What with lambing preparation and lambing itself, we’ve had to make do with a piece of sisal rope to bind poor Isaac’s feedbag together for the last several weeks. I’m here to tell you that the resulting knob makes resting the feedbag upright impossible; it tips over all the time. Nothing like a graphic reminder of why the flat-bottomed feedbags work so well — as long as they haven’t been used as teething toys by the local rodent population.

Isaac's feedbags - new and old

No sooner did I have Isaac re-outfitted than Steve started whining about how Shawn and I had commandeered Steve’s grain-feeding bag for our LGD puppy, Khloe, and wouldn’t I pretty-please make Khloe her own bag so Steve can continue currying favor with the ewes by hand-feeding them treats. Back to the sewing machine, rummage around for another old jeans leg, whip up a bag for Khloe.

But wait, Khloe’s our first female LGD, living here with four stinky older brothers (TJ, Chuy, Isaac, and Jacob). She is living proof that the playing field, although it still has a few potholes in it, for professional women is finally leveling out. Khloe is only eight months old, but within the last few weeks she has turned an important guardian dog corner in her maturity and is now on full duty every night in the pastures nearest the river where the coyotes like to hang out. Although she is still growing and has a voice somewhat less basso profundo than her brothers, she is already an important member of the security force here at Saltmarsh Ranch and she has taken her place in the line of succession as our older dogs eventually must retire from active duty.

What a dilemma. I didn’t want to do anything to suggest that Khloe is somehow an inferior guardian just because she’s a girl, nor did I want to raise Title IX issues by providing her with a lesser level of equipment, but still, it seemed she should be able to have a lady’s handbag without undue damage to her stature as a tough guy. As luck would have it, right then I stumbled over a box of sewing “notions” that I’ve never taken time to unpack since we moved out here from Chicago. There amidst the ziploc bags of mismatched buttons, partial cards of hem tape, unraveling spools of thread, and the usual assortment of stuff a would-be home seamstress collects “just in case” was my collection of laces and edgings and ric-rac saved from the dismantling of my great grandfather’s general store in Pomeroy, Iowa decades ago. One spool of lace in particular fairly cried out to be used on Khloe’s feedbag. Here’s one of the laces from the Williams General Store, probably approaching 100 years old, and Khloe’s Pravda knockoff:

Khloe's feedbag

Steve can barely hide his disdain for Khloe’s bag, and Shawn refuses to comment, but what do you expect? The collective “boys” have been sore ever since we got the vote, after all. I say it adds a sorely-needed touch of elegance to our pastures, especially now that it’s spring and everything is clean and fresh and green.

I will close this frivolous interlude with a couple of my favorite pictures of Khloe, first on the day she arrived last fall at the age of six weeks and needed to use Steve and Shawn’s legs to hide under,

Khloe at six weeks

and a couple of weeks ago when she was hanging out in the shade

Khloe at 8 months

while Steve read a book with Isaac, and occasionally Khloe, at his feet:

Isaac & Khloe keep Steve company

For now …

If I had to pick one phrase to describe summertime with our Soay sheep, it would be “a feast for the eyes.”  Everything is good to look at  — the sheep, the dogs, the llamas, the pastures.  I have been so intent to talk here about the “working” side of shepherding that it is high time I show you the mellow side for a change.
Our tour begins with the view from our upper pastures, the ones we hay, looking down on a section of the pasture we use for the sheep.  You can see two of the shelters in the distance.

Ever since we started raising Soay sheep, green definitely has become my favorite color!  We are lucky to live on a river, the Little Applegate, and it is right down there beyond the grass, lined by the big trees.  It is the river that makes these lush pastures possible for Soay sheep food.  The next picture shows one of the essential parts of the irrigation operation.

The pipe running right up the middle is in the same upper pasture shown in the foreground of the first picture.  It is that pipe, complete with its rainbird just peeking through the grass, hooked to a riser, and laid end-to-end with 17 other pieces of pipe, that brings the water up from the river to the upper pastures.  In the next picture, you can just barely see the rainbirds spewing water up the hillside, the little white spots at the edge of the grass.

I will never forget how excited Steve was last year when we were able to hay the upper pastures for the first time.  Here’s what this luscious green grass will look like in about a month, after it is baled and ready for winter feeding:

Pop quiz:  Is this man having fun raising Soay sheep?

As for the animals, it is not just about loads of green grass to eat.  For the ewes, there is the peace and quiet of post-weaning and the chance to put a little weight back on after the lambs have taken their fair share of their mom’s body mass.  Have a look.

