The Lucky Ones

Posted on October 20, 2016 by Robin

As you must know when there are almost 80 lambs born in the spring I can’t keep them all. How many sheep would I have in 5 years? Who can do the math? My sheep capacity is about 55-65 adults. That includes a few wethers, more rams than I probably need, and the ewe lambs that I choose to keep. Someone has to go and a handful get to stay.

I just sent registration applications in for the lambs who are staying here. I was going to share their photos and then I thought that it would be fun to see their baby photos as well. For those of you who pay attention to who the sheep are I have included the (sire x dam).

16011-sylvia-2 This one is Sylvia and the photo below was taken last week. (Rotor x Sonata) 16011-sylvia-lt

16015-marilla Here is Marilla (named in a contest for her mother, Marilyn, and because she was our Spinzilla ravatar) in March and below in September. This is a good pair of photos that show that even when a sheep is black and white, the wool may look brown due to sun bleaching. The markings on the face and legs will indicate the true color, at least in Jacob sheep. 16015-marilla-left

16016-marv This is Marilla’s brother, Marv. He is one of only two ram lambs that I kept this year. He was champion Jacob ram at Black Sheep Gathering and his dad, Rotor, was Supreme Champion at the CA State Fair. The photo below shows the difference in rate of horn growth between ewes (Marilla) and rams (Marv). (Rotor x Marilyn) 16016-marv-rt

estelle-and16042 This is Stacy as a newborn lamb and below at 7 months. (Crosby x Estelle) 16042-stacy-lt

jean-16062-16063 More newborn photos. This is Jean with twins. I kept both of these lambs. The ewe lamb, trying to stand, is Cindy, below. The lamb nursing is the ram, Joker, in the photo below Cindy. (Nash x Jean)

16062-cindy-rt

16063-joker-2

Joker has a group of ewes and is wearing a marking harness with a red marker.

vanessa-and-16040 This is Vanessa with her lambs. Vanna , on the right, was 5.2 pounds when she was born, but you wouldn’t know that now. (Rotor x Vanessa) 16040-vanna-rt

16046

Vixen is the only lilac lamb I kept. Her markings are a brown/gray instead of black. That shows up better in the photo above than below. (Nash x Foxglove) 16046-vixen-rt

16043

This lamb is Virginia (Rotor x Ventura). 16043-virginia-lt

trista-lt

This is bide a wee Trista, the one lamb that I purchased, so I didn’t take a baby photo. But I just looked and, yes there is one on the bide a wee farm website. Here is Trista as a little lamb.

trista

Vixen, Virginia, Cindy, Vanna.

Fall Colors

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Robin

fall-colors-2

She’s Two Today!

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Robin

So many cute photos. I may have to do more than one post.

I can use more photos if I make a mosaic. A lot of firsts for Ginny at two months old. First meet-up with the big dogs. First Christmas tree. First time in the barn. First visit to the vet.

Still two months old. Running in the fog. Spending time in the shop with spinners. Playing with Rusty and Maggie and conquering branches.

ginny-2-5-months-1 Ginny and her lamb.

ginny-2-5-months-3 Ginny and her moose.

ginny-7-months-1 Ginny at 7 months with the favorite Toy. ginny-7-months-2

ginny-7-months-4

ginny-7-5-months-1 Ginny not so happy after her little operation so that I wouldn’t have to worry about what might happen while I was going to be gone for two weeks. ginny-10-months-1 At 10 months Ginny discovered that she wasn’t a big fan of drones. ginny-11-months First herding lesson at Sheepdog Debbie’s place (Herding-4-Ewe) just down the road.

ginny-1-year-2 Ginny’s first birthday.

Ginny at two years old. Rusty will post some photos in his blog post of Ginny’s recent lesson at Sheepdog Debbie’s.

Breeding Season

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Robin

This week it was time to separate sheep into breeding groups. After much debate and deliberation I ended up using five rams this year. I don’t NEED five rams for the number of ewes I have but it’s always fun to find out how each ram will match with the flock…and there is also a bit of “not putting all one’s eggs in one basket”.

There are a lot of criteria in selecting a ram to buy or a ram lamb to keep in the flock.

Fleece is the most important characteristic for me. If I don’t like a ram’s fleece then I don’t want to use him no matter how great he looks otherwise. I want to stay within the Jacob breed standards but consider fleece weight, fiber diameter (determines if a fleece is soft or scratchy), crimp, and freckling. One problem with making decisions about young rams is that you’re better off waiting until 18 months to fully evaluate fleeces. That is a long time to hang onto a ram and then decide he stays or goes. With my small acreage I just can’t hang onto several rams to evaluate a year later. I need to make my best guess at about six months old.

