We have been riding the Foxy’s Fall Century for several years. I just looked back through blog posts to see if I could figure out when we started. In Foxy’s Fall Century 2015 I referred to this being a revival of a ride we used to do so I don’t know when we rode it the first time. Same bike. Same truck. The only other reference I found to Foxy’s is to a blog post about the three-year anniversary of the accident that could have changed all our lives. That post ends with a photo similar to many of these in today’s post. See that post on my website blog if you want to go off track and find out details of that accident and recovery.
Here is the tandem we bought when we were first married. We get a lot of comments. “Cool bike” “Beautiful bike”, etc. I’m not sure if people comment in the same way as car enthusiasts would comment on a ’67 Camero (which I had in college). In other words, this is an old bike as cycling trends go.
We did some good rides on this in the old days.
This is the only kind of photo I can get while we’re riding. The sun is low when we start so that’s the view–big bike, small people.
This is about 40 minutes later riding south. Those hills should be familiar from west-facing photos from our farm. We weren’t that far from home.
At the rest stop at Lake Solano near Winters. I took this photo because Dan’s brother texted while we were stopped there.
About 15 miles from Davis. This is the view I have while we are riding. Actually this is distorted. The phone photo would have shown only the green backpack canteen but I expanded the view a bit.
I held the phone above my head for this view.
Ride over. Back at the truck.
I feel fine, but maybe next year I’ll try to get a few miles in before the day of the ride.
As I’ve said before Breeding Season is a Season, overlapping the traditional seasons of summer and fall. If defining a Season influences how you live your life, Breeding Season definitely qualifies. It doesn’t take long before I’m ready for it to be over. It’s easier when all the ewes are in one place, the rams are somewhere else, and I don’t have to feed groups differently and watch my back when I’m with the ewes.
We have 4 breeding groups, a non-breeding group (the oldest sheep, Jade, and six ewe lambs), two young rams with potential for breeding (too young and/or small this year), and two older rams who are sold but still here. The breeding group with the most ewes is on the main pasture. Hornblower has about 30 ewes with him. Doesn’t that pasture look great?
Elvis has eleven ewes and is on the pasture to the north. When I moved the Hornblower group to the next paddock of the south pasture I needed to separate the two groups with more than a single net fence, especially since I’m having some issues with the power to the north one. So I set up two fences and was able to power the north one from the south one.
Those pasture photos were taken October 10. On the 13th it rained. We had 1.6″ the first day and .5″ the second day. A significant rainfall usually marks the end of grazing. It is late in the year and the pasture is depleted or dormant. Also, the land is flat and the water doesn’t drain well. This year is different because the pasture has been renovated and there is a much better stand (mostly clover, trefoil, and chicory). We are not sure how long we’ll be able to graze but it seemed appropriate to continue as long as I moved the sheep to a fresh paddock.
Five days ago I moved Hornblower’s group to the paddock closest to the road.
The lane is adjacent to Clancy’s group. However there is hot wire on both sides of the net fence and there doesn’t seem to be any problem with either ram trying to get through.
You may notice some blue marks on the ewes. Those are more noticeable than the orange marks on several, The rams wear marking harnesses so we have a better idea of when to expect lambs. I hadn’t noticed as many marks lately.
Is this why? The rams went in with ewes three weeks ago on September 27. I substituted the orange markers from Clancy and Hornblower with blue markers a week ago. You can see the difference in a new one and the used ones.
Clancy’s group is in the field between the barn and the shop–not one of the renovated pastures. Notice two blue marks. The ewe in the background marked blue was the first one Clancy marked with orange on September 27.
So we now know that she was not pregnant after that breeding. If all the ewes in this group are re-marked that would indicate a problem with the ram. Hopefully that is not the case. The other ewe marked blue in the photo above this one had not been marked before. I’ll keep watching to make sure that more of the oranges aren’t also marked blue in the next week.
When I wrote a newsletter yesterday I referred to the series of blog posts about the pasture that I wrote over the last year. You can find any of these by searching Pasture and Irrigation Renovation (14 posts) and Grazing and Irrigation (7 posts).
Tonight’s post will follow up on this Grazing and Irrigation post (#7) written in June about May grazing. The pasture looks much different now than it did then.
