Moving On

Lambing season is over (except for one sheep that I bought and is due much later). For people who like numbers the stats are on my website in the Farm Talk column--things like how many ewe lambs and number of twin births, etc. It's actually interesting to me to see the tallies. Here is one of the last ewes to lamb. This is a yearling, Eliza, with a pretty ewe lamb.

The weather was gorgeous this weekend and I got serious about sorting wool. Here is a sample from a particularly nice fleece.  This is a yearling out of Meridian Diamond and bide a wee Yuri--the crimp in this fleece looks like Yuri's did. Maybe you have to be a spinner to appreciate this.

I have a lot of wool to sort and I find myself getting distracted. I sat in the barn and took photos. This is Stephanie below.

And Amaryllis.

This banty hen sets on a nest of eggs all summer even though there has been no rooster since I've lived here.

Once she settles on a nesting place I transfer her to this rubber feeder so that I can move it if necessary to get to a bale of hay. I started marking the eggs so that I could take the freshest, but then I lost track. Now I just let her have all she wants.

I got distracted by poppies too, but that will be another post.

Mother-of-the-groom dress

My son is getting married May 2. I can't wear my jeans and t-shirt. I hate to shop, but I do own a dress that I like and I think won't make me feel too dumpy. But it is white...was white. For months my Wednesday afternoon weaving group (WeeklyWeavingWorkshop) has been helping with the planning of this project. Last night I finally dyed the dress. The dye job turned out well, but it wasn't the color that was in the little box in the catalog. It was supposed to be sort of tan with a gold tone. This is more to the peachy side.

I had planned to weave a v-shawl to go with this dress and had some of the yarns picked out. This color shift (you can't really tell the true color in this photo--at least not on my computer) necessitated a change of plan.  The WWW group had planned a field trip to a huge yarn shop in Sacramento, so I took the sash of the dress and some cones of yarn from my stash. Here is the combination of my yarns and the ones I bought:

You can't tell but the balls in the upper left have green and a silver sparkle in them. We picked the other colors based on those. (By the way, the brides' attendants will be wearing celudon green.)

I guess I'd better start weaving. This will be my first weaving project since I broke my arm in January. I am just assuming that I can work my way through this.  Hopefully I'll be posting a photo in a week or so.

FOTF

FOTF = Fiber Off The Floor. I taught two spinning classes yesterday at our Fiber Fun Retreat. The first was Blending Fiber & Color on the Drum Carder. The second was Spinning in Color. The drum carding was such fun, but I didn't get to do it because they were using the drum carders, not me. As I was cleaning up I found the little bits of fiber under the chairs and that had been discarded from the drum carders.   Hmmm. I carded the fiber.

I spun it and plied it with a dark gray singles.

I wish that I'd had mosre students so that I'd have more waste fiber! I'm going to post a photo of this on Ravelry. I now have a Meridian Jacobs group there. Anyone can join! http://www.ravelry.com

Loose ends

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.

I taught a dye class today.  In my dye classes I warn everyone that what we are doing is not repeatable but it's always fun and so far I haven't dyed a batch I didn't like (or couldn't overdye).

The 3 skeins were in balls when I put them in the dyepot. The fiber was on top. I added 4 colors of dye and steamed the whole thing.

Back & Forth & Back & Forth

Time for kids

Now that most of the lambs are here the goats are kidding. These are my sons' Toggenburg dairy goats--there are 4 to kid this year.

Leaping lambs

Aren't these lambs cute?

After playtime it's naptime.

I have photios of some of my 65 lambs on my brand new website-- www.meridianjacobs.com

Light My Fire

If you are a faithful Meridian Jacobs blog reader you may remember my attempts last fall to get the sheep to eat and/or trample the shoulder high dallas grass. Dallas grass is a late summer perennial that takes over the pasture. There is so much thick dead grass that nothing grows under it.In this photo see the little bit of green with all that dead grass that takes over the field. (That's a hay field in the background.)

My oldest son is a firefighter for the U.S. Forst Service and I talked him into burning the fields for me.

These are my two sons. Chris is lighting the fire here--he will be working on a hotshot crew this summer after graduation.

This is oldest son, Matt, and his friend, David. Matt is lighting the fire and David is hosing down the fiberglass posts to keep them from melting.

As the fire crew (also included my brother and a friend of Chris) was working I was working with a previously scheduled class. Talk about double-booking. In the shop we were  winding warp, warping looms, etc and I made a couple of quick trips out with the camera. Some of the class participants enjoyed the time spent in the barn watching lambs. The last 3  people here were treated to watching a lamb being born. However this was more interactive than observation as the lamb turned out to be a huge ram--over 12 lbs! Thanks to Chris for helping and  getting her  hands slimey (but not spotting her white shirt!).

Chris also stayed to help me get the electric fence back up so I could put the sheep out on the pasture. Unfortunately some of the insulators at the south end of the pasture were melted by the fire and the wire broke (burned?) So I need to do some fence repair in the morning.

More photos tomorrow to show the results of the burn.

They're still coming

It has finally stopped raining for awhile.  So I was after some action shots.

Triplets and three sets of twins today. That makes 48 lambs since last Tuesday!

Broken arm update--The cast is replaced with a removeable brace, but the doctor says it will take 3 months for the bone to heal. Right now its held together by the screws. He gave me permission to pick up something the weight of a kleenex. Good thing my flock is easy to handle one-handed.

38 lambs

25 lambs!

17 lambs !

