Month: December 2017

It snowed and the chore time doubled

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We are going to have a White Christmas this year. It is always amazingly pretty to see all the snow, it blankets the ground and covers all the imperfections. Unfortunately, it brings its own set of problems. Everything is harder as I now have to slog through six inches of snow. I attempted to shovel the sidewalks and a couple of paths through the yard but was unable to find a snow shovel. I was positive we had one in the wood shed, I was wrong. I ended up using a broom to clean off all the walkways, cars and front porch. I also looked for the extra 50# bag of ice melt I “knew” we had left over from last year. Nope, it was nowhere to be found.

After creating paths, cleaning off the walkway and a path all the way out to the cars I cleaned off the cars themselves. It got just over freezing so I was hoping the snow would melt after I cleaned it off. I was fairly successful with this technique. Now that didn’t include the time I ended up on my keister after my feet become horizontal faster than my body. I hooked my car battery up to the charger. We just got the car back from the auto body shop and the next day it would not start. Now it was a very cold morning so I am not ruling out a bad battery after sitting idle for 3 weeks but the charger will let us know if it is truly dead or they didn’t get something hooked up correctly.

When I made it out to the barn, there was a new set of twins and a very jumpy mother. I tried to casually sort out the mother with little success. There were four ewes with white and black heads. I finally managed to corral them all into a corner and jump on a white and black headed ewe. I was wrestling her to the ground and trying to pin her down when I realized she was the wrong one. I gave up trying to catch her in the barn and opened up the chute, about half the mothers crowded in. The one I wanted foolishly followed them and I was able to wade in and snag her. The trouble was I had her babies in the main barn and she was stuck in the chute. I ended up just heaving her over the pen wall into the baby area. It was a struggle to get her over the wall. I snagged both babies and dropped them over with her. I found one under the feeder again! I had stuffed more straw under the feeders but the sheep keep dragging it out and the babies keep laying under it. Next summer I will be installing boards so that the sheep cannot get under the feeders. I just need to make a spot where the cats can get in so no mice have a predator free zone.

Next was driving the tractor up to the boneyard to drop off the ram carcass. I had to use speed, four wheel drive and positrack, to get up the back hill. We have a good six inches of snow on the ground. I was able to get up the hill after a couple of tries. On the way down the dogs and I stopped to let the mommas out to water and to lock Mika into the old milking area. It is now covered in straw and she will be spending the days and nights in there to keep her hoof dry while it heals. She does not like this so I will let her out this evening to go drink while I do the sheep chores and then lure her back with food and grain. The horses and sheep are very compliant when you offer them grain.

Next was clearing the driveway down to the road of snow. I like to do this whenever we have any significant amount of snow. This comes from living somewhere with lots of snow. Always count on the next day bringing more snow so you need to get it removed every day or it will get away from you. I also need to move a large bale of hay down to the cows. This is very hard when the snow is deep. I drug and pushed a path all the way down to the cow gate. I then got the dogs and pushed a bale down to the gate. The dogs were placed just inside the open gate to keep the cows from escaping and bum rushing the hay bale. I pushed the bale to the far end and wrestled the feed panels around it so the cows could not stomp it all into the snow. This should keep them happy for the next five to seven days. Mouse decided that he needed to save me instead of guard the gate. He is still a little too eager we need another year to mellow him out. By this time I am cold to the bone and headed back inside to warm up.

I needed to get Annmarie’s birthday present finished. I had a custom cutting board made for the kitchen insert out of Madrone with black walnut accents. The problem was I gave the measurements incorrectly. I measured from the 1 inch mark and forgot to subtract that extra inch. I took it out and ripped 3/8 inch off each edge and sanded it back down. I will use one of the cut off pieces to add a lip on the front of the cutting board. The lip is so when Annmarie lays it on the counter to use as a bread making board it won’t slide forward. I just need to get some black walnut 1/4 inch pegs to make this happen. I put it in place and put a bow on it as today is Annmarie’s birthday. She is miserably sick and has slept most of the day. We had to cancel our birthday dinner plans for tonight.

