From late spring to mid summer,  most weekends are spent either bringing sheep in or sending sheep out. I was very good this year , sending many more sheep out than I brought in. (the year is still young )

I first met Pleasant Run Vesta at SAFF last year, when Cathy from Perfect Spot Farm picked her up from Royal Unzicker, Ivy Brook Meadows.

Although I was sorry to hear that Cathy was downsizing her lovely flock, I was thrilled to have the chance to buy Vesta.  Who could sell such a beautiful ewe!?! It turns out that Vesta has a rather annoying habit – she eats dog food – going so far as to keep the LGDs (livestock guardian dogs) from having a chance to eat.  This trait made her a high maintenance girl at Perfect Spot. We don’t have LGDs so she doesn’t have the opportunity to feed her habit here. She does, however, come running to the fence when she sees  my Great Dane, Maggie, and then stands there with her nose pressed to Maggie’s nose. It took me abit to figure that out. She’s smelling the dog food on Maggie’s breath!

I’d thought to call this post “easy come, easy go”, but my other acquistion this year was certainly not easy..

I like to keep track of the sheep I sell and I often buy lambs from my breeding. (PS -I always want to know if the sheep you bought from me are for sale or if you have lambs for sale. I can’t, of course, buy them all, but I can often help place them. And I always welcome news and pictures)

This pretty ewe lamb is sired by Patchwork Waukesha and out of Patchwork Shelby.  She’s a granddaughter of past Patchwork sheep, Kreutzer Farms Abe (a lilac), Bullthistle Dancer,  Patchwork Morgan (a Viva son), and Sweetgrass Ainslie, born respectively  in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan.  Her name was Lucy, but since that was the name of our late much-loved, Lucy the pig dog, I call her Lucinda.

Deciding on Lucinda was easy.  Catching Lucinda was not!  While the owners were hoping to coax Lucinda and her dam into the barn with grain, I went back to my van to avoid spooking them by the sight of  a stranger.  After a bit, I went to help move her to my van – except she and Shelby were still running full blast from corner to corner in an acre paddock, pursued by two rapidly overheating persons (not to mention two overheating sheep).  They said this is the way they always catch sheep.  I did my best to be a good cutting horse, but I’m 60  years old with a bad knee and covering a 200 foot side with fast and twisty moves  is just not within my skill set.  The lamb is faster than I am  – and I would wonder about the health of a lamb that was slower than I am!!!  Finally, the teenage son came out to help and it was a truly amazing sight. He just took off running and caught the lamb. I was impressed by his speed, glad that I have catch pens and sheep that are willing to go into them at home, and very glad to load Lucinda in the van for the trip home.

And this gorgeous boy went this year…

Shannon from Kenleigh Acres sent me these updated pictures of Patchwork Abraham. I think he’s developing nicely! and that’s sure a handsome boy in the background. Abraham’s parting was all set to be fairly easy even though he was making the trip by air.  It’s too long a story and it ended up well. But, was not as easy as I’d anticipated.  Thank goodness Delta was at the Greenville, SC airport as an alternative to American Airlines and thank goodness that Dave was rained out at work and decided to make the trip with me.  We hauled Abraham and his carrier alot during the day.  Extra hands were very welcome.

I didn’t take pictures, but anyone that has been here can visualize a big stock trailer in front of our house. We can turn around a small horse trailer in our drive (barely).  I am now much more conscientious about asking “what are you driving?”  Again – thank goodness for Dave! It was an experience, but sheep and trailer eventually headed back up the hill.. For awhile we were thinking  we were going to have to keep the trailer and turn it into a guest cabin.

Two more reserved sheep will leave here soon.  One ram lamb will be making a visit to a nearby breeder on loan for the 2009 breeding season. One ram lamb will be watched to evaluate his horns. One ram lamb will go into the freezer.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to resist temptation and the revolving door will only open out for the rest of the year

has been opened and temptation has leapt with a smirk onto my lap – wait, that was Dobie with the smirk….

ME? I’m not smirking *giggle* *giggle*

My Mom was a commercial photographer and my Dad was/is an enthusiast. In 1966, Dad sent me  the revolutionary (at that time) Minolta SRT 101 from Japan where he was working as a communications engineer for NATO. Mom’s cameras were large format commercial cameras. The “tiny” SRT was more my style I went from the Minolta to Nikons – and to an ever larger camera bag (I’m a zoom freak).

