Wildflowers in Northern California

Last week we explored a place that was new to us. Dan had ridden his bike through this area in the Wildflower Century in past years, but had seen it only from the road. This is North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve, 3300 acres owned by the state, 3 miles north of Oroville. The state purchased the land to preserve the unique Northern Basalt Flow Vernal Pools and the rare species of plants that grow here.

There is a parking area but people were already parking along the road because the lot was full. We parked along the road and walked to the Reserve. This was our first view of the spectacular wildflower display and this wasn’t even part of the Reserve.

I am so used to visiting National or State Parks that have complete visitor centers and well-defined trails that I was surprised to discover that there are lands accessible to us that are not part of the park systems. There were a few signs that indicated the direction and distance to a few waterfalls (surprising to me in this area) but no other interpretive signs.

I read later that this area has been grazed by cattle for at least 45 years and that grazing is part of the current management strategy to help control non-native species and maintain the ecology of the area.

This is one of two panoramic shots I created.

There were great swathes of purple and yellow and orange. These are lupines and I’m not sure which yellow flower this is—Great Valley Buttercup or Goldfields? I’ll need to pay better attention next time I’m there instead of assuming that I’ll remember each flower in my photos.

Lupines and I think poppies and popcorn flower.

Purple Owl’s Clover.

Poppies, but I can’t tell you which poppy—there is more than one on the list of wildflower species that occur here.

Sierra Mock Stone Crop. This flower seemed to be growing right out of the rocks—certainly with minimal soil to sustain it.

This one is called Dark-stained Prettyface.

Purple owl’s clover and poppies

The flowers are beautiful individually and close-up, but what looks at what you see at a distance:

It was a suprise to me that there are several waterfalls here, short-lived as they are in this climate, especially with the minimal amount of rainfall that we’ve had this year. I don’t suppose the will last long this year.

We plan to return here before the flowers disappear this spring.

Around the Farm and More Sheep Adventures

We irrigated last week and for a time had our own private wetlands complete with a small flock of Canada geese. Now the pasture is dry but I have heard a lot of honking the last few days. I think this goose was calling his mate.

He eventually flew off…

…but not far. Just into the pasture.

Together.

A Jacob breeder who lives about 2 hours from here wanted to buy the ram, Jasper, and I offered to deliver him. The wether (who happens to be one of the few sheep I am trying to keep coated to keep his fleece free of VM) went along for the ride. It seemed as though it would be less stressful for Jasper to not be completely alone in the trailer. Also we were delivering a ram for Jasper’s buyer to a location that was on our way home.

The horns on this wether are the main reason that he was castrated as a lamb. Most of the rams that don’t meet certain standards will go to the butcher market but this one lucked out and his job is to be a companion to any sheep that needs a buddy.

We drove north and eventually had a clear view of Mt. Shasta. The north wind was incredibly strong that day—so strong that our truck struggled heading due north and pulling the trailer. Time for a new truck?

Jasper ended up in a nice place—a large field and a bunch of ewes. What more would a ram want?

Back home, this is my entertainment every evening.

People have asked why the lambs run and i don’t know. They just do. It’s a Lamb Flashmob. If I’m still in the barn I hear them thundering past.

They run for 15 minutes or so and then they give it up and go find mom or get some hay.

We delivered Jasper on Friday and Axle went to a new home the day before. That left Tamarisk by himself so we put a wether in with him. Today we moved the yearlings, Rambler and Jangle, into the grown up ram pen where there will now be three. We started with a small pen and included a bale of straw as an impediment. There isn’t much space but the idea is that they will figure out who is boss without the major damage that could happen if they were able to back up and charge each other. The wether is still in the ram pen but not forced to be in with the others while they battle it out. Hopefully after a few days they will be BFFs. I assume that Tamarisk, the older ram, will be the boss of the other two.

Lambing Finale

I am a few days late on this post because the last lambs were born on Friday and it is now Monday.

This is Meridian Roca, a yearling (born 3/4/2020) with the last lamb of the season. She delivered easily the evening of 3/26 and was a great mother from the start.

Meridian Foxy is a 6 year old lilac (coloring of gray/brown instead of black) ewe with a small (5.4 pounds) ewe lamb born early that morning. I had given up on Foxy and decided that she wasn’t pregnant even though an ultrasound showed that she was. I thought that maybe she had aborted. I had been keeping the last three pregnant ewes in a separate area but had just turned Foxy out with the rest of the ewes the night before. She surprised me with this lamb the next morning.

This is Cashew, another yearling, with her ewe lamb born on 3/23.

I may want to keep this little ewe lamb. However there are plenty of others I’d like to keep too. Decisions…

I like to keep track of lambing stats. If you look at my lambing board you will see that lambing began 2/20 with twins, six days before the first “official” due date. There was a breather of a few days and then they started coming on 2/24. There were 84 lambs born in 19 days with a high of 12 lambs born on March 1. Lamb # 86 was born 3-14 and then a gap of nine days before the last three. The lambs are color coded for ram/ewe (not very creative here, but I need something easy to remember). The birth weights are as accurate as I can be, but if I find the lamb already up and nursing who’s to say how many ounces of milk it has already had?

