El Dorado County Fair

In our pursuit of shetland sheep to eat all our blackberries away - we ventured to the El Dorado County Fair the other weekend. We made a bee line for the agricultural section and checked out all the cute sheep, goats, chickens, pigs, rabbits, emus and cows. They are all presented by 4-H kids and its great to see how well the produce these animals and how proud they are of them. Its sad to watch them all be auctioned off, though, I don't know how they do that part. They seem like great kids though, very cool.

After that we headed over to the textile section to meet up with a lady whom I had contacted to find out more about raising sheep. She is a dynamo, I would put her at 80 something and she has a herd of 34 sheep and cares for them as well as spins their wool and teaches. At the fair she was doing a sheep to shawl presentation where they sheer the sheep in the morning and then wash, dye, spin and weave a shawl, all in the space of 4 hours. It was amazing to watch.

Anyway, we went with the intention of EVENTUALLY getting a few sheep to eat down the land, this lady had us all planned out with our heard stock, our breeding plan as well as sheering, spinning and weaving lessons. Phew - not sure I am of  the age to start sitting behind a spinning wheel....makes for quite a Friday night!! So we will see what we end up with, we are off to her farm, Spinweb, next week and will scope out the kind of setup she has and how much work these guys take.

The rest of the fair was pretty cool, there was dancing and petting of animals and puppies and blacksmithing and art and photography. I don't think I had been

to a county fair before, it was quite fun and entertaining.