Here is an example of a ram lamb from this year who lucked out. I love his fleece but he is freckled. He’s castrated and is the donkey companion for now.

Horns. You can have the best ram from all the other standpoints, but if the horns grow into the face he will have to go. Here is a blog post with examples of two-horn rams.

Color. The Jacob Breed Standard states that registered sheep must have 15-85% color. That’s a broad range, but not all sheep fit that category.

11080-jerry

Jerry is a 5-year-old wether who won the sheep-lottery by having a beautiful fleece, but with too much color to be kept as a breeding ram. He was castrated as a lamb and was kept to be a buddy to any sheep who had to be separated from the flock. He lives permanently with Faulkner, the BFL ram. Also note how narrow his horns are. If he had not been castrated those horns would have grown tight onto his neck or face.

There is more, but this was going to be a post about the rams I am using this year, not a how-to-choose-your-flock-sire post. However other traits to consider are personality (yes, really), conformation, size, birth weight, gain, and is he a single/twin/triplet.

16063-joker-3

I hadn’t planned on keeping Meridian Joker, but as I looked at lamb weights over the last few months he stood out as one of the heavier ones. I sell at least half the lambs for butcher and the sooner they can be sold the better. So rate of gain is important. His horns don’t have a huge spread, but hopefully they will be all right as he grows.

By the way all the rams in these photos are wearing marking harnesses with red crayons. That’s what all the color is.

dragon Starthist Dragon is on loan from a friend. When I evaluated his lamb fleece a couple of years ago I was impressed and Trish remembered that so offered him for the season. buster Bide a wee Buster came here from Oregon last June. He was so small I had my doubts about him being up for the task this month, but I should have had faith.

Meridian Catalyst is a ram who was born at the 2015 State Fair Nursery. He is a lilac ram with nice fleece and markings. That’s him in the middle of the ewes on the second day of breeding season.Faulker is ram #5. He is a Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) and sires the black (brown) lambs. He is the big guy in the center of the photos. His lambs are larger than the 100% Jacob lambs and are mostly sold for meat although they have very pretty fleeces and also wind up in some spinners’ flocks.Faulkner enjoying some time with the ladies.Isabelle, marked by Joker. 15071-skye Skye is in Catalyst’s group. 15050-jillian Jillian is with Faulkner. 16063-joker-2 Joker looks a little disheveled after a few days. buster-2 Buster has his work cut out for him to reach those big ewes… buster-3 …and needed a nap after the first morning out.

For any of you who pay attention to this stuff and may be wondering about the other Jacob ram I bought this summer…I discovered a few weeks ago that he must have been injured by another ram and his horn had changed position so that it was growing right up against his jaw. I found that the point of attachment was movable (I don’t know if went all the way to the skull which means that it would have been fractured). I tried to give his face a little more space by using wire and duct tape but that didn’t work. This is not a sustainable situation so he is no longer with us.

Lambtown, then Spinzilla

Posted on October 7, 2016 by Robin

I haven’t posted since I was in Texas over a week ago. I had a great time with my granddaughter but what did I bring home? Not a puppy. Not a longhorn. A cold. So I felt pretty awful for several days, but I’m back and trying to catch up with things. (Although I’m catching up on computer stuff early in the morning because the cough kept me from going back to sleep.)

Lambtown, the annual sheep/wool festival in Dixon was last weekend. It’s only 15 minutes from home so it really couldn’t be easier. But being a vendor at a fiber festival is never easy.

It is always a challenge to decide what to bring and how to fit it in a 10’x10′ space (which really wasn’t this year, especially when you subtract the space with the post in the back corner). This year I focused on products that no one else would have.

I brought my brand new lambskins (incredibly soft and fluffy), brand new handwoven ponchos, and Jacob fiber and yarn and buttons.I brought my new farm photos in 2 sizes and as notecards. There were also my new calendars. (As I’m writing this I realize that there are a lot of new things to get listed on the website.) I also brought rigid heddle looms and weaving equipment. marv-and-honey

In addition I brought sheep. I had chosen to not bring sheep because it’s just too much work to have a vendor booth and sheep in the barn, but the show organizer asked me to bring my sheep. With the help of Farm Club it all worked out. The Primitive Breeds Sheep Show wasn’t very big but there was some Shetland competition. Honey and Marv were awarded Champion Ewe and Champion Ram in the division. They make a nice looking pair.