I “process” lambs usually the next day or maybe two after birth. They get a BOSE injection (selenium and vitamin E), a tail band, ear tags, and maybe a band for wethering. With the Jacob ram lambs it’s impossible to know at birth if they will grow up with symmetrical balanced horns (if 4 horns) or wide spread (if 2 horns). So I don’t want to castrate most of them because I’m always waiting for that perfect ram to be born but I won’t know until it’s grown for several months. However, I can tell if they are too light or dark in color to be an acceptable registered ram. The Breed Standard allows for 15%-85% color. If a ram lamb is outside that limit then I will band him to castrate. Those wethers may be sold as fiber pets or as ram companions, or for butcher. There will be another blog post coming up about the color analysis part.

We use two ear tags for each lamb. The first ear tag is preprinted with the ID # which includes the birth year. This years lamb #’s begin with 21. Ewes have that ear tag in the left ear and rams in the right ear. The second tag is color coded by sire and I have written in the ID number. This year I used up a variety of leftover tags but next year I need to start by buying new ones. The gray tags I used are too close in value to the white to easily differentiate. In the lower right corner of the Lamb Board I have my reminder of the colors.

Tamarisk lambs have orange ear tags.

Jasper’s are gray.

There are only a handful of Axle and Rambler lambs and those are red and yellow.

Anywhere you see a X P on the lamb board that means that Peyton, a Bluefaced Leicester, is the sire. The BFL-cross lambs are black so they don’t need a special ear tag to tell me who they are. The colored tags are useful not only for identifying sires, but as a back-up if the original ID tag is lost. It is also helpful to know which color to look for when I am trying to find a particular lamb—the colors narrow the search down a bit.

Ears is a BFL cross herself . She was bred to Peyton so her triplets are 3/4 BFL. The other adult crossbred ewe in the flock is Addy but Peyton is her sire and she was bred to a Jacob ram.

This sometimes seems like an overwhelming number of lambs but so far they are all doing well.

The ewes are hard at work raising all these lambs.

To finish out the stats:
89 Live lambs born, 1 long-dead twin delivered along with a live lamb. One tiny (3.4 lb) lamb died before 24 hrs..
44 rams and 45 ewes
2 triplet births = 6 lambs
36 twin births = 71 lambs (plus the dead fetus)
12 single births (including 3 yearlings)
Average weight of 73 purebred Jacob lambs: 8 lbs (Low = 3.4 and high = 10.6)
Average weight of 16 BFL X Jacob lambs: 9.5 lbs (Low = 7.4 and high = 12.8)

Shearing at the Timm Ranch 2021

This is the sixth year that I have purchased wool from the nearby Timm Ranch on their shearing day. Here is an example of the yarn that is spun from the wool and there is a little bit of info about the ranch and the flock at that link.

We were so lucky with the weather. The shearing had already been postponed because of potential rain and if there had been the north wind as the day before it would not have been nearly as pleasant.

The sheep are what I call a ranch blend of Rambouillet, Polypay, and Targhee, all fine wool breeds.

There are not individual sheep of those breeds, as the ranch has raised their own replacements for quite awhile.

I’m glad that so many Farm Club members were able to help because there were two shearers working and we needed to keep up with them.

As a fleece was shorn Alan took it from the shearers and put it on a tarp near the skirting tables.

After the first few years of working at the shearing we figured out that we’d better bring canopies or we’d be in the sun the whole day. It was looking very festive here—the canopies cover three skirting tables.

We kept up the safety protocol and everyone wore masks. Some of the Farm Club members had been to this shearing in previous years and it was new for others. Susan, Marina, Kimber are in this photo (I think that I’m able to see who is behind the mask.)

Teresa and Doris are here.

Beth, Carol, and Sylvia.

Thanks for this photo, Doris. I am in this one.

At a commercial shearing operation, the classes and skirters have seconds to spend with each fleece if they hope to keep up with the shearing when 6 or 7 shearers are working. We are a lot slower. The reason is that I feel compelled to send wool that is as free of VM (vegetable matter) and other faults as possible. When we skirt we remove any part of the fleece that isn’t up to a chosen standard. We pull off wool from around the edges where there is going to be more debris or felting, wool with paint markings, wool that has more VM, and wool that may be tender (brittle) or short. The huge mills have processes that deal with VM chemically: Carbonising is a continuous process which combines scouring to remove the wool grease and a chemical process which removes vegetable matter such as seeds, burs and grass. Carbonising occurs if the greasy wool contains a high percentage of vegetable matter (%VM), typically in excess of 2% to 3%. There is more info at this link. My wool is going to a mill that doesn’t do that process so it is important to send only wool that is as clean as possible.

I also needed to keep track of how much wool we had because I needed to meet a minimum of 200 pounds for the mill where I’m sending this wool. So after skirting fleeces we filled bags to be weighed. After recording the weight the wool was piled on a tarp to be baled at the end. The reason that we had to keep up with the shearers is that they brought the wool press with them. They would press our wool and any that we didn’t take into bales before they left. It was important to not have to stuff this pile into bags and boxes, but to get it into a bale for shipment.

Much of the ranch property burned in the devastating LNU Complex fire last summer, but the buildings at this location were spared, probably because the sheep graze the 80 acres that is right around the headquarters.

They were certainly lucky that these old barns didn’t burn.

