Are you tired of new lambs photos?
This is the wet butterfly look. The ears remind me of recently-emerged butterfly wings.
This is the “Jacobs come in all colors” look.
Weigh-in of new lambs. I don’t usually weigh lambs, but to be able to answer the question, “How much do they weigh?”, I’m weighing them all this year. My guess is an average of 7.5-8 pounds but I’ll report back when it’s all over.
Today Meridian Jacobs hosted a knitting class taught by superb knitter, Nancy Jane Campbell. The purpose of this class was to evaluate our current knitting habits and work to “Knit Better’. There was pre-class homework.
These are two garter stitch swatches. The difference is that one is the result of knitting every row and the other is knit by purling every row. There is a difference. Nancy pointed out that my purl sample is much more even than the knit sample. The stockinette sample (no photo) also showed that I knit and purl with different tensions, resulting in subtle ridges and uneven stitches.
Lunchtime. We went to the barn so I could feed Nellie. Yes, I named the bottle baby.
We found more lambs.
Soliloquy had twins–smallest lambs so far this year at 5-6 pounds and Victoria had triplets. I dealt with all of them and went back to the shop for the afternoon session of the class.
Before lunch we had measured and evaluated our samples. After lunch we started working on changing our habits and learning new techniques. The sample above may not be too impressive, but notice the very cool knitted cable cast-on edge. It looks much neater than my long-tail cast-on. And notice the inch or so closest to the needles. There is a a big difference in the knitting for that inch than the couple of inches below. At the risk of knitting too tightly I have been knitting way too loose. It’s a lot easier to be consistent when there is a little more tension on the yarn and the added benefit is that the stitches aren’t always falling off the needle. This was a great class and Nancy is going to come back and teach a color knitting class later in the year.
Babe lambed this morning.
Not the prettiest sight at this stage.
It gets better. This is one of Fran’s twins, born last night.
Ebony and her lambs born a week ago.
These are Terraza’s lambs-twin ewes. Sire is Tioga.
This is Savor and Tioga discussing fatherhood.
Now that it’s warm the grass is growing and the pasture has finally dried out enough to put the sheep out. However, there was a break in the electric fence and I couldn’t turn the sheep out until I fixed it. I finally got to that today.
“Can’t you hurry up and let us out?”
The rams are left behind in their bachelor quarters.
Lambs are due in about a month. That means that the ewes ready for their annual vaccinations. They get Covexin which protects against a variety of diseases caused by Clostridium bacteria including tetenus. They also get MUSE, which supplies selenium and Vitamin E. By vaccinating at this time in gestation the ewe’s milk will provide a high level of antibody protection to their lambs.
What’s a farmer to do? Call in the Farm Club! We have 3 regular Farm Days a year, but Farm Club members enjoy coming out more often and I am sure grateful for the help and the comraderie.
Shelby and Tina teamed up to vaccinate sheep. Shelby, person, is holding Shelby, sheep.
Dona held sheep while I vaccinated.
Mary and Kathy kept syringes loaded and ready to go.
Tina spent some time at the manure pile. It’s too wet to get the tractor out to the pile so re-stacking the pile needs to be done by hand (or pitchfork). It’s a good workout!
We spent the afternoon enjoying the sunny day. Notice the milk mustaches on these two. The lambs, that is!
I look forward to Shearing Day all year and this was one of the best ever. That is due to the number of friends who helped and to the outstanding shearer. Farm Club members helped in the barn and two good friends staffed in the shop (unfortunately I don’t have photos of them). That left me free to run and back and forth for things we needed, take photos, move sheep, and thoroughly enjoy the day. Shearer John sheared 67 of my sheep, 19 sheep that belonged to other people, and 7-8 Angora goats. He started a little before 9 a.m. and finished at 1:30! Here’s the photo tour.
Sheep in full fleece the day before shearing.
This is Fran.
Here is Tioga…
… and Clint, the ram lamb I got from the Sweetgrass flock in Michigan.
We gathered all the ewes while John was shearing my friend’s goats.
Farm club members, Tina and Kathy, and Kathy’s friend, Haylee, helped bag fleeces…
…and keep the shearing area clean.
Shelby (and her husband, Greg, who escaped my photos) did a lot of sheep wrangling. This is Shelby with her namesake sheep.
Tina did her share of sheep handling too…
…while my son multi-tasked.
John is an excellent shearer, making shearing look easy (and I know it isn’t). He is fast, the sheep look great, and the fleeces are perfect wth no second cuts. We are very happy to have found him. It is always impressive to watch the rams being shorn. This is Savor being shorn.
Savor’s fleece.
Staple from Savor’s fleece. This fleece went home with Jackie, another Farm club member, who helped skirt and sort fleeces and answer questions.
Jackie, and another helper, Linda, helping a customer skirt a fleece…
…and now I have a lot of fleeces to skirt and put on the website for sale.
Rusty enjoyed the day.
Sometimes I think the sheep enjoy getting that wool off.
We certainly had great weather from the sheep’s point of view.
Thanks to all of my helpers!
