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.

Lambtown

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Another post by Robin. I don’t have time to straighten out WP right now. I think Rusty needs his own e-mail address to fix this problem.

Lambtown was Saturday. What an incredibly busy day! There is no way that I could have made it through the day without the help of friends. The event was packed. Here is my booth before the doors opened.

I had the booth pretty well set up the night before when I was asked to move it 18″ to the north because the neighboring booth wasn’t given the allotted space. Can you imagine? I was not happy, but after dealing with it, I didn’t feel so guilty about spilling over into the empty space next to me. Next year I think I’ll get two booth spaces, but I’ll definitely need a full-time person to help. Friends, Aaron and Alison and Jackie helped with the booth and we even pulled in a few other friends who happened to be walking by.

I taught a rigid heddle class in the morning and had five students. We crammed as many new techniques into that class as we could in 2 hours. Everyone wove a sampler with Italian hemstitching, Danish medallions, and warp and weft pick-up.

There was also a sheep show. Tina helped in the show ring and Dona and Rick spend most of their day monitoring the timing of the show. I thought that we might be showing in the morning, but there were enough sheep entered that we didn’t show until later in the afternoon. This is the yearling ewe class. That is Meridian Vicki in second place. She was Reserve Champion ewe in the Primitive Breeds division.

Tina brought her service puppy in training to Lambtown. Isn’t Golly cute?

Thanks to Dona for the last 2 photos.

Shelby in the news

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By the way, Robin wrote this post, not Rusty. I’m trying to get wordpress straightened out.

Farm Club member and friend, Shelby, nonchalantly  told me the other day that she was going to be featured in the Wall Street Journal! We’ll have to wait for the story to come out to find out what they write, but the photographer who spent the day with Shelby did some of his photo shoot here. I think the fiber and sheep world was new to  Jason Henry .

Paulette is always a good ambassador.

.The sheep were fairly cooperative.

I wish I could have spend the day with Jason, gleaning more photography tips. I look forward to seeing his photos.

Sorting ewes

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This is getting confusing. This post is by me, Robin, even though it says it’s by Rusty. He has his own blog and did not write this post and this is not his blog. Rusty’s blog is here.

Today was breeding group sorting day. Many thanks to Dona, a Farm Club member, who helped me all afternoon (and brought cookies).All the lilac ewes or those with lilac parents went to Hudson’s paddock. He didn’t waste time. Three of seven are marked.

Clint whispering sweet nothings to Delilah.

Faulkner  wasn’t to be left behind.

The Puddleduck ram lamb (I still haven’t decided on a name) is on the left in the picture. He isn’t quite 6 months yet and was given a challenging group of girls to work with. He’s starting to get the hang of what he is supposed to do, but the ewes are giving him a hard time.

Ruby Peak Linden and Meridian Clapton are the other two ram lambs I’m using. Linden seemed more interested in food tonight but Clapton got right to business although he had to work hard to reach the adult ewes in his group.

It’s fun to see the colored rears and know to expect lambs in 5 months, but I hope we have some good rains before shearing day so the marks won’t be so obvious.

A plethora of rams

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It’s almost time to put the rams in with the ewes. I’ve been looking at my sheep list to match up ewes and rams. It makes the most sense for me to use only 2 or 3 rams. Keep the biggest group in the pasture and smaller groups where they will need to be fed hay. But I have an exciting stable of new rams to try. So I think that I’ll have more groups than is really smart.Faulkner is going to be used on some older ewes . This is an experiment to see how crossbred lambs will do for the meat market. My guess is that they will be ready for market sooner and at a higher weight. There may be some interesting pelts as well. Faulkner is a character. Dan says that he reminds him of the Grateful Dead. “truckin’, just keep truckin’ on”.”Hey, man, good grass.”

Mud Ranch’s Hudson is a lilac ram with spectacular horns. He will be bred to all my lilac ewes or those with lilac parents. It’s been several years since I’ve had lilac lambs and Hudson will give me plenty. (Most Jacobs are black and white. Lilac refers to a color other than black–usually a brownish-gray.)

This is the yearling, Sweetgrass Clint, ready for some ewes. He came from Michigan last year.