When I went out do do evening chores there were another set of just born twins! These are tiny little babies and both were wet. I ended up chasing everyone else out of the barn and laying down straw in the stair area. It’s its own area that we normally don’t use. I made a thick layer of straw and put hay and grain in it. I snagged both babies and dropped them into the straw. She came right in but kept running out when I tried to shut the gate. I finally managed to get the gate shut on the three of them. Hopefully, she will finish cleaning everyone up and be well bonded by the morning. No way those two twins would have survived the ram.

It’s supposed to snow some more tonight!

The deed is done, it is now safe to go out to the barn

Steve Hardin3 Comments

We slept in horribly late this morning, till 0700. Annmarie thought it was decadent, I told her once every couple of months of not getting up at 0500 was not going to hurt us and most people would not consider 0700 sleeping in. I had big plans to go outside and work on the Christmas present but alas it was not so. I was thwarted by the ram one time too many. It happened again, another bummer lamb this morning! This is just not acceptable. As promised I switched my schedule around to accommodate the demise of said ram. After breakfast I had plans to put him down and a helper was coming out at 1130. I would have been at it for a while by then but there was a true emergency that took priority.

One of my mother-in-law’s cats was stuck on her roof and it needed to be brought down. Annmarie and I went down there, me with a large ladder. Annmarie crawled around on the roof top trying to catch the cat who did not want to be caught. There is a large tree next to the house that I am sure assisted the cat onto the roof. I hollered encouragement and comments while she was chasing the cat. It had been up there for 3 days. My reply was it was not hungry enough. Turns out that was true because someone had fed the cat on the roof so it would not get hungry. Annmarie finally managed to corner it on the outside edge of the roof and snagged it. The cat tried to pee on her out of fright. Everyone ended up coming down off the roof safely and my mother-in-law was happy, a job well done. I did actually put the ladder away where it belonged for the first time in six months.

It took both of us over ten minutes of searching to find the 10/22 rifle. I thought it was in the gun cabinet until Annmarie brought me the 243. I was never sure how she knew what rifle to bring as it was always a crap shoot as to what caliber I got when I asked for one. Turns out guessing was her main tool. She did not know that the caliber was written on the barrel and she could just look. We did not find the 22 rifle in the gun cabinet, or the coat closet or the laundry room or anywhere else we thought to look. I gave up and grabbed the ever trusty Walther P22 pistol. Annmarie questioned my choice as the pistol has a questionable kill ratio. We were discussing the merits of the pistol vs my proficiency with it when I spotted the 10/22 rifle leaning up in a corner behind the display case. I had moved it there when I was painting the stairwell wall and had forgotten it. I went with Killer, and put Laser Eyes back in the closet.

We had had multiple discussions about the best way to put down the ram. The general consensus was that a 22LR directly between the eyes would probably not kill him. They have an incredibly thick skull. I opted to test this theory and shot him in the barn near the door from about 15 feet away. He did not do anything but turn and run out the door. I had to wait for the sheep to mill around and get out of the line of sight so if I missed no one else got hurt. I did hit him in the head every time and he did finally go down. Luckily he fell with his head pointed down hill so I was able to cut one set of carotids with a knife and he bled out very well. This is important to keep the meat from tasting as gamey as it could be. By this time my helper had arrived, a slaughter virgin. He had never skinned out or cleaned an animal before.

I got the tractor and the virgin tossed him into the bucket. I tried to back down the hill to the little foot bridge but the hill was causing me to slide into the fence. Next thing I know the virgin was hollering at me because the tractor was on three tires and trying to tip over or slide through the fence. He stood on the upside of the box blade and I was able to pull right out. He didn’t realize that sliding around on three tires and almost tipping over are normal events for me. I lined up on the bridge and drove straight off the hill and over the little bridge and through the little gate. It was faster than going around. I then proceeded to clean out the animal giving instructions to the slaughter virgin. Once cleaned out we hooked onto it with spreading bar and lifted it up onto the skinning pole with the tractor. We then skinned it out and boned it out. The virgin only cut himself twice and managed to not do it so deep that he bled on the meat, extra bonus points for this. I had brought out five knives but no sharpener. We needed the sharpener. It is a lot harder to cut meat with a dull knife. We took it inside, washed it all up and proceeded to turn it into stew meat. I could not bring myself to turn the backstrap and tenderloin into stew meat. I cut it all up into steaks. The ram was incredibly fat! There were huge goblets of fat throughout his entire inner cavity and along the outside of his back and chest. Now that he is no more we are hoping we have to feed less.

