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.

Puddle Jumping

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Robin

Someone is making the best of the rainy day.

We went to the barn to see the sheep and get out of the house. Jade is the only sheep who will approach a little person without the bribe of a bucket of grain.

I stood under the roof and out of the rain and watched Kirby…

…run back and forth.

Contemplating the Really Big Puddle.

The sheep weren’t thrilled about all this activity by the little pink person.

By the time we got back to the house I figured that a little more water really didn’t matter. So Kirby ran through the lake that was our driveway until she’d had enough. Tonight it is still raining.

More Grandkid Photos

Posted on February 19, 2017 by Robin

I’ve been so focused on #1 family visiting and #2 trying to get my new website up that I haven’t done much else. I did have a request for more cute grandkid photos though and since cute lambs haven’t arrived yet, here they are. (Not that I’d show cute lamb photos to the exclusion of cute grandkid photos. I’d just have to fit both in.)

Here is what greeted me on Valentines’s Day.

We planted them together.

For the first several days of Kirby’s visit the sun was out and things started to dry out.

We were still wearing boots to the barn, but didn’t have to tromp through as much mud.

Aunt Meryl manages a gymnastics club and there is an Open Gym hour on Wednesdays, in addition to a Wednesday morning Mommy and Me class.

Kirby went to both and loved it.

Gathering eggs from the chicken house.

It’s best if she carries just one.

It started raining again so there were puddles.

Not to forget that there is another grandchild visiting. He just doesn’t spend as much time at the barn.

More Cuteness…

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Robin

…but maybe I’m just biased.

Kirby reminds me so much of her mom when she was little.

Farm Club members helped with vaccinating this morning but there were some distractions in the barn.

Kirby and Lisa looking at chickens.

Kirby set up her doctor office in the barn.

And the Cuteness Begins

Posted on February 11, 2017 by Robin

No, it’s not time for cute lambs yet. How about cute grandkids?

Meeting Kirby at the Oakland Airport.

Holding her baby brother while Mommy gets the carseats strapped in.

We got home in the early evening and someone wanted to go right to the barn to see “sheeps and conkey”.

I got a couple of photos with sheep but the donkey photo will have to wait.

Uncle Chris has the right touch to get a smile out of 7-week old Kasen.

Tracing Aunt Meryl’s hand.

Letting Ginny clean up the egg that was dropped.

Papa Dan, Kirby, and Rusty.

Shearing the Rams

Posted on February 10, 2017 by Robin

Shearing was a few days ago and it’s an event worthy of a few posts. I started talking about it in here but have been distracted by a major project which will take over my brain for a couple of weeks. I need a break from that so here are photos of shearing the rams. Thanks to Dona and Carole for contributing some of these photos.

This isn’t a ram but while I was catching them John started with Mary’s seven sheep.

faulkner

Then it was Faulkner’s turn. Faulkner is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL).

catalyst

Catalyst is a lilac colored Jacob ram. Lilac refers to the gray-brown color of his wool and the facial markings.

What a gorgeous fleece!

Bide a wee Buster is almost a year old.

It’s been on my list to trim Buster’s horn, but John did it before shearing.

That’s another beautiful fleece coming off.

A shearer has to be careful in maneuvering those big horns.

Here is a close-up of Buster’s fleece. Notice the difference in color of the outside of the fleece and the inside in the photo before this.

joker

Joker was the last ram to be shorn.

joker-catalyst

This photo clearly shows the difference in the black & white and lilac color pattern in the Jacob sheep.

joker-catalyst-2

img_6686-2

Next up–shearing the ewes.

The Morning After

Posted on February 6, 2017 by Robin

We sheared yesterday (more about that in future blog posts). Here are some photos from this morning and some before-and-after shots.

You can fit more sheep at the feeder after shearing and it’s sure easier to keep an eye on udder development and predict lambing.

The aftermath where the skirting table was yesterday. We were so lucky with the weather yesterday–no rain after continual storms. This water is from last night’s rain (almost an inch).

Meridian Zoey. Zoey has freckled skin but not freckled fleece–that’s two different things.

Meridian Fandongo. Notice how the sheep look like they have brown spots in most of the “before” photos. The wool has sunbleached tips. Underneath it is black, or gray if the sheep are fading, or gray-brown if they are “lilac”.