As Lambtown ended, Spinzilla week began. From the website: “Spinzilla is a global event where teams and individuals compete in a friendly challenge to see who can spin the most yarn in a week!” This is the fourth year that I have hosted a team for this program that raises money for youth needlearts mentoring programs all over the country.Not all of our spinners are local, but some who are showed up here Monday morning.

We had to take a puppy break at one point when my sister-in-law visited with her new 2-month old Queensland heeler. image_medium

Spinners are continuing to spin at home all week, but on Wednesday several showed up here again. The weather was nice enough to be outside. Notice the wheel in the background.

I had seen this on the way to the bank in Dixon on Thursday evening. All it needed was a drive band and a cotter pin to hold the wheel in place.

Alison and I got it going. I had figured that I’d resell it because I just don’t have room in the shop or the house. But it is way too cool. I’ll have to hang onto it for awhile at least.

Up and Down the Road in Texas

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Robin

At home I write a lot of blogs about my walks Across the Road. Here at my daughter’s place in the Texas Hill Country my walks are Up the Road or Down the Road. These are photos taken from walks in both directions.

This was Up the Road the first morning I was here. It had rained heavily during the night.

I tried to clean my glasses a couple of times thinking that I must have rubbed greasy fingers on them. Then I realized that the glasses were fogging up due to the humidity and temperature. Well, that’s annoying.

Juniper berries, although everyone in the west calls these “cedar trees”.

I have identified this plant as either Snow-on-the-Mountain or Snow-on-the-Prairie, a Euphorbia species. I read that it is an annual that is poisonous to livestock. Here is an excerpt from Texas A&M Extension: “The white sap of these plants has long been used to blister the skin or as an intestinal purgative. In most cases, livestock are poisoned by an acrid principle that severely irritates the mouth and gastrointestinal tract. This plant rarely causes death. Experimental feedings of this plant in Texas have shown that 100 ounces produces severe scours and weight loss in cattle, the latter persisting for several months.”

Gorgeous oak trees are seen where the juniper (cedar) has been cleared.

I have not tried to ID the rest of these flowers. I’m just enjoying them.

black-swallowtail

My granddaughter and I saw many of these large Black Swallowtails this morning.

Visiting Texas

Posted on September 26, 2016 by Robin

I haven’t been to Texas since last year, but that’s because we saw my granddaughter several times last winter and spring in California. It was time for me to see her again and to do that I had to travel east. She is now two.

dsc_3077-2

While Mommy painted the shed we went for a walk.

dsc_3084-2

img_4229-2

Time to take off the shoes.

dsc_3100-2

The low water crossing on the road.

dsc_3110-2

What better place to play on a hot day.

img_4250-2

Hugging Colby.

img_4274-2

Yesterday we went to the Comal County Fair.

img_4314-2

This morning I said that we’d go for a walk in the rain. Kirby started to pack. You never know when you’ll need a stuffed llama, a cup of milk, or a bunch of books.

img_4319-2

It had rained enough during the early morning hours that the water had risen too high for playing.

img_4329-2

We turned and walked up the road the other way.

img_4317-2

Well, one of us walked and the other rode most of the way.

Sunflowers – June Through August

Posted on September 17, 2016 by Robin

I have too many sunflower photos for one post so I split them up into yesterday’s post and this one.

20160615-dsc_0222

Do you see the flowering sunflowers in the center of the photo? If you count 10 rows to each side you’ll see (barely) that every 10th and 11th row there are flowers in bloom. The field was planted with two varieties of sunflowers, a smaller one that bloomed earlier and the larger variety. The following is from Wikipedia:

“Typically, sunflowers tend to be self sterile. But for a sunflower to produce seeds, it needs pollen from a different sunflower. This is also known as cross-breeding, or in this case, cross-pollination. Occasionally, a sunflower can self-pollinate. Self-pollination produces an inbred line which, when bred with a separate inbred line, will result in a hybrid flower.”

20160620-dsc_0335

This is two of the shorter rows in full bloom. The taller sunflowers are also blooming. I assume that these are two varieties that (with probably a male-sterile flower on the larger plants) produce a hybrid seed. At harvest time I talked to a representative of the buyer who was out in the field and she said that this was a seed crop that was going to Europe to be planted for oil production.

20160616-img_1876

Sunflowers typically follow the sun, but when they get large the heads don’t move anymore. This was the view from my house –all the flowers facing east. If I wanted to see the pretty faces I had to walk around the field. Do you want to know more about this? Here is an article from the New York Times that explains why and how the sunflowers move to face the sun. This is an excerpt from it:

“The answer was in their stems. Like those of other plants, the stems of young sunflowers grow more at night — but only on their west side, which is what allows their heads to bend eastward. During the day, the stems’ east side grows, and they bend west with the sun. Dr. Atamian collected samples of the opposite sides of stems from sunflowers periodically, and found that different genes, related to light detection and growth, appeared active on opposite sides of the stems.”

