Shearing Day 2015

Howdy folks!   Long time, no posting.  Sorry, things just seemed to get away from me for a while.  I'll try to do better.  LOL.  (we'll see).

Anyway, what's happening down on the farm?  Well, a lot actually.  The vineyard has come to life and we are mowing, spraying, weeding, pruning, shoot positioning, and scouting for pests.  We've had a fairly dry spring thus far and cooler than usual lately.  I have not put in the garden yet, and it's just as well because it's been in the 30s and 40s overnight this past week or so.  I did manage to buy all the transplants that will eventually become the garden, but I'm currently tending them on the deck, until I can clear out the beds and get them into the ground.  The cool temps have been a blessing for the sheep as I have not yet had a chance to get them sheared.  That's scheduled to happen today.  I'll post pics of their nakedness as soon as the deed is done. 

I did manage to finally rescue the yard from the sheep.  Several weeks ago, Greg had to go to Germany for a week and one of the last things he said to me before he left was "I want my yard back.  The sheep are eating everything."  He was right of course.  My landscape has suffered and my garden last year was a total fail because of having to move the sheep around and move hot wire, which they promptly trample, and try to rotation graze them.  I managed to let them way overgraze the front section and it's just now starting to recover so they are not allowed out there for the foreseeable future.  They can't stay in the vineyard once the new tasty shoots are long enough for them to notice so in the past, they've been around the house way too much.  I decided that before Greg got back from Germany, he would have his yard back.  I called my neighbor/friend who does fencing and got his opinion and we settled on a date and a price.  We ended up fencing off about an acre around the house, which will be "The Yard" and the sheep can have the rest.  It adds the complication of additional gates but it's manageable and it gives me multiple areas to rotate them so one area doesn't get scalped down to dirt.  Now Greg can plant his fruit tree orchard, and I can do a little permaculture with some wild black raspberries and the elderberries that pop up all over the place if you fail to control them.  My garden is safe and there are no more little sheep poop-berries on the driveway.   That's a win all the way around.

Well, Edward Scissorhands (not his real name) is here to shear the sheep.   Back soon, with pictures...

Two and a half hours to shear 13 squirming and kicking sheep.  It takes two people to wrangle them, even though they're in a small 16 x 16 foot stall.  I sell the white wool and keep the black.  I have 6 fleeces to wash and pick out the burrs, grass and weed seeds, then I plan to send it off to a fiber mill to process into yarn.  Every year I say this, and it just keeps piling up.  This year will be different because I have plans for this beautiful brown/gray/black wool.  I'm going to take a refresher knitting class and put it to use.

Here's what they looked like before all the drama began...

... and here's Lefty being sheared, with Pancho in the background, enjoying Lefty's misery.

They're all back in the pasture now, enjoying grass and weeds, and acting like nothing even happened, other than that fact that they do not appear to recognize each other at the moment.    

I'll deal with the black wool tomorrow and get it bagged up in mesh bags, ready for the picking, skirting and  washing steps.

Dey Tuk Er Cloz!!!!!!

Things are about to get a whole lot warmer around here, and just in the nick of time, the sheep shearer worked us into his schedule. Here's a before picture of my little flock of sheep, the morning of the Big Day.



I kept them locked in the barn overnight so they'd be completely dry when he arrived. The sheep stall is 16 x 24 feet, which is pretty large for a dozen sheep and makes it very hard to catch them, so I crowded them into one corner of the sheep stall with a moveable panel. This allowed just enough room for the sheep and the shearer and his equipment.

When he arrived, he plugged in his shears, put down a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood on the stall floor and got started. Here's the motor part of the shearers.


He grabs a sheep, lifts it off the ground, sets it down on its rear end, and runs the clippers in the same pattern every time, starting with the stomach, up one side of the sheep, across the head and face, under the chin, and back down the other side.



It takes him less than three minutes to shear one sheep. The wool ends up mostly in one big piece. As he finished a sheep, he let it up off the floor and it scrambled back to the flock, and he handed the fleece off to me. They get over the drama pretty quickly, especially if there's hay around to distract them.




