The sheep are ready to go to work!!!

        Hi folks, I'm back.  The flock has been carefully tended to by my wonderful neighbors Brian, Tina and Daniel.  Thanks Guys!!  The sheep were working their hills for months to knock down and eat the weeds and brush.   Now at least some of them should move on to other areas of the county.
       My son Rick graduated from high school and is looking for a job.  He's very experienced wrangling the herd thru the chapparal.  So now we have the sheep and the shepherd, all we need are some customers who want land cleared in an eco-friendly way.
       Global Warming: Hot enough for you?
       In the 4 years we have used sheep to clear our land, we have rarely needed to use a weed wacker.  Just put the sheep out in the eating area in the morning, and go down something else till noon.  Then we check on them, make sure the water's not knocked over, etc. We come back in the evening to pick them up and put them in our corral behind our house, where they have water and a shelter. CO2 emitted: much less than a weedwacker. Pollutants:0.
       Now fast forward to winter: the wool that the sheep shed has been collected, washed, spun, and knitting into warm clothing.  With wool clothes we can turn the thermostat down in the house,  save on energy and once again lower CO2 emissions.
        Out on the job.
        When out on a clearing job, the sheep will need herding, protection, water, shade, and the weeds and brush.   Herding and protection can be provided by appropriate fencing, like electric or 6 ft chain link. We have some electric fencing that we can put up.  Then a bucket of water and a shady spot is all they need to do their jobs.
        Sometimes we use the sheep to clear the sides of our road, then we put them on long leashes and walk them up and down the street. They really like getting out and free ranging on either side of the road.
        Prices for clearing.  As cheap as possible.  I'd do it for free, but I have insurance and transportation costs, and my son needs a job.  So I'm shooting for $35 to $100 an acre depending on what level of care the owner can provide.  Something all fenced with guard animals and an owner who will provide water and maybe transportation  gets the lowest prices.
       Call now, opereators standing by!  Well not really. But shoot me an email wallwizerds@roadrunner.com and we can get things rolling.   Later, Janice & Co.

Where I have been the last 3 months...

In and out of the hospital for 2 major surgeries.  And I'm still not done.  I'm on disability leave, mostly stuck in bed with ice packs on my surgery incisions.  Not fun.  I took the sheep back from the farm to enjoy here while I recover.  My husband Bob is combing the wool off Sasha, so later on I can spin it.
      Up in Ojai, the ewes had a bumper crop of lambs, mostly rams.  I have to sell the ram lambs off, and I hope to sell them to someone who wants to use them for clearing weeds and brush.  It would be a great business opportunity for someone with a truck around here (Ventura County or maybe Malibu area).
     Meanwhile the world is fighting over oil and nuclear power is poisoning the ocean.  How about something sustainable, wind, solar, biofuels?  I heard a long time ago about the potential of tidal energy, whatever happened to that?
      Even though I'm sick, I still plan to promote sheep as an alternative to conventional weed abatement and fire suppression in Southern California.  The USDA has an article on their website on this, its really been succesful elsewhere.  I've also seen articles on how sheep are best at controlling weeds around solar energy panel outlays.  Then there's the manure, which can be used for fertilizer or biofuel, replacing petrochemicals in both cases.
      If you are interesting and buying some sheep and starting an environmental weed and brush abatement business, post a comment with a way to contact you.

Black Sheep

Here's Mama Mia and one of her black lambs, cant tell which one.  Mia is a dynamite sheep with her lovely black wool and her ability to lamb every six months!! She is the mom to Sasha, our number 2 ram, and 4 others, including a set of twins, and she is only 4 years old.  When she gets to the lemon farm, she will be one of the ewe leaders out exploring the place.

Baby lamb time

This is our ewe Annie, and her newborn lamb in the "birthing jug".   There were 3 lambs born in the past three weeks. Newborn lambs and their mothers should be separated from the herd for a few days so the baby and mom can imprint on each other, and we can feed the mom some grain with molasses.  

