Fall Has Fell

 Despite the hot temperatures there is no denying that Fall is truly here.  I thought the drought would impact the color change in our foliage and trees would yellow a bit and then drop their leaves.  Just the opposite is true and we've had the best color display in some years.

The fall flowers are blooming much more heavily that I would have thought possible given how water starved the plants have been.   The view across the neighbor's property down the valley is a river of goldenrod.

The sky is clear, unbroken blue day after day.  We did have one afternoon of wispy mare's tails which normally mean rain but we didn't get any.  I think this one looks like The Nexus (skip to about 1:10) and given the strangeness of 2020 I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been.

The weeds wildflowers in unkempt corners are making me glad I didn't spend a lot of energy cutting them down earlier this summer.

Even humble ivy that's crept up trees and along the ditches has turned brilliant red.

Normally the sheep would still have been out on pasture for a few more weeks but we had to bring them in and start feeding hay four weeks early.  We made enough of our own for a normal year but we didn't have enough for extra weeks of feeding.  We were lucky enough to secure 20 big square bales and after an initial trial of three bales - which the sheep were delighted with - we had the rest delivered.

Keeping the flock off pasture requires a different daily routine including scraping the barnyard area clean every morning.  Here, the girls seem to be giving our effort an inspection.

We left the auto waterer in the feed bunk to encourage exercise and because the chore of rerouting water into the barn isn't really necessary until freezing temperatures start.  Fortune is looking longingly at a kitty that she really. wants. to. sniff.

Another aspect of feeding hay is the need to coat the flock to keep the wool clean.  Thus began the annual Washing of the Coats.  I do about a dozen a day and triage them after they are dry for holes and weak leg straps.  Soon there will come a day of mending.

We don't normally need to keep the sheep cool AND in the barn but this year with a week of mid-80s predicted we knew we'd have to take some kind of measure to keep them comfortable.  When we used to have a building full of ram lambs in the summer we had a large box fan going for them but it hadn't been needed for a few years.  Time to press it into service.  First Andy had to create a 2X6 the right dimensions to support it.  The buzz rig was pressed into service as a big table saw.

This will move air!

Mounted where it is, at the end of the pens, a good flow of air will move the length of the barn and push stale, warm air out the south end where the rolling door is normally open. 

Holly sez:

"Bleah.  It's too hot and bright out here.  Let's go in for a drink."

Dogs are so sensible.

Stranger Things

So.... 2020.  Quite the year, huh?  I'm waiting for either the asteroid to hit us or the aliens to land.  It's been that strange.  This particular bit of weirdness is the drought in our area.  Rains have been extremely spotty and fifty miles away things look normal.  Not us - we have a drought.  We aren't California-dry, but we are dry enough to burn up the pastures and have to pull the sheep in four weeks earlier than usual.  There is just nothing out there to eat and they are pulling grass out by the roots.  We can't let them damage the pasture or next spring will be a disaster.  We have enough hay for a regular winter feeding season but not an extra four weeks.  We've never had to buy hay before - ever - but, well.....2020.

We are very fortunate to have been able to secure 20 giant square bales from a neighbor.  The good news is that the hay is very good and the sheep accepted it right away.  The awkward part is the size.  We are used to feeding small square bales that weigh about 40 lbs.  These weigh 700 lbs.

If they don't already know, somebody needs to tell NASA about the poly twine that binds them.  We can carry the bale with the tractor by slipping the tines of the bucket under the twine and lifting.  Tough stuff!

The bales come apart in tightly compressed flakes which we load on a cart and roll into the interior of the barn and then heave in the manger and pull them apart by hand.  Andy's wearing a mask due to allergies, not Covid, just in case you wondered.

We've found curious things in our own hay bales over the years, usually unfortunate snakes or frogs, once an entire eight point deer antler, the occasional rock, but in today's bale we found this. Clearly it's a fragment of some tool but it's a puzzling mix of lightweight fragile wood and machined hard plastic.

The six holes go all the way through but don't show any signs of wear.

The plastic is embedded in a nicely machined wooden slat at a purposeful angle and we're guessing the plastic bit is a bumper or spacer of some kind that another moving piece slid over but we can't puzzle out what this is a part of.

.One of the more innocent mysteries that is the year 2020!

