A Three Year Anniversary

When you live in the flat land it is nice to climb up high and get a view of the surroundings. This is a panorama view of our property from the top of an 80-bale haystack.

You also have to get on top of the haystack to throw bales down to feed. Here is another photo looking down—that’s Rusty below. That is the last photo I took on October 14, 2019. I have no idea how I fell off, but my husband found me on the cement below in a coma.

I’m almost embarrassed to show these next photos, because I look so terrible, but those of you who follow this blog know it’s about real life, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week. I keep seeing posts on social media about the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY that was this weekend, and my friends and I were supposed to be there in 2019. We had airline tickets and a place to stay. Then this happened and they all stayed home.

This is the next picture that shows up on my phone, taken November 13 at the Kaiser Rehab Center in Vallejo. A big piece of skull had been removed from my head, so I had to wear that charming helmet (later replaced with my son’s snowboarding helmet). I also had a fracture of T-7/T-8 so had to wear that wonderful brace.

This was taken November 16 when I finally came home.

This was taken November 29. Trying to get into the holiday spirit? What is significant about this photo is that blanket and the paper with the yarns attached. My good friend, Mary, warped her loom and invited a lot of Farm Club and other friends to come to her house and weave their choice of yarns to create a blanket for me.

I still have this card on my wall with the yarn descriptions and all the friends who participated.

And of course I have the blanket—that is a very special gift.

I found this photo from January 8—it looks as though the brace is gone but my husband said I was still wearing it most of the time. I’m wearing the snowboarding helmet because there was only my skin over the big hole in my head. By the way, that would not be the same haystack but it does show how tall they are. I know other people who have fallen from haystacks—one landed on his feet I guess because he broke both ankles. Another suffered multiple broken bones and some internal injuries and had a long recovery.

This was taken later that month—same pjs, different shoes.

There is a lot that I have forgotten, or never knew, about that whole episode. I do remember that it took a long time before we could finally schedule the surgery (“elective”) to replace the part of the skull that was removed. We had a date for about February 7. We showed up for the surgery and were told that the skull piece was on a plane that had broken down in Atlanta. Who knew that body parts are stored somewhere on the East Coast? Fortunately it arrived the next day and I had the surgery. This is with ice packs on my head.

This gives you an indication of how much of the skull was removed. The stitches are where the skin flap was sewn back together. After the surgery recovery was much faster. It seems that when the skull is in place the pressure in the brain is more normal … Or something like that.

Things for which I am thankful:
This was pre-pandemic. The pandemic officially started a week or two later. Thank goodness all this hospital time and my “elective” surgery was before that.
My husband had retired a year or two before this. He didn’t have to try and juggle a stressful job with the stress of this accident and he was there to do what was needed. (And thank goodness he retired before the era of teaching on Zoom.)
Family and friends. The original prognosis was guarded—would I come home? Would I walk again? Would there be permanent brain injury? Some close friends were great support for my family as they navigated the uncertainty. As it eventually became evident that recovery was possible, friends helped keep the sheep and shop part of life on track—organizing holiday sales, sheep shearing, etc. There is still so much I don’t remember, but when I think about it I know that everything stayed on track and someone besides me took care of all that.

This may be a strange photo to end this post, but I didn’t take one yesterday when we did our annual Foxy’s Fall bike ride. I took this photo on the tandem as we did a brief ride to make sure the brakes and gears all worked. We got this tandem in 1986 when we got married. Yesterday we rode the metric century which is 62 miles through Solano and Yolo Counties. That seems a suitable way to acknowledge the three year anniversary of this life-changing event.

Random Farm Photos from the first part of July

Is it a continuing theme that I never have enough time to write blog post? Sorry if that is getting old. But it’s real. Here’s an attempt so that I can catch up with some of the photos I’ve taken and because I know that some of you do enjoy reading blog posts I write.

The first week of July I taught a Learn to Weave class. This is the students with their finished pieces.

Students learn all the processes to wind warp and weave off this sampler in two days.

In the meantime I’ve had a major custom weaving project hanging over my head. Normally I wind warps from cones, but this one was naturally dyed in skeins with no time to put the yarn on cones. Thank goodness I have a good swift—Schacht Ultra Umbrella Swift which I just put on the website now. The yarn winds from the swift to the AVL Warping Wheel to make 2” sections. More about this in another post when I get around to it.