Our pile got to 230 pounds as the shearers were finishing. They dragged it over to the wool press.

Farm Weekend

This is random photos taken over this weekend. Lambing is almost over and the lambs are growing fast.

This is Fandango and her twins.

Ears and her triplets. Ears is a 50:50 Jacob:BFL and the lambs are 25:75.

Dan burned the huge pile of brush and tree branches this weekend. He had been waiting for some rain to dampen everything else around and then we lucked out that rain followed the burn to help cool it down. That’s what’s left of the burn pile in the foreground and he has started to made rows out of the manure compost pile. We’re hoping that if we spread it out what little rain we get will help to dampen it thoroughly enough so that it will actual compost.

The burn pile is next to the ram pen and I saw Tamarisk a couple of times lying in positions that didn’t look quite right. Usually sheep sleep propped up on their chests. Maybe his horns just get too heavy to hold up and then he uses them as head-rests.

When you are at the ram pen you can’t help but notice how they have destroyed the fence. This is a double fence with welded wire panels on T-posts on the ram side and the electric fence on fiberglass poles on the ewe side. Those welded wire panels are stout but the rams have bent them into a mangled mess. We have bent these back into shape as much as possible, but this fence needs more work before breeding season comes around again.

Yesterday I noticed bird calls that I hadn’t heard before, and lots of them. There was quite a racket and I had never heard that many annoyed or angry birds before. I thought that some were crows but I couldn’t figure out if the rest were nesting birds trying to warn others away or what I was hearing. I told Dan that it would be a good background if someone wanted to make a jungle movie. I took my binoculars out and still couldn’t find the birds. I sent a recording to a birder friend of mine and she identified what I was hearing.

At first I thought the birds were in our trees along the fenceline, but then I realized that the sound was coming from the new almond orchard to the north. You can barely see through the trees and I hadn’t noticed it at first. It’s the elusive Soundtrack Bird.

Here is a clear view of it. That is a solar panel on a pole with a speaker above. They have two stations where they are playing recordings of a variety of birds. I’ve been doing some checking on line and found that birds can cause thousands of dollars of damage to orchards. Most of what I read talks about the damage later in the season but I suppose that since the almonds just finished flowering maybe they are trying to protect the newly forming almonds. One site said this: “Bird Gard harnesses the power of the natural survival instincts in birds to effectively repel them. Digital recordings of species-specific distress and alarm calls, along with the sounds made by their natural predators, are broadcast through high fidelity, weather-resistant speakers. These trigger a primal fear-and-flee response. Pest birds soon relocate to where they can feed without feeling threatened.”

We had no idea that is what we were hearing. I guess I was sort of right when I said that it sounded like a movie soundtrack. However I was thinking Amazon rainforest, not Vacaville almond orchard. It is a bit unsettling to be in the barn and hear this continually, although as Dan pointed out, it’s better than the cannon bursts that we hear in the fall when the crop is ready to pick.

The pasture seems to be a bit smaller now that all these lambs are out there. We’re sure hoping for some measurable rain with this storm. We need to keep this grass growing.

Those are triplet BFL-x lambs with their mom Jillian.

This is Foxy, one ewe who is still pregnant. Foxy and two ewe lambs are the only ones left to lamb and they are due in about a week.

Belle is the ewe my granddaughter showed as a lamb in 2019. This is her first lambing and she had twins. So this ewe lamb is my 6-year-old granddaughter’s lamb, and she wants to name her Beauty (in a Disney princess theme). She is the only one of the all the Jacob lambs born that doesn’t have the typical spotting pattern on her body but that’s OK—we’ll keep her anyway. Hopefully there will be a show where Kirby can take Beauty next summer.

Amelia and Ellie, the goats who both kidded last year. Amelia on the left is the only one who will kid this year—not until April.

The two adult goats on either side and the daughers in the middle. My hope is that we can get those two to Texas this year for my daughter’s family to raise.

To end on a sheep picture, this is Janna and her ram lamb.

Still Lambing

In my system the sheep lamb in the barn (or are taken to the barn shortly after lambing if they were outside. After two or three days in a lambing pen (jug) I move a group of two or three ewes and their lambs to a stall in the horsebarn part of our barn. I think that gives the lambs time to realize that it is important to stick close to their own mom and it gives the ewes time to not worry so much about other lambs bothering them. The ewes can be somewhat aggressive to other lambs and the lambs figure out that it’s better to avoid the other ewes. After a few days they all mellow out and don’t really care anymore.

This time in the stall also gives me a chance to keep a better eye on each ewe and lamb so hopefully I can be aware of any problem that arises. After a few days in the stall they the ewes and lambs go into an area of the barn that is separate from the pregnant ewe area. As more lambs are born, the pregnant side gets smaller and the lamb and mom side gets bigger.

Right now the ewes and lambs have access to the green field that is behind my weaving studio/shop and that gives the lambs a controlled environment in which to learn about the electric fence. The pregnant ewes are on the main pasture. I wrote in one of the last posts how unusually this is because usually when we lamb it is wet and soggy on the pasture and behind the barn there is a lake. That is why I developed this system of where we lamb and how we move the sheep through the first couple of weeks. Wishful thinking that we will get some rain and we can count on that to grow some more grass!

