Shearing Day Prep

Shearing Day was a week ago and I've been so busy that there has been no time to sort through my photos or do anything fun on my computer (like writing blog posts). Now I'm going to try and catch up. Shearing Day at our place is an Open House event so it's a good time to get the place cleaned up and ready for visitors. It took me several hours to finally deal with the mess in the "milking stall" of the barn. That's where we used to milk the goats but it is now kind of my barn office. I don't have photos of before and after but I did take a photo of one solution I found for organizing some of the vet supplies.

                  I not only found a plastic tub to keep the dust and cobwebs and rats away but I wrote the names on the tops of the bottles so that I don't have to pull each of them out every time I'm looking for something. This is so simple, but it makes me inordinately pleased--why didn't I think of it before?              While I was cleaning inside the barn Dan was working outside. We had finally had some rain so felt more comfortable burning the brush pile.               By the way we burned this on Thursday. This doesn't look like much but it was a pretty not fire. Even though it looked like it was out on Monday there were still hot spots and smoke.

                    That burn pile is right next to the ram pen. Here are the five of them. The 4-horned rams are Serrano and his dad, Buster. The lilac 2-horns are Cayenne and his sire, Catalyst. That's Gotham in front.                   In the meantime, Dan is working on the west side of the barn. This has been a multi-year project but I think it may get finished this year.

I was trying to get ready for shearing but was also dealing with taxes, the clutter I still haven't taken care of in the house after painting my office, weaving deadlines, etc. I found another way to procrastinate.              Let's put the GoPro on a sheep. Jade is the obvious choice, being the best pet sheep.              The first thing she did was run into the barn. When one sheep runs, they all do.           Then she shook her head and it was obvious that I didn't have the camera secured well enough.

                 At that point I needed a scoop of grain to entice her.                              I had used the headgear that is meant for wearing the camera, but it was meant for a human head and didn't wrap around the horns very well. I found the brace I use for my elbow and that seemed to secure it better.              I've looked at the footage. It's not as exciting as we might hope for. Maybe if she wore the GoPro all day (and there was enough battery life to do that...and then we condense it all into a minute) it would be interesting. But it's not like she's going to be skydiving or snorkeling. For this trial run she pretty much just looked at the barn, the pasture, and me.

                  I will still do something with the video but it probably won't be winning any film festivals.