I took this picture recently when we put our adult ewes into an area of our property that has never seen sheep, and for decades was a neglected area overgrown with blackberry and star thistle.  I am fairly certain the tan ewe in the middle is Libretto.  The pretty white-faced ewe in front is Ellerbeck, the cover girl on the front page of our farm website.

This nearby group of ewes is about to attack a “mature” stand of blackberries, right behind them.  It didn’t take long for these determined ladies to turn that blackberry thicket into bare stalks.  The ewes will volunteer to return next April to munch on the tender new growth of blackberry that will dare to rear its ugly head in the pasture.

Once they’ve had their fill, the ewes take time out for a late-afternoon snooze and cud-chew.  The ewe against the fence right in the middle is Vieva, one of our 2008 AI lambs, with a darker face than has been seen in the US-based British flock previously.  Over on the left is another of our 2008 AI ewes, Ossie, with the completely white face other than her black eye and nose.  The ewe with the yellow tape on her horn is the mother of at least one of our AI lambs from this year, but I honestly cannot tell which one.  Sheep may safely graze.

Life for the rams is quiet, too, in the months before rut starts and the guys have to prove they are the most worthy breeding candidates by periodically bashing each other.  Here they are earlier in the summer on new grass.  You can see the most recent rotation pattern, over on the left where it looks not so lush any more.

While we are down here in the bull pen, let me brag on a couple of our rams.  I took this picture of Cinnabar a couple of days ago because he reminds me so much of his sire, Fenugreek.  Some day we may figure out where this longer fleece came from originally, but for now we simply enjoy looking at it.

The equally handsome fellow in the back with the yellow-taped horns is Emmett, sire of a number of British AI grandchildren this year (Emmett’s father is Gaerllywd Mustard, who resides in the U.K.).

As for the lambs, they are out from under their moms’ watchful eyes and free to cavort around the pastures eating grass to their rumens’ content.  I tried in vain to get some of them to stop and pose as they started out in a new area of grass a few weeks ago, but was lucky just to capture one little Brit ewe lamb who found the grass so high she had to jump over it!

One of our priorities this lambing season was to focus on our lambs’ non-milk nutrition, especially during weaning, when they are under stress and are more vulnerable to coccidia.  This tan ewe lamb is not quite four months old and weighs 35 pounds, a robust weight and a size that confirms she has not been carrying a worm load.

I had to laugh when I saw the next picture come out of the camera.  This is one of our mahogany Blue Mountain-derived American Soay lambs in a pasture area that had seen better days by the time I got there, but I love seeing the ewe lamb so comfortable being with our guardian llama, Llucy, who you can see looming over her in the background.

Alas, the grass does not last forever.  Here are our youngest British lamb (an AI granddaughter named Heywood) and her mother Xanthoria (Heywood’s sire Curtis is way down in the bull pen of course), trying to scrounge just a little more grass from an area they clearly have taken down about as far as we want it to go.

Not surprisingly, their pitiful attempts prompted me to summon Steve right away to move Heywood’s group to a new section of pasture.

As for our livestock guardian dogs, we are not sure whether they are so content during the summer because they are out in the open pastures, or because the sheep are so content on grass, or because the coyote babies also have been weaned and their mothers are no longer frantically looking for food, but whatever the reason, our big guys mellow out come summertime as well.  Here is Isaac in the cool grass and shade, watching his ewes enjoy a new pasture area.

There is one animal on our farm, our border collie Molly, who never takes a vacation from work, but she is mighty content during the summer when she can find a water tank to cool off in,

or a field of lush grass to run in:

To get you oriented, the foothills in the background are in California (we are about 10 miles north of the border as the crow flies).

I will end the tour by showing you one more time why we love being around the diminutive Soay sheep.  No sooner had I put down my clipboard and picture list when Alizarin (”Lizzie”) came over to investigate.

Here’s hoping you are having a good summer.  If you have Soay sheep, we know you are enjoying this season!

For now …

Experienced shepherds, of Soay sheep or otherwise, and almost any do-it-yourselfer will sympathize with what I am about to say.  When you feed your livestock guardian dogs in the pasture, there is nothing more annoying than to have your bucket tip over, requiring a trip back to the barn for more goody.  Not the kind of catastrophic event that puts a flock in jeopardy, of course, but enough to make you grit your teeth and who needs that?

Same thing if you are in the midst of a home fixup project, your selection of nails-in-old-coffee-cans is sitting on the workbench, and your sweatshirt sleeve knocks a couple of them over onto the floor.  Or you are trying to repair a fence and your can of fence staples tips over in the lush pasture grass.

Wouldn’t you rather have a no-cost, tip-proof container for this stuff?

