It’s breeding month, and all the ewes are in breeding groups with the rams. Most of the ewe lambs are in with our ram lamb, Pistol, and acting all grown up! Nugget (photo-bombing the first photo, taken by Melinda) still has a bit of a head-tilt, but she is a happy gal and such a […]
Who would have thought you could get two 200-pound ewes in the back of a Toyota 4Runner? I was skeptical when Sam Stack came to pick up Brown-Nose and Luna, the two 2-year olds he and his wife Lauren had bought from me to add to their flock at Willy Nilly Farm in Humboldt County.
I took eight ewes who are retiring from production to Soul Food Farm in Vacaville today. We had our first rain of the season, just a light drizzle, but it made the day pleasantly cool, perfect for transporting sheep. In May I had sold four ewes who turned out not to be pregnant to Alexis
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I made the last cheese of my professional career yesterday. It was a nearly perfect cheesemaking day; I began at 6 am sanitizing equipment and the milk line, began the transfer of the fresh milk from the bulk tank, and was joined by Melinda who prepared the buckets of frozen milk to add to the
Dang me! It has been a rough week for our boy, Pistol. As a matter of fact, it’s been a bit of a bumpy life, but he is coming out a winner. Unlike his namesake in the ’60’s country song, “Dang Me,” Pistol was not the seventh son, but the single son of 2072, a
Baserri with its First Place ribbon at the Festival of Cheese at the American Cheese Society Conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Thanks to Seana Doughty for taking the photo!
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Woo hooo! Our Baserri won First Place in its category at the American Cheese Society competition today! They even pronounced BOTH “Baserri” and “Barinaga Ranch” correctly at the award ceremony! Congratulations especially to Taryn Orlemann, who made cheese for me last season, including this lot! And to Lisa, Aline, Caroline and Melinda all of whom
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Bebe is one extraordinary ewe, and one of my all-time favorites. Her name (BB) stands for Bottle Baby, because she was rejected by her mother (who we named Psycho, because of her complete lack of mothering skills) and we had to raise her on a bottle. I originally decided not to keep Bebe, because poor
I’ve been feeling pretty stir-crazy since I broke my ankle two weeks ago, missing my time working with Lolo, Lisa, Melinda and the sheep. Today I hobbled out to my back yard on my crutches and just sat down there with the pets. Gracie and her lamb Frankie were happy for the company. And their
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Melinda got this cute photo of the pigs the other day enjoying a salad of garden trimmings. This triggered her to look back through her photos and find a photo of the pigs not long after they arrived in May. That’s a lot of growth in two months! But as Lolo is fond of saying, “Well,