June...In July

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The 2026 Tour de Fleece

 

The 2026 Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow!  

For anyone who's new here, this is a world wide spinning challenge that runs alongside the Tour de France race.  In 25 words or less, when the bike wheels are spinning, our wheels or spindles are spinning.  Some people set specific challenges (I'm going to spin a pound of wool) and some set general challenges (I'm going to spin 15 minutes every day).

There is an official site for the Tour de Fleece and Punkin's Patch is one of the Wild Card Teams.  There are some really fun sounding Wild Card Teams and you can join as many as you'd like.  Follow the links for more information.  

The Punkin's Patch - My Favorite Sheep team is a very laid back, but fun group of spinners of all skill levels.  Several spinners also follow the race pretty closely and I've learned to really enjoy the race because of the discussions in our group.  

You don't need to join a team if you don't want to.  You can just set your own challenge and  play quietly by yourself :-).  If you'd like to report in with successes and struggles without joining the group, you can leave a comment(s) on this post or shoot me an email.  If I can't help you, I can find someone who can!

Who's spinning this year?

Everybody Gets A Pergola!

The weather has been ridiculous.  We are currently in a stretch of mid to upper 90s and the sheep are hot, the horses are hot, the cats are hot, Pinot's hiding in the air conditioning and I'm...trying not to cry.  The bees are hot too.

Bees work very hard to keep their hives warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  They do this by working together to generate heat when it's cold or try to fan it out when it's hot.  There are lots of interesting articles online about this.  Here is a good one.

Stella and I had the good fortune of having a small building and some trees to provide afternoon shade for our bees when they were up on the hill.  Here's a link to a great Stella and the bees story and also a picture of our set up.  She also had an old leaky cistern and the bees gathered water there every day.  I'm not sure if I have any pictures of that.

There's no shade down here for the new hive and I had been thinking about how I would handle that.  Sure, the bees could probably take care of things on their own, but why add any extra stress to an insect that is already facing so many stressors these days.

I started with just a lattice back and top, but that really didn't help much.  I added the small shade cloth and while it looks a bit janky, it did the trick.  The front porch of the hive had been covered in bees trying to help fan cool air up into the box.  The numbers went way down almost immediately.

This picture was just after I added the cloth, but it's not very clear.  You might be able to biggify it to see more bees.

The other issue in high heat is water.  The tank I've had sitting out in the B Garden to provide water for birds, bees and plants was getting super hot and soupy really quickly.  I've tried to keep it clean and I've seen birds and wasps drinking from it, but never any bees.  I added a shade top to that as well and changed the safety landing to something hopefully more bee friendly.  We'll see.

Ideally it would be great if the weather could just cool off a bit...  

 

If You Are Looking For A Way To Beat The Heat

 Try looking for four leaf clovers.  

(Click to biggify)

There are at least eight here, but even I can't find them all in the photo.  I'd invite you to come out and look in person...but it's outside the shade cloth area so I think I'd just spend a bit more time looking on the computer screen in the air conditioning ;-).

Maybe it would help to look for them in a puzzle format.

Tabitha

Very few of our Jacob sheep get to be well known around here.  Several are remembered for their stories, but remained cookie "tossers" until the very end of their lives.  

Tabitha was loved by everyone and she loved family and visitors alike.  While she was never hugged or even touched by anyone other than us, she was very happy to come up and take cookies straight from your hand.  Everyone loved that about her.

She has not been well for a couple of years and the last month has been a struggle.  She stayed happy until the end though and went out grazing in Del Boca Vista every day and ate cookies and Cheerios when she lost her appetite for regular food.  

I knew the heat this week was going to be very hard on her and I'm glad she left us at the beginning of the week rather than struggling through several more really hard days.  She was a good sheep and we will all miss her.

Tabitha 

April 2017 - June 29, 2026