I was taking photos to try and get a good one for an ad.
Gem
Janelle
Moon
Zelda
Dazzle
Prancer
Zip
Babe
Fanny
These Meridian ewes are all with Kenleigh’s Savor. He’s just a little guy but has been doing the job.
Last, but not least, Amaryllis.
I am not the music video star, but some of my sheep are. A young woman, Shannon, who lives in town contacted me when she was looking for a location to film a nativity scene for a music video she wants to produce. It sounded kind of fun so I said she could use my place. The filming date was last Sunday . Shannon’s friends and family members were the actors and actresses and I was livestock wrangler.
My ram pen was the perfect set–nothing in the shot that looked modern. None of these kids had any livestock experience, but they all did great.
Violet is the starring ewe and she played her part well, standing patiently while Shannon filmed close-ups. The goat kids were a little more difficult–eating the bedding in the manger, the robes, etc. We substituted one goat kid for another part way through.
One of Shannon’s friends has a three-month old baby who was used in most of the shots, but this is the baby stunt double.
After filming in the barn, the shepherds went out to the pasture to get footage with the sheep and the donkey.
The weekend weather was great, but on Tuesday that changed. We had 5.25″ of rain on Tuesday with high winds. That was the date scheduled for a meeting of a group of weaving friends known as Yolo Weavers. We had already planned to meet at my place and make paper. It turns out that paper-making was just the thing to take our minds off the nasty weather.
This is a pile of paper scraps.
This is that pile of paper in a blender.
Here is the resulting paper. The yarn in the first photo creates the texture in this paper.
This is another of my creations. Notice the glitzy fiber in it!
And here are the two girls (middle), daughters of a spinning friend, who taught us to make paper.
I sure like the blogs that have lots of photos. I hope you do, because I don’t have time to write much.
First up–Everyone is invited to my Grand Re-Opening this Saturday, September 12, from 10-3. I hope people will bring wheels and knitting and spend a few hours relaxing under the trees.
I have a lot of fair photos to sort through. Here are a few. Dylan Duncan (Genesis Farms) helped me with the sheep show. I’m grateful to him. My husband was sick and couldn’t come to the fair–he didn’t want to show anyway, but would have been the photographer. Instead, Dylan’s mom, Diana, helped out with the camera.
This is Dylan and me showing Rubicon and Moonshine in the yearling ram class. Rubicon was second to the St. Croix ram which ultimately won Grand Champion of the Primitive & American Breeds Divison. Four breeds were represented–St. Croix, Jacob, Tunis, and Shetland.
Dylan’s dad, Darryl, stepped in to help show in the Flock class.
There are no blue ribbons in here. The Tunis sheep are included in this division and they got all the first and seconds in the classes they entered. I got most of the 3rds after the Tunis and the second places in the group classes.
But the real contest for me was in the display area. The Fair offers a substantial prize for the Marketing Display. Here’s part of my exhibit.
A friend, Joan, helped out tremendously by spinning all day on Sunday and Monday. We had huge crowds most of the day and I sure got tired of talking. I demonstrated weaving while Joan spun.
Here are the final awards. I’m third AGAIN in the overall Marketing award. However I did get the Herdsman award for 9 head or under. I also got Best Display Directed at the General Public (or something like that) and Most Creative. Those are the maroon ribbons.
A friend came by with her knitted felted purse. That is her flock and the sheepdog coming in on the left is my dog’s mom.
More fair photos will follow, but not now.
I moved the sheep to a new section of pasture this morning.
They immediately buried their heads. This is like a salad bar for the sheep–something for everyone. In the photo below you can see clover, trefoil (yellow flower), Dallis grass (broad-leaf grass), yellow foxtail (that grass with the foxtail-looking head), bermudagrass, dock, and other plants.
Some of these plants make summer grazing tough. The bermuda and yellow foxtail are late summer grasses and take over the pasture, crowding more desirable plants. The sheep choose to eat the plants they like and leave the less desirable ones.That’s why, to graze properly, you put more livestock on a small area and move them frequently. When the sheep are in a small area they eat even the less palatable plants while eating the ones they really like. Then you move them to the next area. This also helps with control of internal parasites.