This post has changed focus from whatever I had planned when I started two nights ago to random photos of lambing season. I guess I got distracted and too tired and didn’t get back to it until now. That is Fandango who lambed two days ago. She is one of the oldest ewes here—lambed with twins.

The ewes and lambs that are out of the barn are on the small field behind my shop. This is Jillian and her BFL-X triplets. I never registered Jillian because of lack of color and face markings but she has nice fiber so I kept her. I choose to breed the few ewes that aren’t registered to the BFL ram.

This one is a 3/4 BFL cross. He has the BFL ears.

A yearling ewe named Trina and her lamb.

It’s too late to finish writing much here so I’m going to end tonight with a couple of lamb photos and some daffodils. More tomorrow.

More Lambing Photos

I am not used to pasture lambing. In a Normal Year the pasture would be wet from November through February or March. It’s hard to remember Normal Years, although the last couple were close. In those Normal Years we lambed in the barn and corral areas because the sheep aren’t on the pasture during those months. This is flat land so water doesn’t drain away—it has to percolate through the soil, and there is a clay layer here so if there is a lot of water it can stay on top for a long time. In those Normal Years, it would be mid-March to April when we put the sheep out and there are plenty of annual grasses and forbs to feed them while we’re waiting for the perennial clovers and trefoil to really start growing well. The last couple of years seemed close to normal at least compared to those previous several years of drought. So it seems strange to me to have lambs in the pasture right now and my managment is set up more for barn lambing.

On Saturday afternoon all the sheep came to the barn except for Alice who had two lambs in the farthest paddock. I needed to get them to the barn. I had to get Dan to help with this becuase Alice was too frantic if I picked up both lambs to carry them and one of them was not on it’s feet yet.

This is the view I am always checking to figure out who is going to go next and be able to put those ewes in while they are in labor. Its actually more about behavior in combination with the physical appearance.

When I went to the barn yesterday morning Ears had one lamb. She delivered two more shortly. These are BFL-X lambs and big (7.4, 10.4, and 12.8 lbs). That’s 30 pounds of lambs!

Jasmine was next with twins. I found myself mutli-tasking here. I had an upcoming Zoom class at 9 so I had arranged to Zoom with my grandkids at 8:30. I took Zoom to the barn with me and they watched one of these being born while I was trying to also watch what they were showing me.

Those lambs cleaned up nicely.

So did Ears’ lambs.

Trina was next that morning. She is just one year old right now and she had only one lamb, which is expected for a yearling.

That brings us to this morning. I’ve been watching Raquel and even put her in the night before. Her due date was a few days ago, she is an old sheep, and she has had triplets more than once, so I wanted to keep an eye on her. She had one lamb when I went out at 5:30. We now have a couple of barn cameras and I checked the camera when I woke and thought that maybe I saw something. While I was waiting for the second I walked out in back.

The ewes are usually bedded down, but they thought they were maybe getting an early breakfast so started getting up when I walked back there.

This is a common site, Amelia and her daughter from last year are often lying together.

So are Ellie and her daughter.

In the very back there was a ewe with two lambs. I was able to carry one and the ewe and other lamb followed.

Terri lambed in the afternoon. This is the first but she eventually had another. Look at those horns! These are number 26 and 27.

There is the views from the barn cameras on my iPad from earlier today. I’m heading back now because I have 3 ewes in the pens in labor.

LAMBS!

Lambing seems off to a slow start. Usually the barn is full a few days after the first lamb is born, but not this year. The first due date I had marked on my calendar was today, February 26.

The first lambs were born February 20 - a set of twins to Zinnia and sired by the ram we picked up in Oregon, Ruby Peak Tamarisk.

Here is how that little yellow lamb looked today, 6 days later.

Four days later I checked the barn in between Zoom meetings and found this scene. Two ewes and two lambs. Upon closer inspection I knew that only one of these ewes had lambed. Ginger is the one on the left and these twins were hers. But Dilly was in early labor and sometimes the ewe’s hormones take over and they are anxious to mother a baby. Can you see how confusing it could be for the shepherd to sort out lambs? This is why I think it is important to keep checking the barn and when I think a ewe is in labor I separate her. These are two experienced moms but if there is a young ewe involved she might completely lose track of her lamb if an older pushier ewe intervenes. Even with these two if I’d been there an hour later I might not have known which lambs belonged to which ewes.

This is Ginger with her twins, sired by Axle. There are photos of the sires on the Ram Page.

Dilly had her own lambs but then Ginger thought maybe they were hers. You have to realize that this desire to claim lambs from another ewe doesn’t last long. In fact not long after this Ginger was hitting the fence when those other lambs got too close. It’s only possible to get an orphan lamb grafted onto another ewe with a lot of work and skill (and luck) involved.

One of Dilly’s twins.

Later that night (actually the next morning at 12:30 a.m.) Anise lambed with twins. The black lambs are crossbreds sired by Peyton, the BFL ram. See his photo on the Ram Page

This morning Betty lambed. There is another reason I like to get these ewes into the lambing pen before they lamb.

The lamb on the right is that one in the photo above after Betty got her cleaned up. The one on the left is how they look if they are delivered in a clean pen.

So my goal every time I go to the barn is to figure out which of these ewes is the next to lamb.