I have a bunch of mesh laundry bags and the fleece is rolled up and stuffed into a bag and stacked to await processing. The bigger sheep have been through this and put up with it pretty well. This was the first shearing for the six little lambs and although they are much smaller, they are much less tame and did a lot more kicking and squirming, except for this little guy. He was very sick around Christmas, and I spent several weeks giving him shots and oral medicine, and lots and lots of treats to help him put weight back on. He's my little buddy now, and tame as can be. He's grown a lot since Christmas but I still can't keep myself from picking him up like a puppy. He doesn't seem to mind, and knows there's a handful of grain in my pocket at all times. He's rather spoiled. His name is Todd Helton but I call him Shrimp because he's pretty small.



It's always amazing how small they look once they've lost their wool. In fact, last year was my first experience with shearing and I was stunned at the difference.



Several of the sheep had gotten so wooly and scraggly that there's no way they could see much through the wool covering their eyes.



The black sheep had turned a rich dark chocolate color due to the sun fading their wool but when the shearer was finished with them they had returned to their jet black color. At least for a while. This little guy is Jorge Dela Rosa. He was by far the wooliest of the lambs. Not Anymore! Heh...

Pancho

I took this picture today while I was waiting for the barn water tank to fill. I was sitting on a log and Pancho came over and stood next to me waiting for me to scratch his chin. He loves it. While he was standing there, I took the opportunity to comb the wool out of his eyes. They really need to be sheared soon.

Hot wire (no not that one)

When I was a kid, I loved to spend weeks in the summer with my Aunt Bibby and Uncle Joe. They had a farm with cows, horses, chickens, a huge garden, and what seemed at the time like a million acres of land. They lived in a big farm house and the entire second floor was used as an attic and man was there ever some cool stuff up there. I could spend hours up there poking around in boxes of Life Magazine and newspapers from the 1930s and 40s. Incredible stuff! I never went home from there without some treasure I'd dug up in the attic.

When I wasn't sleuthing around in the cubby holes in the backs of closets I was roaming all over the farm. Yes, part of the point of being there was to earn some summer cash helping out collecting eggs in the chicken house (imagine the scene from Napoleon Dynamite without the pitcher of raw eggs) but the majority of my time was spent crawling around the barn loft, messing around with the cows, trying to get them to chase me, and basically pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Anyway, hot wire. The whole point of getting my miniature sheep was so they could work in the vineyard, eating weeds and mowing grass instead of me having to spray herbicide for weeds and run the mower for several hours per week. In order for the sheep to stay where I want them, I need to have some form of partition so they only work in the rows where I want them to mow/weed and not go running off all over the property. Originally I had thought about using several wires attached to the vineyard posts, about 8 inches apart, forming a multi-wire fence and blocking off the ends with cattle panels or snow fence or something else that would be easy to move, but we're talking literally about several miles of galvanized wire to do the whole vineyard that way. After visiting the vineyard where I bought my the sheep, I noted that they were using a single strand of electric fence to keep the sheep where they want them. When they wanted to move the electric fence, they just rolled it up on a spool and moved it to the new rows. (by the way, that also opens up the potential of never having to mow the yard again).

Back to Aunt Bibby and Uncle Joe's farm. Back in the day, when I was around 9 or 10, I had my first encounter there with electric fence. I happened to reach out and touch it after being told by my cousins, who shall remain nameless, that it was not plugged in. After being knocked off my feet by the jolt, and vowing revenge, (and also crying), I learned a valuable lesson about electricity.

Greg spent part of last weekend attaching the hot wire to four rows of the new vines, which have yet to be sprayed for weeds. He closed the circuit and ran everything up to a battery charged by a solar panel. Neither one of us has had the nerve to touch it to make sure it is working; me, because I know very well what that feels like, and Greg, because he doesn't! We'll know soon enough when we put the sheep out there this weekend. We will both be working out there training the new vines to the trellis and we'll see for certain whether this little sheep experiment is going to work. Based on my observations in the pasture thus far, the sheep seem to select weeds over grass when they have the choice of both. In fact, I've watched them eat some incredibly unpalatable looking stuff, including the noxious, skin-shredding, multiflora rose that is endemic here, as well as the wild gooseberries, also covered in thorns, which we have all over the place. Oh, and they love poison ivy. More about that later...

