I finished fixing the two sections of fence, I burned up this winter, today.  I installed a new latch on one gate and fixed another gate.  We are all ready for cows tomorrow.  I picked up the borrowed horse trailer (thanks Julie) and gassed the pickup.  I will head out first thing as it is a four hour drive each way.

I changed out the post hole auger for the box blade on the tractor today.  With the box blade being stored in the old raised sheep jug area, it was at the right height to just back in.  It only took me 15 minutes to unhook the one piece of equipment and hook up the other!  I was very happy.  No two hours of swearing and trying to figure out how to lift something several hundred pounds by myself.

I went out and did another chicken count tonight.   We are down to 23 hens and 1 rooster.  I have lost three hens this year.  One died of natural causes and two to predators (Predators 2, Farm 0).  Still need to get some sunflower seeds to use as bait.  I had to adjust the light sensitivity on the automatic chicken door.  It closed tonight and left three chickens outside the coop.  I had to chase them back in.  While I was running around chasing the chickens into the coop I found a baby magpie hoping around inside the chicken yard.  It could not fly.  It should be big enough, the thing was bigger than a robin.  It is hard to fly over a six foot fence.  It probably fell out of the tree and just could not get going again.  I left it alone in the chicken yard and shut the outer door to the yard so a raccoon could not eat it.  Hopefully, it figures out how to fly soon.   

Annmarie’s completed silk shawl for Sarah’s prom and future use.

Here is photo of the completed 100% silk shawl drying out after being blocked.  It turned out incredibly well.  If Sarah takes care of it, it will last a lifetime. 

Treasures found buried in the outside wall of the barn.

Walkway I am going to cover over with 2x6s.

End of the barn that is going to be reworked.

I am going to rework the large door on the left and make a sheep sized sliding slot door.  In the middle of the picture you can see part of the wall is sheathed in that is were the honey bees are hiding.  I am going to leave the old draft horse tack hanging on the walls. 

Granary chute, this will be taken out and hopefully some stairs added.

I have spent the last two days catching up.  Annmarie found a trailer!  A distant cousin of hers had one and will let us use it for the day (thank you Julie).  I have the cows lined up for Thursday of this week.  This means that the barn lot fence has to be fixed by then.  I went out and finished digging the two post holes by hand.  The first one just had loose dirt, which is to be expected.  The second one had two very large rocks in it that I had to pry out.  It is no wonder my shear bolt broke.  I did go to the dealer and get a few more bolts.  So it is ready for some more action.  I have one more hole to dig out by our cattle guard.  Both new posts are set in the ground. In some things I am catching on.  You never want to set the posts and then just put the wire on them immediately, they don’t set up as well, even if you tamp the dirt down when setting the post.  Letting the post sit idle for a couple of days lets it settle and firm up.  This week I will take the wire off the burned up posts and attach it to the new ones.  The cows will not be able to get out. 

I finished underneath the barn yesterday.  I installed two more supports and added three 2×8 cross beam supports to shore up the two cracked and replace the broken one.  No I did not remove the old ones.  I just jacked up the floor and pounded them in place and let the floor back down.  They are not going any where.  I just leaned the old wood panels against the barn to keep the sheep from sleeping under the barn.  They were making a mess.  Eventually, I am going to have to figure out how to close up that end.  For now it is low on the priority list.  I decided that it was time for the floor.  My help is not going to be here until next month.  This was prom weekend so my soon to be graduated help is still busy, and when I am available we will be on vacation or camping for two weekends making middle of June the starting date for my help.  The floor is something I can do alone.  I moved all the wood and sorting chute from the outside wall path.  The barn has a heavily built center with two four foot wide paths on each long end.  The reason was a human path on each side and a middle area for the draft horses.  I wanted to work on the outer wall pathway.  I had been pointedly ignoring the fact that there was three feet of sheep dung trapped between the outer wall and some inner 1×12 inch boards.  As I was cleaning up the floor I poked though the bottom board on the wall, it was rotten.  I ended up having to rip off the bottom board the whole length of the wall and dig out the sheep shit with a hand trowel.  (My father got a hand Corona trowel, cast aluminum, for his birthday which I had to have so I bought one, it works great!)  I found one old clear whiskey bottle, one 1958 7-UP bottle, three flat cats, old plastic bags from sheep drench (Annmarie’s father), countless pieces of baling wire, 10 old horseshoes with handmade nails in them, and lots of old rotten leather bridles.  I am only about 2/3 way down the wall.  I did open up all the windows for ventilation and an end door, but I still inhaled a lot of hay and manure products.  Definitely, going to wear a mask to finish it all up.  The worst part is a large portion of it is falling through the floor, so I am going to have to rake under the barn when I am all done. 

