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.

Hiking in November

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Robin

November? It was in the high-70’s where we went hiking today. Dan chose the hike from his northern CA hiking trail book and said that we would go 6.3 miles. When we got to the trail head behind the Fire Station in Cool, south of Auburn, we found out that there was a mountain bike race in progress. So we chose another trail leaving from the same place but our 6 mile hike ended up being 10 miles. For Rusty’s version of the day (and more dog photos) see his blog. This was very pleasant weather for hiking but it is NOT what we should be seeing in November. There was green grass that germinated with the rain that came over a week ago, and is growing well with the warm weather, but it’s all going to die if we don’t get more rain. That is what happened last year and the hills remained brown and gray with no feed for livestock or wildlife. Although the situation is dismal if it stays dry, the country is still pretty and the day of hiking was invigorating. There was no water until we got to the river and the dogs were certainly glad of that. This is the North Fork of the American River. We ended up at the river at the site of the proposed Auburn Dam. I didn’t remember any details about that, but looked up the information after we got home. Construction began on this dam site in the late 1960’s. In 1975 there was an earthquake that was determined to be the result of the weight of the water behind the Oroville dam that is 50 miles north of the Auburn site and was completed in 1968. This caused a delay in the dam construction while the plans were redesigned. Ultimately, cost, potential seismic risks, and relative benefit of the dam site caused it to be abandoned although there were several attempts to resurrect it. I read one report that said that this dam would have been three times as wide as the Hoover Dam but the reservoir that would have filled the North and Middle Fork canyons would hold only 8% of the water behind Hoover Dam. I didn’t take many photos of the remnants of the dam construction site, but the massive undertaking is obvious. This photo is a detail of the one above, looking across the river. I assume that those white spots are bolts of some kind. The whole wall is covered with cyclone fence as is the wall to the right in the photo above. This is a view up river of the dam site. Toyon berries. It was a good day of hiking. The dogs are tired tonight.

Farm Day

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Robin

This was the fall Farm Day. Usually we would be getting ready for shearing but since I have postponed shearing until January we did other things. Unfortunately Dona wasn’t here because she seems to take most of the photos on Farm Day. We started by gathering up the different groups of sheep. They have been separated into breeding groups and it was time to put all the ewes back together with just one ram. That means that I’ll have just two groups now–the large group with the ram, Ringo, and the non-breeding group (March ewe lambs, State Fair lambs and their moms). There are photos of one group in Rusty’s blog. After putting the ewes together the rams also go back together. This is a ram lamb that I kept but didn’t use this year but we took photos so I can register him. Right now the yearling ram, Alex, and the two ram lambs are in a small pen so they can become buddies again–it’s really a matter of working on the hierarchy so when they go out in the larger area they don’t kill each other. There should be no question that the yearling ram will be on top, but the two lambs were duking it out. This guy knows how to use his horns to get his way. We’ll see when they go out who won the second place spot. This is the group of ewes waiting to go into a different paddock.

As they turned the corner you could clearly see all the marks from breeding (from the marker the ram wears on his chest). Unfortunately the blue mark on that ewe in the back means that she still is not bred after having been bred twice by Alex. I think were a few other ewes with blue marks tonight. I’m wondering about Alex’s fertility. Normally I’d expect all the ewes to be bred the first time around. I’ll know in the morning. View Across the Road from my pasture. They are prepping the ground to plant alfalfa.

More New Sheep

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Robin

In the last post I mentioned the new sheep that I got from Puddleduck Farm in Oregon. But there were only two in those photos. There were actually nine sheep in the trailer. I had intended to get a ram and two yearling ewes. It’s a long story but I ended up with 6 more ewes of various ages. Puddleduck Amber Puddleduck Cassandra Puddleduck Celilo Puddleduck Cherry Puddleduck Page Here is the ram, Puddleduck Ringo.Sheep know their sheep friends. They are in the pasture with Ringo and about a dozen of my ewes, but these six stick together. Isadora-Isabelle While I’m introducing sheep this is Kenleigh’s Isadora and her lamb, Isabelle, who was born at the fair and will be staying here.

The New Sheep

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Robin

New sheep have joined the flock. Ingrid and Alan from Puddleduck Farm in Oregon delivered ewes and a ram. The two yearling ewes went in with my yearling ram, Alex. The flock came to investigate. The two new girls are at the top in this photo. I’m not sure of their names. Ingrid is sending in registration papers and their names will be listed. After everyone else went about their own business Alex continued to follow them around. They weren’t too happy with Alex. “Maybe this guy is better.” “No, I guess not.” “I guess we’re stuck with this guy. At least he’s in the grass.”