As you can see in the picture below, Annmarie is incredibly sad that her nemesis and torturer is gone.

When she went out to feed the sheep tonight there was another set of twins born in the barn. They were both with their mother and bonded and doing well! If this continues it will be worth it. Even if we had just removed him for our safety it was worth it.

It has snowed 2 inches since it got dark tonight. Another reason that will cause the sheep to want to stay in the barn. It is now safe to just walk through and feed or play with babies without worrying about getting injured.

Come on people!

Steve Hardin3 Comments

It never ceases to amaze me how little control we have over life. I know that a large majority of us have the illusion of control and we do pick and choose to some extent, but do we really control our lives? Or do we adapt better than others and handle life’s curveballs with perseverance? Sometimes I truly feel that just gritting your teeth and getting through the day with your head up is a great accomplishment. The farm is a constant reminder that no matter how much we think we have done and how far ahead we have planned that there will always be something unknown lurking around the corner. This week has been a great example of this. We had two more bummer lambs! This is five lambs we have given away this season. This is the most we have bummered out in years. On a positive note, we have not had a single lamb fatality. This is also unusual. We usually have 1-2 deaths that we never know the cause. We attribute them to still births most of the time. Our ram needs to go, he is now picking on the lambs, the problem with this is time. To sort, kill, skin, clean, debone, cut and wrap will take me around 6 hours start to finish by the time I have cleaned up all my tools and put everything away and prepped the materials. Where do I carve out that six hours with Christmas and Annmarie’s birthday coming up in the next four days? I don’t as I still have one more Christmas present to fix (measure twice, cut once for all you woodworkers). This takes precedence as I have been planning this for months.

The real problem is Annmarie is so mad at him that if I put a bullet in his head and drug him up to the boneyard she would be satisfied. He is painful and not safe to be around. He is now ramming the door if she is hiding behind it in an attempt to try and get her. I had to have a slap fest the other day to keep him away from me. I just don’t want to waste the meat but safety is starting to be compromised. I spent two hours before work helping Annmarie sort sheep and getting the ram out of the barn so we could snag the two bummers. The plan is to lay out a day after Christmas and just do it! I said the same thing about a mean rooster we had a few years ago only to come home and realize that it had foolishly decided to attack the woman of the house. He ended up on the bone pile before I got home, problem solved.

Zeke, our older border collie, has suddenly decided that he must get out of the yard again. He is jumping the front fence again. I worked all last night and came home to him greeting me in the driveway. I spent 30 minutes and restrung some electric fence wire that we had used to top our front fence. This was supposed to keep him from leaping up and launching over the top railing. An hour later I am in the pickup driving around trying to find him. I just wanted to go to bed but Annmarie said we needed to find the dog, I was tired and mumbled that “we had two dogs and the smarter one is still home”. Next thing I know I am in the pickup driving all around the outside of the property calling for the dog. I spent an hour looking for him to no effect. It could have been shorter but I forgot my cell phone at home and missed the call where Annmarie told me she had spotted him on the back hillside and had to walk out to get him. Somehow he was unable to “hear” her until he realized she could see him. I did eventually manage to go to bed for a few hours, I was only awake for 20 hours.

We have not had snow yet this year, it is late for us but supposedly we will have a white Christmas. I keep counting the hay bales every time I feed hoping it will be enough. It is going to be super close. I need to buy a little more next year or really I am becoming one of those paranoid farmer types that worry about everything.

I would love to go burn the rest of the upper prime squared field neighbor. I still need a name for the new fields. The far end field will always be known as the “7 acres”, that just leaves the two upper bottom fields. I want to use the name “upper prime squared” for the new pasture on the hillside that still needs to be fenced in. Annmarie only wants the fence for the ram pasture completed and the downstairs floor done. She wants results not talk! LOL. I can talk for hours about the changes I would like to make. Occasionally, I go back several years and read the blog myself just to see what I was thinking and to see the changes. Every once in a while I need to remind myself that we really are making progress. I laugh about some of the plans that I said I was going to complete in the next 1-2 years and five years later I still have not done them.