Kirby's Blanket

This is Belle, a 2 year old lilac ewe. Lilac is this color in Jacob sheep that is kind of a gray-brown instead of black. She is pregnant and due to lamb in a about a week. What is special about Belle—at least any more special than any of the other sheep? She is owned by my granddaughter, Kirby.

Way back in 2019 when we all had normal lives, Kirby’s family came from their home in Texas to spend a couple of weeks in the summer. I had selected a lamb to register in Kirby’s name and I got her gentled down before the family got here. This is the story and photos of Kirby coming to the State Fair and showing her lamb.

This is one of my all time favorite photos. Kirby was thrilled to win a pink ribbon! What color is better than pink when you are a 5-year old girl?

I wish I had photos of Belle being shorn and of her fleece. Instead the story will fast forward to fall, 2020. I spun Belle’s fleece, shorn in February 2020, during our weekly Farm Club spinners meeting on Zoom.

I had decided that I would weave a blanket for Kirby to send her for Christmas.

I gave up the idea of spinning all the yarn for the blanket because I just didn’t have time and I knew that the Timm Ranch yarn I use for many of my other blankets would be just fine for warp. I wanted a generously sized blanket so I warped for a double width piece.

I wove random stripes of the handspun brown and the mixed white yarn.

I shipped this blanket on December 14 with plenty of time to arrive before Christmas. However, I made an error in one digit of the zip code. There is a long story to follow, most of which I have forgotten now, and that’s a good thing. I got a message from FedEx that the package could not be delivered. I think it had ended up in a small town in Texas not that far from where it was supposed to go. I corrected the zip code and supposedly all was well. But it wasn’t. I spent countless hours on-line and on the phone trying to track down this blanket and get it sent to the right address. Katie offered to pick it up at a FedEx office, but I was told that wasn’t going to work. The blanket was eventually shipped to Tenessee (FedEx center of some kind) and then to Mississippi to what is called “Overgoods”. It turns out that is a depository for packages they don’t know how to handle or that are lost. The tracking information kept saying that it had been delivered and signed for. I had to insist that it was not delivered to the intended recipient. I eventually worked my way up the management ladder and found that the only way to get the package out of Overgoods was for me to set up an account and request the package.

I did that and eventually got the package back here in California on January 12. This is how it looked. I shipped it back to Texas via good old U.S. Mail.

Kirby has been using the blanket on her bed, but I asked Katie to get some photos so they went outside.

We have all heard about the extreme weather in Texas last week so I think the wool blanket came in handy. Kirby is looking forward to Belle’s lambs and has asked me if she can name them.

It's Time for The Lambing Game

This post will be a little different. I haven’t chosen what I think are my best photos but instead it’s a bunch of photos of sheep rear ends. If you are a Farm Club member you will understand. It’s at this time before lambing that I offer the Lambing Game—a way to test your sheep knowledge and observation skills (really, it’s mostly luck). Farm Club members have a list of breeding dates and potential lambing dates. Based on those dates and these photos I ask people to tell me which of the ewes pictured will lamb first. Tie-breaker 1: The exact date. Tie-breaker 2: How many lambs? Tie-breaker 3: What time on your chosen date? There will be a prize—I just don’t know what yet. I chose to post these photos here so that I don’t fill up the FC members’ emails with lots of photos. Besides maybe the rest of you will be interested to find out what happens. Remember that lambing isn’t due to start until 2/26, but as in people, due dates aren’t exact.

I took photos for this game a couple of days ago and before I could get them posted, this ewe, Zinnia lambed—6 days early. So these lambs are 2 days old already. The rest of the photos in this post were taken this morning.

Anise. I’ll also say here that I just wandered around taking photos of sheep that seem to be bagging up. I did not find all the 15 ewes that are due by March 1 and some of these have dates for after that. Hey, it’s just a game!

Fandango

Alice.

Dimitri

Ginger.

Dilly.

Hilda.

Ears.

Jade

Raquel.

So that’s it for this first game of the season. Now you know what I do when I go out looking at sheep…like I’m going to do now for the 11 p.m. check.

Colusa Wildlife Refuge

On Monday we drove to Yuba City (an hour away) where I had been able to schedule a COVID vaccine appointment at the CVS pharmacy. We made the most of the day be combining the appointment with a visit to the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge. I have driven past the wildlife refuges along I-5 for years but have never stopped and now I want to make sure that we go visit all of them. These can be mini-road-trips in a year when we may not be able to take a real road trip.

I wish I’d had my camera nearby for the whole drive. I think we passed up a lot of interesting views, but I had my camera ready when we drove past this barn.

There are five refuges in the Sacramento National Wildife Refuge system (dark green on this map) and there is also a state refuge which is not shown here. Maybe we’ll make it to another when we go back to CVS for our second vaccination.

The first bird we saw was a Greater White-fronted Goose.

There is a 3-mile auto tour and a short walking trail. We started with the walk, some of which was blocked off.

You aren’t supposed to get out of the car on the auto tour route, but there is a parking lot and observation platform at the beginning of it. There seemed to be a greater density of birds at this location than later on.

I had to do most of my bird ID after I got home and could look at my photos with my bird books in hand. Feel free to correct my IDs if they are wrong.

Snow Goose or Ross’ Goose? We couldn’t decide if the brownish face on many of the white geese was the natural coloring or staining from poking around in the mud. But one of my bird books shows that tan face on the Snow Goose photo.