This is 57 yards wound onto the sectional beam of my AVL production loom

This is after it is all tidied up. I have woven one so far, only 24 to go.

In between working on winding that warp I was trying to wet finish the last 20 blankets I took off the loom. Then they need to be measured and photographed.

These won’t go on the website for awhile because they are destined for a show at The Artery in October.

I have ignored my garden other than trying to keep a few things watered. A few plants are doing well despite my inattention. My Hopi Black Dye sunflowers are over 8 feet tall. I have had to prop up a few of them because they are getting so heavy.

Speaking of watering we are trying to keep the pasture irrigated but the irrigation district has reduced our allotment of water for the season. As we let the interval between irrigations get longer and reduce the time for each irrigation, we end up with less water and the field doesn’t fully irrigate. Those dry parts are what the Central Valley would look like without irrigation.

I have been conducting field trips for a summer camp through Trackers Earth. The kids spend time in the pasture, watching spinning and weaving and with sheep. Jade is always a favorite. She is an amazing sheep to let any number of people crowd around.

I don’t need any comments here about masks. I don’t think any of my blog followers would make those kind of comments, but when I posted a couple of photos on Facebook, I got nasty responses about children wearing masks. We are wearing masks in close spaces in the barn but not outside. I am selfishly concerned about my own health and missing out on some very exciting upcoming events. So that’s real life right now.

The most exciting thing going on is that my daughter and grandkids are visiting. That will deserve more blog posts. Kirby goes out with me every morning for chores. Jade is the favorite sheep and is always there for hugs and pets.

This is Kirby’s lamb, Rose, daughter of Belle, who Kirby showed at the State Fair as a lamb in 2019. Kirby will be at the fair to show Rose.

Random Farm Photos - June

I found myself wildflower hunting in my own pasture.

These aren’t your traditional wildflowers but they are still pretty.

Salsify.

As I walked in the pasture a bird startled me when she flew up out of the vegetation between the fence and the road. Do you see that depression in the lower center of the photo?

It happened so quickly when the bird flew up and into the tree I thought she was a turkey. But now I’m wondering if she was a pheasant. It seems more likely that a single pheasant would be nesting here. I’ll have to go back and check.

After I set up the electric fence I tested it and there was hardly any charge. That meant I had to track down the reason that the fence was grounding out. I found this one, but fixing that didn’t change the charge on the fence.

Then I found this one—a branch holding the wire on the ground.

Here the tree has grown so much since putting in the fence that there are multiple insulators to keep the wires off the trunk. Eventually we found that a gadget with a plastic handle that connects the fence at the west side of the pasture to the fence near the barn was grounding out on a metal gate. This fence goes all the way around the pasture and the paddocks so it is important that it is working.

In the barn. Hen in a barrel. The chickens lay eggs all over the place.

Random Farm Photos

I take photos thinking of sharing on the blog and then I never have time. Here is an accumulation of some from the last couple of weeks.

Patchwork Amara and Patchwork Bettylou, the two lambs that came from Georgia last summer.

Daffodils are here. I have a friend who has told me she doesn’t like daffodils because they are trying to be too cheery. (You know who you are.) I don’t agree with that, but I must say that every time I see a daffodil I think of that friend.

What time of year is this?

It is a little worrisome to see roses blooming already.

One of the chickens decided to use the bin where I throw baling twine to make a nest.

Another is using an open bale of straw.

Making compost. Dan turns this pile every so often. You can see the steam rising. The pile is warm inside. Soon we’ll need more moisture to keep it going.

Meridian Jasmine.

One of the things that has been keeping me busy is skirting fleeces and photographing them for the website. I have several listed but they aren’t live on the site yet. They will be soon. This is a coated fleece—look how long and clean it is!

Random Farm Photos and a December Surprise

I went out for chores last night and was surprised to find this:

Of course it wasn’t in a pen with nice clean straw. I had no idea that there would be a lamb so I haven’t been watching for them.

Lambs aren’t due until February 28. I checked back on my calendar 5 months and we were in Texas when this ewe would have been bred.

I checked with people who were here to find out if there were any break-outs (or break-ins) while we were gone and no one can think of anything. That means that I didn’t get all of the ram lambs out of the pasture when I had intended to. I meant to do it by the time they were four months old but I must have missed someone.