The Lamb Festival (used to be Lambtown) was last weekend. I was so busy that I didn’t get very many photos of the event. I have been on the Board and organized the classes for 3 of the last 4 years, but I have already given notice for next year. Someone else can have a turn…maybe someone that doesn’t have quite as many things going on as me. I had a vendor booth, taught, a class, managed the registration table, and showed sheep all at the same time. How? Thanks to my good Farm Club friends and others. Jacki, Shelby, Kathy, Tina, and Anna all helped. Shelby showed the sheep with the help of my husband. Too bad we don’t have photos of that. Granite, the ram lamb that won Reserve Champion at Black Sheep Gathering received a Champion ribbon although I’m not quite sure how the divisions were set up. Here are a few photos.
This knitted vest was awarded “Best Item of 100% Jacob wool”, sponsored by meridian Jacobs. Isn’t that gorgeous?
And here is some beautiful Jacob novelty yarn.
My friend, Nancy Jane Campbell, did a fantastic job of organizing the Sheep to Shawl contest and the Spinning Contests. One of those was a spinning triathlon which included blind-folded spinning as well as spinning with rubber gloves.
The Lamb Festival was on Saturday but we had addional classes on Sunday, three of which were held at my place. While I taught a weaving class and Nancy Campbell taught knitting at the shop, Rebecca Burgess set up in the barn and taught Natural Dyeing. Here are some photos of the class samples.
These are yarns that Rebecca brought with her. Rebecca has a fascinating message and you’ll hear about it in future posts. It’s too late now to explain more but if you google Fibershed you’ll find out about it.
And what was happening at home? I put these 4 ewes in with Savor before leaving for the Lamb Festival and when I came home they were all marked. I think my sheep are ready.
What have I been doing all week? Way too much to write down and maybe not all that interesting. But I’m so busy that although I’m always taking photos and thinking of good blog posts I just haven’t had time.
Here are bits and pieces of this week.
I finally wove some more baby blankets. I have customers waiting. After I took the blankets off the loom I realized that I had a lot of skipped threads along the left side of many blankets. I know why–has to do with combining 7 threads as one in the warp and trying to use 2 threads wound together on the pirn with a fly-shuttle. Just enough drag on the shuttle to cause it to catch the warp threads. AHHHH. That means a lot of fixing. My $/hour just went WAY down. Here are some of the 17 blankets.
These blankets will be on my website after I get better photos. That’s another thing I spent time on. I tried in the sun and in the shade and none of the photos were very good. Back to the drawing board.
I have projects on three looms right now. Two are for the November show at the Artery. One is for my friend, Irene, owner of Cotton Clouds. That project will be a surprise, but here is a preview:
14 carat gold thread–use sparingly!
This is more of the project. All of these yarns are going into the warp!
In the meantime there are sheep things going on. Savor, one of the yearling rams, had been with a group of ewes and I needed to put him somewhere temporarily. I didn’t want to put him back with his buddy, Tioga, because I figured that they’d have to fight it out first and I can’t deal with that right now. So I gathered up the ram lambs that are left and put them all together. Usually the lambs bow down to the older and stronger ram and leave him alone. There is posturing, but if they know what’s good for them they won’t antagonize the big guy.
At first I thought it would be OK.
They look friendly enough, but finally Savor started threatening one of them more seriously. It happened to be a ram lamb who is already sold for breeding but hasn’t gone to his new home yet. I needed to separate them because I didn’t want to take a chance.
The ewes were all looking hopeful that they would get a chance to mingle with the rams. “We’re ready! Come hither!” Notice the double fence.
Last but not least–someone in this house has no problem taking naps:
We had an unscheduled Farm Day yesterday.First order of business was chores.
Stephanie greets the Farm Club. She seems to enjoy pestering Kathy. I think she must smell Kathy’s goats. Everyone had a chance to milk a little.
We’re only milking one side because the kid is nursing from the other. This is Tina milking.
Here is Shelby. I haven’t been putting Stephanie on the stand because she is easy to milk and I’m only milking one side once per day.
We were going to start trimming feet, but got side-tracked when Rusty decided to roll in the leftovers from yesterday’s butchering. The guys that butcher clean up well, but there is always something smelly left. I think he found the rumen contents. I had just made Rusty an appointment at the vet to remove a foxtail that he’d picked up that morning. I didn’t think that my husband or the vet would be too crazy about holding a really stinky dog. So dog-washing was in order.
We don’t get too fancy with this. A hose and some soap.
Usually I wear my rubber boots or flip-flops. We were trying to keep our feet dry but get all the soap off of Rusty.
Tina and Kathy are trying to get the dogs to pose. Rusty is back from the vet already (foxtail in right ear) and Mobi (Jackie’s dog) wants to play.
We moved on to trimming feet, putting my squeeze chute/flip table into service again.
To get more work done we also tied some of the sheep to trim feet. This is a lamb that needs to be halter broke anyway because she is one I’ve chosen to keep.
The dogs keep watch. Note the trimmed feet. I have trimmed his feet three times this year to avoid foxtails in the toes.
“Well, if you’re not going to let me work, I’ll just lie here.”
We quit trimming about noon. I forgot to take photos of the chute being used for sheep with varying horn types. I think I need some modifications to use it more effectively. Shelby offered to be a sheep. I’m not sure these are the photos I need to work on the modifications, but laughter is always a good thing.
Somehow the Farm Club is starting to remind me of the YaYa Sisterhood. We’re accepting more members!
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