Clint’s son, Clapton, out of Meridian Jazz. He will be 6 months old the first week of October. I hope he’ll be ready to work soon. His horns and fleece look great. I would have shown him at State Fair but somehow he knocked out 3 teeth just prior to the show. You can’t take a sheep with a bloody mouth to the fair. Clapton is an “E” generation lamb and I’d like to breed my unrelated E ewes to him.

Here is one of the new ram lambs, #337 is from Ingrid Painter’s Puddleduck flock in Oregon. He needs a name.

 

Ruby Peak Linden is also from Oregon. These two rams lambs will be 6 months old in mid-October. I’m going to give them both some ewes and see what happens.

If I haven’t forgotten anyone that is already 6 rams, which is more than enough. So these ram lambs may have to wait until next year unless someone buys them this season. This is Meridian Siskiyou, sired by one of my favorite rams, Tioga.

 

This two horn ram has a great horn spread and I’ll probably keep him around to see how he turns out.

I like the horn spread on this ram also. I like his color, also, even though he is on the dark side and should not be used with ewes who are also very dark. His wool looks quilted in this photo but is is not when you see him in real life.

 

 

 

 

A sheep adventure with 2 friends and a dog

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I heard via e-mail that there were a couple of sheep in need of rescue. The owners had lost their property and had moved out of state. They needed someone to pick up the sheep. I don’t normally take in unwanted sheep, but these were two that had been purchased from me as lambs and had never been around other sheep or goats. So I rounded up my friends (Chris and Colleen) with the enticement (bribe) that there was another fiber event going on in the area and my dog and we drove to Placerville. The first hard part was finding the place. We had very detailed instructions, but I’m glad that there was someone to read them as I was driving.

I knew that Rusty couldn’t effectively herd these sheep with a cone on his head so I found a rib band from our collection of arm/foot/shoulder injury paraphernalia and put that around his middle so that the drain tube wouldn’t get hung up on a bush.  The sheep gathering itself went surprisingly well (you can read about that on Rusty’s blog as he described it fairly well, if you can get over his know-it-all attitude). What Rusty didn’t say is that, even with his skill and expertise, we never would have got those sheep in without the extra friends and the panels.

Next stop was the Yarnival, a celebration of the opening of the PluckyFluff workshop at a winery in Placerville. It seems like I usually recognize everyone at out local fiber events, but the PluckyFluff following includes a different group of people. There were vendors, live music, and pizza on the winery grounds. I don’t usually take my dog to events like this, but I couldn’t leave him in the hot car (the sheep were OK in the back with the shade) so he came along.

The yarns are wild and crazy. I’m not sure how you actually use most of them, but they are certainly fun to look at.

This is a collection of handspun yarns from around the world made into the “world’s largest skein”.

Here is a detail of that yarn.

There were a few sheep and goats around. Isn’t this a beautiful colored Wensleydale? Do you notice the color of the dirt? Dirt in the Placerville area is red. That sure makes for a beautiful sheep, but I’m told that under that red color this sheep is really a brilliant white.

A huge Angora rabbit.

The little girl at the end of the bunny’ leash was walking it right towards Rusty. I told Rusty to lie down and cautioned the girl to avoid the dog.

An amusing sign.

Ideas for my husband since we have at least 3 places that need handrails.

 

Same lesson learned again

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Before I start this post I should say that Rusty was not supposed to publish his post to MY blog. He has his own now. I don’t know what gibberish he was thinking when he wrote that. It must have been the drugs he was given.

MY BLOG POST: What lesson is that? The one about not putting off things that should be done now.This may look like a gate, but it is not. It is a welded wire panel that I open to get in this pen. A gate has hinges and it swings. But enough of that. This panel has to act like a gate in that I need to be able to get into the pen and let my dog into the pen. Here is another view of the panel.

Do you see a problem? If a Border Collie (or a person) goes running through this opening solely focused on sheep he might run into those points. I used to have this covered, but the covering fell off a couple of days ago and I hadn’t bothered to find the wire to fix it. This is the result:

It could have been much worse. Several years ago we had an emergency vet visit for a pig that tore open several inches of skin and fat and was supposed to go to the fair the next day. I guess I could have sewn this up myself but I live only 10 minutes from the vet and she happened to be in and I didn’t want to be bitten and I don’t know what I’m doing. So Rusty had a vet visit. (When he wrote his blog he didn’t seem to know what had happened to him. I didn’t even know he had been injured until later in the day. He ran right past that fence and worked the sheep like he was supposed to.)

