Whimsy & The Puyallup

Look at my birthday present ! My daughter is holding my new German Shepherd puppy. I named her Whimsy. She is 9 weeks old now and since this picture was taken her other ear perked up. She has been very easy to house-train and a joy . I have already had her with me in the sheep pens, and plan on teaching her to herd sheep. But that will be later in the spring. For now I just want her to be exposed to my sheep, their sounds & movements. She isn't afraid of them, nor is she aggressive. We are going to have so much fun together !

I spent my birthday preparing for our annual September tradition, taking sheep to the Puyallup Fair. This is a busy time, and for the next week I'll be occupied with the fair. Goth ( my Jacob Sheep ram ) can tell it's that time again too and he even seems resigned to his 5 day stay. Last year he appeared to enjoy the crowds gathered 'round his pen. He would stretch, lift his head high and strike a pose for them.

I'll be back to blogging after the fair. If you're in the area ( Puyallup, Washington ) stop in at the Animals Of The World barn & say "hi ". You know you want to  Do the Puyallup !

Puyallup Fair 2012

Another great time exhibiting at the Puyallup Fair ! This year I had more help, my granddaughter K.N. is old enough to stay with her brother C.T. & I the 4 nights and 5 days of exhibition in the Animals Of The World barn. We camp there so we're able to get some rest before each busy day.Camping in our trailer makes it even more fun too.

 The front of my exhibit, with C.T. & K.N. at the table, ready to answer questions should I have to take a break.

These pictures were taken before the fair was officially open for the day. No crowds to obscure the picture taking.The sheep pens were clean after our morning clean-up.After picture taking we enjoyed our traditional fair breakfast, doughnuts & beverages ( who eats healthy at the fair ?). Coffee for me!

Side view of exhibit...

..back view. My exhibit is in a center aisle. I needed to create walls to post information about Jacob Sheep, and also create visual borders. I have worked on the design over the years to minimize visual clutter, but as you probably realize, this often requires a cost in supplies and a lot of labor.My husband and I are refining this, because transporting the walls, the sheep, and everything else is also a big thing to take into consideration.

 Goth, my ram. Posing for the crowds.He was very accommodating to photographers this year, and even mellow.I am not exaggerating when I say there must have been thousands of pictures taken of him over the past few years.One would think he is aware of this the way he posed this year.

 

The ewes ( girl sheep ) in their pen.Thora, Tovah, Mally, & Buttercup were here this year, showing the public the varied horn count on each sheep in this breed.

A lot of time and energy, a lot of fun invested in another year at the Puyallup Fair. I am so thankful to have been invited to participate as an exhibitor here, and even more blessed to have 2 of my grandchildren help me out. Our granddaughter K.N. even chose to spend her birthday here with me and her brother.Maybe next year she'll be here too.Lord willing, I will , and so will Goth.

 

Puyallup Fair 2011 ~ Fun & Done

The Puyallup Fair is over, and I can say the last 5 days of the fair were fun. Hard work for me and mine, but fun! My husband Jim helped me so much and he also kept things at home in check. Someone has to be home to feed all the animals left behind.Thank-you Jim. Our oldest grandchild C.T. helps me every year at the fair. He looks forward to his time here and he works hard for the privilege. C.T. cleans out the pens in the mornings before the fair opens and sits at the table answering the public's questions about Jacob sheep.He also sweeps around our exhibit during the fair and helps me keep it clean all through the day.You can see my ram, Goth, looking through the bars of his pen.

A view of my little nook of the 'Animals of the World' barn.What is that I see in the back of the picture ?

My grandson, eating a delicious vanilla ice cream cone from the dairy and milking barn on the fairgrounds.Oh so very tasty, and already I am missing a truly good vanilla ice cream cone.( Next year at the fair, for sure!)

Another view of my exhibit at the Puyallup Fair.

Our daughter came for a visit and brought C.T.'s sister.One nice thing about the fair is I get to visit with people in my little area. I also get to see so many people I know , but rarely see,passing through this barn .Of course I have to invite them to sit a spell and visit, that is one of the best perks of being here. The girls, my Jacob Sheep ewes are posing for me. Well, actually, they are lined up and hoping to receive the soda crackers I am dangling overhead. Here from left to right are Buttercup, Mahlon,Thora, and Valkyrie. Then there is Goth. He seemed to strut and pose the whole week,surprising me by being so mellow. He did not ram the bars of his pen. He did entertain us often by kicking or butting his ball, accepting soda crackers, leaning his head into the spaces between the bars for my husband to scratch behind his ears or under his chin.He did not seem to mind in the least the hundreds and hundreds of people taking his picture. Good boy Goth. May you produce many more lambs and be with us many more years. Hopefully we can "do the Puyallup" together again too !

