Shearing Day was yesterday. I have far too many photos for one blog post. Starting with the beginning, the night before.
Lots of barn cleaning and organizing. One of the last things to set up is the shearing corner. This board has been in use for many years, labeled so that it never is cut up to use for something else.
The evening before shearing Dan and I went to Trish’s farm, a few miles away, to pick up her 24 Jacob sheep. With sheep in full fleece it took two trailer loads. After shearing they all fit in the trailer with room to spare. These are Trish’s three rams.
I put 10 or 11 ewes in each of two stalls for the night.
I recognize this ewe’s hairdo from when she was here last year.
John began with Trish’s rams.
As John was shearing the three rams we moved the ewes from a stall to the shearing corner. The shearer doesn’t want to stop once he starts, so we do our best to always have the next sheep ready.
I woke up early on Shearing Day so I could finish the prep for the day. One of the jobs was to get all of our rams into the shearing area before people got here. While John was shearing Trish’s sheep I worked on the rams, vaccinated and trimming hooves on all. That way I didn’t have to think about catching them later to deal with that.
After Trish’s sheep were loaded back into the trailer John started on our six rams and the wether.
In the meantime Farm club members started gathering our ewes. This photo shows what a fabulous day it was, after so many days of thick fog. We were really lucky, because that drippy wet fog was back today.
I am fortunate that I have such a willing and capable team of people.
Sheep are in the lambing area and this will be the next group to move in.
Thanks to Roy Clemes for sharing some of the photos I used here.
I’ll start with a random photo. This is the newest animal here, if he/she (?) is still here. Every morning we feed the two Garage Cats in, well, the garage. For a couple of weeks we have seen a third cat off and on. It (haven’t identified gender yet) has started to come in while I’m still there if I don’t make any fast moves. We don’t know where it came from–a neighboring property or dumped. The local newspaper had an article this week about the overwhelming number of dogs and cats that are abandoned. So we’ll never know about this one. I put out a live trap a few days ago but one of the other cats went in for the food. We’re going to be gone for a week so this is not the time to catch this kitten anyway. I did not see it the last two days so I don’t know if it is gone or just being more cautious. I’ve name it Smudge.
Back to sheep things. This is Patchwork Amara. You can glimpse the beautiful clover and trefoil in the background. This is what the sheep are grazing and that’s what this post is about.
Farm Club members came Saturday to help with a fencing project. We finally have all the permanent fencing back in the pasture. Dan has been working on that a bit at a time while trying to let his knee fully recover after knee replacement in April. Since last fall I have written a lot of blog posts about the pasture renovation and irrigation improvement. Grazing properly this spring was a challenge when I had to set up electric net fence for the whole paddock. Now we have 3-wire electric fence going north-south along every other check. That’s every 60 feet. Initially I was grazing each 30 foot width separately. Now it seems to work to graze the 60 foot width for four days. I think they are grazing it evenly enough.
I still need to use the electric net fence though. The posts for the permanent fencing are about 15 feet from the south perimeter fence so that we can drive a tractor there. We use net fences to block that 15 foot gap. That net fence is also important because it is how the charge is carried from the perimeter fence to the north-south paddock fence. In the past I have moved those fences from one end to the other as we moved the sheep. Wouldn’t it be nice to have enough of the 15′ fences to have them always in place and ready to go? I also wanted one fence to span the whole north-south distance in case I wanted to split those 60′ paddocks into two for grazing when we have fewer sheep out there. Another need is 60′ fences to block off the north end of those paddocks. That’s where Farm Club comes in.
I have been putting this off (not like I’m sitting around doing nothing) and thought that it would be a good task for Farm Club. Also if Farm Club members came to do it, I wouldn’t be able to procrastinate and move it to the “deal with it later” list.
First we measured all the spaces in the pasture where I needed net fences. North-south lane fences need to be about 15 feet. The north-south fence to split the 60 foot paddock is 368 feet.
Then we gathered up all the fences that I’ve been using to create paddocks.We measured them and checked for damage.
We used bright red labels provided by Susan so that we could easily find the label. This is Rachel marking these.