We still have the grow tubes on the new vines so they are safe from nibbling, and once the vines are mature, any leaves that grow on the trunk and any water sprouts that come up from the base, down low, are fair game for the sheep because they need to be pruned off anyway. We've set the cordon wire (the lowest horizontal wire where the vine's lateral arms grow, and where the fruit develops) at about 42 inches which should be high enough to be out of reach of the sheep. They do stretch their necks and reach up when eating sometimes but I don't think they can reach the cordons. If they can, I'll just move them higher. Once the vines are weighted down with big, ripe clusters of grapes, the sheep will have to be taken out of the vineyard, as the grapes will prove to be too irresistible to pass up, even if it means climbing up on each other to get them. Based on what I've read, until the grapes are actually almost ripe, and full of sugar, there isn't much interest in them from the sheep, or the deer for that matter. Once the ripening process starts, all bets are off.

From the moment I brought the sheep home, I've been using a little bit of sheep feed in a bucket to condition them to follow me. It worked. They practically bowl me over now when I walk into their pen shaking the green bucket. They make an incredible amount of racket over a couple of handfuls of grain. I guess the pellets are sort of like crack cocaine. It's hilarious to watch them inhale their food. The lambs in particular sound like little piglets when they're eating. My plan is to lead them out to the vineyard with the bucket of feed, (they are powerless to resist it) into the hot-wire enclosed rows, dump the bucket, and close the circuit. Based on what I've seen thus far, this should work. I've managed to cause a stampede all the way across their pasture just by shaking the bucket a couple of times. Even Jilly Bean comes thundering as fast as her stubby legs can carry her so she doesn't miss out on the treats. She is rotund and looks more like a hippopotamus than a sheep when she is running. I don't understand it because she runs everywhere she goes. She never walks. She shouldn't be fat at all.

See? That's her on the right!

Sheep Dog at last!!!

She's finally here. Sophie arrived on Sunday afternoon after a several-hour car ride from Council Bluffs, Iowa. She's been in foster care since sometime in April. I wasn't sure what to expect since I've never had a dog like this before. My dogs have always been pets, slept in the house, and been catered to like children. This dog has an actual job to do. She will be the guardian of my sheep and has thousands of years of instinct to draw on to keep them safe. Sophie is a Great Pyrenees or Pyrenean Mountain Dog as they are known in some places. She is a spayed female and is roughly a year old as far as the vet can tell. She's healthy, and up to date on all vaccines and is ready to take charge of her small flock.

When she hopped out of the car on Sunday, she was a little wary of her new surroundings, and it was less than helpful to have both of our other dogs barking up a storm inside the house, but she came to me, rolled over on her back for a belly rub and instantly became our dog. She is wonderful. Very gentle, anxious to please, and very, very affectionate.

I've been reading up on how to work with this type of dog, and not "ruin" it in terms of its guardian ability. Sophie seems like the perfect dog for us. She has been guarding goats and although a little apprehensive when she first saw the sheep (I'm certain she's never seen one before) within a few minutes, she was in the pen with them, watching them move around and did not seem the least little bit confused or concerned. Mr. Independent, Cocoa, was the first sheep to approach her. He walked right up to her and gave her a sniff with absolutely NO FEAR. She stood calmly and watched him, and then looked at me and wagged her tail.

I had already decided to spend that first night out there with them since I had no idea what to expect once the sun went down. I needn't have worried. We made her a separate enclosure within the sheep pen using cattle panels (rigid 16' x 4' metal fence) and I put her in it, sat in a chair next to her for a few minutes, and then got up and got in the truck for the night. As it was getting dark, she dug up the grass next to the tree in her pen, and made a soft muddy place to sleep. She faced the sheep and settled in. There were a few fireworks going off even though the 4th was the day before, and she was a little bit startled a few times but she never barked, and never got excited. As the daylight was fading, the sheep came over to the fence panel separating them from her pen, and all laid down right next to it. The farm these sheep came from had two Great Pyrenees dogs that live with the flock so I was not surprised that they had no fear of her.

Tonight we moved the box from my truck that I used to picked up the sheep into her pen. This will be plenty of shelter for her if it rains. It's way big inside and there is a thick rubber mat to keep her off the ground if it gets wet. I latched the door open so she can't get trapped in there. She didn't show a lot of interest in it but I bet when it rains she'll be in there in a hurry.

She is a very easy going dog as far as I can tell after one day. Today we walked the perimeter of her pasture that she will be guarding. We did a couple of laps and took our time so she could sniff and mark what will become her turf.

As Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool" who tries to mess with her sheep.

Pictures to follow...

Shepherd FAIL!