The ryegrass is gone and you see mostly clover.
Next most prominent is birdsfoot trefoil, and more recently the chicory has taken a foothold. Those are the three broadleaf plants that were in our seed mixture. All of the paddocks in the south pasture look like this now. Back in the spring we started topping the ryegrass with the mower before grazing and mowed again after grazing. This prevented the ryegrass from being flattened over the clover and becoming a mulch layer.
The smaller field on the north is different. We didn’t graze early enough and this is where the annual ryegrass had such a head start on the clover and overwhelmed it in places. I took this photo while irrigating two weeks ago. While the pasture was flooded, some of the ryegrass “mulch” floated and I was able to rake a lot of it into piles thinking that I’d be able to move it out with the tractor.
A few days later I realized that I didn’t want to wait until the field dried out enough to use the tractor. I was ready to graze again but the lane was still too muddy. I realized that I could use all that straw to cover up the mud. So I used the wheelbarrow.
I used at least a dozen big loads of ryegrass straw to fill in the lane.
This is Sparky in that north field. Hopefully over the course of winter these bare spots will fill in now the they aren’t covered with mulch.
In 2024 we attended the opening of this show because I was a “farm partner”. The explanation and story is in this blog post from 2024. I think I did a better job of photographing last year’s show and sharing artist info in my blog. I took this quote from last year’s blog post, after copying it from the Cowgirl Artists’ website. From the website: “Celebrating the true contributions of Women in the American West…Much Western art is an ode to the work and contributions of men, while often limiting women to a single sphere, or pretty face. “Women’s Work,” a groundbreaking exhibition that teams artists up with women on working ranches, turns that notion on its head. By showcasing Western women as multi-faceted contributors to the Western way of life. Furthermore, Women’s Work aims to provide a platform for Indigenous women to authentically share their own stories, rooted in their intimate connections to culture and heritage. Traditional and fine artists are included, with all work on the theme of “Women’s Work.”
After seeing the show and talking to the organizer I decided to submit an entry for this year. Entries were due in the fall and, if accepted, work was to be completed in the spring 2025. I entered Year to Remember blankets using locally produced wool, and naturally dyed by me with plants grown on the farm. I could serve as my own “ranch partner”. I was accepted! Work was shipped to the show to arrive by mid-July.
The catalog of the show is at this link. There you can see all the pieces and details about work.
The Women’s Work show is upstairs in this building. The second floor is in a horseshoe shape over the lower floor. When I went upstairs I was immediately drawn to this display. Four artists worked together to put together the display.
There is amazing detail on this saddle called She Who Made Me by Kari McCluey
This painting, CowGirl II – Securing a Win, is by Megan Wimberley, the woman behind Cowgirl Artists of America.
Bluebird Let Me Tag Along by Lisa Sorrell.
There are details about each piece in the catalog at the link above. There was by far more wall art than 3-D work, but it was difficult to get good photos of those. That’s why I recommend looking at the link.
These are my two blankets. Later I rearranged them so that the more colorful side is the one that shows. The blanket on the left indicates high temperatures for Trinidad, Colorado for 2024 and the one on the right is for Vacaville. The full year is portrayed following the stripes from one end to the other.
On Saturday I came prepared to include the info about the Year to Remember idea with color coding. I thought it would make the blankets more interesting (and more saleable). However, this is an art show and the person in charge wanted to keep the signage at a minimum. This info is in the catalog, so I took it off the blankets. I’m including it here as explanation…and because this is a plug for your custom Year to Remember blanket. I have a blanket warp on the loom now and can weave one. If these blankets don’t sell in this show they will be on my website after I get them back.
Dan took this photo.
The A.R. Mitchelll Museum has a large display about Mitchell and his friends as well as contemporary western art for sale. From the Museum website: “During the 1870s and 1880s Trinidad was the headquarters of the largest cattle and sheep operation in the state of Colorado. A booming cow town filled with cowboys, cowhands and ranchers, Trinidad’s streets and neighboring towns were home to the horses, cattle and beloved cowboys and cowgirls that A.R. Mitchell would paint and immortalize throughout his career.”
I am already over my self-imposed limit of 10 photos, but I want to continue the story so I can blog about things at home.