On the other hand the book described the Ross’ Goose with a smaller pink bill. Is that what I see here?

It’s a challenge to identify birds when this is the view.

Or this view.

I figured out that the last one was a Northern Pintail after I identified the bird in this photo.

Northern Shoveler.

Greater White-fronted Goose.

American Coot.

I had a hard time matching this one up to what is in my books. The curved bill and coloring have me leaning toward the White-face Ibis, but I don’t see a white face. Maybe some other Ibis?

Great Blue Heron.

I was surprised to see the crowd of birds roosting.

I finally figured out that they are Black-crowned Night Herons. The description in the books fit as does the statement that they roost in trees during the day.

I look forward to getting the second vaccine for more than one reason. Hopefully we can fit in a trip to another refuge before we start to feel any disagreeable side effects from the vaccine.

What's Keeping Me Busy

This is a post with no theme other than the snippets (is that a word?) of all the stuff I’ve been doing.

I got my second batch of the 2020 Jacob fiber back as yarn. The first batch of 2020 wool was spun at Valley Oak Mill and is listed here. This batch is from Mendocino Wool Mill and is listed here. It always take me a little while to figure out how to best present it for sale. I had some put on cones and some in skeins. The yarn on the cones appears to be so much finer than the skeined yarn but it’s the same yarn—it is just under more tension when wound on a cone. I wondered how much the skeined yarn would bloom when washed. That information is important to know when you are planning a project. Whether you are going to knit, crochet, or weave with the yarn you need to know what will happen to the piece when it is washed.

I washed a white and a black skein to see what would happen. In this case washing just means soaking in hot water and then hanging to dry. This is four skeins of yarn. Can you tell the difference in the yarns on the outside and in the middle? The middle ones have not had any treatment. The outside skeins have been washed and the character is very different.

One way to measure the change is by looking at wraps per inch (wpi) before and after. In this case the black yarn measured 14 wpi before washing and 10 wpi after. If you don’t allow for this post-washing change then you may be surprised at how the finished piece looks and behaves. I will wash all the skeins before labeling them.

Another test before selling the yarn is how it actually works in use. I wove scarves of each batch of yarn to compare them and to determine the best sett (spacing of the yarns on the loom). I tried each at 8 epi (ends per inch) and 10 epi.

I photographed these so that the light was behind and you can kind of see the spaces between the yarns. Those spaces are nothing like when the scarves were still on the loom with the yarn under tension. When you cut the piece off the loom the yarns relax and they further relax and “bloom” when fulled in hot water. This photo shows 2 scarves from each batch of yarn at 2 setts each. All four turned out great and even though the yarns appear different, it’s hard to tell the difference in these finished pieces. I look forward to using these yarns in some much larger projects next.

By the way I put these scarves on three different websites—here on my own, on the Fibershed Marketplace and the Artery webstore, all the while carefully keeping track of which one is where so I don’t take a chance on double-selling them.

Another project I’m working on is recording some videos for the Learn to Weave class using the rigid heddle loom. I am going to teach this on Zoom next week and I want videos for students to refer to when we’re not on Zoom. I warped the rigid heddle loom with all four of those new Jacob colors and wove a short scarf while recording most of it. I haven’t wet finished the scarf yet, or edited the videos. (Thanks for reminding me.)

I also finished another v-shawl. This is another thing on my list of things to do. I want to put together a kit for this shawl and give options for the stripe design. I’ve woven several. I just need to get the instructions put together and figure out the best way to present it. I just added this shawl to the Artery web store along with one of the pinwheel scarves.

I still have a barn full of fleeces. I spent some time yesterday working on those. I only have two full fleeces listed on the website so far, but I have listed several 1-pound batches for people who would like to start with raw wool but not start out with a whole fleece. I am skirting, sorting, and photographing. Raw wool is listed here.

Here is another example. In the meantime I want to get my hands in this and start working with it myself. There are some really gorgeous fleeces here.

I said this was a bunch of random photos. So far it is all about wool and weaving and the things I need to do. So let’s get random. Dan saw me weaving and my weaving slippers reminded him of the Bernie mittens that have been popping up all over the internet.

How about springtime flowers? It’s not spring yet, but the daffodils are here.

So are the almond flowers.

I don’t usually have the patience to scour the wool in locks even though it would save a lot of time at the other end of processing. I pulled out some locks that had more VM (vegetable matter) than I would like. I’m going to see how clean I can get them with flicking after washing. That will go much faster if they are already organized.

How about some goats? These are mothers with last year’s daughters. That’s Ellie and her daughter on the left and Amelia with hers on the right. Amelia is pregnant again.

One last random photo. The redbud is going to bloom soon. Hope springs eternal! And we’re getting our Covid vaccines Monday—have to drive an hour for it but I finally tracked it down.

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.

Shearing Day 2021 - Part 2

I wrote a post about Shearing Day a couple of days ago but there was more!

There were photos of Ginny and Oakley (the shearer’s dog) in the last post. Rusty even wanted to play. Not bad for an almost 15 year old dog.

The last post ended up with a lunch break. (Too bad we couldn’t have the fabulous potluck that has happened in other years.) I had brought a friend’s sheep here to dry out and stay dry so they could also be shorn. They were the after-lunch group.