Yes, 17! That's since Tuesday.  Started with Dot's triplets and a single. Yesterday there were 2 sets of twins. Today there have been 3 sets of twins and triplets. Everything was going smoothly until the triplets came along. All lambs born with no problem and nursing OK. Paula and Jan were both starting to lamb so I put them in pens and hung around--beautiful warm afternoon--pleasant in the barn. Paula had the tiniest lamb I've ever seen, so I got out the scale. This little ewe is only 2.5 lbs!

I weighed the 4 lambs born earlier today--6.7-10.2--they look like my normal lambs. So I waited around for quite awhile to see how many lambs there would be. I finally decided it had been too long and I pulled 2 ram lambs--8.4 and 8.9 lbs! These aren't great photos but you can see the size of the lambs.

The boys were up and trying to nurse while the little one was still barely standing. She tries to nurse but I haven't see her stay on the teat  so I've given her a few ounces in a bottle. Will go back out with more later.

Lambs!

First lambs were born yesterday morning--triplets to Meridian Dot. These are 2 ewes and a ram. A single ram was born in the afternoon and this morning there were twins. I have about 8 more due this week!

Ready for lambs!

My husband entertains his 7th grade science classes with my x-rays, etc. He is going to show them the latest via this blog today so I figured that I'd give them another photo to see.

 Dan cleaned the barn this weekend because I stll can't use a pitchfork--or trek the wheelbarrow through the foot of mud we get when it rains.  We also set up lambing pens.The pens will be full by next weekend.

Miracles of Modern Medicine

This is a warning: Photos that follow are graphic. It's 15 days after the injury (seems like forever) and 5 days after surgery. The splint came off to reveal what was underneath. Now I have a cast. It's below the elbow!. After only 2 weeks its sure hard to straighten my arm.  And I need to work to get some life back into my curled up fingers. (I'm sorry for those of you who have suffered much more debilitating or serious injuries than this--I must seem like a real whiner--and I'm so thankful that this wasn't any worse.) So here are the photos. I go back next week to have the stitches removed.

For a change of pace, look at what is blooming. I have a friend who says she doesn't like daffodils because they are too perky" I think they're great!

Still Typing One Handed

It's 11 days later and now I'm going to have surgery. I can't sleep and figure that all I'm going to want to do the rest of the day is sleep so what better thing to do than amuse myself at the computer? I don't know who wants to see these photos besides me but ... oh well... you can always go to the next blog.

 

This x-ray shows that the wriast bones are settling into where the radius is supposed to be healing--at least I think that is what it shows.

Just noticed something on this drawing. I assume that he doesn't plan to remove fingers to make me match his plan.

Hopefully we'll be back to sheep for the next post! Lambs in a few weeks!

This Would Have Been a More Interesting Way To Break My Arm

It was my youngest son's 18th birthday a couple of weeks ago. We all went for a mountain bike ride near where my older son lives. I ride my mountain bike all the time around here. We live in the flat land. Now I know where the 'mountain' comes from in mountain bike. The photos don't show the parts of the trail with giant roots and rocks sticking out or the 4" wide track with a steep drop-off on one side. Or the parts of the trail where you are in the lowest gear and pedaling what seems like 1000 rpm only to travel at a snail's pace and eventallu have to stop or fall over. The photos show the snow and ice. Now most of the trail wasn't snowy, but it was a unique element to add to the experience. We talked to people who said that normally they would have been skiing here this time of year. Kind of a scary situation from the standpoint of California's water needs.

My First Cast

I'm typing one-handed because I broke my arm on Wednesday. I was trying to loosen a bale of hay using a hay hook and I guess the hook wasn't in the right place or it slipped. In any case I went backwards and took the brunt of the fall on the concrete with my arm. I actually remember thinking "save the back" (having had 2 back surgeries) and I twisted so as not to land right on my tailbone which hurts all the time anyway. I spent half of Wed night at the hospital while they manipulated the bones back in place and splinted the arm--up to my armpit.

These photos of the x-rays show the break. The wrist end of the radius is broken vertically and horizontally. The vertical fractures break the end of the radius into several pieces--one doctor said it looks like popcorn. I went back on Friday for more x-rays. The bones were still in place but they won't cast the arm until next week if the bones are still in place. Right now I'm just supposed to keep the arm up. About the only useful thing I can do is work at the computer (one-handed). So maybe Ill get caught up on bookkeeping, registrations and my new website (in progress).

Visit to Texas and Arizona

My son and I left Christmas night to go visit my daugher in TX. We spent 4 days touring the Texas hill country--some beautiful country. Next we flew to AZ to visit my friend, Irene, who owns Cotton Clouds, mail-order yarn business. I first met Irene when I lived in AZ, but I haven't been back for 26 years and I had never seen Cotton Clouds. I took over 600 photos, but I'll show only a few here! This is the Pernales River where it flows over and through these huge slabs of rock.

Katie's friend is a fence builder, and as we drove around the country he pointed out all the fences that he's built, including some with fancy gates.

In Arizona we stopped at the AZ Sonoran Desert Museum near Tucson. This is a Harris Hawk that put on a spectacular show along with 3 other hawks. They flew over the crowd, swooping low and landing on tall saquaro cactus. It amazes me that they can spot prey a mile away!

This is Mt. Graham that rises to 10,000 feet near Safford, AZ. I used to live in Safford and saw this mountain from my backyard. This is the view from Irene's living room and bedroom. I took the photo in the morning as the sun was just hitting the mountain. Fantastic view!

We drove part way up the mountain and asked someone to take our picture. That's Irene in red, her husband, Ron, me, and Chris (wearing shorts).

This is Irene in Cotton Clouds www.cottonclouds.com Yes, all those shelves are filled with yarn. And here is a happy customer--Me! I almost left my big suitcase in TX since it had been emptied of the Christmas presents we took Katie. I'm glad I didn't because I filled it with yarn to bring home!