Gathering In

It's easy to think of autumn as the harvest season but it's mid-summer and we're overlapping the harvesting of both hay and winter wheat.  We are somewhat behind on where we *could* be with the hay - we are still doing first cutting but have had great hay making weather and could have been done if we were a crew of ten people.  Being as it's just the two of us and we're in (ahem) advanced middle age Andy only cuts enough hay to fill five wagons - about 650 bales - at a time so we can get it unloaded and in the mow before the next batch is ready.  We are closing in on five thousand bales and put up the first half of the second to last field today.

It lies about a mile up the road so Andy takes the baler with one wagon and I follow with a second and then make trips to bring the rest while he bales.  The moms with lambs were way at the end of their pasture.  They have gotten very cosmopolitan and don't flinch when big machinery drives past.

The sun was high and the light is harsh at midday but the hay is mostly timothy and still very green although the picture doesn't show it well.

Fields that we don't use have been rented for several years to a neighboring farmer and last year he tried putting in winter wheat.  Other years he has raised both corn and soybeans.  Corn grows reasonably well on this hill ground if it's prepped correctly and the weather is right but he had a couple of bad years weather-wise and switched to soybeans.  That really didn't work out well.  The crop grew alright but just when he should have been starting to run the combine we got five inches of rain and you could barely walk across the fields let alone drive machinery across it.  That was a loss.  The winter wheat seems to be a success!

I think wheat is one of the prettiest crops when it reaches maturity - graceful and romantic in a bucolic sort of way.

Lovely, solid fields of grain ready for the combine.

And he'll have the other product of  a crop of wheat - the straw.  This will be baled and sold, so there's two products for the effort and expense to raise one crop.  (Although that means he has the expense of  another line of machinery, so it's not like the straw is totally free.  Ag economics is complicated and usually leaves you thinking 'Is that all we made??' when you go over the books.)  We're glad to see him have success after some years of dicey results.

When I brought the third wagon he was already emptying the combine hopper into the big trailer.  Later, his daughter, home for the summer from college, took over driving the combine.  He said it was a good place for her to practice as the fields were small, flat and dry.  She also manages a herd of beef cattle on their farm, doing everything from making breeding selections to arranging slaughter and cutting of selected animals for the on-farm store's meat case.  Nice to hear of a young adult being so involved with the family farm.  Whether she stays with it or not she will still have a better understanding of business and hard work than the great majority of her peers and that can only work to her advantage.

Granted, it's apples to oranges, but it was amazing how fast he had gobbled up so much of that field while Andy was still on the second hay wagon.

The moms and lambs were working their way back toward the barn harvesting grass as they went.  The lambs are growing well and and looking less like babies and more like teenagers. It won't be long before we address weaning.  I'm sure we could do it any time now, but at the moment there's no pressing reason to separate them.

We have an abundance of yellow swallowtail butterflies this year and they were also busy harvesting nectar from flowers.  There are two in this photo - there were three but one flitted off.

We are only in late July - still many crops to be harvested and gathered in for the winter.

June Is Bursting Out All Over

Every month has its beauty but June really sets the bar, I think.  Every live thing is blooming, growing, expanding and enjoying the warm sun.

Our bee tree was silent this spring.  The resident honey bees apparently didn't survive the winter for whatever reason, but nature abhors a vacuum and a bee tree isn't vacant long.  A nice big swarm swept in from somewhere and set up housekeeping.  That's a lot of bees!  We're hoping they are docile occupants as previous swarms have been.

The early summer flowers are making a good show.

 If you look closely you'll see a big jumping spider hiding in the peony bloom.  I'm sure there's some kind of sinister metaphor here but I just think they're cute!

Another little visitor is a pretty garter snake that has taken up residence somewhere under the concrete patio and likes to sun himself in the tomato bed.

We had  few days of hot sun and a dry Canadian high pressure system which allowed us to get a good start on the hay.

Unloading the bales in the morning of this beautiful day with the prospect of baling more in the afternoon, watching the cloud shadows slide over the hills while the sheep grazed, hearing the birds talk and the flag snapping in the breeze.....  I feel so blessed to live in the place and time that I do.  I could wax poetic about living in the country and farming but the pictures are better, I'm sure.