On Saturday there was a luncheon provided by CGA to be followed by an artists’ talk. I had been asked to be one of the panel. Before the luncheon we wandered around this block of Trinidad.
I got a kick out of this design. That’s a real truck, not painted.
We stopped in the Corazon Gallery across the street from the A.R. Mitchell Museum. I was interested in this because it is an artists’ coop as is The Artery where I sell in Davis, California. Here’s a “small world” experience. We wandered through the gallery and I noticed a landscape photograph with the photographer’s name Joe Coca. I knew that name. Having subscribed to Handwoven magazine since the first issue in fall, 1979 I was very familiar with photography by Joe Coca. I wondered if he might be the same person because Handwoven magazine was based in Colorado. We started up a conversation with the person staffing the store on that day. I assume it is like The Artery where all of us artists take turns being shopkeepers when the store is open. I said we were in town for the show across the street and I had entered handwoven pieces. It turns out that I was talked with Joe Coca! We talked awhile longer. He worked with Interweave Press for years and has been all over the world as a photographer. Joe’s website states that he is semi-retired, but it is worth looking at the website to see some stunning photography.
Back to the show!
After the luncheon awards were announced. There was a winner and an honorable mention in the 2-D and 3-D categories. I was so surprised to get the 3-D Honorable Mention!
The people selected for the panel discussion were all artists who were able to fill the role of their own “ranch partner”. Megan, left, had prepared questions for all of us to answer. It was a fun experience and I was very interested to hear the stories of the other women. The other women are all cattle ranchers. Megan asked questions about how we got started, how we integrate artwork with our daily lives as ranchers (I call myself a farmer, but that’s another story– what is the difference between a farmer and a rancher?), do we have issues with gender expectations, recommendations for young people just starting, etc. One difference that I thought about later is that although we all talked about seasonality of ranching/farming, I think I am the only one who direct markets. In other words, I don’t load all my lambs on a truck and send them off to market and I don’t take my fiber, yarn, and handwoven to a retail store and it’s gone. I have interaction with all the customers whether I’m selling lambs for meat or for breeding flocks or selling all the fiber products. I spend time at the computer on social media letting the world know I’m here (including this blog–please share!), time (not enough) working my website, teaching fiber arts, working at The Artery, and attending fiber shows. That doesn’t mean any of us have more or less work than the other. It’s just different. A theme in the discussion was that there is Never enough time for all of it.
Dan had my camera and recorded some of the comments. I haven’t had time to listen yet.
After this discussion we got on the road and headed north to Colorado Springs where Dan’s brother and sister live.
In the last blog post I shared photos of a brief stop at a corner of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Then we were on the road to Trinidad. We had time for one more stop.
We turned south off of I-50 on Hwy. 69, east on Hwy. 96, and south on 165 to find Bishop Castle. We had never heard of Bishop Castle, but the campground host at Bryce Canyon suggested a stop here.
We parked along the road and walked past other cars on the road to this entrance. This is not part of the castle, but the entryway to the property.
This sign is at the right of the entryway. I guess this is enough to limit any liability claimed by visitors.
View of one portion of the castle. This project was started by Jim Bishop in 1969 and was a work in progress until he died in 2024. Wikipedia says: “James Roland “Jim” Bishop was born in Honolulu in 1944.[6] He moved to Colorado with his wife, where they raised four children, including a son named Dan.[6] Bishop bought the land for the site for $450 when he was 15, and construction on what was originally intended to be a family project to build a cottage[7]started in 1969.[8] After Bishop surrounded the cottage with rocks, several neighbors noted that the structure looked something like a castle. Bishop took this into consideration and soon began building his castle.“
View from another corner. It’s hard to get the whole thing in one shot. The tower is 160 feet tall.
The property is owned by the family and, despite the warning posted, they seem to welcome visitors. There is a gift shop on site as well as a food truck.
We did not take the winding stairs on the outside or the inside all the way to the top, but we stopped here.
I saw on Instagram that the dragon breathed fire on July 4th and on Halloween.
Interesting detail.
Near the castle are the workspaces where lumber is milled and metal worked.
There is also a small cement mixer.
This is the backside of the entrance in the first photo. Bishop Castle is an interesting place to visit. Dan came home with ideas!