Rachel made a list so we could match the needed fences with what was available. I found two 162 foot lengths and a 40+ foot length to use for the long fence I wanted. Then we started to cut the other fences and make sure the wires were attached at each end to carry the charge. I used to use 75+ foot fences to close the gaps in the old system. We could cut those into 60 and 15 foot fences or make multiple 15 foot fences, especially if there were bad spots to avoid. We did not finish the project, but made good headway. Now that all the fences are labeled we’ll have another Farm Day to finish the project. I have enough fences now so that the paddocks are set up for the week I’ll be gone and Farm Club members will be supervising.
Back to random photos.
Those are all mine. The green and blue shoes are wool and I like them best in the summer because they don’t get so hot.
Young pigeons. A couple of months ago I realized that a pigeon had made a shallow nest at the top of the stairs in the barn. I should have tossed it out then. Last year Dan spent days cleaning out years of accumulated pigeon droppings in the second story. He blocked off all the access points, but one pigeon figured out how to fly over the top of the door at the stairway. There were two eggs I think. I took a photo of the baby pigeons on June 30 and I think they were only a few days old. I’m surprised that they didn’t try to fly when I walked up here. They look like they are old enough. I wonder if they haven’t figured out how to fly through the gap where the mother pigeon enters this space.
And there are two more eggs. I don’t remember if I had seen four eggs and only two hatched, or if this is another generation. I have tossed these eggs. As soon as we get back from our upcoming trip I will move these pigeons out and clean this area. We don’t want to start another pigeon rookery.
Part 1 of this year’s retreat is here. We planned to go to the Ferry Building Saturday afternoon because several people were interested in the book signing and demo at Book Passages. We split up to get there. A couple of people took the bus.
Five of us walked…
…and four chose to try their first Waymo (self-driving car).
We made it to the Ferry Building and listened to Julie Beeler describe mushroom dying. Several people bought her autographed book, The Mushroom Color Atlas.
Rachel found a moment to knit.
We walked to PIer 39 to find the sea lions.
Rachel and Sarah found some along the way.
After watching the real sea lions we went back to the home by bus, by Uber, and by taxi.
Rachael had brought a collection of fiber and yarn and her drum carder so she could make art yarn batts. She invited the rest of us to make a batts.
Here is my creation. I spun this as well.
We ordered in dinner and afterwards played Battle Sheep before moving back to the parlor for an evening of fiber.
The 2025 Farm Club Retreat Team. That’s Rachel, Sarah, Klara, me, Brenda, Beth, Deborah, Katy, Amy, and Carol. Looking forward to 2026!
We started the tradition of the Farm Club Retreat in 2011. We find a weekend between shearing and lambing that we can stay in the house owned by NDGW (Native Daughters of the Golden West). We skipped 2020 through 2022 because of the pandemic, so that makes this one #12. This is last year’s Retreat.
Two of us are members of NDGW and can bring guests to the Home. Sometimes we have a planned excursion and other times we make it up as we go along. But we always have plenty of time for enjoying each other’s company while working on projects.
There were ten of us this year. On Friday afternoon we gathered in the parlor to spin or knit. We found a place Mexican restaurant about three blocks away to eat dinner.
Saturday morning I got up early and went on a walk.
I am always entertained by the variety of houses. I sure would like to see them inside.
The color of this house and the amazing flowers certainly make it unique.
I walked south on streets that wound their way up the hills and I found that I was on a part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.
I wanted to get to Sutro Tower because it seemed like as good a destination as any and it is certainly a visible landmark. Sutro Tower is a 3-legged radio and TV tower 977 feet tall built in 1973. It’s not quite so visible when the clouds are low.
The hilly part of this course made it feel like a good workout considering that I usually only walk where it is flat. I got back in time for breakfast.
Our traditional breakfast is pie! This time we had lemon pie, pumpkin pie, two apple pies, and quiche.
This was enough to provide us some dessert after dinner that night too.
We spent the next couple of hours in the parlor
Siobhan couldn’t spend the night but came for the camaraderie on Saturday. Here she is spindle spinning flax.
Klara knit a lace shawl. I took this photo because I liked the color scheme, knitting green, wearing green, and sitting in a green chair.
Shearing Day was a week ago. Here is the first post.
As we loaded Trish’s sheep into the trailer John kept shearing, starting with my rams…
…and then moving on to ewes.