I love the portability of the prosumer digital cameras. I don’t care for fully automatic shooting and all my digicams have included manual modes, which is what I always use. I don’t want to change lens. I don’t want to carry extra lenses. I don’t want the weight of an dslr. I don’t want to spend the money.  I love my Panasonic FZ28 with its 18X optical zoom.  Loved the FZ20 and the Fuji S602Z. Don’t need a dslr! But, I did wonder if I just might want one.

Since I saved SO much money by not attending AGM this year or buying another ram, I decided to find an older dslr on eBay for cheap just  to put to rest my tinglings for a dslr.  I found a Canon 300D on eBay – the original Canon Rebel , which was the first dslr for under $1000 and is considered the first dslr for the “common people” back in 2003 when it was introduced. A whooping 6.3 mp. I chose the Canon because I have some old Canon lenses and thought they might work.  I bought a Canon 35mm from a pawn shop a few years back as it came with an incredible selection of filters to fit my FZ20. I sold all the lens except for the wide angle – don’t really know why I kept that one, as I never shoot wide angle and have never used a Canon. As it turns out, the old lens is FD and the Canon digitals take EF or EF-S, so the lens won’t fit.

First thought out of the box is that I love the weight of it. It’s heavier than the newer Canons, but near the weight of my old 35mm cameras.

Second thought – I’ve fallen into Pandora’s box and there is no way out.

Third/etc thoughts – I don’t like not having spot metering. In looking over the specs on the affordable Canons, it looks like I’d have to go to the Canon 450D or 30D to get spot metering.
An 18-55 lenses just doesn’t do it for me.  My favorite 35mm camera lens was a 70-200 with macro.  I just ordered a 75-300 Canon lens. The 55-250 image stabilized lens was higher rated (and more expensive), but I’m still deciding what I want to do.
The noise on a dslr is almost non existent compared to a p/s due to a larger sensor. Pictures at 800 iso on this camera are surprisingly noise free.
Even this dinosaur of a camera is faster than a prosumer.

I’d love to hear thoughts/experiences/comments on your favorite dslrs – maybe even a blog entry? Especially from two of my favorite photographers – http://kenleighacres.wordpress.com/ with her Canons and http://mudranch.wordpress.com/ with her Nikons.

or maybe “Tongue-tied Thursday”? I really searched, but couldn’t come up with anything better for Thursday.

or maybe it should be “litterer”, given Dorothy’s  propensity for clearing desks, counters, and bookcases when she feels the urge (not to mention the little bits of mice, snakes, moles, and various unidentifiable detritus she leaves on the front deck)

Dorothy loves her cat sized cradle.. and it is a cradle .. a cradle style picker.  It is, however, securely fastened with a padlock so that this cradle does not rock when unattended.

The cradle is studded with long, very sharp, teeth…

and so is the base. The fiber is fed into the the front of the picker (this picture is from the back – Dorothy, always correct, is facing the front of the picker) while the cradle is  held toward the picker person. The cradle is then swung (is swung a word? swinged?) towards the back of the picker – catching the fiber from the tray, pulling it across the teeth, and out the back, where it falls neatly into a box. Sometimes. Sometimes the fiber just floats for awhile.  A picker works exceptionally well on the ‘traditional’ open,  loosely crimped Jacob fleece.  Although I confess to not being completely sure what the ‘traditional’ Jacob fleece is My small band of ladies exhibit a variety of fleeces and they all assure me that their fleece is “Jacob”.  I tend to believe them.

In discussions on various internet  fiber groups about pickers, there always seems to be one person that rather haughtily (if you can apply the term haughtily to email), explains that a picker doesn’t clean – its only purpose is to open the fibers.  I don’t  think it shows in this photo, but there is  a bit over 1/2″ of  dirt and trash built up at the base of the teeth from two fleeces. It may not be the “purpose”, but it is a nice side effect and I’d rather not have that make it to my carder. Pickers do not take out large pieces of hay, but do well for small bits of trash.  It will not take out cockleburs – it will smash the cocklebur into small prickly cockleburs bits that are near impossible to get out to the fleece.

It is best in most cases to feed a small amount of fiber, make sure the cradle clears both ends each pass, and get the fiber through the picker in one swing. With a loosely crimped fiber, this is not really necessary for a quality output, but does speed up the process. With a crimpier (more elastic) fiber, fiber left on the teeth after the forward swing can snap back around the teeth and form neps (little coiled knots of fiber) on the following backward and forward swings.  For more elastic, downy type fleeces, I raise the cradle almost as high as it will go and do a very light picking, sometimes doing a second pick.  A light picking also works well for tippy Jacob fleeces IF THE TIPS ARE STRONG. If the tips are weak, as they often are in hoggett (first shearing – usually as a yearling) fleece, picking will break the tips and leave noils (little bits of short fiber).