This was Friday and the goal was to be in Trinidad, Colorado by the late afternoon. We had time to do a bit of exploring along the way from Montrose to Trinidad. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is very close to Montrose and we thought it would be worth a look. We were there in 2016 but only to camp nearby and drive above the canyon, as described here and here. However the Park was closed due to recent wildfires. We continued on Highway 50 and I realized that a small corner of the Park was accessible about 20 miles from Montrose.
The location known as Cimarron used to be a major hub for sheep and cattle transportation and, later, for tourists. There is a Visitor Center here but it wasn’t open.
We looked around outside and read about the train cars that are here.
We took a short drive from that location to the canyon.
There is a restored engine and cars on a bridge over the Cimarron River which runs into the Gunnison just around the corner.
I had not realized that one of the important aspects of the narrow gauge railroad is that the cars are much more maneuverably around bends in the track.
When you look east from the location of the train this is the view. This is the 468-foot tall Morrow Point Dam.
This photo is a view of the north side of the river below the dam. If you enlarge it you will see a ladder that is right next to the large tree in the center. Just to the left of the ladder, circled in red, is an instrument used to measure movements in the earth. It is described below.
We walked over the bridge to a trail on the north side of the river.
There were plenty of interesting plants to photograph, but I have shared only one here. This is poison ivy.
View of the Gunnison River just downstream from the Dam.
UhOh. I can tell already that Day 4 is a three blog post day. Enjoy!
I got to Michigan on Wednesday. The Annual General Meeting began on Friday.
The meeting was held at the Branch County Fairgrounds in Coldwater, Michigan. First stop was the sheep barn.
This old spinning wheel was outside the barn.
It was sure fun to see this many Jacob sheep from different breeders in one place.
Notice the ear tags including a CA scrapie tag. This is Meridian Saffron who I sold to a fellow Jacob breeder in 2018. I was able to get her to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival that year. I just found the blog post about that. I wish I could have participated in some of the fun at AGM–that is buying and selling sheep–not possible when I’m flying.
There are several barns at this fairgrounds. They are labeled sheep, cattle, horses, etc. I was amused by this sign.
A wool show was one of the activities at this meeting. Another activity was the sheep show. I don’t have photos of that because I was a judge. I said I’d do it with a partner, not by myself. That was a challenge. I got good feedback, but I don’t want to do it again. Too much stress and it’s difficult to place 10 sheep in a class when they all look pretty good. Fortunately we needed to place only the first four sheep in each class.
One of the participants showed me her “arm-knit” blanket made of roving. It weighs 14 pounds!
The presentation I was most interested in was that by Gary Anderson about the study being conducted about lilac Jacobs. Gary showed this slide from a 1995 (I think) paper and noted that they said “the causative mutation” instead of “a”. I think I have written a blog post about the current study in which he involved, but I’m not looking for it now. I’m at the gate for my flight home and want to finish this before we board. I did find this post that is related to the study because of the sheep involved I may have to write more later.
Sunday morning I helped with some sheep loading and a little clean up. Then I got a ride with Gary to his farm in Sparta. My flight wasn’t leaving until 7:30 p.m. so Gary gave me a tour of the area. This is a plaque in place at his original family farm.
I spent many days (weeks, months?) working towards going to CNCH (Conference of Northern California Handweavers) as one of the teachers at this retreat-style conference held at Asilomar on the California coast. I have taught Learn to Weave many times and can do it without thinking, but the prep is different when I am not teaching at home and when there will be so many people in the class. This is a class presented to people who may have some weaving experience but not enough to warp a loom themselves, people who may have woven long ago but need a refresher, and those who have never woven anything. Many don’t have looms or at least not looms that are portable.
Fifteen people signed up for this workshop. Five of them were bringing looms, five looms were borrowed from local guild members, and I provided five. That’s not just the looms–five warping boards, benches, and all the equipment that goes along with winding warp and weaving. I also supplied yarn, and not being someone who wants to tell people they have to choose only one or two colors, I brought plenty of choices…and in wool or cotton–their choice. This is where I staged what I was to put in the trailer. It doesn’t include the grid wall that was already in the trailer. You’ll see that in use in some of the photos.