Zeke and I went to put the sheep up on Friday night.  What a knot head, he didn’t want to listen, only to run around and chase the sheep, what a teenager.  So after three times trying to move them to the other end of the field, I had to calm myself and just keep Zeke near.  Once he got calmed down, and stayed close we made it to the other field.  I opened the gate for the sheep and they panicked and were jumping over an equipment wire gate.  Morons were bouncing off it , trying to go through it and Zeke was laying down.  One of the sheep ended up cutting itself up on the barb wire and bleeding all over our bridge.  The sheep are doing fine.  We moved them into the orchard with the horses as it was starting to grow out of control.  The horses could not keep up.  The horses chased the sheep around for about an hour to establish dominance and since then they have been comingling without any problems. 

I did get the power cords all strung out to the barn, tools in place and drug my compound miter saw and stand out to the barn.  I am ready to tackle the floor, as soon as it is all cleaned up.  I will most likely drag my old cheap table saw out there also.  After that the only thing I need is a third extension cord and my Sawzall.  I need the Sawzall to cut in the windows and doors in the outer walls of the barn. 

Donna (my mother-in-law) had our go to contractor (Lee Herman Construction) put metal on the entire back of the machine shop.  He said it was touch and go after he removed the wooden siding he thought the hole thing might fall over.  There was a large section of the supports missing on the tall side (Ted, Annmarie’s dad had knocked them out with the tractor when he was getting hay, his fine motor skills were leaving him) causing the barn to be very unsteady.  A couple of the main supports inside were broken also.  Lee replaced those and shored up the inner wall.  It looks good, the plan is to do a side at a time. 

The weeds are dying this time around.  The stinging nettles wilted within 24 hours.  In a couple of weeks I should really be able to tell how things are doing.  The grass is growing so fast I am going to have to break out the mower soon.  There is always something to distract me from my current project.  Sarah is going to move the large pile of sheep manure this upcoming weekend with the tractor. I need it out of the way so we can get at the entire front of the barn without working around it.  None of these things include emptying the old granary so I can tear it down.  It will take two days to empty the granary, two entire days with the tractor and pickup and trailer in use.  I am going to have to use my hired help wisely to get the maximum assistance possible. 

Jason and I are going to do the front of the barn.  I have a couple of small metal working jobs for him and I am going to offload all the scrap metal I have piled around the place onto him.  I figure he will need to make at least three trips just to get all the scrap.  This should be the last big push for the scrap metal.  After that I will fence in a scrap area where my pile is now and we will throw the occasional scrap onto that pile.  I want to get all the scraps contained into one area so it is safe to mow without hitting some large chunk of steel.  Eventually, I would like to use a metal detector to go over certain areas and finish cleaning them up. That is many many years away.  In ten years I would like the place to look like a well groomed park. 

The weather was fantastic today, not too hot or cold and the sun was shining.  I went out and sprayed weeds for 4 hours to start off the day.  My little 2.5 gallon hand sprayer got a work out!  I upped the concentration of the chemicals a little more than last time.  Some weeds didn’t die the first time around.  I was trying to go low and it did not work out well.  I think I have one more patch of stinging nettles still to spray.  The Mule (four wheeler) is getting fixed in the shop still, it needed a new motor.  Once it is done I will rig the boom sprayer up on it again and then I can spray the bottoms and hillside.  An acre is a square approximately 70 yards to a side.  I had to figure that out so I would know how much spray to put on an acre.  So in a couple of weeks I will have to spray again.  I really want to get on top of the weeds this year.  I can already see the difference on our front hillside.  The weeds are vanishing. 