In a few short minutes this:

Becomes this…

I haven’t seen a bench picker in action, but cradle pickers are dangerous. The teeth are super sharp. Just touching the teeth can make you bleed. Picking demands your entire attention! Don’t watch watch a movie while picking, don’t visit with your friend, don’t try to photograph yourself picking….

Yes, I was wearing the shirt when the picker teeth caught it. Dumb.

It’s been a slow week for my fiber challenge.  I finally decided to see a doctor about my shoulder.  One day at the doctor and another day going for xrays  pretty much shot a big part of the week.  Did you know that one of the xrays for your cervical spine is shot from the front through your mouth? For some reason that really weirded me out, especially by the fourth time they had to reshoot.

I wasn’t totally lazy and did pick Jedd’s fleece, carded about 1 pound of it, washed five of the beautiful fleeces I purchased from Hillside Jacobs, spread another 200 lbs of lime (very carefully) and made a pair of socks.

Patchwork Badger…

supplied the fleece  for this week’s challenge. Badger is my only Jacob Sheep bottle baby.  In keeping with my practice of allowing the ewes to lamb where ever they like (within the confines of their fence, of course),  Badger’s dam, St. Jude’s Janice lambed at the top of the hill. I heard screaming at 3 am and went out to find Badger at the very bottom of the hill while Janice worked to clean a second lamb.  In later years, Janice has gotten over her habit of butting anyone that touches her newborn lambs, but she was still into it at this time (her fourth lambing).  With one lamb tucked under each arm and one hand on Janice’s horn holding her away from me, we made the VERY long trip up the hill to the barn. 
The next day, I was still having to hold Janice for Badger to nurse and Janice was still butting Badger. Since Badger was the four horned ewe I had REALLY been hoping for from a Junco/Janice cross, I made the decision to bottle feed her.  Janice has since gone on to successfully raise twins without assistance , as has Badger. And I have confined the sheep at night to a flatter area!

Badger’s fleece is a “down” type. I wish I’d thought to grab a lock before I picked it, but I didn’t. This is the only remotely intact lock.

As you can see (maybe), the lock structure is nearly square and short. There is very little luster. But, it’s big on ’stretch factor’….

going from ~ 3″ staple length to a just over 5″ fiber length.  Although this fleece does not have a clearly defined crimp, it has a lot of crimp – that’s what makes it stretch.   I love the diversity that I find in my Jacob flock.  Badger’s fleece is wonderful  for knitting, especially for socks. It’s not my favorite type of Jacob fleece (although Badger is one of my favorite ewes), but it is part of what makes the breed so interesting.

From this…..

to this…

in ONLY (ha!) six years.  Granted, it’s not yet a big pasture of grass, but it’s grass and the sheep are eating it, so I’m going to go ahead and call it pasture. We hope to get more cleared and planted this year. Our drought status has just been changed from exceptional to moderate, which inspires me to get back to work on developing some grazing.  Our heavily wooded 20 acres includes a large percentage of mountain laurel (also known as lambkill), wild azaleas, and rhododendron – all quite toxic to sheep, which takes away the option of fencing the woods and letting the sheep clear it.  We’re currently waiting our turn with the excavator guy to come.

RubyBelle knows she is old (14!), but didn’t realize she’d died and gone to heaven!

I started planting forage chicory and I like the way it’s done. The sheep like the way it tastes Chicory is one of my successes. I’m thinking of putting in some forage plantain. Because most of our acreage is difficult to get to with machines, even though we have a four wheel drive tractor, much of our pasture establishment and maintenance is done the old fashioned way – walk and toss. My soil test came back that I need 1.25 tons of lime per acre – no wonder my shoulder hurts! 400 lbs down and 2100 to go (and that’s the back piece – the front piece is accessible). I started researching wildlife mixes, taking note of what grew on the side of the road, and seeing what was still growing during our 5 year drought.  This year’s rainfall has been wonderful.

If chicory was a success, my instructions to the bulldozer operator that cleared the last piece for us were definitely not geared for success. It’s a fairly steep piece of land. I didn’t want to leave the stumps and I wanted him to bury the brush.  Which he did. I didn’t realize just how much erosion leaving the tree roots/stumps in would have controled and I didn’t realize that what he would use to bury the brush would be……the top soil (duh!) The soil sample also recommends 1500 pounds of compost per acre – ouch!

From this…

almost completed Jane rug – but her fleece didn’t stretch as far as I’d hoped and the rug is turning out to be an awkward balance of dimensions.

to this:

and a pile of unwoven fleece – in somewhat less than six years, but not particularly speedy. Lady Jane is special and she deserves a special weaving. I’ll cut warp threads to make it narrower and longer. I’ll be happier with a weaving that “looks right”, so it’s worth it.

