The Week Following Dental Surgery–rams, Lambtown, Fibershed

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Robin

Not a very good title… and it doesn’t describe what I want to share in this post, but dental surgery was the event on Monday that set the tone for the week.

I stayed on the codeine less than 24 hours because I don’t like feeling so…well, drugged. I didn’t feel too bad on Wednesday and some Farm Club friends came to help me set up breeding groups. It is always a challenge to find enough places to put the groups where there is no fence-line contact between rams.I left Faulkner in his area but expanded it to include the run next to it.

Ringo Ringo got the most ewes so he had the pasture.Rotor, one of the lambs born in March, went with his ewes to the horse pasture. We wondered if he’d be able to reach those ewes, but he’s had no problem. I don’t have a photo of Nash, the lilac ram. He went to the field behind the shop. Crosby and Alex were left in the ram pen.The non-breeding group includes the ewes to be bred in February for lambing at the State Fair, their lambs, some of the ewe lambs that I’m keeping, other ewe lambs for sale, and this year 4 ewe lambs that are sold but haven’t left yet. It’s a lot of sheep to keep away from the rams but I barricaded them in the area around the barn. white-tailed kites Our resident white-tailed kites, seen from the barn.

One of the adult rams, Alex, was picked up by his new owner on Thursday so I put the few remaining ram lambs with Crosby to keep him company for the day. On Friday I took 7 sheep, including Crosby, Nash, and Rotor to Lambtown for the sheep show on Sunday. Normally I am a vendor at Lambtown but this year there was a conflict with an event I had really wanted to attend and where I knew that I’d sell well. So I took sheep for the weekend but attended Fibershed on Saturday. It’s a good thing. I probably should have stayed home entirely but at least the Fibershed event was easier than doing a full vendor booth at Lambtown.Here are two of the sheep pens at Lambtown and my meager display.Saturday was the Grow Your Jeans event that was the culmination of over a year’s planning and work by the Fibershed team. There are photos and a description of the work involved in growing cotton and indigo in the nearby Capay Valley and the dyeing, weaving, and pattern-making of these locally produced jeans at this link. The Grow Your Jeans event featured these jeans as well as “grass-fed tops”, the shirts and accessories worn with them on the straw-bale fashion show runway. The new felt banner was made by FC friend, Jackie, of Sheep to Shop.

Prior to the fashion show attendees could shop at the vendor booths and eat fabulous local food. (At least it looked fabulous. I stuck to my yogurt and cottage cheese.)I brought handwoven pieces, horn buttons, and lambskins. I did very well as far as sales, but, unfortunately by this point, I was not in the best of shape. I just wanted to be home on the couch. These pillows are stuffed with local wool in an cover of organic cotton. They both sold. This is my “grass-fed top” on the left. It is Timm Ranch wool woven in 16-shaft huck lace. The weft is dyed with osage orange from across the road.The fashion show took place in an old dairy barn. Prior to the show, Rebecca and the others involved in creating the jeans told about their parts in the project.I stood just outside to get a photo of the model wearing my shawl. I stepped back inside to see the last part of the show. Two of the models came out carrying this flag.Along with all of the other aspects of Fibershed that Rebecca spearheads, she has also been involved with the re-introduction of hemp as a valued agricultural crop in Kentucky. It’s a long story and you can read some interesting articles here. This is one of five flags to be woven from the veteran-grown hemp project. They use Sally Fox’s California grown cotton for warp and Kentucky hemp for weft. The first flag went to Farm Aid and this is the second one. I thought it was a fabulous way to end the evening’s program. Kind of gives you chills.

I am not doing justice here to the whole event. Everything that Fibershed puts on is exceedingly well done and the message is so important. I am grateful to be involved in this movement even in a small way.

It was a long drive home to Bolinas that night and then there was still Lambtown the next day. I had a ride to and from so started in on the codeine. On Saturday Farm Club friends had been on the winning Sheep to Shawl team. This is the fabulous blanket that they spun and wove.

After the sheep show I doubled up on the codeine and waited for my husband to come drive the sheep home.