This ewe, Spice, is one of two ewes for whom I did not have a breeding date. The other has a fertility problem because she has never been bred and was confirmed open when we did ultrasounds a few weeks ago. The vets did ultrasounds on all the ewes and found 2 open that I thought would have been pregnant, but 52 other ewes that are pregnant.

Farm Club members have suggested names: Yule and Surprise so far. I was wondering about OOPS!

After so many years of drought, maybe we’ll start to catch up. There is a lot of snow in the mountains and we got more rain yesterday. In the late October storm and this series of storms we have alsost more rainfall already than we got all last year. This photo is last night’s total. We had 3” a couple of days ago.

That much rain all at once makes for a mucky mess. Dan made a bridge for my wheelbarrow. This is why farmers don’t throw things away. That structure was one that has been around here for quite awhile—I think we may have got it from a friend when he moved years ago. It’s been the elevated path between the two houses since we had that October rain. Now it’s going to work as a bridge out here.

I looked at this view over the gate this morning and thought that the sheep looked very festive with their red and green markings.

One last photo. This was on Saturday as I was driving home from Sacramento. (Traffic was stopped so I as able to get this photo at no risk.)

2021 Road Trip to Texas - Visiting Family

Its taken me awhile to get back to the Road Trip blog posts, but I know you’re waiting for the next chapter (at least I know of one person who is). As I said in the last blog post we got to Katie’s house just before midnight. We knew that it would be best to leave the goats in the trailer and get them out in their new surroundings the next day.

They were glad to get out of the trailer. The new goat pen and shelter wasn’t finished yet so they went into the fenced area where the dog stays when everyone is gone. They particularly liked the big rocks that line the fence. The grandkids were told that they could each name a goat. Four-year-old, dinosaur loving Kasen named one of them Indominus (we thought of Indie for a nickname). Six-year-old Kirby chose Snowflake for the white yearling. Katie and Kurtis will name the kid.

Who needs rocks when there is a picnic table?

…or a dog house?

I’m glad the goats finally made it to Texas.

They will have good lives with our family there.

Random Farm Photos

The Random Photos posts mean that I don’t have anything very exciting to report or a story to tell but I don’t want to be so neglectful of my blog. So here it is.

I have been updating the lamb pages and needed new photos. This is one of the five ewe lambs that is still for sale. Her number indicates that she was the first lamb born in 2021.

This is a lamb I am going to keep. This is almost the last lamb to be born in mid-March.

Tamarisk is the sire of most of the lambs this year. All the rams are putting on too much weight. They get alfalfa because in our area alfalfa is cheaper than any of the grass hays. But maybe I need to switch to something else even though it will cost more.

The goats are always so helpful when I’m doing chores.

This is Ellie and her daughter from last year.

How about some weaving pictures? After all, the blog is titled Life on the Farm and at the Loom. I finished a custom weaving job of 44 throws woven with Northern CA grown and spun yarn. The customer ordered 200 throws, but I said that I could do 40 of them. This is how the weaving looks still on the loom.

I wove these in two batches. This is the second batch of 22. Fortunately I don’t have to do the wet finishing. Someone else is taking on that task.

This is another project I’m working on. I will devote a whole blog post to this idea when I have more finished but the short story is that this blanket represents the 2020 weather pattern in our area. The colors indicate the high temps for the whole year of 2020. The grays and blues are 40s, 50s and 60s. Green is 70s. Yellow, orange, and red are 80s through 100+. There are two rows for each day of the year.

That first blanket has the color changes in the weft. In this blanket the warp indicates the temperature. I hope to market this idea as a kit to weavers and/or weave custom blankets for people based on a special year and place. I sell this yarn at the shop and on-line.

These are samplers that are woven in the Learn to Weave class. I have the first in-person class in a year and a half scheduled for the first week of July. Participants range from brand-new-never-touched-a loom to people who have some experience but could benefit from instruction on warping, reading drafts, etc.

I weaned 7 lambs a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been taking Ginny in there to practice her herding skills. It only took a few days for the lambs to figure out that when the dog is there they need to be near me. A Border Collie’s natural moves are to “gather” the sheep to the handler rather than chase them. But Ginny has the tendency to be to close and I’m working on the “get out” command.