Luckily, as with so many other aspects of keeping a flock of Soay sheep, help is readily at hand, this time in the form of a square-bottomed cloth bag, a transportation system for your dog food or nails that cannot tip over and spill.  Here are two of our dogs’ “stockings” filled with half their daily ration and ready for the evening feed:

As you can see, Chuy and Isaac’s stockings are tip-proof.  You just pick them up and off you go. 
 
Why don’t these bags fall over and spill?  The secret is in the square-shaped bottom end, illustrated by Isaac’s upended stocking: 

The bottom really is more or less a square, and whatever its geometrically accurate name, that bottom surface keeps it upright just fine.  In fact, when the top of a longer bag droops over, it helps keep out rain, dust, and inquisitive border collie noses. 

The ideal raw material is old jeans, so heavily worn that the owner can no longer go out in public in them (holes you-know-where) or torn enough to make them unsafe to wear near moving machinery parts.  And there is a side benefit.  If you do not make bags out of them, you eventually will have to throw the jeans away, so these sewing projects should qualify as “green” even though they are a sorry excuse for blue.  Here is a good example of a recent candidate for reinicarnation.

The only other materials you need are a sewing machine, a few straight pins, and any color thread.   No zigzag or button hole or other “foots” to discourage the novice seamstress in this project.

Before I launch into the illustrated directions for making a square-bottomed feed/nails sack, a credit is in order.  We adapted this idea from generations of rock climbers, including Steve in his younger, more agile days, who use stuff sacks to keep their carabiners, pitons, ropes, and legendarily minimal toiletries organized in their backpacks.  You can still find this kind of sack in outdoor gear stores, but you will pay a relative arm and leg for them, and why not use your own free jeans legs instead?

Making the Saltmarsh All-Purpose Carrier

Step 1.  Cut one leg off the jeans, leaving the bottom hem intact, or what passes for intact.  An initial length of about 14 inches will yield a bag about 10 inches tall that easily can hold a quart and a half of dry dog food or a coffee-can’s worth of nails and still have enough fabric to grab onto. 
 
 

Step 2.  Turn the severed leg inside out and lay it flat with the existing side seams more or less forming the edges.  If you are using a tapered jeans leg, this will not be an exact science. 

Sew the open end (not the already-hemmed bottom edge of the leg) shut with a plain straight seam about one inch from the raw edge.  Here’s what the prepped material looks like and how you sew it: 

Step 3.   The goal now is to create a box-shaped bottom that will not tip over.  First, put the new seamed edge in front of you running vertically — up and down. 
 
Grasp some material on either side of the seam and pull outwards to form a diamond/box shape.
 

You want to turn the pointed ends at the top and bottom of the diamond into the sides of a square, which, when you turn it back rightside out will form a box.  Take my word for it, please.

Figure out where you can hem crosswise to create the sides for your box.  In the following picture, I have marked with a black dotted line the two “sides” you will create by sewing these two new seams.  I recommend you mark yours as well, unless your dogs will be offended at having the seams of their stockings show.  We girls endured black-seamed stockings for decades without permanent emotional damage, as I recall.   

Now sew each of the marked seams.  You will be sewing through quite a bit of heavy fabric, so use a heavy needle and your trusty straight pins. 

 
Be patient and gently work the machine through the material.  Don’t forget to sew both seams.

  
 
Here is what it looks like, still wrong side out, when both “sides” have been made.  For reference, I marked the very first straight seam with a wiggly line so you can see how the various seams fit together.

Once you’ve got both seams done, turn the whole thing right side out again.  Nudge the fabric into the corners to see if you have made two decent-looking square corners.  We’re not talking engineering precision here, just something that will work.

Step 4.  To check your work and my directions, fill the bag with some rocks or beans to be sure it is stable.  Hint:  it will be!

To tidy up the inside of your new stocking and leave more room for goodies, turn it inside out one more time and trim off the extra hunks of material, always leaving about an inch of material outside the seam so it will not ravel.  
 

Be careful, of course, not to cut off the working parts , or you will dribble dog food down the lane and have nothing left for your loyal protectors to eat. 

  
 
Turn the whole thing right side out one final time, wrap it with festive Santa wrapping paper, an artsy bow, and you’re all set. 

Accessorizing your stocking.  What, you thought I was going to stop at the basic bag?  Not a chance. 

Monograms.  If you have two or more dogs who eat different kinds or amounts of food, or more than one kind of nail, you can make a good-enough identifying monogram by cutting an initial (as in “i” for Isaac or “C” for Chuy) from any contrasting scrap of cloth you have lying around.  Sew it on near the open end of the bag, high enough to let you slip the open end of the bag over the sleeve arm of your sewing machine. 