Weaving and Other Woolly Things

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Robin

I’ve been checking things off my endless list.

Make buttons. There are over 150 buttons here.Weave more products to take to Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event on October 3. This are four shawls using very soft wool from Anderson Ranch.

Deal with sheepskins. I got one batch in and one batch out. At first I got four boxes with 29 sheepskins that were not mine. Those went back to the tannery. Yesterday I got the boxes with my 30 sheepskins and I photographed them for my website (although they aren’t there yet). Not artsy photos, but I need to show the size and the color and this is how it has worked best for me. In addition I shipped off 42 more sheepskins and am keeping my fingers crossed that I get them back before December. That’s a pretty big investment and I need to be able to sell them before Christmas.

Weave a blanket for a customer using her handspun yarn that she sent me last year. I hate having things hanging over my head. When I was finally ready to get to it I opened the box that I though held her wool. Nope–there was something else in that box. Then I almost panicked wondering if it was possible that her yarn had ended up out in the big yard/estate sale that I had over Labor Day. Fortunately that was not the case.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how best to use this yarn. One worry was that using yarns that are very different is likely to result in tension issues and different elasticity in the finished piece (showing up as ruffly places where it should be smooth and flat). I’m glad that I waited to plan this blanket because one of the last emails that I had from the spinner had the word “gradient” in it. That gave me the inspiration for how to wind the warp and weave it.

I made a gradient from the darkest brown all the way to white in the warp and then I wove with the same pattern. This is double width so this photo shows only the half that goes from dark to mid-brown. The lighter half is underneath. After weaving and unfolding the blanket…

…this is what you get. This is not a very good photo but I just don’t have a good place to take a photo of a full size blanket spread out. I am really pleased with this piece and am inspired to do some more like it.

One last thing. At Spinners Night Out one of the spinners said that her husband had made a discovery in his bowl of popcorn:

Mothers & Daughters

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Robin

I was trying to get photos of ewe lambs that I want to register. The sheep had come in from the pasture so it was more difficult. In addition the lambs (who don’t look much like lambs anymore) are still sticking close to their mothers.Alexandria and her lamb, above and below.

Ginseng and her lamb (who is sold but still here). Foxglove and lamb, Foxy. She will be at the Lambtown Sheep Show in a couple of weeks. Foxy and Foxglove.

Donkey break.Hot Lips and her lamb, Honey.

Harvesting Tomatoes

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Robin

I’m a bit behind on this blog post but I took a lot of photos and still wanted to share it. Do you remember when they planted tomatoes Across the Road in early May? Five months later those tomatoes were ready to harvest.

These are not big juicy table tomatoes on five-foot high plants. They are smaller canning tomatoes that can be mechanically harvested. This is the first time I’ve seen the harvester that doesn’t have people riding on it while sorting tomatoes. It’s all done mechanically.Two tractors run side-by-side. One pulls the bins that hold the tomatoes.The other pulls the harvester.The tomato plants are cut off and pulled up a conveyer where the tomatoes are sorted from the plant and sent through that yellow chute into the bins. Unwanted plant material, including smaller tomatoes come out over the roller towards the base of the harvester.

Here they are waiting for the next tractor and bins to catch up to the harvester. Is it any wonder that everything in my house is covered with a layer of fine dust.?

Haresting of this field took a lot longer than I expected. They worked out there 24 hours/day for 2 1/2 days.

A few tomatoes spill out when the truck makes the turn onto the roas. This is a photo taken at the end of the harvest.