Some of the rams were aggressive toward her at first but now they respect her a bit more.

Ginny is always ready for a dip after working the lambs.

More About Rusty

It was a week ago that I wrote the blog post that started the story of Rusty’s life here and two weeks since he died. Here are more photos of him the way I like to remember him.

In that last post Ginny was just a baby. As she grew up she became obsessed with The Ball. Rusty never stooped to playing with a ball or toy but he sure liked to chase Ginny when she chased the ball. In fact that was the only thing that perked him up in those last couple of months.

Rusty knew that he had important roles to play when we had school field trips and our spring open house, Meet the Sheep. He had to keep track of the small animals that were not where they belonged (bunnies in this case,)

And a chicken here. I never had to worry about him grabbing one of these animals, but he thought it was very important to watch them.

Another bunny on the loose.

Rusty was always patient during our field trips.

He also paid attention when I warned him to “leave it”.

Rusty took on many roles here but the original idea was that I needed a Border Collie to help with sheep. He was my pathway into learning about sheep herding. He and I went to lessons at Herding 4 Ewe, just a mile from here. He wasn’t the one who needed the lessons but I needed to learn how to help him be successful and develop confidence and how to not get in his way. It certainly helps when starting a dog to use sheep that are already “dog broke”. It is also important to not try and start a dog using ewes with lambs, especially when those ewes have horns.

My sheep were a tough crowd for the dogs, and Ginny didn’t get as much early work as Rusty did, but that’s another story. I am trying to make that up to her now and weaned a group of lambs so that she and I have a group to work with. (That’s also another story and maybe a blog post coming up.)

Rusty excelled at this very important job. That was to keep the rams away from me when I had to do something in their pen.

I could talk about how all work and no play isn’t good. But remember that for a Border Collie the Work is what they want to be doing. Sheep work (or watching bunnies or whatever) will always take priority over anything else. But if we weren’t going to do any sheep work, then going Across the Road was the next best thing for Rusty.

He always watched and chased after Ginny while she focused on the Ball.

I won’t say that Rusty especially liked water but he wasn’t shy about cooling off when he got the chance. And as his hips got more sore over the last several years I think he liked to walk in the parts of the canal where the water was just deep enough to support his body weight.

I think this is the look of a content dog.

Other important jobs included harassing ground squirrels. The chirping under an old wood pile kept the dogs focus for what seemed like hours.

If we weren’t Across the Road then any puddle would do to cool off.

This was taken in 2018. Maggie is now gone, but Finn and Sawyer still live right next door with my son and DIL. That’s Kirby in pink, the granddaughter from Texas.

The pack.

Have you ever seen a Border Collie smile? I never could get a good photo of it but Rusty had a great smile when he was pleased with himself.

Rusty knew that if I was cracking walnuts it was treat time for him. He heard me scooping them out of the bucket and would come choose one.

In the last year I encouraged Rusty to help herd the chickens. He got to use some of his herding skills but wasn’t at risk of being beat up by a ram. He complained about this in his later blog posts (here is one), but I don’t think he really minded.

Rusty really was The Best Dog Ever. We can’t replace him.

Random Farm Photos

Just sharing what I see here. I have things on my mind now that will result in a future blog post. But these photos have been lined up for awhile.

This photo is from this morning after moving to fresh pasture. These paddocks on the east side are are looking so much better after being able to irrigate and then getting warm weather. We didn’t have nearly the normal winter time growth because there was so little rain. It also helps that Dan has been mowing after grazing to take down the stalky parts that are left.

It’s mostly about sheep here but the goats are photogenic. This is how I usually find the goats in the morning. Ellie and her daughter (mostly white) are together and Amelia’s daughter (brown) has now joined the pair because Amelia is distracted by this year’s kids.

Two of Amelia’s triplets that have decided the feeder is really a goat play structure.

This is what my dahlia garden has looked like for a month. The plants finally started sprouting and then they were attacked. I don’t know what is getting them. I put out rolled up newspaper to see if earwigs were there. I put out a game camera (only for one night though) to see if I could catch ground squirrels in action at night. I have sprinkled diatomacous earth around. I don’t know if that is helping but some of the plants look better. The funny thing is that we have this one bed and there are big tractor tires at each end with more plants growing in them. The ones in the tires aren’t eaten as much—does that mean there is some creature that won’t cross the rubber tire?

