Grain auger at sunset, courtesy of Sarah.  I guess that college photography class paid off.

West side of granary roof.

 It is really happening!  We spent yesterday finishing the roof removal on the granary.  If you look at the picture you can see the wall falling apart.  It was that way before we started in on the roof.  I was just glad it didn’t give way while we were crawling around.  You can even see that I have not crawled up and unscrewed the safety ropes from the anchors at the peak.  Will have to do that eventually, sooner rather than later.  The West side was Mr. President’s and was nailed down.  The East side was mine and it was all screwed down.  I finished mine in a few hours and did a little bit for Mr. President.  He spent 8 hours on the roof in 100 degree weather.  He did get it finished.

East side of granary roof

Baby lamb, they are so cute.

I had to go spray another 10 acres.  I sprayed the bottoms and hill side down by the school house.  The weeds were thick!  In a few weeks I am going to have to take the mower down there and mow all the dead stuff.  Gotta get the roof on the barn first.  Still more spraying to do in the upper fields and up by the bone pile. 

We have two sets of twins currently.  One boy and girl from each mother.

The back creek stopped flowing yesterday.  I had to drive across it with the mule and it just kept slowly dropping until by late evening it was running no more.  I don’t see it picking up again any time soon with this hot weather expecting to stay. 

Today was the day Mr. President got up on the granary roof to remove some tin.  This meant that I had to spend 45 minutes getting all the safety gear set up and in place.  If he falls off the roof I don’t want his mother
coming back to me, so he wore the harness all day long while he was on the roof.  He only almost went off the roof face first once.  The roof is a pretty steep pitch.  Once the first piece of tin was off there would be a place to stand.  It just was not happening.  My ladder is about 10 feet too short.  I really need a 30 foot ladder and those are not very common or very cheap.  I tried to get the nails but straddling the roof and holding on while trying to pry screws out was not easy nor fast.  I finally ended up screwing a standing block directly onto the tin that allowed me to pull the nails above it.  Once the first piece was gone it went much faster.  One side of the roof is fairly modern.  The East side is new tin held in place with screws and the West side has those old galvanized twisted nails.  I am working on the modern side and it is fairly obvious why it needed to be replaced, the boards underneath are rotten and brittle.  I have already broke two different boards, yes, I am also wearing a harness.  It will hurt when I fall, but I won’t die. 

I spent the morning spraying again today.  I am all the way down by the bluffs now.  I am still concentrating on the upper hillside.  The star thistle is the worst on the dry hot hilllside.  I ran out of 2-4-D today and had get some more.  I will spray the bottoms last as they are mostly just Russian thistle and 2-4-d will kill it.  The fancy spray is for the hillside.

At 1500 today I was done working on the tin roof.  It was just too hot.  I drank over 2 gallons of liquid today.  I never drink that much fluid.  We went into the barn and worked on the inside cleaning up nails and getting ready for the second elevated storage room from the grain tower conversion.

When I was spraying I saw lots of baby birds, baby woodpeckers, blackbirds and a whole covey of Hungarian Partridges (around 20 birds).  The most Huns I have seen on the property have been five a couple of years ago.  I am hoping they make it to adulthood. I did see the baby deer twins up on top of the hillside. I saw the little two point buck this evening as he wandered down to the front creek in front of the house for a drink of water.  He is living by the metal grain bins.

Side note, the mule has 1250 hours on it after the engine rebuild.  

Cross brace progress.

 We had a very nice rain and wind storm this morning.  It totally altered the plans of the day.  I was going to spend most of the morning spraying weeds while Mr. President worked on tearing down the granary roof.  The storm totally changed that, wind, lightning and rain does not make it conducive to being on the roof.  I opted to work inside the barn.  We built window frames for the new tack room.  Once we had the frames we then had to cut holes in the end of the barn and then install them.  One was a used bathroom window I picked up at a yard sale for $10 and the other is an old wooden window I got from my parents for free.  We also framed out the door for the tack room.  Mr. President cut out all the overhead broken beams and exposed all the wall framing so we can add new beams to raise the ceiling.

Windows into future tack room.

Tack room windows, inside view.

Bungee automatic door closer.

 After lunch, we started back in on the roof.  I installed the cross beams and Mr. President cleaned up the barn and tack room. 

After dinner I went back outside to try and do some weed spraying.  I only managed to squeeze in one sprayer full.  MILESTONE is a name to remember.  Yes it is very very expensive, but boy howdy does it work!  The star thistle that I sprayed yesterday is already starting to wilt.  It is amazing.  I had to stop spraying because another storm was rolling up to the house.  Luckily, it did not rain, just lightning and wind tonight. 