Habitable building in one hour

Its freezing here!! Seriously, I found ice crystals out in the grass yesterday.  Its also been raining a lot still.  My husband Bob has been worried about the sheep not all having a place to get out of the rain, and he came up with this ingenious solution.
      First he took four pallet racks from work that he was going to get rid of anyway.  We brough them up to Ojai. Then he and my brother David put them together with these snap-on steel rods. Two racks for the sides, two racks for a gable roof. Side braces at the open ends.  A piece of plywood for the back, propped up with a post, a tarp over the top, tied on at the corners, and its finished in one hour.  All the sheep can get in there out of the rain and the wind.
     After we were done, we were having a good time admiring our work.  We got to thinking about emergency shelter that some refugees have around the world: just a tarp!!  Snapping together the pallet racks makes for a sturdy shelter that wont blow down in the wind. Later, actual walls can be built on and a door added.  This to be a temporary to permanent housing solution.  Since they are snapped together, they can also be snapped apart and moved.  One man or 2 women can carry a rack.
    Feel free to use this idea for shelter anywhere in the world.

Our winter home in Ojai

This is where the sheep hang out while they are waiting for us to finish the fence and move them to the Lemon Farm.  Its the place where my brother lives in Ojai.  This is the very back of the place, which is close to the Ventura River.  Right now the place is quite soggy as we have had over 6 inches of rain in the past week.  The herd had to shelter in a tiny shed where there wasn't room for all of them, so the rams stayed outside in the rain, until my brother could fix up a shelter for them.  Once the sheep move to the farm, the grass will grow really high in Ojai. I will send a few back to tackle the grass.  A friend of my brother's is thinking of starting a "sheep herding experience" program for city dwellers then!!
          

Happy Holidays from the Lemon Farm!!

Happy Holidays to all who  follow or who have read my blog this year!!  I am totally jazzed to have readers!! 
         Its really exciting for me to see readers from around the world reading the blog.  Everyone in the world deserves to have a safe, clean, environment, and we can all participate, even in a small way, to clean it up. To thank you all, I am going to visit my neighbors today and hand out some free organic lemons to each (and the url to this blog!!).
         Its Friday afternoon, Christmas Eve, and I'm off to pick horseweed  at the ranch, and collect pumpkins for the sheep, who will spend Christmas in their manger in Ojai. So it will be next year, hopefully January!! that the sheep move to the ranch.  The big obstacle is we are scared of what runs around out there at night, like coyotes.  We'll have to go out there every night to put them in the barn, or find someone else to do that.  Or maybe get a guardian animal like a good working dog, we'll see.
        Dave and I will get together soon and plot some goals for the place for next year.  we have a tractor that needs to get fixed, and paying for that will be a major goal.  In March the sheep will need shearing, and maybe I can sell some of the wool.   Their wool is unique, and I will write about that and show it to you soon.    Happy Holidays, Janice & co.
     
    

And later, that evening....

Its pig out time.  Currently the sheep are staying at my brother's in Ojai, while we got the deal straightened out and the fence put up.  The 2 sheep at the front of this picture are twin lambs born this summer, their mom is one of the black sheep in this picture.
       There's also some smashed up pumpkin in the foreground, I still collect pumpkins in the fall for them. While Horseweed is now the main food in their diet, I need to supplement with pumpkins, tumbleweed, squished lemons, kitchen scraps, and a few acorns.  Acorns are considered toxic to sheep, but I have found that in small quantities, like a handful a day,  they're ok.

The tree is freed

Same tree, same day, about 3 hours later!! Notice the shadow at the bottom from the horseweed a few feet to the west.  The tree has a long way to go before it a solid dark green lemon making machine, but at least et gets more sunlight and nutrients from the soil.  This was tree number 3, 97 more to go.