The view of home, from north to south.  Sorry it's a little shaky - I'm trying a different video platform as I don't like that I can't disable 'suggested videos' on YouTube anymore - and I haven't gotten far enough into the editing functions to improve the quality.  Sigh.  Have to learn new things again.

And we did have lambs this spring!  I'll try to do a baby picture recap at some point but this is where we are now - going out to a small pasture with the moms and a few old aunties!  We mowed the long flat part of this pasture and will bale it.  What we didn't mow will feed them well until the grass grows back where it was cut.

This is not a trick of the camera - the gray ewe in front, Taffy, is really this big.  Oy.

Trying to get pictures of small moving lambs in tall grass proved to be an exercise in futility but the gist was that they were tasting grass and happy.  :-D  

It's not hard to see why this ewe is so big - she's the original Mowing Machine.

And how could you let a gorgeous June day go by without taking your most dignified dog for a drive to Tractor Supply in your classic car?  

A remarkable day all around!

Mischief Managed

We managed to get one large job finished this week.  It took a few sessions but we finally got the ewe flock coated.  It's a big job that takes more time than you'd think it would.  We've gotten quite good at estimating which size coat will fit a ewe but when it's actually on them, before you lift hind legs to slip into the straps..... sometimes you see it's going to be too long or too short and you pull it off and reach for the next size.  Lots of bending over.  It's really nice to see them all jacketed and know their fleeces are safe from the dreaded VM.

They will pick up some chaff from the floor on the area we call "the butt poof" and some on the back of the neck.  Our feeders are really good but there's no way to protect that area other than put a show hood over their heads and that's unnecessarily extreme.  Only the locks on the back of their necks suffer some - what's under their throat is often clean and lovely.

Now that everyone is safe from contamination we started feeding out in the 'picnic area' again - that's the hay feeder Andy constructed in the old feed bunk.  Some of the young, athletic ewes jump up from the backside and eat out of the manger.

This eases any congestion in the barn proper and no one is crowded - unless they want to be.

Some of the geriatric girls and the rams are still without coats.  The ewes I had to order a few more of certain sizes for.  The rams are still enjoying going outside for a morning apple party followed by grazing so I don't want to coat them until they are solely "barned up" and on hay.

Another item ticked off the list is the Oxford rug punching kit I learned on when I went to the school earlier this month. I finished it and am think it's a decent first effort.

I'm pleased with how it came out. Despite how simple it looks the pattern teaches you borders, shapes, curves, filling in areas, the stitch gauge you should try to attain in various areas, how to make dots..... and how to stray off the instructions.  I didn't care for the navy and white marbled yarn they included for the sheep so I substituted some of my gray handspun which was languishing without purpose in a bin.  I also wasn't jazzed with the random squiggles all over the sheep so I reduced it to just a few along the back.  If anyone is inclined to try an Oxford kit you will get the foundation fabric with pattern drawn on (they have hundreds), yarn in very generous quantities, and a boxed punch tool with a stitch gauge and small (20+ pages) instruction book.  The bigger book on the left I purchased on Ebay and it's really super.  You can easily get by with the small pamphlet that comes with the punch needle but the bigger book is so pretty and full of pictures and information that you should get a copy if you can.

The next project that needs attention is a guild spin-and-knit along.  For this one, those members who want to participate brought in 4 ounces of ready to spin wool - roving or batts were OK as long as the fiber was clean and carded in some manner.  The fiber was sorted by the project organizers and put into piles and then randomly creatively reassembled into 4 ounce lots of mixed colors.  All included one neutral (mine's white) and the rest is colored.

Alrighty, then.  We are to spin yarn by combining these rovings in any way we choose and then knit something using That Nice Stitch.  Hmmm.  Put opposites against each other so they all pop?  Try to blend those in the same color family?  If my goal is to keep the colors unadulterated I should chain ply.... which I don't usually like the feel of.....but if I spin and ply the yarn back on itself I will totally randomize the colors which might not be too bad although I don't usually like striped yarns.  I do like all the colors.... by themselves.   This will take some thought.  The project is due in May so I can't dither too long.

Holly says,

"When the sun comes out in late November you should stop, drop and enjoy it.  You can think about stuff later."

What a smart dog!