Spinzilla

Posted on October 19, 2014 by Robin

I spent a lot of time on Ravelry last week chatting and posting photos because that’s where the action was for Spinzilla, a week-long spinning contest that is a fund raiser for the Needle Arts Mentoring Program for TNNA. I hosted Team Meridian Jacobs and there were spinners here almost every day for a week. My team filled with 25 spinners so, although I was captain, I didn’t do any spinning. I knew that I needed to keep working on pieces for my upcoming show at the Artery. Here are some photos from the week. Rusty also wrote a blog post about his part in the activities.

Look at the gorgeous yarn being spun.

There were prizes everyday. These are special fiber jars donated by Dona.At the end of the week everyone measured their yarn and submitted the totals along with photos to Spinzilla. We don’t know the results yet, but all of our returning members exceeded their totals from last year. We spent a little time in the barn taking photos to share with others and to enter in the photo contest to be judged this week.

We heard that some teams required a commitment of a certain amount of yards spun, but for our team the whole thing is about Fun. I look forward to spinning on the team next year.

At theAththe end of the week

Five Months to Lambs

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Robin

Monday was Sorting Day (but not like at Hogwarts, although I know that some of you could probably come up with some Harry Potter analogies). It was also the first day of the Spinzilla competition. Spinners from Team Meridian Jacobs were going to gather here in the afternoon but some of the team members are also Farm Club members. Several of them came early to help with sorting ewes and rams into breeding groups.Faulkner, the BFL ram, was first to get his girls and they happy to meet him. I knew that Athena was ready because she had been hanging out next to the fence. But so were Delight, Delilah, and Shelby. Four of the seven ewes with Faulkner were bred yesterday. (The red on the ewes’ rumps is the mark from the crayon in the ram harness.)

Next up was Crosby, a lilac ram lamb. I wasn’t going to use him this year because it’s hard to split the flock into too many groups. But transport for the ram that I am buying is now delayed so I thought I’d give Crosby a shot.He just got back from Lambtown where he won Champion ram of the Primitive Breeds division. It was a small show, but a win is a win, right? The judge loved his fleece and so do I.The girls, however, were not as impressed. It seems that ribbons aren’t everything.To Crosby’s credit he tried hard… …he didn’t give up… 14052 Crosby (1) …but to no avail. None of the four ewes wanted much to do with him. I don’t have a photo but I did see him finally lying down by the fence looking exhausted and dejected.Alex was ready for his ewes. He is a yearling ram whose fleece is beautiful. I didn’t try to use him as a lamb last year because he had bluetongue in the fall. Even if he could have bred, he likely would have been sterile from the high fever. Out of his group of 14 ewes, Alex found only one ewe who was interested. Poor Celeste. With no one else interested in him, Celeste got all Alex’s attention. Good thing that I moved Shearing Day to January. Hopefully rain will wash out some of this color.

The rest of the flock is waiting for a ram to show up in a few weeks. Lambing season will be a bit longer this year.

Pocket Photos in the Pasture

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Robin

I like this idea of Pocket Photos. Not pictures of pockets, but just whip the phone out and take photos. These were taken in the pasture yesterday and today. Can you tell what that one is? Look below to see it from the other direction. That web stands out with the sun behind it. Sometimes these are face-height and you really don’t want to walk into that. Yesterday afternoon I mowed three paddocks that the sheep had grazed. I will irrigate tomorrow and I hope that by mowing the tall dallisgrass stalks that are left after I move the sheep it will give more opportunity for the annual grasses to start growing. The recent rain started some germination but I think that this last irrigation should bring up more. At one point the mower stopped working. Fortunately Dan had just got home. He doesn’t usually work on the tractor in teacher clothes–it’s pretty hard to stay clean around tractors and barns. Speaking of barns, see that cement? That used to be a wall that created a doorway in the ram pen. This small area with cement walls is the “whiskey barn” because we were told that whiskey was stored here during Prohibition. The only reinforcement in these cement walls seems to be a few strands of barbed wire running through them. No rebar. I don’t know if the rams pushed this by rubbing or if one of them hit it when he was fighting. The rams are feisty. This ewe is obviously in heat because she hung around the outside of the ram pen all day. This is the second day in a row that the rams have broken the electric wire that runs around the inside of their pen. That coincides with the second day that the ewes have been directly across the fence here. Tonight I moved the rams to a more secure location. We have to get through a couple more days without mishap. On Friday one of them will go to Lambtown for the sheep show and the other is sold and will be picked up this weekend. After Lambtown the remaining ram and a new one (as soon as I can get him) will be put with the ewes.

