Random Farm Photos Again

This is my life–trying to work on everything at once, because it all seems important.

I just finished this scarf to have at Lambtown where I’ll be teaching Clasped Warp and Closed Weft

Spinning class Saturday morning. Three new spinners!

I’m trying to organize my life. The basket where I put gloves when I come in from the barn has been NOT organized. I spread all the gloves out to match them up. Then I gathered gloves from the barn. There are pairs on the left. All on the right are single gloves. Most of them are left-hand gloves, so where are all the right-hand gloves? I know that if I get rid of all the singles I’ll start finding others that should have matched. So I’ll probably put these in another box and hang on to them for another 10 years or so. Notice the boots at the top. They have had their last trip to the barn. I’ll salvage the shoe laces to use as ties on the net fence but the boots are going away.

This may not look like much, but it represents several hours of button making. First there is cutting on the band-saw. The cups hold groups of buttons that are all from one horn. I try to keep those together through the process so that they can be sold as sets.

This is the same batch of horns, but now with holes drilled. Now they will go back to the sander and then they will have a finish appleid.

The last three days I have sorted out ewe lambs I’m keeping and put halters on all. I’d like them to be at least semi-halter broke–then if I have to use a halter the sheep won’t panic .

Two Jacob ewes, one black and one lilac

While doing so I led some outside to get a better look at color. There is an obvious difference between the black and white lambs and all the lilacs.

Lilac twins, the last born this spring. I named all the lambs last night. These two are Cosmos and Dahlia.

I spent time today inventorying the hedgerow after replacing some of the plants that didn’t make it. These are rhizomes from Johnson grass a very invasive and obnoxious grass. I can’t dig it out of the whole pasture, but I can dig it out of the fenceline along the hedgerow. It is important to get the clumps and these tubers out. they continue to grow and sprout new plants–I’m sure that I didn’t get everything.

Random Farm Photos

Wild turkeys on the top rail of a gate and on he ground in front, with sun setting behind.

This is a resident flock of turkeys–two adults and five babies (not so baby anymore). They come and go farther up the road and across the road. They are most annoying when they are around the peach tree or scratching up the garden.

Two views of the paddock I moved the sheep to yesterday. This is looking south. The grass in the foreground is an undesirable one and we are thinking about how to deal with it.

The same paddock from the other end. The grass here is orchard grass which was part of the seed mix we used in fall 2024. Notice how inconsistent the pasture is. There is lots of chicory in the top half and not much except the grass in the south with lots of bare ground between clumps. More issues to think about.

Yesterday moving rams lambs to the barn to sort for harvest day.

Notice ground squirrel holes. They have underground cities everywhere including under the barn.

After harvest. I have eleven sheepskins salted.

I’ve been sorting JSBA files. Jacob Sheep Breeders began in 1988 with the plan to keep a registry for Jacob sheep in North America. From the website: “JSBA’s mission is to foster the conservation of Jacob sheep through education, advocacy, registration and research.” I was Registrar for many years. When I began I picked up five four-drawer filing cabinets, holding registration applications, from the previous Registrar, also in California. By the time JSBA went digital and I was finished, those filing cabinets were full and overflowed into boxes. Several years ago I started scanning the files so that there would be a record of JSBA’s history. Actually, I didn’t do the scanning initially, but prepared the files so that we could have someone else do it. Each file has two sets of photos stapled to it and wool samples for rams. I removed photos and tried to find two views of the sheep to staple back on but to cover up comments and signatures. Needless to say, this gets time consuming. Farm Club helped for awhile, including scanning now that we can do that with a phone. So…now, many years later, there is the goal to finish the job. I know which boxes have not been prepped, but I’m trying to figure out which prepped files were scanned and then if those scans are now in JSBA’s database.

I would rather be weaving. I SHOULD be weaving. This is another example for the upcoming Lambtown class about Clasped Warp and Clasped Weft.

I don’t know how long I’ve had these boots, but they are very comfortable and got me to the top of Mount Lassen last month. I think they have seen their last days. The sole on the left one has completely separated all the way back to the instep.

Random Farm Photos

These photos may seem to be unrelated, but that’s how my life is right now…or maybe all the time. Farm Club members were here on Saturday to help set up breeding groups. Too busy to get photos then. Sunday I demonstrated weaving at an alpaca farm for their open house for National Alpaca Farm Day (remembering at 6 the evening before that I needed to get a loom warped for that). Today I worked on lots of odds and ends, mostly working towards being ready for Lambtown this weekend. So this is odds and ends.

Clancy got to work right away on Saturday. (For the record, he is a BFL registered as Liongate Aylan, but I started calling him Clancy because I couldn’t remember that name. Clancy stuck.)

This is one of the ewes I picked up in Napa last week. That’s a story for another blog post when I have time. She is with Clancy’s group.

Indigo is flowering. I spent so much time trying to keep the indigo thriving during the summer that I want to make sure I use more of it for dying before it’s too late.

This is today’s fresh leaf indigo dyepot. That yarn will be blue when it is out of the pot and dry.

I made buttons over the last few weeks but hadn’t finished them yet. I use lacquer in a satin finish. I could only find semi-gloss locally and had to order what I wanted. There are also two skulls that I cleaned as well as I could and wanted to apply lacquer to the horns.

I load the buttons onto wires that I can dip in the can of lacquer and then spread them to drip and dry. This is one way to get some use out of styrofoam packing material.

These are buttons and shawl pins that I finished a couple of weeks ago. When I couldn’t find the satin lacquer I used semi-gloss and also polyurethane. I think I like the satin finish best, but I’ll find out at Lambtown if it even makes any difference.

I spent a lot of time this week using a new app that will completely remove the background from photos.

This is another example. I wanted these photos for the new weaving class on my website.

One more sheep thing. I have two registered adult rams that I need to sell. There are four rams out with ewes now and these are extra this year. This one is Hurricane. Rams are on the website here.

Time to move onto getting my newsletter out.