Okay, ya know how I said I fixed the hole in the fence? Well, I did. Only the problem is, there was more than one. One thing I've figured out already is that once all green vegetation has been consumed in the sheep enclosure, anything with chlorophyll outside the pen is more enticement than they can stand. Oh, and they're sneaky about it too.

I put them out in the pasture yesterday afternoon for several hours after I finished work and could be around to keep an eye on things. Still no sheep dog, so as it was getting dark, back I go, out to the truck, to spend another night watching over my flock. I put them back in their enclosure, and they milled around a bit and then flopped down next to their little unfinished shed. They seem to understand what it is for but it doesn't seem to bother them that it has no roof or siding, and offers zero protection from anything. They like it, and go in there to rest whenever they want, and no matter how hot it is, they seem to want to pile right up against each other.


I settled in for another night and after finding nothing interesting on the radio, eventually started nodding off. At about 10:15 I wake up and see Jilly Bean standing over by the leaky fence. She's staring off into the woods and I see no sign of any other sheep. I think the only reason she isn't with them is she's too rotund to fit through the hole in the fence...

I hit the lights, get out of the truck, walk over to where Jill is standing and I hear much crackling and munching but I cannot see one single sheep. At this point I know I need help so I go back to the truck and call Greg on my cell. I'm pretty sure he was asleep but I offer him no options and just tell him to get some sheep feed in a bucket and get down here and help me rustle up some damned sheep. He comes straight away, and we start looking for the hole in the fence while shaking the bucket. Well, it's been less than a week and those little buggers know the sound of feed in a bucket. They all come running and crash directly into the fence. I can't get them to go through the little hole they managed to escape through so I have to cut the fence to get them back in. They pile through and I dump their feed into their little tubs on the ground, and while they're busy inhaling their favorite thing in the whole world, Greg and I quickly fix the fence where I cut it, and fixed the "new" hole they had most recently escaped through.


These things are not user friendly!


I need to get a couple of bales of good alfalfa/grass hay so I can throw some in there at night so they'll have something to munch on in their pen and they won't be so determined to sneak off into the woods at night.

It's not like they're starving though...


See?

Getting in touch with my Inner Shepherd

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that since bringing the sheep home, I'm sleeping in the truck next to their pen. Yep, last night was night #5. See, here's the thing. Sheep are food in most parts of the world, both for humans and animals. Since my guardian dog hasn't arrived yet, I'm responsible for making sure these things don't get eaten by something. Our biggest problem here is with coyotes and stray dogs. We also have occasional bobcats which will definitely kill a lamb if given the opportunity. Anyway, I've parked the truck so I can flip the lights on and see the entire sheep enclosure. They understand that I'm watching over them and they sleep next to the fence close to the truck. Thus far, we have had mostly uneventful nights, although I'm really getting about half of the amount of sleep I normally get. I head out there at around 9:30, just as it is getting dark, and come in the house at about 5:00 am, when things out there start waking up. I wake up at least once an hour, and of course anytime they make a noise or I hear something that might be an animal creeping around near the pen.

Sleeping in the front seat of the truck is not exactly the lap of luxury but it isn't all that bad either. In fact it has been pretty peaceful both temperature-wise and bug-wise so except for sleep deprivation, it's not so bad. It is firefly season so there are literally thousands and thousands of green blinking lights in every direction. Hard to describe.

Anyway, over the past five days, I've actually learned a lot about the behavior of sheep. They do not sleep straight through the night. They get up, graze for a while, meander over to the water bucket and get a drink, lie back down next to the fence, burp really loudly, and then commence to chew their cud, just like cows. Oh, and they head butt each other. Often. This cycle is repeated over and over through the night.

Well, up until last night that is...

I was in and out of sleep, and was awakened at about 1:00 am by the sound of something crashing around in the thick brush to the north of the enclosure, on the neighbor's property. I figured it was a deer since they use that area a lot, but to make sure, I yelled out "Move Along!" a couple of times. Then I hear "maaaaah-maaaaah" and I realize one of the sheep is on the other side of the freaking fence.

&#%$&*%!!!!

