Five human gates and 25 T posts.

Yesterday was a busy day.  Mouse got to go on another car ride.  My mother found out about a friend of her selling gates, panels and fencing supplies.  It was a great deal!  I saved over 50% off on everything.  These are the things that I will need eventually but don’t currently have them allotted to any one location.  Now that I say that, one four foot gate needs to go down by the old apple tree in the orchard.  I have a gate opening all ready installed in the fence it just needs a gate.  A cut to fit panel is wired in place now.  I also want to install one in the back fence of the orchard so you can walk out onto the back hillside without having to climb the fence.  I picked up five small gates so that leaves three more for somewhere on the farm.  Luckily for me, even our tractor will go through a four foot gate.  I won’t be putting the people gates in places I need to actually get through with a tractor.  In the bottom pump pasture, (new name just created) I want to fence that off next year.  I think it is only 2-2.5 acres and I want to plant Sainfoin as a test feed crop.  Once established it comes back like alfalfa, but it is a legume so it will bind nitrogen into the soil.  I really need a manure spreader.  I could spread the straw and poop from the annual barn cleaning over the pastures.  It is on my list.  I need a decent used one at a fantastic price!  No pressure in finding that.  The bottom pump pasture will need a fence alongside the top of the creek bank.  I will need a tractor gate in it down by the culvert and a people gate at the end and maybe even the side closest to the creek.  So that is four small gates and one large gate used up already.  Another large gate needs to go into the school house pasture next to the old barley field.  There is already an opening with a cow panel wired in place.  I think this may be a 16 foot opening so I would have to move one rock crib to make an appropriate sized opening for a 12 foot gate.  I need to retighten and update that same section of fence next year so moving the far sided rock crib is not that big of deal.  Plus I want to add a new fence up the back hillside down by the upper prime far fence line.  That will need a 12 foot gate.  I also wanted to subdivide the back hillside one more time down by the apple tree, another 12 foot gate needed.  I also need to install a metal gate on the upper hillside to replace a long barb wire gate that is unwieldy and hard to operate.  That leaves me with one 2 foot gate left out of all the ones I just purchased!  I now have over 20 railroad ties.  I probably need at least another ten to do all that fencing.  I will have to keep working on acquiring more.  I have over half a mile of woven wire now stashed in my fencing supply area. 
Once home, I took mouse with me to the post office.  He tried to sneak out while I was shutting the door and caught his nose between the seat and door.  He yelped and didn’t want to face the door anymore.  We then played for a couple of hours until Annmarie came home.  I then went out and planted the upper prime field with a non irrigation pasture grass mix.  I went with the plastic whirly seed spreader.  I had to twirl the handle for three hours, but I figured I saved at least an hour of fighting with the old seeder in addition to the planting time.  It was worth it.  I was walking back and forth slow and methodical but that was taking forever.  I opened up the seeder one more notch and started to fast walk across the field to get good coverage.  I had to start removing clothing due to all the sweating from the workout.  It took me three hours to get the seed spread out.  I probably would have only used 8-12 pounds of seed if I had used the seeder.  I used about 35 pounds of seed doing it by hand.  The sun was going down so I will have to use the harrow on Tuesday. 
 

Five 12 foot gates and 15 railroad ties.



New worker added to family.

Well we did it, we have a new puppy!  Annmarie drove 7 hours each way to pick him up on Saturday, November 28, 2015.  He is a purebred Border collie from working parents.  The breeders were going to hold him back for themselves but had things come up.  They will only sell their dogs to working farms and say they can work both cattle and sheep.  The biggest thing is being able to differentiate between cattle and sheep, they are not herded the same.   He is silver in color, bright blue eyes and only eight weeks old.  We had been talking about waiting until spring but Annmarie has more time available now and hopefully Sarah will be home soon.  This will spread out the puppy duties to ease the burden.  They are so much work!  The first couple of days our dogs didn’t want much to do with him.  Now Zeke will play with him and not growl at him nonstop.  Zeke playing with him has helped ease the burden a lot.  Otherwise, he needed a human play toy incessantly.  We did the math and with Zeke being 5 years old and it taking us 2 years to really train the puppy well. We will need a new dog every 5-7 years.  I would like to wait until the old dog has died before getting a replacement.   His name is Mouse, its color appropriate.  I needed a name I could holler out easily.  No multiple syllable names were allowed in the choosing process.  No names that started with a S or Z were allowed either.  Oh and nothing that sounded like one of our commands.  I really wanted a single syllable name, hence the choice Mouse.   It was Annmarie’s idea to call him Mouse.  He gets to sleep with us for a couple of weeks until we are sure he can hold his pee through the night then we will crate train him.  The first three nights of the crate are the worse.  The nice thing is both other dogs are crate trained so it won’t seem so foreign to him. 
He is already showing an interest in the livestock.  He tries to chase the alpaca out of our yard and he loves watching the chickens through the fence.  He just needs to not get rolled by the sheep!  The plan is to just keep him near Zeke when we go out to the barn.  Zeke is generally avoided by the sheep and he will protect both of them.  Mouse is constantly trying to grab Zeke by a leg when they play. 


Sprout is not taking to the puppy.  Its interrupting his desires and needs.