I have an alarm set in the morning to call the tile place and order the custom grout for the floor tile. It takes two weeks to get here. Unfortunately, I did not put the phone number in my phone and the business has changed locations. I don’t know the location and cannot remember the name of the place. So I have to call the trim place and ask for a referral again. This time I will put the number in my cell phone. I add notes to my contacts, like “does wood trim”, “contractor”, “plumber”, “heating guy”, “wooden fence stays”, “hay” so that when I inevitably forget their name I can do a search in my phone and find out who I need to call. I always recognize the name once I see a list but can never seem to pull it out of thin air.

Still at it

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Slow but steady wins the fencing race. I ended up fencing in the rain on Thursday. I have these fancy all rubber overalls I picked up this summer at a yard sale and my rubber boots and waterproof coat. It went great except I had leather gloves and it didn’t take them long to get wet and slimy. I spent a couple of hours nailing in wooden stays. Some would say wooden stays are archaic. But I had noticed that all my fence done with wooden stays survived the elk last year. My neighbors had a bunch of fence torn up by the same elk. I was told by someone who is licensed to harass the elk that they see the wooden stays and will leap the fence, on other fences they just run right through it. Plus the horses and cows cannot push the top wire down when you use wooden stays. I still have about 40 more feet and the first 60% of the fence will be completed. Although Annmarie has told me I need to go back and wire both woven fences together between each wooden stays so the sheep cannot slip through. I did this down in the corner I know they bunch up in but she wants it the entire length of the fence. As soon as I don’t do this then the sheep will learn to slip through and then I will still have to do it after tightening the fence again.

Annmarie had told me she thought the chicken killer raccoon had moved out to the barn under the old milking barn section. So we opted to quit feeding the cats at night as we don’t want to feed the raccoon. I took a good look at the area today and yes i do believe the raccoon dug under the barn but for a different reason. I have had a raccoon leg trap out their for almost three weeks baited with peanut butter. The trap is chained with metal chain to the wall so that it cannot be drug off by a raccoon. The trap can only be triggered by putting a paw down into the tube and then pulling up on the actuator. There is no way a cat or dog can trigger the trap. It has been sitting there doing nothing for so long I had forgotten about it. It looks like the raccoon finally decided to try his hand out. We go out to the barn every morning and every evening so it must have managed to get loose before morning. There was some loose hair stuck in the trap. We think this is a “Townie” raccoon as it is avoiding traps. It was most likely trapped and dumped off out at four corners. We have discovered this is more common than we believed. This of course just forces me to deal with the problem in a lethal method. This is very hard to do when you never see the offending critter. We have a ninja raccoon!

We had company come out on Saturday to see the baby lambs. We have been sorting only and had a passel of babies that needed to be tagged and banded. They had four children age 10 to age 4. They had a great time! There is no one that doesn’t love baby lambs! I did all the tagging and banding while Annmarie did the catching and then we just had everyone line up like an assembly line to hand me sheep. There were the inevitable questions about why I put different colored tags in their ears? We have a pink based color for the girls and all the boys get the same blue color. I alter the girl color every 50-75 babies to give us a rough approximation of the ewes age. It does actually work. They wanted to know why I kept playing with the little boys testicles? I said I had to make sure to get both testes when I banded or they would still be a ram. Next was did it hurt them when I put two small rubber bands on the boys scrotum? Yes for about five minutes then it hurts no more as there is no more blood flow. Did we need to shear the sheep? No, they are hair sheep and we just use them for meat. They then got to hand feed the horses, go inside the chicken coop and gather eggs, then walk out and watch Annmarie hand feed the bull and one of the heifers some apple slices. Mouse was in heaven as the children kept throwing the ball repeatedly and tirelessly while they were here. He was very tired after they left. We fed them all lamb bits for dinner. It was delicious. I put mine over a baked potato like a topping and it is amazing. Zeke said “peace out”” and went and hid in the laundry room to get away from the children. Gizmo is starting to get more social and finally quit barking at them after the first 20 minutes.

