This was a tough week. I knew that it was getting time to think about easing Stephanie out of pain.

Stephanie was a Toggenburg goat that my son, Chris, got in his second year of 4-H. She was born February 15, 2003 and we brought her home as a few-day-old kid and bottle fed her. As the years went on Chris raised many other goats from the offspring of his only purchased goats, Susannah and Stephanie. Stephanie is the goat who stayed here after Chris got out of high school and moved on to other things. In the last three years or so I have been the goat care-giver and Stephanie has been my friend.I can’t find any baby photos of Stephanie but this is her at about 6 months at the State Fair.  She first kidded at age two and Chris showed her every year along with his other goats.   That’s Stephanie on the left in this photo. She was never as productive or showed as well as the other goats, but she was my favorite to milk, because she had hand-sized teats instead of finger-sized ones. That’s Stephanie in the lead in this photo and Chris’ favorites, Trista and Suzannah, along with SparkleBerry, a Nubian who somehow ended up here.  Dairy goats are bred to produce more milk than their kids can handle at first and we milked the does and bottle-fed the kids. That’s my mom drying one of Stephanie’s newborn kids.Stephanie might not have been the top show goat, but she had her good days. Reserve Champion at the State Fair in 2006.

Chris graduated from high school in 2009 and after he showed goats one more summer, most of the goats were sold to people who wanted to show and/or milk them. I didn’t want to do either. Stephanie became a “personality” here.

 She knew how to intimidate Rusty.

In 2010 I bred her to kid at the CA State Fair Nursery, where I also take pregnant sheep to lamb. I handled this  like we do with the sheep and Stephanie got to raise her own kid.   In the last couple of years I often found Stephanie “hiding”. I think that maybe she was annoyed by Amaryllis, the donkey, who though of Stephanie as her best friend. I don’t think the feeling was mutual. Stephanie was beginning to have less mobility and she couldn’t easily move away from someone who was bothering her.  For the last year or more Stephanie had her own stall at night so that I knew that she would get enough food. She was too stiff and arthritic to walk out to the pasture unless the sheep were grazing the closest one. Last winter was hard on Stephanie. I put a coat on her and gave her a heat lamp at night. The recent heat wave (though short at 2 days) was equally hard for her and the summer will only get worse. I talked to my veterinarian about her the other day and told her that I don’t think Stephanie ever lies down anymore because she is so stiff and sore. I would find her sleeping on her feet with her head resting on a bale of straw. We agreed that it was time for her to go. As the vet said, it’s better to make the decision a week too soon than a day too late. Stephanie died this morning as sat on a bale of hay and held her head. It was very peaceful and she didn’t suffer at all. This whole thing makes me think of my mom who died of Alzheimer’s 5 years ago. It would have been kinder and more respectful of her had she been able to die long before she finally did.

What a gorgeous day!

Pumpkin pies from my garden.

I spent last weekend in Boonville at the CA Wool & Fiber Festival which is part of the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show. I was a vendor at CWFF years ago but this the first time in quite awhile for me. This is a fun show but the hours and the drive make for a long weekend. I left home Thursday afternoon and finally finished setting up the booth about 10:30 that night. By the time I packed up on Sunday night it was 10:30 and I got home at 2:30 a.m. Monday.  Good thing I had a good audio-book for the drive.

My 10 x 10 booth was packed full of my farm-produced items as well as retail equipment, kits, etc.

 I entertained myself by needlefelting my first 2-dimensional piece…

…spinning on the new Country Spinner from Ashford…

…visiting with Jackie, who was a great help at the booth, and…

…watching people try on the fuzzy hats in the booth across the aisle.

I have been friends with Karin since 5th grade and she came for a visit. That’s her between the cowboys, who are also very entertaining.

I bought this very cool horse necklace from the Navajo ladies who had a booth across the aisle. I have worn the same earrings for about a year and I never buy jewelry, but I couldn’t resist.

Although it’s hard for some of us to understand, the world doesn’t revolve around fiber, at least the furry kind of fiber. This is the County Fair and APPLE Festival. After the fiber building closed in the evening I had a chance to see a few more things at the fair.

I enjoyed seeing the exhibits created by youth groups to promote local agriculture.  Who knew that there was this additional use for yellow squash?

I found another old friend.

This is Freckles, who I sold a few years ago to someone with a petting zoo. What a good life for a sheep who would be culled!

Back to the fiber building.

On both Saturday and Sunday Charlie demonstrated his skill with his chosen fiber animal.

There is a rabbit in there.

An English Angora.

Charlie harvests the fiber with scissors.

He makes sure that there are no second cuts or short fibers in the prime fiber he saves. Too bad you can’t do that with sheep.

Fun friends, fun weekend, but long. I’m glad to be home and sleeping in a bed instead of the back of the truck. Oh, there was a sheepdog trial also. I’m going to let Rusty tell you about those photos in his blog.

We crammed a lot into only a couple of days. AGM (Annual General Meeting) is always fun because you see people who you may only see once a year (or less). Because the AGM is held all over the country and at different times of year, not everyone can go to them all. There was a pretty good turnout in Colorado. Here are some photos of the activities.

Friday evening wool show.

Friday evening Spinners’ Lead contest for juniors…

…and for Seniors.

“Make sure that you see the socks too.”

Saturday morning sheep show.

Saturday afternoon presentation about The Effects of Nutrition on Fiber Production.

Also Saturday afternoon–AFD (Average Fiber Diameter) testing for anyone who brought wool samples (or took scissors and cut samples from the sheep that were there). This is Ron Cole from ASI, who taught the Wool Handling Workshop in California a few months ago. He brought the OFDA (optical-based fiber diameter analyser) used to measure wool samples and I think he ran about 200 in the few hours he was there. AFD and some of the other statistical measurements are of importance to sheep farmers because it is AFD that determines the best use and the market for wool.

A wool sample is placed between two screens and thousands of measurements are taken in a few seconds time.

This is the information you get from the scans. I usually send in wool samples for all my yearlings so that I have micron data for each sheep at a consistent age. When they are sent to the lab you get this data back in printed format.

I should have taken a photo of dinner. It was fabulous Jacob lamb prepared by students in the meats lab at Colorado State (I think I have the school right) accompanied by corn, potatoes, and Colorado peach cobbler.

After dinner there was a brief meeting and presentation of a Jacob wool shawl (made by me) to Jennifer, who organized the event.

Throughout the day there was plenty of sheep shopping and trading going on.Most people who were hauling sheep left early Sunday morning. Some of us stayed around and drove a couple of hours up in the mountains to the Lonesome Stone Fiber Mill in Granby.

What a beautiful area! Lonesome Stone currently has about 250 alpacas. We spent some time visiting with the alpacas before seeing the mill.

Note the bowl on the head method of bringing alpaca treats to the field. Once the bowl was lowered the treats were gone within seconds.

Isn’t this a cute baby?

Lonesome Stone is a favorite of alpaca growers, but they also process wool and any other fibers. When a producer sends raw fiber it is scoured, picked, carded, pin-drafted, spun, and plied. The yarn produced is beautiful. This is carded fiber going into the pin-drafter and coming out…

…like this, ready to be spun.

This is a corner of the store where the finished yarn is sold. Oh, did I say that Lonesome Stone also dyes the yarn?

After this field trip I drove 3 hours to Colorado Springs to visit with my husband’s sister and brother and their spouses, spending the night north of Colorado Springs. I left for the airport about 8:30 and got home around 4:30 p.m. It was a great weekend, but I am glad to be home. Tomorrow I’ll be on the road at 5:30 a.m. to pick up my new sheep!