Puddleduck Petra. A good example of a black fleece that looks brown when on the sheep.

Meridian Alice, a two year old ewe.

Meridian Bertha, another two year old. It will be only another day before the sheep look dirty again and you don’t see that bright white against the black.

Shadow Mountain Shelby. Shelby is lilac. Her facial markings are gray, not black. Her spots are a light gray. I used my iPhone for this morning’s photos so some of the sheep look like they have abnormally big heads. Maybe that’s only partly camera perspective but partly that they no longer have huge fleeces around those heads.

Bide a wee Hallie.

Meridian Cindy, one of last year’s lambs. Oops! It turns out that she is freckled. Those smaller spots are in the wool. You can’t tell about freckling when the lambs are born. After a couple of months it will appear. I think it shows up in the secondary follicles instead of the primary ones and that’s why you don’t see it at birth. (I’d like to hear someone who knows explain if that theory is correct.) I also noticed it in her twin brother, although you can’t really see it in the photo below.

Meridian Joker, Meridian Catalyst, and bide a wee Buster.

And here is what I saw when I first checked on the rams this morning:

That wall behind Joker is supposed to be attached to the 2 x 4. I found the drill and some screws and put it all back up and it was only then that I looked at the other corner:

Oh, that’s a bigger problem. This wasn’t originally a ram barn. It started out two calf hutches that I made. Eventually they were put on this slab facing each other with a space in between and another roof overhead and the kids show pigs lived there for a few months a year. Then it was Faulkner’s pen and he was pretty easy on it. Now that the Jacob rams live there it needs reinforcement. Dan got the jack out to jack it up back on the cement and then reinforced everything inside with heavier 2 x 10’s at about head-bashing level. It could still use interior solid plywood walls but hopefully this will get us by for a few more months.

Stupid rams. You should be grateful that you have a shelter to get into after shearing and you’re not expected to stay out in the wind and rain.

Across the Road Close-up

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Robin

It has dried out enough to take the dogs walking again. I haven’t taken my camera lately because it’s cold and I have three leashes and the Ball Thrower Thing and my hands are too cold. (Don’t laugh if you live where it snows. I’m still cold.) Rusty wrote a post about his perspective of the latest walks. Here is what I see when I walk with the iPhone.

You know those gloves with the special fingers that are supposed to let you use your phone even with the gloves on? I have some too:

Do you know what I think when I see these photos? Or when I’m looking at the ground while taking the photos? What if these were satellite photos and these were mountain ranges? Can you see that?

The rain has started things growing. This is in a huge patch of thistles.

There are a few mustard flowers blooming already.

Perspective again. What if that little red rock in the hole was really a house? Then those cracks are canyons.

Uh oh! That perspective thing would make this a very scary photo indeed! Raccoonzilla.

Speaking of another perspective. Three dogs and me.

First Farm Day of 2017

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Robin

We have a lot of new members in the Farm Club. This was the first official Farm Day of the year. The goal was to get the barn ready for Shearing Day next weekend and to get the sheep ready too. I never seem to get time to take photos during Farm Days so my iPhone got handed around and other people took most of these photos.

Right now cleaning the barn involves the trek around or through the mud and muck to get to the manure pile. We spent about an hour and a half cleaning and organizing the barn.

Then it was time to look at the sheep.

We caught each sheep.

We cleaned off ear tags so that the crew will be able to read them next week and won’t have to find me to identify a sheep.

This is Onyx and Esmerelda, two of the BFL-Jacob crossbreds.

We brought all the ewe lambs (born last March) in to replace their lamb ear tags with bigger, more legible ones.

Two ewes had horns that needed trimming to prevent them growing into their faces. It takes one person to hold and one person to use the wire saw.

Last we went to the ram pen. I was standing with the rams and looked up to see everyone looking in.

The ram in front, Buster, had something on his mouth to look at more closely.

I’ll call my vet about this on Monday because I don’t know what it is.

A few people left before I rounded everyone up for a photo. This is the biggest group that we’ve had here. This is a great way to make the chores go quickly. Thanks, Farm Club.

Adventure in a Stairwell

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Robin

Oooh! This sounds exciting… and maybe scary. Not really. But I came up with that idea while in said stairwell and thinking about Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher and all those other heroes who narrowly escape with their lives Every Time they are being chased.