I had real high hopes that we could get through this lambing period with our ram and he could then impregnate everyone and then we could kill him for stew meat. It’s not looking like that is going to be possible. He is now pushing and head butting the ewes in an effort to bully them. He is humping pregnant ewes who are almost ready to give birth. He used to just drink their pee to tell if they were in estrus and then mount them. No more he is on a total dominance kick. But the real reason he has to go is that he has head butted a gate twice in the last week that Annmarie was standing on the other side, totally not cool. I am so pissed off when I get in the barn with a stick that I just yell and swear at him to take his best shot because if he knocks me down I am going for my knife and only one of us is getting up. He seems to understand and has been staying away from me. But I cannot have him hurting Annmarie. So I have arranged some help and right after Christmas he will meet his demise. I am still hoping I can get a shot behind his ear. Last time I shot a ram between the eyes it just knocked him out for a couple of minutes. The bullet could not get through the front of the skull! This animal is designed to crack heads at full speed with another ram for dominance. We have a gal who wants to use his bones and hide and parts to practice her budding taxidermy skills on. It’s a great use of resources. We will just bone him out right away and cut up the meat into stew sized pieces.

I have been looking at our skinning pole arch and I think I need to dig out an area around it about 1 foot down and then fill it all in with 2 inch gravel with a 3 inch layer of 3/4 minus over the top for drainage and dryness of the ground. I like this idea and am going to do it next year.

Gizmo got involved in my selfie! He is a whopping 6.5 lbs now and 11 months old. He is not as social as Sprout but he is finally starting to figure out that people are not evil. He loves Annmarie and I. He will finally go to Sarah now.

We also have another plumbing issue. Our hot water relief valve off of the gas tankless water heater is leaking very slightly. I would have never noticed except it got below freezing and I noticed the huge icicle hanging from the outside vent tubing. I will need to call the plumber and see what can be done. I tried to finish painting the hallway and am of course about a quart short on brown paint. I will have to go back and buy an entire gallon just to get the one quart I need. I am also going to try and get a new white color for the hallway and entryway. We don’t want super bright white.

I am Batman!!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

As I lay sleeping peacefully last night I was rudely awakened at 0500 by my alarm. Usually, Annmarie jumps out of bed and does yoga while I contemplate the value of getting out of a warm bed. Instead this morning she rolled over turned off her alarm and went back to sleep. I decided that laying in bed and surfing the internet was a valid option to getting out of a warm bed. While I was still waiting for Facebook to load on my phone I heard it, a call to arms! A chicken was keening its death knell. (Batman get to the bat mobile!). I leapt out of bed and ran to the walk in closet. I threw on my cammo cargo pants (commando of course) and a shirt and raced down the steps. I had to run back to the laundry room to get a coat (bat suit) and my fancy high power flashlight. I stopped at the front closet to arm myself (utility belt). I opted to go big or go back to bed and grabbed the pistol grip shotgun. Now was not a time to spare the innocent, now was a time to punish the guilty! (Dark Knight). I snuck to the creek side of the old house and heard an animal under the old house. Of course after my remodel of the skirting it is impossible for me to see under or crawl under the building. There were chickens all over the chicken yard. The dummies had not gone in last night and were huddled all over the chicken yard like little bite size nuggets. You have to ask yourself what would Batman do?

I was unable to spot the offender and ended up chasing chickens around in the dark to throw them back into the coop. I didn’t want to provide dessert to the offender. While I was doing this Annmarie came out to help. She spotted the spot under the skirting where something had dug under the building. It was dug to provide the shortest path to the chicken coop! Its on, there will be blood.

I counted chickens tonight and realized we only have 22 hens left. I have lost 3 already. This is totally unacceptable and must be stopped. I baited the live trap with cheerios tonight. The real problem here is how long can one raccoon eat on three chickens?? I am betting it is several days if not an entire week. If the cheerios don’t work I may have to go to cat food. The problem with that is I catch a lot of cats. If you shake the trap before you let the cat out they only go into the trap once or twice before learning to avoid it. I cannot use any kind of leg trap as I don’t want to hurt the cats or dogs. We need both of those animals to do their respective jobs and they are not easily replaced.

It’s going to be a long winter if I have to battle this fiend all season long!

Back to the bat cave!