Dallis grass has been a problem too. It is a perennial grass that originated in South America and can be a good pasture grass if grazed properly. If I can’t keep it grazed low it gets so tall and coarse that the sheep won’t touch it. Then it takes over and nothing else can grow. If you go back to older posts in the blog you’ll see where last year at this time I was doing everything I could think of to get the sheep to eat the thick stand of dallis grass. In the spring we finally burned it.
So what did I see in the salad bar pasture this morning?
Amaryllis went right for the yellow foxtail! Nobody else eats that.
Here is another undesirable plant. This grass is medusahead. It is an annual grass that grows in dry areas and has these nasty seed heads. Sheep don’t want to eat it even when it is still green. The medusahead started growing in this side of the pasture when I couldn’t get irrigation water to this area. The last few times I irrigated I have been more successful at getting water here so that’s why it’s green underneath. I hope that if I’m successful at irrigating this area next year the medusahead won’t be able to take over.
But look who is eating it!
So what are the sheep eating?
This is Della with her mouth full of dallis grass. (That’s the dallis grass seed head in the foreground.)
Ebony is eating trefoil and dock.
Linda is eating dallis grass.
The goat, Chloe, is eating trefoil and…
Jasmine is eating dallis grass.
One way to join me in a “pasture-walk” and photo shoot is to join the Farm Club and spend some time here. It’s on my website–see the link on the right.
I delivered Mary (4-horn) and Madeline (2-horn) to the State Fair Nursery this morning. They are both due on September 2 with twins and triplets. They will entertain thousands of visitors that go through the Nursery run by the UC Davis vet school. The sheep for the show don’t go in until Labor Day weekend.
This is Goldie, the chicken that likes me. She runs to me and expects to be picked up when I open the chicken house door. She is hot, like the rest of us. The TV news people love it because they get to say “triple digits”. Of course they’re inside their air conditioned offices.
So what am I doing on these hot days? Plugging away at everything that needs to get done. We’re mainly working on getting the shop put back together. No photos until it is done! I’m taping and painting and putting down floor. Dan is building a deck, doing electrical work, etc. I have a spinning class this weekend so I have to be able to get in the door!
I’ve been sorting sheep again. State Fair entries are due this week so I needed to figure out who to show. I have a lot of lambs from which to choose. I sorted the lambs into groups based on sire so that I could choose 4 lambs with the same sire for one of the group classes. These are Houdini’s 2-horn ram lambs…
…and these are his 4-horn ram lambs.
These photos are in the dark because it was night before I got to this task. Hard to evaluate fleece in the dark. So I looked again in the morning.
You can barely see Rusty behind the rams. They are so dog-broke now that I can work with them in the field.
They are going into one of the pastures that was so swamped with tall grass last year. We burned it in the spring. Look at the trefoil growing in what was a 4-foot tall sward of grass.
Here is a close-up. This is one of my favorite flowers–bright and pretty and good forage for sheep.
Some parts of the pasture are starting to get overrun with that Dallisgrass again. I’m hoping that the ewes can make a dent in it if I keep them out there longer. I’ve been letting them in the barn during the hot part of the day. If I don’t make them go back out they’ll bed down in the barn at night, but they will have more of an effect on the pasture (bedding down, manure deposited, etc) if they are out all night. So I’ve been moving them out at dusk.
Do you see that big round one–third up from the right? That’s Madeline. She is pregnant and due to lamb at State Fair just before Labor Day.
I can’t believe I sheared in November and I still haven’t processed wool. I sold a lot of it, but I have some to process. Wait until you see the new products I’m going to have! (I’m not telling right now.) Three bags full:
These guys are waiting for something fun to happen. They are ready for the girls, but we’ll wait a few months.
That’s Rubicon on the left and Moonshine on the right.
Back to more painting!
