From the Fields – Robin Lynde

By Robin Lynde, Solano County sheep rancher

I raise Jacob sheep, which are a spotted horned breed. I sell them for meat, but my primary interest is in fiber. I do a lot of things with wool and wool products.

We just finished Lambtown. It’s probably the biggest sheep and wool festival in California. I taught classes. I brought sheep to show, and I had a vendor booth. That was a pretty packed four days, plus all the lead up and the cleaning up after it. Because of Lambtown, I have not started breeding yet. The rams will be going out with the ewes, but I’m not going to have as many as normal.

We have a major pasture and irrigation renovation that started about three weeks ago. We stopped irrigating before we started this work. The pasture is all dirt now. The sheep must be locked in an area where they don’t have access to pasture. I will have smaller breeding groups because I have more sheep than I can handle. If you’re getting (Environmental Quality Incentives Program) funding through (the Natural Resources Conservation Service), you play by their rules, and their rules are you don’t graze that field for a year if it’s being reseeded, so I can’t have as many lambs as normal because everything would be way too packed.

We’re thinking ahead to what water restrictions there may be. Doing this irrigation renovation should help because we’ve been using a ditch that’s been there for years, and the property hasn’t been leveled, and it didn’t work very well. This will be replaced with a pipeline with valves, so hopefully, we can use water more efficiently and get it where we need it when we want it.

The other part of my business is promotion of fiber and teaching classes and selling my handwoven goods and yarn. This is the time of year when that should pick up. I should have had things woven in July, and I’m trying to do that now.