We were amused by this sheep’s fluffy hairdo.

I watched this sheep butt others with her horns and she must have been doing that earlier to come in with this look.

Farm Club members helped clean the barn after we finished shearing, and they valiantly braved the lake to dump the wheelbarrow loads.. This is what happens after only 2” of rain.

They also spent time looking through fleeces.

After finishing with all the sheep I like to take some photos of how they look without fleece.

This is Sheila.

Meridian Axle.

Ruby Peak Tamarisk, on the left, is the sheep I picked up this summer in Oregon (blog post here). Meridian Jasper is on the right.

Rocky is a wether whose only job is to be a buddy sheep when I need to move someone else (usually a ram) into separate quarters.

Peyton is the BFL ram who weighed in that morning at 281 pounds!

Farm Club members took some of the fleeces but there are still a lot left.

Shearing Day 2021 - Part 1

Shearing Day was 5 days ago on 1/29. I can’t believe that I haven’t shared photos yet. I often think in terms of photos and blog posts, but they don’t always make it to the computer. The first post I meant to write was about getting ready for Shearing Day.

Tuesday night the area was hit with a wild storm and huge winds. On Wednesday we drove to a friend’s farm about 5 miles away to bring her sheep to our place so they would be dry for shearing. We now know how many sheep we can put in our trailer—that would be 20 in full fleece. The sheep were soaked but by bringing them here they had a chance to dry out and our shearer added them on after shearing our sheep..

Tuesday night our power went out and stayed out for almost 24 hours and we were luckier than many to be out of only that long, especially since I didn’t think John would want to hand shear 88 sheep.

Wednesday morning I got the barn organized for shearing. I found the plywood we save for shearing next to the stack of straw. It looks as though last year someone labeled it so that it wouldn’t be cut up and used for something else before this year. Good idea.

We started with the rams. This is 2 year old Jasper.

Shearing Day is usually an Open House and we have a lot of visitors and fleece buyers. This pandemic year was an exception, but I was glad that some Farm Club members could come and help. In fact they did most of the work of moving sheep and handing them off to John.

Sheep-eye-view of the holding pen.

The whole day went so smoothly. Everyone had a job and knew what to do. The few brand new Farm Club members jumped right in as well and the “old-timers” showed them what to do and talked about handling sheep.

John sheared 8 rams and wethers and then moved onto the ewes.

Mary scooped the fleeces off the shearing board and her husband, Russ, held the bag open for the fleece.

Kathleen was happy to do her regular job of weighing fleeces.

As usual Ginny entertained herself with the ball. This time she put the ball through the fence where John was shearing, hoping that someone would throw it for her. This time John’s dog, Oakley, picked it up and they both ran off.

Later Oakley found a piece of horn which I think he liked better than the ball.

John sheared all 68 of our sheep and then took a break before shearing the my friend’s 20 sheep.

While John ate lunch we held a raffle that was open to those members who had renewed their membership. We raffled off the shawls that our Meridian Jacobs teams had woven at 2019 Black Sheep Gathering and 2020 Lambtown Sheep-to-Shawl contests. It was fitting that Marina won the shawl woven by the team she was on in 2019. Two other members who couldn’t be at shearing will pick up the Lambtown shawl and another that I wove as a sample before the Lambtown competition.

The ram lamb (almost a year), Rambler and his wether buddy in the background. Remember this look—you’ll never see him this white again.

Stay tuned for more shearing photos tomorrow!

Just Like Old Times...and Sheep Photos

It’s been a year since Farm Club members came to the farm for shearing. The pandemic hit not long after and we have had no Farm Club activities. Shearing is this week and we had our annual Fleece Preview when Farm Club members could select their fleeces. It was small—only 3 members plus me—but we did the jobs that were necessary. We checked all the ear tags against my flock list, cleaned up those that were too dirty to read, and gave BOSE injections. We also clipped fleece samples from all the 2019 sheep (now with their full yearling fleece) for micron testing.

I’m way off my game here. I have only one photo of us working. However I have a few photos of gorgeous wool.

Pecan is a 2020 ewe lamb with a beautiful lilac fleece.

Rambler is a 2020 ram lamb.

I like to take photos of as many sheep as possible before shearing day to update my flock list. I wandered around with the camera a couple of days ago and was surprised that I got pictures of almost the whole flock. There are now 58 ewes, 3 wethers, and 6 rams.

I don’t want to overwhelm this post with all those photos but I’ll share a few. You can see all the ewes here and the rams here. This is Sonata, the oldest sheep here, born in 2012. I just checked my records and she has had 15 lambs—that’s 7 sets of twins with a single lamb her first time.

These three are the youngest sheep, Pistachio, Sandie, and Pecan, so named after a Farm Club member suggested “nut” names for what I thought might be my nuttiest crop of lambs. Due to Covid, we didn’t have people coming to the farm and it took a lot longer to socialize the lambs and get them used to being handled. I eventually sorted out those that I planned to keep and worked on halter breaking and handling them a bit. Isn’t this a nice group of 4-horned ewes?

The most prolific ewe here is Ears, a BFL and Jacob cross. She was born in 2013 and has had 16 lambs.

Jade, everyone’s favorite sheep because she is so friendly. Jade was born in 2015 and I have two daughters and a granddaughter in the flock.