This morning wrote a blog post about being at TNNA. We stayed on the 5th floor of the hotel. On Sunday I had a little extra time before getting to the show and I thought I’d go up to the top floor. After checking out the view from the 26th floor…

…ooops! Turns out its the one that I misidentified in the last post as the view from our room…I decided to take the stairs down. May as well get a little exercise even though gravity would do most of the work. (Notice that I hadn’t thought to take the stairs UP!)

I opened the door to the stairwell and there was a guy sitting on the floor facing away from the door. Beard. Backpack. I think that maybe he was writing something. That’s all I noticed because I thought that maybe I shouldn’t stare or otherwise engage…thinking about those books and movies. I started down the stairs.

Your typical stairwell, although cleaner than some. 8 steps.

8 more steps.

8 more steps. Sometimes at the landing I would make a turn clockwise just to keep from getting too twisted in one direction.

Sometimes I walked back up a flight just for the heck of it.

Things changed when I got to the first floor.

Surprise! Notice the blue barrier at the bottom. There is a swinging gate there. The door to the right…

…is this one. Guess I can’t go out there. So I went through the little blue gate.

There were three choices. Go down the next set of stairs or go through one of two doors.

Surprise again! Look at what is in Door #1.

Yes, it’s a chandelier among all the pipes.

This was next to Door #2. The door was closed and I didn’t open it.

I chose the blue stairs.

Another message of positive thinking. I chose not to go through that door because I kind of thought that I was where I wasn’t supposed to be.

Back up the pretty blue stairs…

…to what I recognized and through…

…the door to the second floor.

Uh oh! Do you ever open a door to a stairwell or the back door of a commercial building and wonder if you’ll ever get back in? Is that door locked from the other side? In this case I came through the door on the right, but wanted to make sure that the door on the left would really open or I’d be stuck forever in this little room with no window. Before the first door shut completely I made sure that the other door would open.

Whew! I made it into the safety of the hotel.

Please don’t judge me. I’ve told you before that I write blog posts in my mind all the time. You can be thankful that many of them never make it to the keyboard. But now you see how I sometimes amuse myself.

TNNA 2017

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Robin

Every January I meet up with my long-time friend, Irene, who owns Cotton Clouds, a mail-order business based in Arizona, to go to the Winter Show of The National Needlearts Association. Since I’ve been going it’s been in San Diego (2016 and 2014) or Phoenix (2015 and 2012) or Long Beach (2013 and 2011). This year it was in San Jose, only an hour and a half from here (on a weekend without commute traffic), so Irene flew to Sacramento and spent a few days here before we both drove to the show.

TNNA wasn’t the only thing in town on Saturday.

There was plenty of pink visible.

Other colors too. Why does Irene always look more excited in these photos of us together?

Big fat yarns seem to be the new thing this year.

I managed to find a few sheep.

After spending a few hours at the show we checked into our hotel where we had a room on the 5th floor.

This is the view…

…and this is the art work on the wall.

We went back to the convention hall. We had been seeing groups of young (mostly) men (mostly) wearing black (mostly) who were attending something in the convention center but didn’t quite fit the demographics of the yarn buyers and sellers. Irene spoke to one group and we found out that they were competing in the Super Smash Brothers Tournament, a Nintendo gaming event (if I’m using the right terminology). It’s worth looking at this link for a view into an obsession a little different than the fiber one (maybe takes up less space?) A quote from the article: “For video games you don’t need depth perception at all,” he explains, sounding almost Baudrillardian, “there’s no depth: it’s just right there.” Put in perspective, that quote is from a gamer who is blind in on eye. We may bring out fiber swatches and knitting needles. They bring their own controllers.

Back to the Fiber Hall.

I love how this sign was made.

Very clever.

I like the look of this fabric…

…woven on this loom which I have in the shop and eventually on the website.

We talked with a lot of vendors. This is Francis Chester-Cestari who has sheep and a fiber mill in Virginia and promotes American grown fiber. Irene is looking at some of his U.S. grown cotton. Notice the book on his table. That’s his memoir.

I didn’t come away from this show with all the new products that I usually do, although I do have some lotion bars with sheep on them (see photo in one of the collections above). There weren’t as many vendors and I really don’t need more yarn. What I need is a better way to market what I already have before adding more. So my investment this year is a new modern website! You’ll be hearing more about that in a month or so.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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