Lemon Tree Liberation

That is a fully grown lemon tree, completely surrounded by horseweed.  This is the 1st tree I freed all by myself.  Horseweed does not have an extensive root system, and can be easily pulled out by hand.  Well easier said than done. Its so dense, about 10 plants per square foot, that it takes a few hours for each tree.  First you clear all around it,  only to discover that the horseweed  grows right to the base of the tree and goes up thru its branches.  But I am determined!! So I drop to my hands and knees and start crawling around under the tree, pulling horseweed as I go.  I discover that, down on your knees, you dont have the leverage of your back, and its all shoulder muscle now.  And the horseweed plants under the tree are just as big and thick as the ones around.  But I am determined!!  I keep pulling, throwing out the weeds as I make it to the trunk on the "open" side.  Thats the side thats open to our initial clearing, that connects to the parking lot.  By this time I am sweating and covered in dirt and horsweed pollen.  I also have to deal with fallen lemons squishing under my knees.  Well at least those smell good!!  Now its  time to work around the truck  to where the horsweed goes on into an impenetrable forest for acres, blocking out the afternoon light, and I think I'm getting a little paranoid!  Do you remember from the comic strip "Charlie Brown" that Snoopy would get "Weed Claustrophobia"?  Its for real.
        So I crawl out, catch my breath, drink some water, and check out my progress so far.  I decide to clear more on the outside before getting under the tree again.  That means my dog Kaylee, can get in there and hit me with her tail while I am down on the ground, sweating, dirty, squishing lemons, and giving myself repetitive motion syndrome in my shoulder. But I am determined!! I dive under that tree, keep pulling and pulling till that last damn horseweed is gone from under the tree and at least 2 feet away from any outer branch. Whew!! I collapse on my pile of pulled horseweed.
       Have I mentioned how good the lemonade from these lemons taste?

Weeds to you, dinner to us

This is from the trial visit of the sheep to the ranch in September. Bob and I met with Dave and his friend Janet to watch the sheep encounter the ranch.  As there is also some mustard, tumbleweed, and dry foxtail, they nibbled on that first, but took some bites of the horseweed.  While they were roaming about and checking it out, us people filled up the back of my van with horseweed for the sheep back at Ojai. We also met with the owner of the ranch, Stan, and his family.  They were quite taken with the sheep, trying to hand feed them (unfortunately they were stuffed at this point!)
          I looked up horseweed extensively online to be sure it was ok for sheep to eat in large quantities.  Some organic wineries use sheep and goats to eat it down in the spring, before the grape vines start to bud.  Bob and I have been spending Saturdays, going off to the Lemon Ranch and picking truckloads of the stuff.  Then we truck it up to Ojai for the herd.  The herd is staying in Ojai until their enclosure is ready for them.  There's a good barn already, we are collecting fencing material and making a corral for them.
         It was on this visit that we all freed this first lemon tree completely from the weeds.   Four months laters, its visibly greener. 99 more trees to go...

Horseweed Ranch

My neighbor Dave lives down the street from me.  He has many cherry trees at the front of his property, and in the summertime a lot fall into the street.  I approached him a couple of years back about getting some of these excess cherries.  He is an avid gardener, not only cherry trees but pomegranates, grapes, and row crops in the summer.  This year I came to visit him (and get some cherries) one day, and we start talking about my sheep.  He's like, "WOW!! what a freaky coincidence!!"  He had just sent off an email to the owner of a piece of agrigultural property in Camarillo.  It used to be a lemon ranch, now it looked like the picture above.
           That is a fully grown Lemon Tree, peeking out above the weeds.  And this is a lucky tree, many trees are surrounded by weeds over 6 ft tall, that block out sunlight for the tree.  Some trees are already dead, and several are in terrible shape.  Dave's idea, to lease and rehabilitate this property and turn it into an organic farm.  As cheaply and eco-friendly as possible.  So he needs to get rid of the weeds, and I need food for the sheep throughout the fall.  Works for both of us!!
           About the weeds, 99% is Horseweed.  Horseweed is common weed all over America, and it usually grows 2 to 3 feet tall, but has been known to grow very tall in places, as tall as a horse, hence the name.  Horses dont like it much.  Horseweed is usually a nuisance plant on a farm, mixed in with other weeds, growing no taller than 3 feet.  Why is the Lemon Ranch overgrown with 7 foot tall densely packed horseweed?  Modern agricultural practices of using lots of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
         Herbicides are chemicals that selectively kills the weeds, while leaving the food crops alone.  Some of the newer herbicides can kill just about any weed.  Just about.  They cant kill Horseweed!!!  So the what happens is that the horsweed has no other weed competition, and plenty of fertilizer and water in the soil.  It grows tall and thick.  Plow it under, and it just grows right back, until the herbicide leaves the soil.
       18 acres or horseweed. About 100 lemon trees.  12 sheep.  4 people. Can we do it?

