Category: Technology and Software
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We’re Back With a New Shop! Plus Conservation
Did you know that our farm property is in a conservation easement? Our land is preserved for farming for the future. In Colorado, the land trust puts out a resource that shows where all of the conserved farms and ranches are. It also lists the goods you can buy from them. Now is the perfect… Continue reading
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New Farm Store Coming Soon
We’re moving to a new online system for our store. We hope to be back up by Tuesday, October 12th. The new site will allow you to order meat for pickup here at the farm or for delivery within Paonia. It’ll still allow for the shipping of wool and other products nationwide. We look forward… Continue reading
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Juniper Gulch Ranch Solar
The project to add a grid-tied solar array to the house site up at Juniper Gulch Ranch is almost complete. Final inspections should be today, and swapping the meter for the net meter may be as soon as tomorrow. We hadn’t really planned on doing this project this year, but the combination of tax credits… Continue reading
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RIP, John Ellenby
We’ve heard that our good friend, John Ellenby, has passed on. One of the companies he founded was Agilis. This picture has been on our wall for many years. In the archives of our old hardware, we had a Compass and a GRiDPad. Here’s a good article about John and his contributions to the world… Continue reading
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Sheep AI Work
We are once again doing research with the USDA National Animal Germplasm program. This year, we are collecting blood samples and other data on the ewes to evaluate their ovulation stats. The experiment calls for blood collections every hour, so we have a lot of work to do. We had our vet put catheters in… Continue reading
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Old Computer Technology
While cleaning up the garage a bit, I discovered this old tape drive. It was a wonder of its day: small, compact, and high-capacity. How times have changed! Continue reading
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Lambing and LambTracker
Most of this past year has been spent working on LambTracker, our open-source flock management program. As a result, this blog has been totally neglected. My Twitter feed has been the one thing I’ve kept up with. It’s a lot easier to send a quick tweet than it is to write a decent blog post!… Continue reading
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Where Did August Go?
August has flown by! We’ve been moving the sheep to fresh grass frequently. I was trying to get them on fresh food every 24-48 hours. So, a lot of our time has been spent moving fences and figuring out where they’ll go next. The late July flood started our annual monsoon rains, and we’ve had… Continue reading
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Colorado Woolgrowers Convention and the LambTracker Program
We just got back from our yearly Colorado Woolgrowers Convention. This is the once-per-year, two-day meeting of the sheep industry in Colorado. In addition to the regular reports on world meat and wool markets, they talk about what the US Government is doing about grazing and water rights. We also get updates on predator pressure… Continue reading
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We’re Baaack!
The Desert Weyr farm blog is back in business! After over a year off, I’m ready to start blogging about the farm again. I’m hoping to write updates roughly once per month. Continue reading