Woolgathering

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Robin

I spent last weekend in the Surprise Valley in far northeastern California. I was hosted by Bonnie, the owner of Warner Mountain Weavers in Cedarville, who had asked me to teach a class.You can’t miss the Warner Mountain Weavers when driving through town……because it’s not a very big town. I unloaded my truck with things for the class on Sunday and some items for a mini-booth. The store is downstairs and the classroom is upstairs in this beautiful historic building which was built in 1874 as a schoolhouse (downstairs) and shared with the Masons (upstairs).Look who I found upstairs in a spinning class! Farm Club members, Lisa (who connected me with Bonnie for this adventure) and Kathleen.Downstairs I tried my hand at rug hooking which I greatly admire but won’t have time for, at least in this lifetime.Beverly, who owns Jitterbug Rugs Studio (motto: Life’s Short – Cut a Rug!) is a pro.Bonnie carries all sorts of yarn but I particularly admired Loni’s Lana, produced by a local rancher who runs four bands (a band is 1000+ sheep) of Rambuoillets in this desert valley and in the nearby mountains. Loni has just begun to have her wool processed into sliver and yarn, natural dye it, and market it in the northern California Fibershed and beyond. Surprise Valley, Hays Mountains I spent two nights at Bonnie’s and Richard’s wonderful house about 7 miles north of Cedarville. This was the view from my window in the morning and I had to quickly get out with my camera.The sun rose over the Hays Mountains that are in Nevada.The major wildfires burning in California have pushed smoke into even this remote area. There was haze and smoke throughout the weekend (and all the way on my 5-hour drive home on Sunday).This is the view west to the Warner Mountains.Just before I snapped this photo there was a cat looking out of that hole. Cool photo, huh? (If the cat had still been there.)This is Zipper, the resident burro (from a wild BLM herd)……and his buddy, Hank.Old wooden loading chute near the barn, now filled with sagebrush.I have a crazy story that I’ll try to make succinct. I asked Bonnie why they moved to Modoc County from Sonoma and Marin Counties. As she told me of a friend who bought land there I recognized some names. It turns out that their good friend, Bill and his sons, Dennis and Larry, had a dairy in Petaluma where I worked when I was in high school (and had a big crush on one of the sons). As other owners of large dairies have done, they bought land in this area so that they could grow their own alfalfa. (As you drive through all these valleys between Redding and Cedarville you see lots of cattle and alfalfa.) Bill has since died but Dennis happened to be in the area so he came to dinner on Saturday night. We would not have recognized each other (we look only a little different after 40 years) ) but it was fun to catch up on mutual acquaintances and stories.Just up the road from the house Bonnie and I cut rabbitbrush flowers for use in the dye class the following day.This is the bag that I brought home. I need to get these cooking.On Sunday I taught Expanding Your Horizons with Rigid Heddle weaving, a class in which I teach hand manipulated techniques for creating more patterns in weaving (applies to other looms as well). Isn’t this a wonderful space for classes? I’m so jealous. This is not a rigid heddle loom, but an old Hand-Skill Loom that I had never seen before.Turning what looks like a steering wheel lowers and lifts the shafts.One of the techniques is weaving loops. I usually demonstrate this with loops all the way across the weaving. Don’t you love this idea of creating images with the loop placement?

Modoc County is a place that I’d like to return too sometime. Too bad it’s so far away…but I think that’s what keeps it so great!

Ginny’s First Lessons

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Robin

Ginny is 11 months old and a few weeks ago I took her for “instinct testing” at Herding-4-Ewe, a training facility just a mile from my house.This is a photo that Dona took on that day. Clearly Ginny is interested. Debbie, the owner of Herding-4-Ewe, makes a determination if she thinks a dog is ready to begin training. Ginny had her first lesson last week and today was the second. Ginny before 2nd lesson Here Ginny is waiting outside the arena while Debbie gets the dog-broke sheep out.Pretty soon I’ll be the one in the arena with Ginny and we’ll both be getting a lesson (and I won’t be taking photos), but for now Debbie is the one working with Ginny. Look at how controlled Ginny is. This is the look of a dog that is thinking and can learn something new.

She starts off with her favorite direction, “come-by”, or clockwise. Her tail is down and she is focused. Dogs have a direction that feels better to them (similar to people being right- or left-handed). They avoid going the other way. One goal of training is to eventually get the dog willing and confidant in going in the less comfortable direction. (By the way, Rusty’s best direction is “away”, the opposite of Ginny’s.

