It’s not easy to leave when you have animals to care for. I am fortunate that there are long-time Farm Club members who have become good friends, and they are willing and able to spend a few days at the farm. Three friends organized the dates to suit their schedules so I know the animals are in good hands.

Anytime Dan and I will both be gone I spend at least a day getting organized. I needed to get the pasture set up to make it easier to graze. This has been “on the list” whether I was leaving or not. So Farm Club members came Saturday to help with that project and I shared that here.

This is on the list of things to fix, but there was no time to do it right before we left. This is the ram pen shelter and they have been enlarging the holes in the plywood. There is a 2×6 board on the inside so I haven’t been worried about the rams getting out, but do I want to take a chance when I’m gone? So I tied a metal panel to the outside.

The water trough needs cleaning at least weekly in the summer because it gets full of algae.

I needed to finish a proposal for an article for one of next year’s Handwoven magazines. That was due August 1. This is a photo to accompany that proposal.

After photographing the cosmos flowers I harvested this batch to dry. I pick them every few days so they will continue to bloom and to save them for dyeing later. The pink flowers are dahlias.

We were down to only six bales of alfalfa in the barn. Although the ewes would be on the pasture while we were gone, all the rams need to be fed hay. Since Dan’s knee replacement we have bought hay by the stack so it would be delivered. This is the first batch of ten bales that Dan has loaded himself since the surgery.

This job was not a priority but I continue to be distracted by gardening chores. I know this is not the time of year to prune roses, but I was tired of being attacked by rose branches every time I walked on that path or the deck at the Weaving House.

The lamb page of the website has not been updated for quite awhile and I needed current photos. The last photos are from mid-May and those lambs have changed a lot since then. I took these photos a couple of days before our trip but have not yet updated the site. Maybe by the time you read this post I will have added some of these. I will need to take more photos when I’m home.

A couple of days before leaving I was at the Artery to remove all of my pieces there. The Artery will be closed for two weeks while the floors are completely refinished. The old carpet and tile will be removed and the floor will be refinished. We found that there would have to be the added job of asbestos removal. The Artery will reopen August 11 so I’ll be returning my pieces the day before.

I got my Timm Ranch wool back from the mill right before we left. I had time only to open the boxes. I will list it on the website when I’m back.

Stay tuned for photos of our trip. We camped the first couple of nights but I’m in a hotel room right now and finally got my computer out. Now to try and make some updates to the sheep pages. Or maybe I should review 5 days of emails…