Jasper is Jade’s son, born in 2019.

Quora is Jade’s granddaughter from 2020.

Stay tuned for shearing photos on Friday!

Horsetail Falls

Last Friday was National Hat Day according to my special calendar. My kids had written in “while wearing a warm hat go to M&K’s for a hike”. We met them and my brother, Dave, in Pollock Pines. We had intended to go snowshoeing but found the intended destination to be up a slippery icy road and we changed plans.

If you have driven west on Hwy. 50 from South Lake Tahoe then you might know the big waterfall that you see north of the highway as you go down the big switchbacks before the highway heads due west. That is Horsetail Falls. We weren’t far from there and decided to hike that trail.

This is a close-up of the warning in the middle of that map. For us the biggest difficulty was the icy granite.

We brought the snowshoes thinking that we might use them, but it didn’t take long before we realized they weren’t necessary and Matt stashed them off the trail.

Dave helping with trail maintenance (picked up the sign that had tipped over).

This is the view looking south and west. The highway is in the canyon below the trees. You can see snow on the northeast facing slopes…

…but when you look north you see how little snow there is on the south and west facing slopes. This is January and it’s scary to see what how dry it is.

It was also unseasonably warm. I was wearing a base layer of wool on top and bottom plus a wool sweater. I was overdressed.

This is Pyramid Creek that drains from the Pyramid Peak area which is beyond the falls.

Matt doing his part to keep the trail clear of boulders.

Dave tried to venture closer to the falls. We decided to not go further. There isn’t much of a trail—instead it is a lock of climbing over rocks and even though the weather was warm there were a lot of icy spots on the granite. It felt a little treacherous at times.

The water in the deeper pools of the creek looked incredibly green.

The description of emerald comes to mind.

On the way back down. This is almost the same view as one of the first photos, but you can see the highway where it switchbacks up the mountain.

We took a little time for artistic license. Kaleena filmed Matt “rock climbing” and it looks incredibly real when you see her video—that is until Kirin (dog) walks into the scene.

Dave’s artistic idea was to have everyone pose as the hiker in the sign on the tree.

We’ll see what he comes up with when he finishes his video.

Usually I take lots of photos of plants and other components of the overall scene. Not so much this time because I felt encumbered with gloves, trekking poles, and not slipping on the ice. But this brilliant red cedar caught my eye.

Every Day is a Holiday

My family collaborated to give me a very cool Christmas present.

Its actually a silly calendar with a lot of made up National (fill in the blank) Days, but what makes it special is how they personalized it. The kids committed themselves and other family members to sharing certain days with me! They have filled in at least a few days every month.

For instance here is what I can look forward to in March…celebrate Peanut Lovers Day with my 4-year-old grandson on Zoom—maybe with peanut butter sandwiches, spend time with my daughters-in-law on International Women’s Day and listen to my nephew play the bagpipes on International Bagpipe day.

Here is how we have celebrated this month so far. I watched a sci-fi movie with Chris and Meryl for National Science Fiction Day. There was a birdwatching hike with my brother on National Bird Day…

National Hot Tea Day was a good time to use the new mug my DIL gave me.

National Dress Up Your Pet Day was today and Chris brought his dogs over to take part in the festivities. Being a huge StarWars fan Chris has StarWars dress up costumes for his whole family.

Sawyer had to settle for hat and glasses.

Fimm was happier with the hat than with the StarWars get up.

Rusty was a good sport about the whole thing and didn’t even seem embarrassed. He was more focused on Ginny’s ball than the thing on his back.

Tomorrow is National Hat Day and the notation says “while wearing a warm hat go to M & K’s for a hike”. That’s on the plan for tomorrow. I’m sure that at least some of these will generate more blog posts. Stay tuned!

More Birds and New Site to Visit

I find myself exploring local sites that are new to me, some of which were featured in blog posts. If you scroll backwards through December and into November you’ll find Birdwatching in Fairfield, and hiking at Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Monument, Bassi Falls in the El Dorado National Forest, and Mt. Diablo State Park.

Even closer to home than any of these is the Haagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, on the western edge of the UC Davis campus. I met a friend there for an outdoor socially distanced visit. It may not be the normal time of year to visit this site because most of the plants are dormant. I can picture how this will be in the spring through fall with new growth, flowers, and BEES!

From the website: “The Haven is a unique outdoor museum that provides resources for local bee pollinators, inspires and educates visitors to create pollinator habitat gardens, and provides a site for the observation and study of bees and the plants that support them.”

We didn’t spend any time in the garden at first but used this as a starting point for a brisk 5-mile walk.

The roads took us to Putah Creek and we walked along the trails there for awhile.

We saw several ruby-crowned kinglets. These are cute little birds with a greenish tinge that flit from branch to branch.

Ruby crowned ? I identified this bird based on the white circle around the eye. The bird book says that it “takes a quick eye to see the ruby crown”, but I did see a flash of red at one point on one of the birds.

Do you see the two rope swings in this photo?

A couple of people helped me out with these—Common Mergansers, female on the left and male on the right..

Back at the bee garden, we wandered through the grounds.

I learned a new word: gnomon, “the projecting piece on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow”.

There was no sun today to try it out, but I will be back.

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.