The hungry season

In Southern California, Fall is the hungry season.  Most of the wid grasses have died and blown away. My shepherd goes back to high school and cannot take them out on the hill.  It gets dark before we get off work to pick whats left along the mountain roadsides, which isn't much beside tumbleweed.   So now we have to decide on giving up on local food or let the sheep go hungry half the week. 
               Thats where Craig's List comes to the rescue.  I put a post for Used Halloween Pumpkins under "wanted", and I can get hundreds of pounds of pumpkins!!  Here's the older sheep chowing down a chopped up 300 lb pumpkin.  A family in T.O. had won this in a "guess my weight" contest at Trader Joe's.  Someone who knew them saw my ad on Craig's list and put me in touch with them.  I had to take out the back seats of my van and use a 2 by 10 as a ramp to roll it up!!
           In the lower right of the picture is a cactus pad from a prickly pear cactus, also called Nopal. The cacti are found on a lot of local hillsides.  Sheep love to eat them anytime, but we usually only pick in the fall, to conserve this native plant.  Cacti pads are great to eat if you are dieting, they add great fiber, and are believed to lower high blood sugar.  I like them in green salad.
          But as you'll read in my next post, Fall is no longer the hungry season, thanks to a neighbor's love of gardening.

Grazing the hillsides

In the spring and summer, the flock grazes our hillside and the vacant land up the road.   Our hillside is fenced and they eat it down to the dirt.  The road is a free range experience though, and can get dicey.  First there's getting the all the herd out of the gate, some of them keep forgetting where it is.  Then there's the mad dash to get away from Kaylee, our "sheep dog", who stays tied up for this part.  Finally they all congegate on the other side of the road and begin eating the wild oats and the brush.  They wander up the hill, taking bites on the way, till they get to our neighbor Mitch's place.  Its a cool plateau they like to hang out on. So, we chase them back to the road. Along the road is a lot of thistle and mustard.  There's also an oak tree with low enough branches for them to eat the leaves.  After a while of eating up here, we push them back down  the road, to the side canyon.  Here they can eat themselves silly on mustard, fescue, and holly cherry.  If we have left a bucket of water there, they will tank up.  Then they slowly wander back down the road to our hillside, run up to the side of their corral, and start chewing the bushes.  This circuit takes 2 to 4 hours, and they may be chewing their cud at this point.  Eventually they wander back into the corral, (but if they dont, Kaylee is more than happy to round them up), hit the water trough, get back into the pen, and take a nap.  The sheepherder of the day (Bob, Rick, or me) needs a bath at this point and most likely a nap too.  The road grazing circuit happens 3 to 4 times a week in the summer.  On the other days, they get a big trash bag size pile of mustard or tumbleweed from elsewhere in the neighborhood.   What the humans get out of this is exercise, a reduction in the fire hazard around our house, and the chance to talk to neighbors and their guests. And the hapless lost motorist who end up here, where they have to turn around on a one lane dirt road next to a steep hillside.  While the sheep, mistaken for horses, cows, or (my favorite) "DEMON DOGS!!!"  freak out the kiddies in the back seat.

What sheep eat and why its important

What do sheep eat?  Just about any plant material.  They eat grass and hay and grain, like regular livestock.  They can also eat  left-over fruits and vegetables, live weeds, dead weeds,  "brush", oak leaves, cactus, and tumbleweeds.  And the grown-ups have enough sense to stay away from poisous plants like oleander.
         Here in Ventura County, our climate zone is "Mediterranean", characterized by wet winters and hot dry summers. The natural vegetation of the hills is "Chapparal", dense bushes of Bay, Holly cherry, elderberry, leptosperm, sage, and other plants that grow 5 to 8 feet high.  Their lower branches die off and fall to the ground for many years, building up fuel for our periodic wildfires.  In the spots where there is no chapparal, there will be the weeds  mustard, wild oats, scotch thistle, tumbleweed, horehound, and fescue grass.  These weeds will grow to 4 ft high, die off in the late spring, and be the tinder for the wild fires.  Very often these patches of weeds will be close to the roads, where a lighted cigarette tossed out of a car can cause a month long brushfire (google on the 1993 Malibu Fire if you think I am making that up).
       Back 50 years ago or so, country dwellers here used sheep and goats to eat down fire breaks around towns and suburbs.  With the advent of weedwhackers and chain saws, sheep and goats fell out of use. But recently, the use of animals is making a comeback, because they are less expensive to use.  And they dont start fires  like chain saws can(see the 2006 Day Fire and the 2008 Santa Barbara Fire).

