Green Grass and Water

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For a year and a half I’ve been writing my blog posts on my old WordPress blog. I haven’t had time to do much lately but decided that this is associated with my website maybe I’ll add one here for now because it will link to the newsletter, with which I’m also behind. Go to the other blog for more frequent posts.

In anticipation of Dan’s knee replacement surgery we got a stack of hay in. At this point I’ve fed most of it. That is Sparky, the bottle lamb from this year.

Dan and Robin sitting on an alfalfa stack with a lamb.

Due to circumstances beyond our control the new pasture got far ahead of our ability to graze it properly. This is the start of grazing this year.

Spotted sheep grazing green grass that is as high as the sheep.

You can see that as much or more of the grass is trampled than eaten, but it’s better than nothing. And I’ve stopped feeding three bales of alfalfa a day.

Green grass with white fence separating grazed and not grazed sides.

We irrigated for the first time with the new pipeline system. Dan had the surgery three weeks ago so I’m doing this part for now. There is a learning curve to how many valves to open, how much open, and for how long. It will be so much better than the old open ditch, but it’s a lot to figure out right now, especially when we are desperate to get this grazed.

Orange valve cover with water flowing from pipeline

There are 7 valves at the north end of the field and 20 across the width here. I couldn’t remember what I was doing and the grass is so tall I couldn’t figure out where they were at first. So I found a strategy to keep track. At 5:30 a.m. I closed # 7-15 and opened #12-20 (not all show here)

Pasture of green grass with my numbers that show how I was keeping track of irrigation.

Eventually there will be more detail on the other blog where I have a whole series of posts last fall and winter titled “Pasture and Irrigation Renovation” if you want to see how we got to here. This is this morning’s photo. I need more sheep to eat all this grass!

Sheep grazing tall grass May 1

Catching up with Meridian Jacobs

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It’s been a long time since I wrote a post here. I find it easier to work on the Wordpress blog and certainly easier to find a post I want to go back to. If you’re still catching only the posts here I hope you’ll look up my WordPress blog and follow me there. I don’t have time to do both and I don’t want to duplicate stories.

In the last post at the other site I shared photos of fleeces on the sheep wearing coats and talked about why they wear coats.

In the post before that I shared photos from the Overshot Explorations class from last week.

The post before that was about my hike in he El Dorado NF where we searched out the remains of a B-17 “Flying Fortress” that went down in 1941.

There are new sheepskins on line and more on the way back from the tannery, but I haven’t shared those on my blog yet.

I haven’t written posts yet about using the new corespun yarn but I will.

I have posts on the other site about the farming Across the Road, but haven’t shared the Mt. Diablo photos yet. I have a blog post in mind for those.

I hope you’ll join me at the other Meridian Jacobs blog home.

Ironman 70.3 in Oceanside - Its a Family Thing

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I would not have normally planned a 4-day trip during lambing season, but the date was set when my kids asked if they could give my husband a special Christmas gift. They wanted to enter a half-Ironman event as a relay team that included Dan. That was his Christmas surprise! The Oceanside Ironman 70.3 was April 1. Matt and Chris have both competed in Ironman events, full length as well as half. We have always gone to support them and now they wanted to include Dan in the event itself. Oceanside is about an 8-hour drive so we needed to leave on Thursday to be able to check in on Friday.

Katie flew in from Texas to be here for the family event. She went with us in the car while the others flew to San Diego.

Valley and hill covered in brilliant green grass with bright blue sky and white clouds.

The recent (and seemingly nonstop) rain in northern California made for brilliant landscapes which I photographed from the back seat.

The brilliant green, blue, yellow, and white have given me ideas for planning a woven piece using those colors.

Getting into southern California we saw remnants of the unusual extreme weather south of us. No more travel photos because I have lots of others to share.

View of the ocean with yellow flowers in the foreground.

We got to Oceanside in the evening and had time for a look at the ocean. We always think of southern California beaches as sunny and warm. Sunny, yes. Warm, no. Just as in northern California right now, it was unseasonably cool…

…although wouldn’t guess that looking at the kids. (Thanks to Kaleena for some of this photo and some in the next posts.)