Ewe #16 had twins this morning, a boy and a girl.  Annmarie and I managed to get her into the yard first thing this morning.  They hung out in the yard all day then this evening we took them over to the barn lot and locked them up with the other mother ewe and her twins.    When I noticed this morning at 0500 she had just had the babies as there was afterbirth still hanging out of the ewe.  We wanted to give them some bonding time before moving them. 

Zeke is doing some weird snorting thing tonight.  Not sure what is going on with him.

Soon to be removed granary.

Roof cross pieces going up

 I started spraying today first thing this morning.  I am going to need more 2-4-D.  The really expensive herbicide I had extra, but I am going to run out of 2-4-D tomorrow.  I forgot how rough the ride can be when you are creeping over and around the rocks on the steep hillside.  Luckily, I wear the seat belt provided in the mule and did not get bucked out.  Almost slid out one time as it was.  I am about 1/4 done with the spraying.  The stuff is amazing, just 2 hours after spraying the weeds some of them were already wilting.  All you non chemical people can just come to our house and bring a shovel and all summer long and you could not do all the weeding I am going to do in 5 days on the mule with some modern chemicals.  Once we get the star thistle back under control then I can go back to spot spraying. It has just been let go too long. 

Lamb shed ready for a new side.  Dung pile gone.

Dexter cows hanging in the shade.

Mr. President finished up the dung pile next to the old lamb shed today.  It is all ready for siding (after I put in some cross pieces to attach the siding.

We did manage to get about an hour on the barn roof.  I screwed down the supports today and we started to put in the cross beams.  I am hoping to get those fully installed tomorrow after the weather quits cooperating with the weed spraying (wind blows).  Mr. President is going to start tearing off the old granary tin roof tomorrow.  We have to install two safety points so he can hook in his fall harness.  Plus the cell phone in his pocket is necessary to call for help.  He tells me he does some rock climbing so he can probably get himself upright.  Hopefully, he doesn’t fall and the safety equipment is just a pain in the butt.  I will make him wear it.  Better safe then sorry after falling off the roof.

The mule spray setup has arms that you extend, four feet to a side so you can spray a 12 foot swath.  These arms are on a swivel/spring setup so if you hit something the arm bends back and then snaps back into place.  What they don’t tell you is the plastic nozzles do not tolerate getting banged into hard objects.  I broke two this morning and had to have Annmarie pick up spares.  The nozzles have very small holes and kept getting clogged up with particles.  I would stop and clean out the offending nozzle and then continue on.  I now have a bucket in the back with some tools and the spare parts needed to fix the sprayer instantly.

Stupid horses got in the yard and would not leave.  Hogs, kept eating the green apples off our apple tree in the front yard.  I tried chasing her away but she just kept coming back.  I finally just gave up.  Especially, since I cannot let the dog chase the horses out of the yard.  Zeke is adjusting to his life in lock down.  When I was off spraying he had to stay on the run, and as soon as I got back I let him off.  After three weeks Zeke will finally let Mr. President pet him.  

The green/blue color on the hillside is star thistle a noxious weed.  The reason I am spraying every thing.

Bees swarming

Hanging out waiting for reports.

 I just saw these pictures of the bee swarm.  I kinda wish I had seen it in person.  Looks pretty cool.  No go on the sheep dog trials today.  We drove over there and could not find any thing so we stopped at a coffee shop to get directions (and coffee).  Wrong weekend, next weekend is the big event.  Instead, we took some back roads home and did our in town shopping.

Once at home I dug in to converting the mule from a mild mannered four wheel transport device to a Weed Killing Nemesis.  I knew this was going to necessitate several trips to the hardware store.  Yep, I managed to get it together and working in two trips, but still need one more trip in the morning to get the last two U-bolts.  I had to rewire the the switch and add in all new wires.  The old ones got ripped off.  I added some wire tires with premade loops and ran all the wires through them to keep them in place and not rubbing on the metal.  I had to add another ground wire while I was at it.  The boom has 8 spray nozzles on it and I replaced four of them.  Amazingly, when I flipped the switch the sprayer came right on.  I added some pressure treated 2x4s on each side and bolted those in place.  This creates a support that I was able to bolt the sprayer arms

Repaired mule ready to be transformed

Weed Killing machine

onto.  I also added in a piece of 2×6 to hold the sprayer tank in place so it doesn’t bounce around in the bed of the mule.  I was going to store all the chemicals in the back of the mule.  But after further thought decided this was unnecessary as I have to fill up with water every time I need new chemicals in the tank.  I will just stage the chemicals next to the hose I plan on using to fill the tank.  Tomorrow I spray the whole place.  I just hope the wind doesn’t blow.

Mr. President almost finished with the hog pile of poop.  I went up today and spent a little time cleaning it all up away from the building.  He will still need to pick up the last of the pile.  After tomorrow it will be all done.  I am going to have him work on the other two piles after that.  I need to spray then we can work on the roof again.  I need to kill a lot of star thistle.