I have told everyone here to head over to my other blog for more up-do-date news. I have three posts so far about the recent Black Sheep Gathering. Third day has links to the first two days. This post here is all about bragging rights. This has been a season of awards. It started with entries at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival in May. Jacob sheep were the featured breed this year and I wanted to be represented even though I couldn’t take sheep there. I sent woven pieces instead. This black and white pinwheel shawl won the special Jacob award. There was also a special award for my Jacob blan ..read more

Every year I like to take new photos of the sheep in full fleece. We’ll be shearing in two weeks, so now is the time. It has been raining so much (blog post) that the sheep are all in the barn area to be out of the muck and the standing water in the pasture. What a contrast between these photos and the ones I took last January. If you look at this page of all the ewes you’ll see the difference between photos dated January 2022 and January 2023 (at least until I get more photos to update all of them). I am sure ready for shearing. Some of the ewes are looking very scraggly. At 10 years old, Ra ..read more

Back to farm stuff with the blog, although I have a couple of other topics to throw in as well. Breeding season usually starts October 1. There will be a 2-day delay this year because I’ll be at Lambtown October 1 and 2. I have already scheduled a Farm Day for Farm Club to come out on the 3rd to sort breeding groups and watch the action. My goal is to have all the extra sheep (2022 lambs I’m not keeping and a few cull ewes) gone by then. I don’t have enough room as it is to spread out the groups the way I’d like to. I want to introduce the rams for this year. Patchwork Townes is a 2-1/2 year ..read more

I had too many photos to include in one post, so I split up the photos for the 2022 Timm Ranch shearing. The first is here. Many of these photos were taken by Farm Club members. Thanks Janelle and Susan and Allan. There is a shearing crew of two, but only one of them is shearing. Allan carrying a freshly shorn fleece to the skirting table. Siobhan at the skirting table. Doris, on the right, discussing wool with Susan, the owner of this flock. This is Susan and me with our pile behind us. This was early in the day. The pile will get larger. Doris and Reba at the skirting table. Allan and ..read more

Every year I get wool from the Timm Ranch, about five miles from here, and have it made into a really great yarn. I sell the yarn in skeins and on cones and I use a lot of it for my own woven products. I could probably substitute blog posts from previous years for this one and you wouldn’t know the difference. Same place. Same sheep. However some of the Farm Club people have changed. So here is the 2022 Shearing Day last week. The Timm Ranch sheep are what I like to call a ranch blend of Polypay, Rambouillet, and Targhee. That means that those are the original breeds in the flock but over the ..read more

Some Jacob breeders name all their lambs when they are born. I don’t think I can come up with 80 names each year. I do better to keep track by number and only name the ones that I keep. Names become important when you have sheep that are registered because they are tracked by name in the registry. They have a breeder’s prefix (Meridian for me) and an individual name. Sometimes I assign a name before a lamb is sold, because I can figure out if that name has been used already, and it avoids the problem of a Meridian sheep out there with a name that I think is too weird. Other times I find myself ..read more

If this is the first time you’ve seen one of my blog posts it is probably because you clicked a link in a newsletter sent out by Spin Off. Some of my posts are about weaving, some are about fun adventures and many are about sheep and farm life. All are filled with more photos than text, and soon there will be posts about lambing. Today the post is full of photos I took today (now yesterday because I didn’t finish it last night) while still trying to get my website updated for the Spin Off partnership. I have been overwhelmed by the work involved in maintaining a decent website while dealing wi ..read more

There are photos from Shearing Day here, but of course I have more to share. John shearing Meridian Pistachio. One thing that is so fun about Jacob sheep is the variety of patterns in the fleeces. This one is Terri. Here she is after shearing. This is Hazel after shearing and two weeks before shearing day. Quora had a coat all year . The photo on the left was taken a about six weeks ago when the coat was changed for a larger size. The main purpose of the coat is to keep the fleece free of VM (vegetable matter) but this photo shows another benefit. The coat protects the tips of the wool fr ..read more

It feels like the night before Christmas! …All through the barn the sheep are waiting…The barn is organized. The tools are hung (where is that strike-out thing when you need it—I wanted to say stockings but cross it out) . The rams have been moved to the barn. The water is turned off (empty stomachs are better for shearing). ETC. Dan did this job earlier in the week. The gate we used to have here didn’t fit the space and I had a panel wired up to stick out into the doorway a couple of feet. The reason is that when the gate swings open (towards me when taking this photo) it would stick out int ..read more

We live by seasons…and this one is breeding season. On Sunday Farm Club members came to help. We started by sorting ewes. We also replaced old smaller ear tags with some that are a little larger and more legible. We colored coded the 2018 and 2019 ear tags. I had already tagged the 2020 ewes with blue tags. I can identify many of the sheep by their markings but I don’t remember all 60+ of them. The larger ear tags make it easier to read the tag and to find a particular sheep when you can narrow down the year by the ear tag color. Then we put the markers in the ram harnesses. It was time to ..read more