This afternoons’s job was to weed-eat the ditches in preparation for irrigating tomorrow. Not only will the water flow better for more effective irrigation but we are working hard with the Mosquito Abatement District to minimize mosquito propagation. That means getting the water off the fields and out of the ditches as quickly as possible once irrigation is finished. We recently bought a trash pump to help with that as well. This is the ditch at the north end of the pasture after weed-eating the north side of it (looking east). This is after I cleaned up the south side of that ditch (looking west). This ditch is at the south end of the property before (looking east)……and after (looking west). I used 3 tanks of gas and had to add more string to the weed-eater to get through this. The sheep don’t mind me working while they graze.

Photos in my Pocket

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Robin

What do I mean by Photos in my Pocket? From my phone, of course. These are photos I took in the last couple of days that I took only because I just happened to have the phone with me.This is the time of year when the dallisgrass gets away from me. The sheep can’t keep up as it gets taller and coarser. In addition the seed heads get sticky from a fungus and then adhere to the sheep. This is one of the BFL-cross March lambs. Cascade wearing dallisgrass.Yearling ewe named Ears. Everyone recognizes this spider that I saw when I opened the lid of the garbage toter. We’ve had some beautiful sunsets the last few days. And in the shop… handspun warp …this is a warp made of yarn in my stash, most of which my mom spun years ago. The weft is Jacob yarn.

All Smiles

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Robin

At the end of the last post, out of character of most of my blog writings, I told you that this one would be all smiles.

Katie and Kirby (now 8 weeks old) are in California for a few more days. Kirby has had a whirlwind visit of meeting grandparents and other relatives on both sides of her family.Grandpa DanUncle Chris Aunt MerylBFF, Camilla

Bath time. Katie & Kirby. My two beautiful girls.With Grandma (me). You can read Rusty’s ideas about this here.

Moving on

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Robin

Major disappointment for our family last weekend. And ours was only one family’s story about the impact of the King Fire in northern California. Recent rain has helped the 7000+ people who were assigned to this fire to finally gain the upper hand. Over 7000 firefighters and other personnel, almost 100,000 acres. When there were “only” 4000 people assigned to the fire the news reported the cost of $5 million/day. Fortunately there were relatively few homes lost compared to other recent fires (but if you were one of those few its obviously a major impact), but the destruction to the forest, the wildlife, and the impact on thousands of peoples’ lives is impossible to quantify.

I realize that natural disasters happen all over the world and the impacts are far worse than what happened here, but nevertheless this is the one that is right in our faces with a direct affect. And this one was not NATURAL. There was an ARSONIST. I can’t even express my anger and frustration over that.

My son and DIL both live just south of this fire and fortunately the initial work by the fire crews prevented the fire from burning south where potentially hundreds of homes, including theirs, could have been burned. They both worked this fire (son on the fire line and DIL in dispatch) and while they were doing that my other son and the rest of the family headed to Lake Tahoe for the Tahoe Ironman.

I took lots of photos but as the outcome of the weekend was not as hoped I’ll show only three. Saturday the air was clear at Lake Tahoe and we dropped off bikes and bags at the transition areas. Our Ironmen are Chris, on the right, and Rob, his uncle, second from the left. This was only part of the support crew as the other family members came later than day. We left at 4:30 a.m. so we could park and get our competitors to the where they needed to be on Sunday morning. Here we are about 15 minutes before the start. The event was cancelled (or at least the public was told about it) at the absolute last minute as the first wave of contenders were entering the water. The bike/run portion of the race was to take place in the Squaw Valley/Truckee area. This is a view of Squaw Valley as we picked bags up later in the day. Although there had been some rain, that is not mist hiding the mountains. It is smoke.

Major disappointment for everyone at the event. Frustration. Tears. Anger. There is no arguing about the fact that conditions were not safe for an elite (or any) athletic event, but that doesn’t help with the frustration of everyone involved….This is only one event. I can only imagine all the ripple effects of this incident caused by ONE PERSON. It seems tame to call him selfish, but what else? Right now we don’t know anything about the reason behind the arson. But there is no good reason. Daylight drive back home.

So now I will MOVE ON. Next post will be all smiles!

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.

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