Farm Club members kept the sheep coming so that John didn’t have to wait.
Farm Club members covered all the jobs. They moved sheep, bagged fleece, checked the ciipboard, swept between sheep and let sheep out as they finished. I have videos of shearing but haven’t had time to post them yet. Because I recorded 4 or 5 videos I can say that John shears a sheep in just over 2 minutes. It is amazing to watch.
We bedded the barn with straw knowing that would help with the cold at night.
The shorn sheep enjoyed the sun during the day.
Farm Club member, Kathleen, took over her annual job of weighing fleeces.
This is just some of the fleeces, bagged and labeled with sheep name and weight.
Farm Club members and other friends who purchased fleeces were able to skirt fleeces the selected.
This is our youngest Farm Club associate, son of a member. He wanted a job and spent most of the morning cleaning the barn with the help of Dad.
Shearing Day can be tiring. This is Oakley, John’s dog, in a pile of belly wool.
After shearing was over I called on three Farm Club members, who are now tagged as the Tech Team, to figure out why I couldn’t get the barn cameras to work after we made a big switch to a new internet service. I hadn’t been able to get them set up again. Farm Club members have links to those cameras. Success!
Shearing stats: We sheared 64 ewes, 12 rams, and a wether. That’s important to know because shearers charge more for rams. I guess it’s a good thing that they don’t charge more for horns. (Joke) Of those sheep 47 ewes, 9 rams, and the wether are mine. We didn’t shear 2 ewes who will be the subject of another blog post. Fleece weights range from 2.5 to 6 pounds. That’s typical for Jacob sheep.
I need to start skirting and sorting fleeces so I can get some on the website for sale and others to the mill for processing.
I just checked back to see when I wrote last. Wow! I’m so behind. It’s probably impossible to catch up with all the ideas I was going to share. Here’s an update about sheep and lambing season.
This is the lambing board where I record all the info as lambing progresses. This will stay up until the first lambs show up next year. The info shows date, ewe, lamb # (purple for ewes, blue for rams), and birth weight. The blue brackets are triplets.
Here is a summary: Lambs born between January 25 and March 7, 2024 Single births: 3 = 3 live lambs Twin births: 33 = 63 live lambs (3 died at birth) Triplet births: 8 = 22 live lambs (2 died at birth) Total live lambs = 88 ear tagged; 1 died at 1 day and 2 dead fetuses not counted. 44 ewe lambs / 42 ram lambs Sires: Horatio 36 lambs Barrett 27 lambs Typhoon 12 lambs Blizzard 5 lambs Peyton 5 lambs Unknown 3 lambs The Unknown are the first 3 lambs born, earlier than I expected, and due to the ram lambs getting into the pasture prior to breeding season. OOPS!
I also question if Blizzard is the sire of the five lambs born later than expected based on original breeding dates.
I made this chart to help work it out. If the lambs were born based on the original dates they would have ben born in mid-February. They are about 2 to 3 weeks later. A sheep heat cycle is 17 days and gestation is between 142-152 days (average 147 days or 21 weeks). Blizzard was with 3 ewes until Lambtown, October 6-8. If he bred them October 5 the due date would range from February 24 to March 5. I just looked back at last year’s Lambtown blog post and see that Queen Q and Quark were both at Lambtown also. They came back on October 8. IF they were bred October 8, 147 days would be March 3 (range February 27 to March 9). I’m pretty sure that April’s lambs are sired by Blizzard, but I’m still not sure about the others. I think they probably went in with Horatio when they came back here but I don’t remember. It would have been smart to leave them away from rams for another week or so. The lesson here: TAKE BETTER NOTES.
Thanks for “listening” while I try to work this out. Now, on to photos.
Lambs are getting big. This is Hailee, one of the few 2023 ewe lambs that I put with a ram. Her twins were born March 4, so they are only 3 weeks old. Really? It seems like that was so long ago now.
Here is a view of Hailee without lambs under her. I really like her horns!
We had a Farm Day on Sunday and several members showed up to help take notes about lambs. I hadn’t taken time to record number of horns, color, etc and needed to be able to update the website. We caught all the lambs and then inspected each one. It’s easy to tell the number of horns on the rams when they are young, but not always on the ewes. This photo makes mer think of a line at the grocery store. Farm Club members caught lambs and waited while we all checked them out and then I ear tagged with a colored tag.