Isn’t that amazing? And isn’t it cool that there is so much to be learned about the seemingly most mundane things in our world? I’m all for promoting science to explore ideas and not just to solve a problem. But I digress… 20160615-img_1868

20160620-dsc_0339

You saw bees on the sunflowers in the previous post. 20160620-dsc_0370

Here they are at their hives. Hives were placed all around the field. 20160620-dsc_0390

Here is another interesting article–this one about the bees that pollinate sunflowers. “In sunflower hybrid seed production, pollen from a male row of sunflowers must be moved by bees to a female (male-sterile) row. Growers typically use honey bees to accomplish this task. However, most honey bee workers specialize as either nectar or pollen foragers. Nectar foragers tend primarily to visit female rows, while pollen foragers visit male rows. If few bees cross between rows, growers can experience poor seed-set.” The article goes on to say that native bees collect both pollen and nectar and by chasing the honeybees from row to row they make the whole process more efficient in terms of getting the 100% pollination. Therefore growers should encourage native bee populations.

20160629-dsc_0563

The photos above were all taken in June.

20160718-img_3086

By mid-July the heads were drooping and the two rows of smaller plants were cut. The sole purpose of those sunflowers was to provide half of the genetics of the hybrid seed to be harvested from the larger plants.

20160718-img_3087

20160812-dsc_2070

The seed was ready to harvest in mid-August.

The harvester drove through the field, cutting the plants,…

…sorting out the waste,…

…and periodically dumping the seed into a waiting truck.

20160812-dsc_2071

20160812-dsc_2092

20160812-dsc_2135

But the job isn’t over. While plants were being harvested in one part of the field the other part was being disked.

20160812-dsc_2136

20160825-img_3826

A month later the field is still being prepped to get ready for next year’s crop–tomatoes.

Sunflowers-April through June

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Robin

We have only 10 acres here, but having the field Across the Road makes it seem as though we have much more. We are careful to be good neighbors and we are grateful that we have permission to spend time exploring that property. So I feel kind of like the crops grown there are mine although I have none of the work involved. This summer’s crop was sunflowers–one of my favorites. I have way too many photos so I’ll break this into two posts.

April 12. You can just see the tiny plants.

sunflowers-sprouting

April 27

20160502-img_1064

May 2. Cultivating.

20160611-img_1797

June 11. They’re growing up. I sound like a proud parent.

20160611-img_1799

The rest of the photos in this post were taken throughout June.

20160608-img_1758

20160615-dsc_0162

20160615-dsc_0193

20160615-dsc_0203

20160615-dsc_0206

20160615-dsc_0207

20160615-dsc_0208

20160611-img_1807

20160615-dsc_0209

20160615-dsc_0210

Life and Death on a Milkweed Plant

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Robin

While mowing the pasture the other day I saw a fluttering monarch butterfly.

I thought, “Cool, I’m watching this butterfly emerge from the chrysalis.” However, as I watched I realized that for some reason the butterfly had been stuck in this position and now was hopelessly damaged. I helped it out of the chrysalis but its wings were damaged and all it could do was flutter, but not fly.

I continued mowing.

There were plenty more milkweed plants that were teeming with life. That’s the Common Buckeye Butterfly and the Alfalfa Butterfly (see my last post).

Here is what the seed pods have inside when they are ripe. (Spinning, anyone?)

I identified this one in Bug Guide.net as the Small Milkweed Bug (also the Common Milkweed Bug, Lygaeus kalmii). It’s surprising how many similar looking bugs you find when you google “red and black bug in CA”.

Small milkweed bug or Common milkweed bug, Lygaeus kalmii

I had to look closely to see the identifying markings. The Guide says: “Adults suck nectar from flowers of various herbaceous plants, and also feed on milkweed seeds(?). Also reported to be scavengers and predators, especially in spring when milkweed seeds are scarce. They have been reported feeding on honey bees, monarch caterpillars and pupae, and dogbane beetles, among others.”

Here is more life, but I’m not going to try and specifically ID this one.

And the circle continues…

Monarch caterpillar on milkweed

The other photos were from a couple of weeks ago and I just saw this monarch caterpillar a few days ago on another milkweed.

Meridian Jacobs' Blog

Life on the farm and at the loom.