.

This ewe, Meridian Pecan, isn’t bothered by any of those details. She’s happy to have fresh green feed.

Grazing and Random Farm Photos

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Paddock 1 after the first day of grazing. These are yesterday’s photos and this morning the sheep were moved to Paddock 1-N. That is the one just north of this one.

This is 1-N before I moved the fence.

Did you notice the owl box in the first photo? I can’t look in but I can just reach the latch, open the door, and snap a photo with my phone. It’s obvious that it has been used, but I don’t know if the owls have raised babies or not.

Leaves at the edge of the pasture.

The tenacity of trees to grow however they can.

A view of some of the sheep Across the Road. They are grazing the alfalfa and being moved strip by strip.

More Fog – Add Yellow

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A screenshot from Instagram show yesterday shows our weather.

Screenshot of a satellite photo showing mass of fog over a map of California.

Our farm is at the edge of the Central Valley, sort of where that arrow points. To put this in perspective, realize that the white band on the right is the Sierra’s (not much snow yet). The left side is the Pacific Ocean and where the fog narrows and goes to the left–that’s going between the hills and ends up over the SF Bay.

Screenshot with text about fog in the Central Valley.

Read the details above. To those of you who live where it is really cold it probably sounds like I am whining. Is cold different when you can see sun part of the day? Or sit in a sunny window? There was not even a glimpse of sun the last couple of days.

So let’s add some color!

Bright orange cosmos flower.

Cosmos from the summer dye garden.

Close-up of two sunflowers.

Sunflowers growing Across the Road a few years ago.

Shawl woven in orange and yellow yarn.

My interpretation of the garden woven in a cotton shawl.

Grazing – Gray Fog but Green Pasture

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We’re almost to the last check in the south pasture. Well, we are at it but that is today and this blog post is about yesterday.

This is looking south and Paddock 2 on the right. That is the one the sheep were just grazing for two days, after grazing Paddock 3 (left) for two days. You can see how this looked two days ago here.

Anther view of that same fence line.

Moving west, this is the fenceline between #3 and #2. I had to move that net fence from the division between #3 and 4 to the division between #2 and 1.

The fence line between #’s 2 and 1, neither yet grazed

The sheep grazing #2 on the first day (yesterday)

Jasmine.

Rose.

Jade.

Random Farm Photos – Yesterday

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This morning I shared photos of our grazing set-up now that it’s one year after the big project began. I just looked back through my blog and found this post when we seeded. That was November 19, just hours before we had a lot of rain. A lot has happened in a year. This winter it feels like a whole new experience because prior to this project I would not have been grazing in late November and would be waiting for spring.

Yesterday about noon I walked out to check the fence. Some of the sheep were on their way in.

This is the corner of the new paddock I’d just set up. I think I mentioned something in previous posts about acquiring five new sheep. This is one of the three Corriedales, so far named Corri 1, Corri 2, and Corri 3. Yeah, not very creative. This is Corri 3…

…and she is one of my best friends.

Sparky is another.

I have been taking photos of individual sheep to update the pages on the website. I have updated this page with the current ewes, but haven’t included all the new photos yet. The ewe in this photo is Ophelia, a yearling.

I also took photos of new lambskins yesterday. I stopped in the middle of writing this to list them here.

The hedgerow project wasn’t completely finished yesterday. I found more cardboard and cut it up for the remaining 19 plants and added more straw. We hadn’t got them all watered yesterday so I brought out a wagon to haul more water at one time.

I finished just as the sun went down.

In the evening I jumped on Zoom for my final Basics of Bark Tan class presented by Traditional Tanners where I have had the latest sheepskins tanned. This is leather I made from deerskin! I highly recommend this class. It is very well presented and a lot of fun!

Grazing – Foggy Morning and Moving to Fresh Pasture

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Jacob sheep on pasture grazed and trampled. A foggy morning.

The sheep were out when I went to the barn yesterday morning. The paddocks are numbered from west to east, 1 to 21. Every other check has a permanent 3-wire fence, visible in this photo on the left. In the summer I grazed two at a time and 4 days seemed about right. After we got measurable rain I noticed significant trailing down the border check between the two paddocks they were grazing. The check is a raised strip running north to south that guides the water when we irrigate. I thought I’d better put a fence along that check so that they wouldn’t impact it as much. So that’s the way I’ve been grazing for the last few weeks. When Farm Club helped to measured net fences to make sure I had the correct fences where I needed them (blog post here) I had left 3 lengths of e-net that we measured to be the correct length for just this need. You can see the net fence on the right of this photo.

Jacob sheep in pasture that has just been grazed while there are lush plants on the other side of the white e-net fence.

The sheep grazed this paddock (#4) for two days. This is the third morning and they need to move to #3. The fence is on the border check and you can see how they have grazed right up to it. The fence is purposely tipped away from the grazed paddock because I think the 4-horned sheep are less likely to get horns caught when they graze near the fence.

Jacob sheep walking towards me to move to a new pasture.

The sheep were anxious to get to fresh feed.

White electric net fence with sheep on the left and fresh pasture on the right.