They all get white ear tags for ID shortly after they are born. The colored tags are useful as back up if the original ones are pulled out and to help find a particular lamb. When I’m looking for a specific number I have to look at all 80+ lambs and it’s much easier to narrow it down by color. It also helps when I’m taking photos that usually I’ll be able to identify the lamb later by at least one ear tag. We color code them by sire.
Barrett’s lambs got green tags.
Ewe lambs are tagged with the white ID tag in the left ear and the colored tag in the right ear. Ram lambs are the opposite, so that’s another way to help find a lamb.
Horatio’s lambs have a purple sire tag.
We tagged Typhoon’s lambs with yellow. I did not assign colors to lambs that are potentially Blizzard’s or the ones with an unknown sire. Now you can find most of these lambs on the website. Ewe lambs.Ram lambs. I’m not finished taking photos. Most are for sale.
From looking back at photos and blog posts I figured out that the first Farm Club Retreat was in 2011. That would make this the 13th retreat, but we had to skip 2020 through 2022. It was fun to look back through that post just now and see the origin of some of our traditions.
Entering San Francisco from the north we drive across the Golden Gate. It was gorgeous weather for this visit.
The Native Daughters of the Golden West Home is on Baker Street. It was designed in 1928 and built for NDGW. Now members and their guests can spend the night in SF in a spacious yet cozy and friendly space. One of the long-time Farm Club members told us all of this in 2010 and that’s when we began the tradition of our Retreat weekend. It used to be just for one night, but we enjoyed it so much that now we make it for two nights.
We were the only guests there for Friday night and we all had our own rooms. Room 401 was a new room for me. Each bedroom is decorated by one of the Parlors (chapters of NDGW) and has it’s own style.
There is a bakery across the street that used to sell pies. We began the tradition of lemon pie for breakfast. Some of us started to bake our own pies and that’s a good thing because the original bakery is no longer there. Saturday morning began with pumpkin pie, lemon pie, apple pie, and plum cake.
I pulled up the live YouTube for Hayes County (TX) Livestock Auction in which my granddaughter was “selling” her Champion bunny.
This is an auction to support all the 4-H and FFA youth who win champion awards in the show. It turns out that the entries go home with the kids but the bids are for real money that go into the bank accounts to help support future projects and college funds.
After watching Kirby we gave our new Farm Club members a tour of the building. This is part of the museum collection in one room. These are gowns worn by some of the Grand Parlor dignitaries. (I can’t remember their designation.) This made me think of watching the movie of the recent Taylor Swift tour with Kirby and DIL Meryl right after Christmas. Taylor had a bit more sparkle but these ladies were very sparkly for their time.
We decided that our destination for the day would be one of the SF Library branches. There are so many fascinating houses.
I’d sure love to see inside some of them. Look at that gorgeous detail.
It was about a mile to the Presidio Branch. Why the library? A California resident can get a SF Library card by showing up in person. That card gives access to all the digital and audio materials from the library and a lot of us make good use of those.
After getting our library cards we split up and two of us walked to Golden Gate Park. This was a unique art structure not far from the park entrance. These are LED cubes that change color I think. If you search for Entwined in Golden Gate Park you can learn more about this art installation that has been in various locations for four years.
Our destination was the Conservatory of Flowers, visible behind the Love alphabet blocks.
The Conservatory originally opened in 1879.
I took photos of some of the extraordinary plants we saw. The variety is fascinating.
The sign here says “The Fanged Pitcher Plant may look sinister, but in the wild colonies of an ant species called diving ants live symbiotically with this plant.” The ants dive into the pitcher part of the plant to consume pests and in turn fertilize the plant with their droppings.
The common name for this plant native to Peru is Lollipop Plant or Golden Shrimp Plant.
Beautiful shades of green on these leaves.
When I saw this I thought that now I know where candy corn is grown!
We walked a few blocks to a restaurant where we enjoyed a great dinner. In this photo we have moved onto dessert. After dinner we went back to the Home to spend the evening working on projects and enjoying the atmosphere.