In this photo Ginny is heading “away” in the less comfortable (for her) direction. Notice her tail up. That’s a sign of a dog that is not thinking. She’s in “play” or “chase” mode like in the first photo.

This is a calm dog.

This looks good for Day 2.

Rams…

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Robin

…wouldn’t life be peaceful without them?

The rams were giving me so much trouble with the fence in the pen I’d used for years that we switched them to a new space about six weeks ago. It’s been working OK but now breeding season is upon us and they are getting harder to deal with. Welded wire panels alone are not enough. Here is what happens when ewes flaunt themselves just across the fence. Not only are the rams ruining the panels, but the electric fence on the ewe side is immediately grounded out and that means that all the electric fence on that system is out. Dan had an idea that would hopefully solve the problem for the short-term in the areas where the rams were pushing on their fence and bending the t-posts.He put in extra posts that we happened to have around and welded rebar between the posts on the two sets of fences to help make things sturdier. We hoped that it would make the whole thing more secure.

Here is what Ginny thought when she noticed the welder in the corral.

There was a shirt hanging off of it so maybe she thought it was a short person.

Lots of reinforcement should keep them from pushing those t-posts over, right?Fence posts look good. The wire, not so much. He was completely stuck in the welded wire and the high tensile wire. This is Alex, by the way, whose horn I just trimmed in the last post.

The only way to get Alex out of this was to cut the welded wire panel in two places. Now I have the ewes completely separated, but that isn’t a long-term solution. Unfortunately I don’t have a big enough place to have the rams in a pen that is isolated from everyone else so we’ll be moving to Plan C when we have time (that would be when Dan has time).

Views on the Farm

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Robin

Taken over the last week or so.Sheep coming in from the pasture.Amaryllis following.Dallisgrass.

Ram lamb that I’m keeping. He’ll be at the Lambtown sheep show. This is Meridian Nash (Meridian Crosby x Mud Ranch Ginseng).

Love this guy’s horn spread (Meridian Crosby x Meridian Sophia). I wish I had room to keep all the promising ram lambs for several months, but most have to go before breeding season. In fact there has already been at least one major ram break-out involving the ram lambs and I’m sure that I’ll have at least a couple of early lambs (mid January instead of late February when the planned lambs will come).Here are the yearling and two-year old rams. Puddleduck Ringo, Meridian Crosby, Foley, and Alex. Foley is sold and will be picked up soon I hope. Before we went to Texas these rams switched places with…

…Faulkner, the BFL ram, to give them more room and so that they couldn’t keep getting tangled in the electric fence. It worked for awhile, but the ongoing saga is a subject for another blog post.

Egrets looking over the pasture.Hot LIps.

Another ram issue. Notice how this horn (which has already been trimmed) is starting to irritate the skin on Alex’s shoulders.

Another trim was required.Fresh water after cleaning the water trough. I so hope it rains this fall. I’m so tired of being dusty, hot, and dry. I don’t know when I’ve looked forward to winter, but I sure am this year. I just hope it’s not a disappointment. Ginny in yard Ginny in her watching the road spot. She likes to chase trucks from her side of the fence.

Splash Dog!

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Robin

This is the favorite Jump for the Toy spot. I took these photos with the iPhone.

The Latest from the Loom

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Robin

In preparation for Fibershed’s Grow Your Jeans event I wove six shawls using locally grown Timm Ranch wool yarn. I showed photos of these before they were washed in this blog post. Quite a dramatic change. With the exception of the second blanket the weft is all the same as the warp, but naturally dyed. From left to right: Osage orange (exhaust), Jacob wool, osage orange, black walnut, pomegranate, not dyed. One shawl will be worn in the fashion show and they will all be for sale at Grow Your Jeans. After that they will be for sale at the Fibershed Marketplace website and at the Artery in Davis.More locally grown wool. These scarves are woven using Solano County Anderson Ranch wool. Not locally gown, but one of my best sellers–chenille scarves. You’ve seen this before but I hadn’t taken a photo with the magazine cover.Here’s is one of my photoshoot locations. Hard to find a smooth surface in the shade.