So here is the fix for the fence. (Now you know why you haven’t thrown away all the hoses with bad ends.)

Here is the fix for the dog. There are staples and a rubber tubing that acts as a drain. Isn’t that one sad puppy? He wants back in the sheep pen.

Dreaming, wobbly, what’s on my head?

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No one is in the house and the computer is free. MY TURN. I know that Robin set up this blog for me, but she said that she’d need to help me with it…

Things are fuzzy. Spinning. I’m up. Chasing rabbits through alfalfa fields...walking around in the kitchen…can’t see to the side...daisies…

I remember getting in the car with Robin. We went to the sheep vet’s place…

Little pink sheep floating through the sky…drool is running out of the thing on my head…biting the old tire swing and flying, flying, flying up in the air…pawing at the plastic thing on my head.

I like the vet when she comes out because it means we’re doing something with sheep. I don’t like going to her place. She had funny things sticking in her ears and she touched my side with the end of it. I had to walk past a scary horse to stand on a wobbly platform. “55” they said.

…1 UPS truck, 2 UPS trucks, 3 UPS trucks, 4 UPS trucks, Fed Ex, 5 UPS trucks…I keep running into things…chasing herons and eagles out of the canal…Pawing the plastic thing.

The vet shaved hair off my side and stuck me with needles. Then Robin carried me into the house and the cat came over to bother me. Now this plastic thing bothers me.

...running around sheep, away, come by, away, come by…I remember I helped Robin catch the big ram named Hudson. I think I did it very well and she could get a halter on him to give him medicine. He stays away from me like he is supposed to.

OK. I hear Robin talking to me but I can’t see her unless I turn my head and then I bump into something. I give up.

 

Boys will be boys

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You saw the photos of the new girls in the flock and how they ran out to greet the rest of the sheep. I brought home two ram lambs as well.

This is Puddleduck 337 (needs a name) and his fleece is below.

This is Ruby Peak Linden.

I put 337 and Linden in the pen with Faulkner and his little buddies (4-horn April ram lamb and 2-horn wether). I figured that there wouldn’t be any issues because the lambs are still on the young side.

Linden, however, thought that he could take on the big guy.

 

 Faulkner finally had enough of the pipsqueak and decided to put him in his place.

One more time for good measure.

That should do it. Now they can be friends.

Wonderful awards

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This is the “official” photo of me with Meridian Vicki and the judge, Martin Dally. (Thanks, Shannon.)

This is a close-up of the award.

Shannon Phifer created needle-felted awards for the Champion Ram and Champion Ewe of the show. I am so pleased to bring this home. Did Shannon have some prior insight? We think that the sheep on the award looks very much like Vicki.

But there is more! The winning sheep was also awarded a halter with a personalized tag!

New sheep in the flock

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When I went to the Jacob Sheep Breeders AGM I took 9 sheep with me. I came home with 10. That was not the original plan. However, five of those sheep are new to the flock.

I don’t have all the right paperwork yet so I don’t remember what Karen named this little girl, but she is from the bide a wee farm in Oregon.This is bide a wee Jewell. Karen and I were going to trade lambs and when I couldn’t decide between the two lambs, they said that they would trade for both. They have beautiful fleeces and I can’t wait for shearing day! Another new face is this pretty ewe lamb from Mud Ranch in California. I am waiting for her paperwork too and I don’t remember what Joan named her.

This is a preview of the Mud Ranch lamb’s fleece.

This pretty lamb is one of my flock. I feel kind of guilty for not trading or selling her, but not guilty enough that I can’t be glad to have her in the flock. This is the little ewe who almost won Best Fleece in the sheep show. (Is it OK to spend the rest of your life saying I “almost won”? I’m proud of that because she was second to the Kenleigh Acres ram who has consistently won everything he has been entered in (and deserves it).This is my little ewe’s fleece. I guess I need to name her now since she is staying here. Her dad is Tioga and her mom is Zip (out of Zelda, whose mom is Zena). How about Zippy? I don’t know if that has quite the image that I want for her.

The three new girls plus Z— joining the rest of the flock.

I brought home some boys too, but i think they deserve a post of their own.