Speaking of bugs I was sitting outside talking to my daughter on the phone and I noticed movement on the ground. There were dozens (hundreds?) of these bugs.

I checked iNaturalist and Google and I think they are boxelder bugs. They are under the maple trees and locust trees. Maples are listed under the description for these bugs. I have never noticed them before so maybe its something about this year or its just that I don’t usually just sit under a tree and do nothing else. These are redder than the ones I see in the photos but I think it’s because they are the juveniles. When I looked later I found ones with more brown on the back.

This is a selection from my recent ecoprinting. They are for sale in Davis at the Artery and on-line on my website and the Artery website.

This is the AVL loom before I threaded. That’s 50 yards of wool for a custom weaving project.

Its hard to make out the pattern while I’m weaving because the value of the warp and weft are similar and it’s a very open weave structure. After wet finishing the yarn will bloom, the holes will disappear, and the piece will look more like a blanket.

That is about 15 blankets woven so far. After they come off then I need to cut them apart, trim all those threads, and look for errors to fix. Then I need to do it all over again for another 20 blankets.

Ginny in Pink

I was throwing the ball for Ginny a few days ago. She yelped and ran for the house, getting caught on a gate as she went around it. I still don’t know what happened to cause her to yelp—maybe she jumped and landed wrong—something made her run for the house. But it was when she got caught on the gate that she injured herself. I didn’t that she was injured until the next night because her long hair covered the wound.

That was two nights ago that I was petting Ginny and discovered an injury that I knew should have had stitches the day before.

This is a not-very-good photo of the gate that was the problem. The tips of those horizontal pieces stuck out and inch or so longer than they are now. Dan cut them off so they don’t extend beyond the pipe border now.

We took Ginny to the vet and left her for the day. When I picked her up she was wearing a cone.

The actual wound stops about half way down that shaved area and there was a flap of skin and tissue about 2” in diameter near the top.. The bottom part of the red part is drainage from the wound. The vet had to trim away the edges of the wound so that there was fresh tissue to heal together. Now it is stapled and Ginny has to wear the cone so she doesn’t lick the wound. She started to scratch it with her hind foot so I covered it with a t-shirt.

I cut about an inch off the outside edge of the cone because I didn’t think it needed to be quite so big. Now she can reach the floor and her food dish.

Ginny was a bit distraught last night—probably still from the effects of the drugs she had, but also not happy with the cone. Today she seems to have bounced right back. While we were working in the barn she was right there wanting someone to throw a ball.

No running or jumping for 10 days? That may be a problem.

Around the Farm

These are random photos taken around the barn as I’m doing chores.

My sons have a tool to use a chainsaw to make slabs of downed trees. Chris got chunks of oak from a friend whose property burned this summer. These are just some of the slabs that he now has stacked in the barn to dry. He made a gorgeous table out of a tree from a couple of years ago.

The goats are always anxious to help with barn cleaning. These are the two doe kids left from April. I didn’t have the heart to sell them as food animals so they are still here. I’m hoping to still find a way to get them to Texas for my daughter’s family. The pandemic prevented that last summer and fall—maybe this year?

That’s the two adult does in the middle and the two doe kids on the outside. You’d think from the photos that we had a goat farm. No, the goats are just always around when there is activity.

Trista and Hazel looking for attention when I came out to do chores. Hazel isn’t even looking for grain—she truly likes to have her face scratched.

I saw pink debris on the wall of the barn. Do you see the teeth marks on the crayon marker? My guess is rats and not mice because those look like good sized teeth. But maybe both.

This is Meridian Rambler, a 10-month old ram lamb. See a look at his fleece is below.

Ten month old Jangle, another ram lamb. See his fleece below. They will be shorn in about two weeks along with the rest of the flock. I”ll be posting fleeces on-line and give people the opportunity to come look at fleeces in the couple of weeks following shearing.

Have you seen the new roving in the shop and on-line? I don’t think I’ve put it in a newsletter yet. Here is your first view of it.

I am working on creating some slide shows from guild presentations that I used to do in person and now need to do in Zoom. I will be presenting one next week called What’s in My Toolbox?—about weaving tips and techniques.