I got the classroom set up by Thursday evening. Many thanks go to the person who organized the conference and made sure that I would have two helpers. My two requests for teaching the class were space (this room was great!) and another person (I had two!). With a beginning level class there are a lot of questions along the way one person can’t provide all the answers in a timely manner. There was also the issues of unfamiliar looms getting them set up to work with the class.
Samplers in wool on the left and cotton in the center. On the right are some of my shawls.
One of the perks of teaching this class was staying at Asilomar. My room was at the end of this building.
We set up grid wall to hold warping frames on this side of the room.
The looms were near windows on the other side.
These are only portions of the samplers people could weave.
The workshop was Friday and Saturday with finishing up on Sunday morning.
This is a photo of most of us. Thanks to all of the participants and the helper weavers! I hope to do this again. When I teach this class here at the farm I take three to five people. The class is described here.
Part of the prep for this workshop was planning for farm chores. My husband had a knee replacement only a few weeks before and there were limits to what he was supposed to do. Thanks to a good friend and my brother who handled a lot of that.
When I got home Sunday there was a new lamb which was not a complete surprise, but that’s another story.
I shared some photos on Instagram a month or so ago about a jacket that I finally mended.
The only thing wrong with this jacket is that I kept catching it on gates and the inner parts of it were getting filled with hay. The top half and the whole back still kept me warm. Why would I throw it away?
I finally fixed it. It’s a relief to not have to worry about getting caught on the gates as I walk through.
Then I decided it was time to mend the overalls. The following post popped on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. Same jacket. I guess no one can accuse me of being part of the fast fashion problem.
Yesterday’s post brought us up to November 19 when the work on the irrigation pipeline was almost finished. The field wasn’t yet seeded and significant rain was due that night.
There is a story about the seed. It was a special order to get the quantity and mix we specified. On November 8 we drove to the seed company in Tracy to pick it up to save on shipping cost and so it would be here when Michael was ready for it. The order wasn’t correct so the company was going to ship it to us the following week. It didn’t come on the day it was supposed to, and we didn’t want it to arrive while we were gone. It would be on a pallet which would need to be unloaded and we couldn’t risk the seed getting wet if it rained. So we scheduled delivery for the following Tuesday, the day after we’d be back from Arizona. The shipping company called on Tuesday to say it would be here Wednesday. We needed to get that seed in the ground on Tuesday because of the imminent rain.
Fortunately we were told that the seed could be taken off the truck so we could pick it up. Dan I drove to Sacramento to pick it up at the trucking company location. I texted Michael that the seed we would be back home with the seed by about 2:00.
The air seeder has two long arms that distribute the seeds as it’s being driven.
I don’t know the details of how it is set up but this is a look at the part under the hopper where the seed falls into the black tubes in a measured quantity.
There is a control here where Michael set the amount of seed to apply. He somehow calibrated it to apply 30 pounds/acre when the tractor is driven at 6 mph.
It took only a few hours to apply the seed using this equipment.
This was followed up with ring rollers to help the seed have more soil contact. It was getting dark.
After rolling the main part of the pasture, Michael had to adjust the width of the rollers to squeeze between the new valves that are 30 feet apart. This was to access the north part of the field.
Michael’s son had been riding in the cab while Michael was working. While he adjusted the rollers (and Dan was watching to make sure they cleared the valves) I took Bodie into the barn to feed the sheep with me.
Seeding was just in time. We had almost an inch and a half of rain that night.
The NRCS engineer wanted to certify the pipeline work, but now it was too muddy for people to walk or drive across the field and even on the road to the west. I walked out there by walking on the dried grass to the side of the dirt road west of our property so I could send photos. This shows the work the welder did the previous day when he could drive on that road. He cut out a circle on the horizontal pipe, matched the vertical pipe with another cut, and welded them together.
There is a precisely measured hole in the top of the horizontal pipe. I think the purpose is for air flow to help with water flow.
The finished connections that need to be covered. But, wait, they are not finished. There will be another post that shows a flow meter being installed.
Avoiding the dirt most of the way, this is how my boots looked just….
…walking across the dirt road to get to the corner of the property. I sent the engineers the required photos and these last two to show that it was not a good time for anyone to visit.
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