I crawled up on the barn roof today to see if I could salvage any thing from the roof that blew over.  I was hoping to salvage the main supports.  Not happening, they are all busted up or cracked.  So I am going to have to yard it off with the tractor, break it up and burn it.  Not good for anything.  Unfortunately, those 2×6 boards are 20 feet long.  Not as easy to come by as they used to be.  I am going to check out the supports from the grainary roof and see if I can retask them to serve as the new roof supports. 

I found the chicken’s hiding spot out in the barn.  I had been looking every where but could not find it, and actually, I did not find it, Zeke did.  They are laying on the stray under a tarp.  I found 30 eggs in the nest.  I had to throw them all out as they could have been a couple of weeks old.  Now that I know they are laying there we will check it every day.

I put in two more supports pillars under the barn today.  Only one left, the bad news is I have broken one cross beam (so warped when I straightened the main beam it broke), the two next to it are cracked.  So now I have to shore up the beams with another three beams.  2×8 inch beams only 10 feet long, so not hard to find or fit in. 

I tried to attach the post hole auger to the tractor yesterday.  It would not fit.  The hydraulic arms were too far apart.  I called the dealer and they put me off and left a message for the salesmen.  I called again today to talk with the salesman and one of the parts guys explained to me how to fix the problem (I had to let out some slack in the swing of the hydraulic arms).  I mounted the auger and promptly drove over to use it.  The first hole was carefully done, I slowly lowered the auger.  The second hole I tried to power down the auger and broke a connector bolt (fails on purpose so the shaft is not damaged).  I only managed to get two holes dug before I broke it.  Now I need to get a handful of those bolts to keep on hand.  Learning the hard way…

New Katahdin cross ram.

I listed Lucky for sale today on Craigslist.  As I was double checking the listing I noticed that someone in Pendleton was listing a Katahdin X ram for the same price.  I messaged that person, who responded right back.  She liked the look of Lucky (was wanting to add more color to her flock) and was willing to trade straight across.  Just like that, four hours later she was out here trading rams.  The new ram is an off white color and a little smaller than Lucky.  He was being fed in a pen, dry hay only.  In a few weeks we will see how he looks after getting adjusted to all the green grass he can eat.  She looked at our camel backed ewe and we opted for another trade!  She has a 1 month old lamb that once it is weaned we will swap for the camel ewe.  All in all it worked out well. 

Zeke, getting ready to chase the sheep.

I had to give the new ram some probiotics before turning him loose.  I managed to chase him into the loading chute (he is not near as tame as Lucky) and was trying to catch him.  I caught a horned head just below the ribs on my right side when we dived at each other and he leaped into the air.  Damn sheep.  This is the number one reason we will not own any sheep that weigh over 150#.  Once he got his probiotics we turned him loose and I went to chase the sheep back into the same area. Zeke ran around while I stood on the hillside and hollered.  Zeke pushed the sheep to the wrong gate.  So I had to go open the gate, while I was doing that Zeke decided to exert his dominance on the new ram.  He ran over and jumped on the ram, harassing him until we called him off.  He is a firm believer in getting the upper hand early now.  The ram did not want to back down.  I expect they will go a few rounds before Zeke establishes dominance.

I am still looking for a 2 horse trailer so we can pickup the cows.  I just need to borrow one for a single day.  Everyone has a gooseneck.  Stupid problem to have. 

The chickens were definitely hiding eggs from me, 25 chickens laid 20 eggs today.  There is one chicken who got out of the pen and is now wandering around trying to get back in tonight.  She will figure it out or someone is going to have a snack this night. 

Mika, in the orchard.