Here is one tip—using a mirror to check for slack threads when weaving a problem warp.

On yesterday’s walk Across the Road I did not take a ball. But we found one…I’m sure it’s one of ours that was left behind on another walk.

This is typical of all four dogs. Ginny and Finn are looking at the ball. Rusty is looking at Ginny. Sawyer isn’t watching but if anyone makes a move for the ball she will be right there.

The Most Dangerous Things on the Farm

It’s been almost two months since I wrote a blog post and I never did finish the story of our Colorado road trip. But there were extenuating circumstances and that’s what this post is about. I has taken me this long to be able to figure out accessing my photos and the blog part of my website. I hope that this is just the jump start to get me going again.

When you think about the most dangerous things on the farm there a number of things that could come to mind: runaway tractor? Mean rams?

How about this one?

Or this? Nope. This is not a poisonous snake. And the dog is pretty gentle too.

I want to include some fun photos before I go back to the scary stuff. Isn’t this a fabulous Jacob sweater? My friend, Kathleen spun yarn and knit the sweater especially to fit me and I was going to wear it o the big sheep and wool festival in Rhinebeck New York in the fall. We never made it there because f my injury. At least I have the sweater and I look forward to when I’ll be able to wear it.

This is a Learn to Weave class I taught at Fiber Circle Studio not long befoe the accident.

I guess I was going to write a blog post about breeding season. This is a new marker replacing on that was used up in the harness that the ram wears so you can monitor breeding progress.

Back to the scary stuff. This looks like just a regular stack of alfalfa with a few bales missing. But it’s not as innocent as it seems. It was a stack like this, although complete, that I fell off of in mid-Ocotber. Well, it was either the stack or the ladder that was leaning on it. We’ll never know because I don’t remember. I climbed up to throw a few bales down to feed and because I like to see the view from something tall (living in the flat land). These stack are 80 bales and each bale i 95-100 pounds. My husband found me on the ground unconcious. Unfortunately the stack was on concrete instead of soft mud or sand. I underwent surgery to remove part of my skull to reelease the pressure of the brain swelling. So this photo was taken after I was out of the hospital a month later. I was in a coma for 3-4 weeks at the hospital. The helmet if a snowboarding helmet that replaced the hospital-issued helmet that rubbed in a lot of places. I have a red cotton cap between my head and the helmet. This was to protect the half-grapefruit size hold in the skull where the skull piece had been removed. I douldn’t go anywhere/do anything without the helmet becuase the brain was not protected. In reality I couldn’t go anywhere/do anything anyway. That photo was on one of my few trips to the barn

Farm Club filled in a lot. After I came home they gathered a few times to do barn work and help in the shop.

It is wonderful having such a great group of people to support me.

Fast forward (slow forward ) to February 6. That was the day that the skull plate was to be put back in. First it had to get to the hospital. There are storage facilities for such things and I heard that my skull part was in Kentucky. Then I heard Virginia. We showed up at the hopsital after all the pre-op stuff on the morning of the 6th to find that my bone was on an airplane that was stuck in Georgia. So we came back the next day for surgery.

This attractive iimage was taken the following day I think. Those are ice bags under the net. I was in the hospital for only a few days and thankfully was allowed to go home early the next week.

Another view that show where they cut through the initial scar and lifted my scalp all the way up to slide the bone in. They anchored the bone with titatium plates and screws and then stapled the skin.

This is how it looks otday, 2 weeks after the second surgery. I go in tomorrow to get the staples out.

So this has been a long 4-1/2 months. I am much better after the second surgery than after the first and hopefully will get clearance to do a little more activity than I’ve had this whole time. i mean lambing starts in a day or two and it’s snot easy to think of siting in the house waiting for my husband or son to report in. I just don’t want to do it that way. But the next thing I have to overcome is a frozen shoulder. That is likely a result of being in a coma with no movement of the arm. It’s very hard to think that I could be released to walk aaround and get to the barn but that I can’t use my arm. Frozen shoulder is very painful and the only way to get over it is to tear up the adhesions in the shoulder joint—excercises which I’m trying to do but I think I need more guidance/PT support first.

Thanks for catching up with my blog. Maybe I’ll all least be able to keep up with this—although I can’t use my big camera very well rifht now and I can’t walk around among the sheep because I’m still working on balance issues.