        Its a little work to train the sheep to work along a road, and you have to stay with them, but on weekends its a lot of fun.  Bob or I would place logs to sit on at their favorite places,  watch them eat while reading a book or texting, and answer questions (or pose for pictures) when drivers from civilization that got lost up here happened upon us.  We would do this from May to September, but when school starts and our day sheepherder had to go back to school, the sheep need to get moved to another place until the following spring, when the grass grows back and the cycle starts all over again.

Meet the sheep!

The sheep featured in my first post is not actually mine, but a fine specimen of the breed I have.  Its called Barbados Blackbelly.  They are originally from North Africa, and were brought to the caribbean in the 1600-1700's to feed the slaves on the plantations there.   Now sheep are very good escape artists, and a bunch got loose on Barbados.  They soon became feral, living off whatever they could eat on a hot, humid island.  The plantations eventually broke up, the slaves became small farmers, and the sheep continued to thrive for centuries.  A few were brought to Texas in the early 1900's, and interbred with  Gulf Native and any other sheep that were around.  My guess is that most barbados sheep were kept on small ranches there to eat down the brush, and to have around in case anyone got hungry.  Nobody was actually in the sheep ranching business.  Barbados sheep were bought and sold around the southwest by these small ranchers, and eventually made their way to California.  The breed is very interbred with all sorts of sheep, resulting in many colors and other variations.  There are probably fewer than 10,000 Barbados sheep in the U.S., its considered a "rare", "heritage" breed.  Most dont have any wool to speak of, and when they do it comes with a good bit of hair.  They are smaller than most conventional sheep, but I've heard they have very tasty meat. (I quit eating read meat a while back).   The reason most people keep Barbados sheep is for weed/brush abatement.  They are very hardy, and will eat just about anything.  They can be really sweet too, when they get used to you.

Introduction: How we became urban shepherds

Cant believe I have been sheepherding for 4 years already!!  I started with 4 sheep, just to clear the land on the property I own with my siblings in Ojai, Ca.  Our parents bought the 2 acre ranchita back in 1966, and we grew up their with horses, cows, chickens, lots of fruit trees and organic gardens. Weeds were always a problem, and a neighbor suggested sheep to keep them down.  Our 1st 4 sheep did an excellent job of that and also procreating.  Our flock has grown to 12 as of November 2010. Now Ojai is RURAL rural, and a bit, well,  uh, how do you describe a town that hold memorials for fallen trees? The sheep were no big deal up there.  So my place in Newbury Park is up in the hills; my property is ALL HILL, and its 39 stairs to the front door.  Clearing the place for fire prevention is a horrible job, and when the fire department asked us to rake up the grass as well, we knew we needed to brng the sheep to the city.
In contrast to Ojai, Thousand Oaks is covered in concrete and very few people here respect diversity or nature.  I mean one time I had a friend over, and when we were OUTSIDE she saw a beetle and had to step on it!!   People come over and freak out over all the Daddy Long Legs hanging out in my house.  Then they go back to their own houses and spray chemicals all over to kill flies and the other bugs that spiders take care of.  Oh and dont get me started with the SOCIAL POLICE.

So into this fine city come our little sheep to eat down the brush around here, and protect our $$$$ homes.  Bob (my business and marriage partner and best friend) is a natural when it comes to sheep herding.  The sheep fall in love with him.  We experiment  with different ways of staking them out, but discover that a good fence is best.  However, on weekends we let them out and herd them up and down our dirt road. Most of the neighbors are estatic to get free weed abatement, but some are anal retentive when the sheep leave their little gifts of organic fertilizer around.  Well I'm going to stop here and try to upload some pictures.  Will write more later.