The lambs in the last post are 10 days old now and yesterday I let them into the pasture with all the other sheep. Last night I found the little ram lamb limping and I diagnosed a broken leg, but wasn’t sure where. I took him to see my vet today and she came up with this splint to immobilize the leg. The break is at the top of the tibia and this splint holds the joints on either side immobile. We’ll leave it on about 3 weeks and see how he is.
While I had my camera in the barn I took other photos.
Amaryllis, the donkey.
Jasmine, one of my son’s does. He has gone to his summer job and I’m milking the goats that are left.
Ewes and ewe lambs on the pasture.
These ram lambs were so happy to get out onto the pasture after being in a dry lot getting hay for weeks. I have to keep them separate from the ewes now so my options are more limited. This pasture now has plenty of feed.
This is trefoil, one of my favorite flowers, and good sheep feed. There is a lot of it in that ram pasture.
My husband came back from the hardware store and told me he bought something for me. The other day when I was irrigating I broke the only shovel that I could find –one with the handle taped. So this is MY shovel.
I decided to donate a lamb to the raffle held by JSBA (Jacob Sheep Breeders Assoc) to support AGM (Annual General Meeting)– http://www.patchworkfibers.com/raffle.html –but I needed to figure out which lamb. So it was also time to figure out which lambs I want to keep (and choose the raffle lamb from this batch). This is not an easy thing for me, especially since I just counted sheep after an auction trip and I still have 114 and I really should have only about 50 by the time breeding season comes around! The first step was to sort out the ewe lambs and then sort them into 2 and 4 horn groups. I didn’t get them all in here, but I sorted out most of the older ones.
This is most of the 2-horn lambs.
And this is most of the 4-horn ewe lambs.
I don’t think that there were any lambs that I wouldn’t be happy with in the flock, so it was a tough decision. Here are the 2-horn lambs I chose.
Here are the 4-horn girls.
The girl on the left is the lamb for the raffle–guess I should come up with a name. Here she is:
She has a very pretty fleece and her sister is in the 2-horn group that I’m keeping.It was a tough decision. I think that my thought process on this might be a good topic for my Farm Club News–maybe that will be the next one.
http://www.meridianjacobs.com/exec/eFarmClub.asp
The rest of my lambs are on my website:
http://www.meridianjacobs.com/exec/eSheep.asp?categoryID=Ewe%20Lambs
I’m trying to finish up all kinds of things that have been put off or just didn’t get started. Part of this is in anticipation of Meet the Sheep, our Open House that is this weekend. So there is clean up to do, class prep, etc. Also, I think I can start getting back to weaving soon and I’d better get caught up on some other stuff too. So here’s some of what I did yesterday:
1. I spent a lot of time on Jacob Sheep registrations. I am behind there because of my one-handed typing. I just started typing 2-handed again–I consider it therapy because the left hand doesn’t really bend the way I need it to.
2. Dealt with the ram that was butchered last week. Good thing it isn’t summer or I couldn’t have waited this long.
3. Lolita finally lambed. Two weeks ago I treated her for hypocalcemia and other metabolic problems. She recovered and I’ve been waiting for these lambs–2 girls and a boy.
By the way this ewe lambed at State Fair last year (August). That’s 6 lambs in a year. No wonder she had some problems. She seems fine now. I’m keeping plenty of food in front of her.
4. Taking photos of new lambs and here is who is in the way.
5. Speaking of goats we are feeding 9 kids. It seems never ending although its better now that they’re on 3 x’s/day instead of 4. I do a lot of the kid feeding but Chris has been milking. He’ll be gone this weekend though and I told him that he has to get the milking machine cleaned up.
6. I picked up butchered lambs and had no room left in the freezers. I had to take a turkey out to make room for the lamb, so I cooked a turkey last night. Can’t cook a turkey without the stuffing and mashed potatoes! At least we’ll have leftovers for quite awhile.
Aren’t these lambs cute?
After playtime it’s naptime.
I have photios of some of my 65 lambs on my brand new website– http://www.meridianjacobs.com
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