Farm Day

It is always a great day when it’s Farm Day. Farm Days are for Farm Club members to gather at the farm and help with farm chores while learning more about sheep and enjoying the camaraderie. What a lovely day for this.

We started by checking out the dye pots. Farm Club has a Sheep-to-Shawl team who will be competing at Black Sheep Gathering next month! They are spinning Jacob wool of course, but wanted to dye with a few of the plants from the farm.

Yarn going into a weeping willow dye pot.

This is a coreopsis pot.

Once that was underway we went to the barn to work with the lambs. We were vaccinating, checking lambs for freckling that begins to show up at about this age, and assigning FAMACHA scores (indicator of anemia that can be caused by the Haemonchus contortus stomach worm). If lambs scored at the higher end they were put aside for deworming. Everyone shared the work.

There were lamb catchers…

…a marker lady…

…FAMACHA scorer…

…syringe filler…

…and clipboard monitor.

I wonder if anyone noticed bruises on their legs when they were finished. That is one result of working with Jacob lambs and holding them in the most convenient way.

At lunch time it was time to check out the dyed yarns. These are to be accents in a mostly white, gray, and black shawl. Left to right: weeping willow leaves, coreopsis flowers, several skeins in pomegranate rind dye, and a natural color from the suint vat.

We didn’t think about a group photo until some people had left. I think we’re missing Kimber, Mary, and Susan.

People who could stay went back to the barn to do a thorough cleaning. Then I said that there were a lot of hooves that needed trimming and they were up for that too! This was a first time for some people and they were great! Five people can trim a lot more hooves than one person can.

The goats always want to go through a gate that you are opening and sometimes it’s just easier to let them. In this case they went to the end where there was hay over the fence and we just shut the gate on them there. then they were out of the way.

After everyone left I took the yarn out of the washer that I had processed this morning. This is Timm Ranch/Jacob yarn in skeins that I didn’t realize I still had. (Too much stuff in boxes in the shop.) It will be good to be able to put this on the website soon.

Thanks for a great day, Farm Club!!!