I scheduled a Farm Day today to take care of some chores prior to shearing next week. The ewes were ready to be vaccinated to provide the highest level of antibodies in the colostrum. I wanted to clip fleece samples from the yearlings (their second fleeces) to send in for micron testing. We also made sure that the ear tags were clean enough to read and that the tags would match the cards that go with each fleece.
Some long-time Farm Club members were there as well as some people who are new to Farm Club. It all went very smoothly and it took only a couple of hours to work through all the sheep and take time to take a closer look at some of those fleeces.
Farm Club members get a chance to reserve a fleece at this Fleece Preview Farm Day.
Deborah took the photos from above and this is me remembering to take at least a few photos. Often we get so busy that I overlook that.
While most of us were in with the sheep Susan, Chris, and Nikki volunteered to clean behind the barn. That’s always a big chore. When they finished here they moved to the ram pen and cleaned the ram barn.
Mary checked off the list on the clip board and made sure the cards matched the ear tags. Susan drew up vaccine into syringes.
Marina and Katy caught sheep, marked faces, and cleaned ear tags.
Rachel and Siobhan also helped catch and mark sheep.
The photos below are what it is all about. I had been thinking that the sheep are looking a bit bedraggled, but when I got hands-on those fleeces I changed my mind. They are looking good.
April is a yearling ewe, almost 2 year old.
Queen Q is the same age. The photos below are an on-the-hoof look at the fleeces of the four rams I have here.
Meridian Blizzard (Meridian Silverado x Meridian Bessie), 10 month old ram.
Meridian Typhoon (Meridian Turbo x Meridian Rocha)
Fair Adventure Horatio, 3 year old ram, from Colorado.
Hillside Gabby’s Barrett, 3 year old ram, from Michigan.
Shearing Day is Sunday, January 21.* We’ll be shearing about 70 sheep. Fleeces are available on shearing day and for a month or two afterwards as I skirt them and post them on-line. If you live in the area you can come here to choose a fleece. Contact me.
*I just fixed this. A friend pointed out that I wrote June 21. Yikes!
One of the Lambtown events is the sheep show. I live so close that I like to participate and I know that people like to see my sheep there. But I knew that I couldn’t be a vendor AND show sheep. I told the FarmClub that I would get sheep to Lambtown if they wanted to handle the show. They were willing.
This was simpler than some other shows because there were no group classes and, as at many shows, you could only enter yearlings and lambs. I sold my yearling ram at Estes Park in June so we didn’t even have to worry about who would want to handle a ram. I entered two ram lambs, two ewe lambs, and two yearling ewes. It’s the yearling ewes in this photo. These are twins born in 2022.
Farm Club members set up a display about Jacob sheep and Farm Club. All I had to do was bring a few of the panels that we use at State Fair and the box of photos and signs. I forgot that I’d be using the Meridian Jacobs sign in my vendor booth so Lisa used her t-shirt to indicate Meridian Jacobs. Clever!
I have to explain about that panel in the center. When you wind a warp on a loom you pack the layers of yarn with paper as you roll it on the beam. During one of the Sheep-to-Shawl competitions a few years ago FC member, Alison, thought that the paper used for rolling the warp could be made more interesting. As the shawl was woven, this message emerged from the back of the loom. Isn’t that a great idea?I thought it was worth laminating and using as a sign.
I did not get to see the sheep show, but many Farm Club members were there and some took the following photos.
Beth and Marina did most of the showing. The competition was from a Shetland breeder. This is the ewe lamb class.
This is the ram lamb class. The green on the ram is because our breeding season had already started and this ram lamb was wearing a marking harness when he was with his group of ewes.
Beth ended up with a challenging sheep. This ewe decided to go on strike.
We ended up with Champion Ram and Champion Ewe of the Primitive Breeds division.
Deborah helped out when a third person was needed for the champion class. Once again Beth had a less cooperative sheep, but handled him well.
Dan spent all afternoon driving the tractor and wagon that transported people back and forth from the vendor halls to the livestock area.
This was very popular not only with adults that appreciated the rides, but with kids who liked to sit in the front. Dan took extra laps to give some of those kids more time sitting on the front bench.
Lambtown 2023 was a big success for all of us. The crew that put the show on this year is to be commended for the time they spent on planning and organizing and the professionalism they brought to the event.
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