I was able to move the fence that was blocking access to the next paddock and they all came around the end.

Fresh pasture on the right with sheep grazing. White e-net fence down the middle and grazed pasture on the left.

This is the view before I reset the net fence. I find it interesting to see how the sheep ate the leaves as far as they could reach on the chicory. By the way, the leafy plant that looks like we’re growing a crop of lettuce or chard is chicory. That was one of the three forbs in the seed mix we planted last fall. It didn’t grow as much as the clover until later in the summer, but it is sure evident now.

Close up of grazed leafless stalks of chicory with sheep on the other side of the fence in fresh pasture.

Another view of the fence before I moved it, and more chicory stalks.

Sheep grazing chicory and clover on a foggy morning.

The sheep are happy on this new paddock. This is quite a contrast from the one grazed for only two days.

White net fence in the middle with grazed field on the right and not grazed on the left.

View to the north after re-setting most of the net fence.

Foggy view.

Chicory flower at the end of the season.

Creating a Hedgerow, Part 2

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I introduced our hedgerow project in the previous post. That was Friday. Today, Sunday, one of the Farm Club members who had helped on Friday had offered to come back to help with the project. Even though the ground is moist from recent rains, the new plants would benefit from water right after planting. Also, we needed to add a cardboard layer to the mulch. Cardboard, covered by straw or other material would provide more of a light barrier which will help prevent or at least slow weed growth.

Raquel brought a barrel that she uses to catch rain water. There is a spigot on the bottom to fill containers. She thought it would be a good idea to fill this so that if more people came to help we wouldn’t all be waiting to fill buckets at one hose. It turned out to be just the two of us but her barrel idea was still helpful. We brought a hose from the other side of the fence to fill the barrel and could then work from that. Raquel’s idea was to use gallon milk jugs so they could be tipped over at each plant and direct the water to the base, while we were also working on the cardboard part.

This morning started out super foggy. This is a view of the paddock that I opened for the sheep yesterday. They have eaten or trampled most but will have one more day here.

This is one of smallest plants we put in Friday. It is a Western Redbud, which is not a small plant when it has grown up, but right now it’s only a couple of inches.

This is another redbud, marked with the blue flag, yarrow, and deer grass.

Some of the cardboard was cut in strips and positioned in a triangle around individual plants. These three were close enough that I cut holes in two larger pieces to provide the first layer of mulch. We had put straw around all the plants on Friday, but today we moved that to add the cardboard.

Where did we find enough cardboard? I thought that I might have to buy some. There was a box of science fair boards left over from Dan’s years teaching seventh grade science. And there are a lot of boxes I have saved because you never know when you’ll need a box! I do use a lot of boxes for shipping wool, etc, but I don’t think I’ll need any of these larger boxes or odd shaped ones for the rest of the year. Raquel and I cut them apart and stripped off all the tape and plastic labels.

We used the cardboard strips around the plants or cut holes in larger pieces. That blue barrel is what we filled with water from the hose near the house.

Raquel made trips with jugs of water. We let them drip while we continued with cardboard.

Almost finished!

We covered all the cardboard with more straw. The project is still not finished. You can’t tell from the photo but there are 19 plants without cardboard and about that many that didn’t get water today. That will be tomorrow’s project for me.

Creating a Hedgerow

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Our pasture and irrigation project that began last fall included a plan for a hedgerow. This project was included in a block grant from CDFA administered by Fibershed. So when the time came to implement the hedgerow plan, people from Fibershed volunteered their time to help make it happen, along with the RCD (Resource Conservation District) representatives.

The hedgerow was to be planted inside the east fence of the pasture. RCD experts had come the day before with most of the plants. We placed them approximately where we thought they should be planted and marked them with flags. Some are small and if we hadn’t flagged them it would have been like an Easter egg hunt to find them all.

After a foggy start to Thursday we had warned everyone to wear rubber boots. Friday was sunny and dry! The first task was to clear space where each plant was to go in the ground. The biggest impediment to getting a good start will be the amount of competition and shading from all the other vigorously growing plants. Even a plant we like (clover for example) will be considered undesirable in the root zone of the new plants. I remember from somewhere, “A weed is a plant out of place.”

This was quite an undertaking. We planted 80 California natives in the 250′ row.

The plants include three to five each of Coyote Bush, Oregon Grape, CA Lilac, Western Redbud, Golden Current, Deergrass, St. Catherine’s Lace, Toyon, White Sage, CA Fuchsia,and 50 Yarrow.

The pasture has been growing well, the soil looks healthy, and everywhere you dig there are earthworms. We have had recent rain so it’s moist, but we will have to make sure that we irrigate these new plants. That’s a project for a couple of days later.

The photographer who has been with Fibershed since the beginning, Paige Green, and I wandered out to visit the sheep and take photos.

Jade provided Paige with the perfect cover for getting photos of sheep that might otherwise be wary of an unfamiliar person.

Back to the hedgerow. View to the south when we were finished.

View to the north. Each plant was surrounded by rice straw to provide mulch with the intent to prevent weed growth. There is more to that story…to be continued in the next post.