Celine’s fleece is the easiest type to processs – long, very little crimp, nice demi-luster, and fairly open tips. It feeds smoothly through the picker and cards quickly.

Badger’s very different fleece will be next.

My shoulder has been killing me for the last week or so. I keep meaning to rest it, but somehow that doesn’t work out if I hang around home. Carding wool with my electric drum carder is a good way to rest it (I’m catching up on fleece challenge – Celine’s is almost finished), but picking up a 50 lb carder to lay it over so I could clean in front of the motor wasn’t all that restful.

Driving doesn’t bother my shoulder ….Road Trip! Well, very short road trip – just 50 miles up the road to Perry’s Water Gardens It’s not yet prime water lily season, but it was a nice drive and some of the earlier varieties were blooming.

I love the look of these clouds – they look like cloud mountains.

The gardens are a group of small ponds with mowed walkways. Ben served as my tour guide.

There were water lilies (natch!)

And irisis

and ducks (these are Swedish Blues – aren’t they pretty!)

And guess what  I found in the barn!!!

Jacob Sheep!! Three pretty ewes! And they look familiar….why, it’s  Jacquee’s Rosemary, Patchwork Saluda, and Patchwork Anabelle. Hi girls!!

er…goat

Doesn’t she look like a rabbit? It amazes me that she can hold her ears so erect.

I’m not a goat person (my Jacobs are NOT goat-like), although I got to admit that I’ve never understood terms like “goat person” “cat person”. The first time I heard that, someone squealed “oh, you are a cat person” when she spied old Sam Thomas.  Cat Person? Like in the Catwoman movie? Quick check to see if my tail is showing.

I’ve had Nubians. They are attractive goats – coming in lots of fun colors, are excellent milkers, extremely loud, hyperactive, and perhaps two steps below stupid. Dave told me if I got rid of my Nubians I could have all the sheep I wanted. Very little time went into making the decision to sell my goats.

But, I have to admit that I like my neighbor’s Saanans. I watch after them when she’s away. They have lovely soft voices and are calm and gentle.  You’d think that the lack of any color would make them boring, but they have their own beauty.

Good old Bandit, AKA The Oaf, is the Pyr/Anatolian boy that managed to drag me down the hill by my ankle. He’s still smiling about it while he guards his does.

Sam takes his guarding duties very seriously and does not welcome human attention.

In 1989, Dave and I fell in love with a ramshackle old house on 3 overgrown acres. Six layers of newspapers nailed on the walls (yes nailed!), were pulled off to reveal hand hewn boards. Vines of all sorts were finally battled to a standstill and we began to find many decades of heirloom shrubs. The elderly lady who had last lived in the house was crippled and never went out much. Her passion was her shrubs. The neighbors told us “anytime Ollie had a dollar, she bought another plant”.  The spring was a true delight of discoveries.  Our neighbors told us to watch for the blue rose to bloom~~

I was so delighted when the blue rose first made her appearance. As we got to know the neighbors, we got used to hearing “oh, the blue rose. I have one from a cutting Ollie gave me.”  I carried on the tradition and gave divisions to friends for 50 miles around and brought a division to our new place. This morning the first blue rose of the year opened. I love thinking that my friends and Ollie’s friends are enjoying their blue roses.  The proper name for the blue rose is Veilchenblau and you can read a little about it at http://www.antiqueroseemporium.com/rose-1009.html There’s a picture there showing the clusters and the different shades when the rose is in full bloom.  My readings mention that it was often used as a rootstock for grafted roses. I think our area blue rose is probably the result of a grafted rose dying back to the rootstock. The blue rose was developed in 1909. Happy 100th Birthday!!

I am not a flower gardener. I forget to water, I forget to weed (well, I remember to weed – I just don’t do it), and snakes hide in the flower gardens. Dave killed a 2 foot copperhead last weekend. But roses are tall and I can weed eat under them.

This is my “ditch rose” (probably a rugosa). It was growing wild in a ditch. I figured I wouldn’t be able to kill it and I haven’t!

Cheap unmarked Walmart rose – blooms all summer, never gets any weird rose diseases. An unexpected treasure.

White Koster – tiny 1 1/2″ blooms. Every so often one will have a bright red petal.

Besides roses, I love Irises – especially the simple, elegant shape of this one.

CAN WE GO NOW?

I’M BORED AND I’M TIRED OF LOOKING AT FLOWERS. I WANT TO GO PLAY BALL~~