How To Shelter A Shelter From A Battering Ram

Goth, our big boy here, has destroyed many fences , gates, trees, and even another ram. We have tried to provide him with shelter to protect him from the rain but he has taken out solidly installed corner posts on buildings and the shelters over the years. He, his father and grandfathers killed the huge cottonwood trees in the ram pen by ramming them, for fun. See this post*Goth And The Spot of Ugliness. For a few years I have had this idea for a perfect shelter for rams, bulls and horses ( our sons' horses also contributed to taking out the corners of shelters) but not being any good at all in carpentry or building construction, and knowing my husband has many, many other more needful things to do in spite of my pleading, well, nagging~ my bright idea went undone. I have even spent many hours on-line looking for ready-made shelters of my simple design. I am sure there are many of you who read this ( or not) who will exclaim this is an old idea and YOU might have even incorporated it, but no one has ventured forth with this plan as of yet,( and I have asked many people on-line and in the sheep business around here)....so here is finally, the culmination of my idea and my husband and youngest son's handiwork. THANK-YOU! My husband and son have so many more important things to be doing, but our ram pen is right by the turn-around in our driveway. You see it right away and I don't like such destruction , ripped tarps, bashed in fences, demolished and dead trees to be the first thing so many people see.Hey, I don't like seeing it myself, but I do want to keep Goth. Above is the beginning of the structure. A structure supported by 3, THREE posts, all on the outside of the fence.See, if there are NO posts inside the fence, the ram cannot bash the post and cause the shelter to lean and eventually fall~ which has been the demise of all our previous sheep shelters. You can see on the other side of the fence, the huge wet hay and manure pile our youngest son cleaned out of the pen for me, with a bit of help from our oldest Grandson and my husband. This build-up is from Goth and the 4 ewes that spent the fall with him. I could not get into the pen to clean because I did not want Goth to be tempted to ram me. After our son helped my husband get off to a good start on the shelter my husband finished it, a bit at a time. He is a busy man and the weather has been bad. He had me be the watch-out just in case Goth took an interest in him and the bright green ladder.You can see part of Goth in the background of the picture above, and you can see the trunks of the very dead cottonwood trees killed by years of ramming.

My dear husband!

And here is my Valentine's present this year , the 3 post ram shelter that looks nice! I can also clean out the manure and wet hay stems with a 3 pronged forked hoe, from the outside of the fence~ yay! No risking life to have a clean ram pen. What is funny is that until my husband could get to finishing the roof, he had one strip of the corrugated metal roofing on the top and Goth would position himself perfectly under the strip to keep himself dry. He's not so dumb after all.

My husband presented me with a dozen red roses and card to melt my heart yesterday. Then he finished my ram shelter ~thank-you Jim, I love you!

Goth's Head Gear, Snack or Adornment?

"Hey, bahhhhhhh ! Look over here, ladies I am your ram. The ram with the studly head gear decked out with greenery. How can you resist me? " ( Goth wearing rugosa vines tangled in his horns)

"What about you Delilah? Like my head gear? " Delilah seems unimpressed.

"No one is paying attention to me. Oh well, if the ewes don't find you handsome at least they should find you tasty." And they did, the gals ate the rugosa leaves and vines off Goth's head shortly after I took these pictures. Then they resumed ignoring him. Guess breeding season is over for the gals. Poor Goth. A ewe lamb also got herself decked out in greenery and wore it for 2 days. We had to disentangle her from the rugosa because she wouldn't stand still for her flock mates to eat the leaves off her. You can see how sheep left un-sheared and allowed to roam large ranges , fields, and wooded areas can easily get tangled in thorns, briar patches, etc., that would allow them to be caught and eaten by predators or literally starve to death . Thorns grab the fleece and as the sheep struggles the thorns dig in even more thus causing the vines to tighten...horned sheep get caught in all sorts of bad situations .They can be caught in brush, fences, feeders and sometimes victims of clashes among each other leading to the horns piercing vital organs or causing internal bleeding. I love my horned sheep, but it is easy to see why over the centuries many shepherds have bred sheep to be hornless, or polled.

New Ram Barnaby & Etiquette?

This is my new ram Swallow Lane Barnaby! I love him already. He is a perfect gentleman, for a ram. He is nice to the ladies, great with his new pal Black Bart, and follows me around like a puppy dog. I hope he is able to live here for a very long time! Barnaby came from Swallow Lane Jacob Sheep , and Mark and Cathie from Swallow Lane took Cedar Pond's Vandal home with them. Most of my best sheep trace their lineage back to Swallow Lane and I am privileged to have some new bloodlines from them again. My ram Goth is the son of Swallow Lane Torque, who I bought from Mark and Cathie a few years ago. I have been very happy with the lambs and sheep from Torque's line! Thank-you Mark and Cathie! Being the gentleman he is, I am thinking Barnaby could use a few etiquette lessons and who better to learn proper etiquette from than Emily Post? If you are "in the throes of etiquette" ( as The Stick Horse Cowgirls say), then you too should consider checking out their blog. Click here * for a chance to win an original , genuine, 1945 book of 'Etiquette' by Emily Post. You could glean all sorts of information that should come in handy. Like, the difference between balls and dances. And what color suit YOUR butler should wear. Useful stuff like that. I know I put my name in the hat , because I for one do not want to be considered a "vulgarian" by the likes of Miss Emily and her friends!