I get out of the truck, turn on the head lights, count four white sheep in the pen and realize it is Cocoa, the black lamb, Gone Missin'! Craptastic!!! I can hear him but I can't see him and now that the lights are on, he wants back in the pen but he can't find the hole where he made his escape. At this point he is continuously bleating, more frantically every second that ticks by, and I'm imagining every coyote and dog within a mile thinking dinner is just about ready. I walked back to the truck and got the wire-cutters out of Greg's tool belt in the back seat, took my flashlight and tried to coax him back into the pen by stretching and holding up the fence high enough for him to squeeze under it. No Dice! He WILL NOT go near the section where I've lifted it up and he is way too fast for me to try to grab him. As if that isn't enough to deal with, the other four sheep are now bleating back and forth with him at this point, louder and louder'; I guess trying to encourage him to come back inside the pen, and he's not smart enough to realize I'M HOLDING THE FENCE UP FOR HIM, so he head butts the fence several times and then dashes off down the fence line into the night. Okay, on some level I know this is funny but I can't seem to think about anything other than my little black sheep disappearing, and the horrible fate that awaits him if I can't get him back into the pen.

At this point the lights in the truck go off so it's almost pitch black except for my mini mag light which gives off about the same amount of light as a cigarette because the batteries are almost dead. Oh, and I've also ruined my night vision after turning on the truck headlights so I'm basically fumbling back to the truck like a blind person. I get there and start the engine and turn the lights back on so they'll stay on, wondering how I'm going to catch this sheep in the dead of night. When I turn around to assess the hole in the fence, I see that Cocoa is now back in the pen, casually eating grass like nothing has happened. I went up to the house and got a piece of scrap fence and covered the hole enough that he can't get out again, and then settled back in for the night. I'm pretty sure I put my hands in poison ivy when I was fixing the hole in the fence. It's all along the fenceline.

Lesson #1...Sheep are like mice, they can squeeze through a pinhole. I have some more work to do on my fence.

On the Road Again...

Well, right now, Deb is in Missouri picking up her sheep. She left this afternoon for the 6 hour drive south and surely by now is learning a little bit more about what she's gotten herself into. She is staying at the farm where she is purchasing the sheep and this evening she will get a lesson on trimming the sheep's hooves. Interestingly, the farm she is purchasing the sheep from also is in the process of putting in a vineyard and has future plans similar to ours. At some point, once we have permission, we'll put a link to their website. Next year, I'll try to go down there with her, but this time, I still have work to do...

I finished nailing up the fencing up to the gate this evening, I'll finish securing properly tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, I'll be waking up early to finish one last h-brace and will be installing the gate. I then need to complete their shed, the framing is done, just needs a roof and the siding completed.

Never fear, Deb took the camera with her and I'm sure we'll have plenty of photos to share tomorrow evening or Sunday.

Until next time...

Mutton Mowers

Okay, maybe that's too graphic. How about Wooly Weeders or Weed Warriors? Anyway, I'm not sure there is anyplace in the U.S., with the possible exception of Hawaii, where coyotes have not carved out a niche for themselves. With the exception of RATS, I can't think of a more adaptable animal off the top of my head. Rural Iowa is definitely Coyote Country. I seldom see them but I hear them howling at night quite often, particularly in the spring. With our close proximity to the Lake Miami Wildlife Management Area, Coyotes are an inevitable part of living here. They play a role in controlling the population of rodents of all types, and are a part of the ecosystem here. They are welcome to all the rabbits, squirrels, mice, moles, voles, and chipmunks they can catch and carry away. What they are not welcome to is my little sheep. Livestock animals, particulary small livestock, are the low-hanging fruit of the food chain. In order to avoid having my sheep become the main course for a pack of coyotes, I need to protect them. Which brings me to...

Sophia! She's a female Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. I got the call today that she is ready to go to her new home and guard her sheep. She's currently in Rescue in Council Bluffs, Iowa, guarding goats. She will be making her way to Bluff Creek Vineyards sometime the week following the arrival of the sheep. She's a beautiful young female and should fit in well here. She's been in rescue for several months, after being found running along I-80 west of Des Moines. She has been evaluated in terms of her willingness and ability to guard livestock and has passed the test with flying colors. I'm really looking forward to getting her here and adjusted to her flock and new family. I'll be a lot less nervous knowing she's out there keeping an eye on things.

I still have a bit of work to do to get things ready for Sophia and the sheep, and that will be accomplished by the end of this weekend. I need my fence to be pretty bomb proof, as I will need to keep Sophia in, and all manner of unwanted guests OUT! I'll post more pictures when I get them.