This one would work nicely for oatmeal for the birds, or a sack of “O” rings if you are putting together your own satellite.  

Drawstrings.  In the days of yore, pre-velcro, the climbers’ stuff sacks had drawstrings with jim-dandy clamp-like things to keep them shut.  Are you are going for the Martha Stewart award here?  If so, you can add rickrack, or use extra jeans legs for fireplace sachets (I am not making this up), or you can add drawstrings by cutting off the hemmed bottom edge of the jeans and making your own open-ended, tube-like hem, with those little slits for threading through a drawstring, etc.  Personally, I would rather clean gutters than thread drawstrings through anything, much less a jeans leg, but if you’ve got a good movie to watch, have at it. 

Once you figure out how to make these bags, you can crank them out in assembly line fashion and have a selection of sizes to pick from when you need to take a handful of insulators, a few nails, and a spool of electric tape out to work on your fence, or when you need to take a couple of irrigation pipe fittings and a small or medium-sized wrench or two out to a malfunctioning riser or rainbird.  And when the winter rains or snow arrive in earnest, you can fritter away whole days re-organizing your nails, nuts and bolts, screws, all those PVs (Potentially Valuables) in your tool shed.

If I don’t get back here before the end of the year, may your Christmas stocking be coal-free and not tip over.

Happy holidays!

Then I remembered the “dance” I describe here, the task where the (blue) gloves come in so handy, is part of “jugging.”  All of a sudden I was no longer in the throes of writer’s block.  I was back at a 10th grade sock hop in rural Iowa, flailing to the sounds of “Devil with the blue dress on.”  Talk about random access.  

Back to the Lamb Kit. 

Nitrile gloves are the only equipment required for a task unique to the lambing phase –”jugging” the ewe and lamb.  Here is how jugging works and where gloves fit (oops) in the picture.  Stay with me and stop tapping your toes.  DWTBDO was a truly awful song and I’m sorry I brought it up.

A couple of weeks before lambing begins, we bring our pregnant ewes up from the pasture to a fenced paddock named, in a fit of originality, the “Maternity Ward.”  The MW consists of a small area near the barn where we keep the ewes at night, and a surrounding area beyond that where they can graze during the day with our guardian dogs.  This setup allows us to keep close tabs on the ewes and quickly spot the newborns.  Having a small inner sanctum also allows the dogs to “patrol” the perimeter around the sleeping quarters at night.  The combination of scent and their physical proximity to the ewes is enough to ward off coyotes looking for dinner, a bigger problem for us when the tender baby lambs start arriving.

To be sure, the Maternity Ward is a bit crowded, especially at feeding time, and once a lamb is born, it can be stressful for the ewe, especially a first time mother, to keep track of and stay focused on her young one in the general chaos.  Now we (finally) get to “jugging.”

As soon as we discover a new lamb, we move the ewe and newborn to a “jug,” one of several 5′ x 5′ paneled areas within the Maternity Ward that are warm and and have dry fresh bedding straw.  Here the mother and lamb can be alone for the first 24 hours or so while the lamb learns its mother’s voice and smell (and vice versa), and here the gloves (finally) come in handy. 

We want to avoid human scent on the lamb until it has bonded with its mom and the reciprocal “imprint” is firmly in place.  Steve wades right in, picks up the lamb with his gloves on, and starts the jugging dance, walking slowly backwards, holding the lamb low enough for the nearsighted ewe to follow closely, nervously licking at her lamb and usually gurgling and muttering a lot.  It takes just a couple of minutes to get them into the jug and is guaranteed to work as long as the ewe’s nose is close enough to smell the lamb.  This is one time when I wish I had had a camera.  There is no dance quite as odd as the 6-step the shepherd and the ewe perform in jugging.  

After the ewe and lamb are safely ensconced in their jug, everyone relaxes and the ewe gets back to work cleaning and feeding her baby, savoring the relative tranquility until the next ewe/lamb pair displaces them.

Our gloves of choice are made of nitrile, rather than rubber.  Nitrile is much stronger and just as thin as rubber, so you also can wear them to do the fine work necessary to vaccinate, tag, or otherwise handle the lamb if you do not want to work bare-handed.  Nitrile gloves are easy to locate in the farm supply store or pharmacy.  They are the blue ones, disposable and inexpensive.

Oh yes, if you have nothing better to do in late March/early April, you are welcome to stop by the ranch and watch a demonstration of jugging with blue gloves on.  I probably do not have to tell you what 1966 “hit” tune by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels will be  piped into the Maternity Ward to accompany the dance. 

For now …