Month: May 2018

Kinda working

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I did do some work yesterday and a lot of online shopping. I love Craigslist and am starting to like Facebook Classifieds also. I am always on the lookout for fencing material as I am constantly running out of it. We just found a ram on the Facebook classifieds and I found this cool chest yesterday. The best part was it was in Pilot Rock. I put in an offer on some fence gates early in the morning but was unwilling to pay what they wanted. I stockpile extra gates as I always need them so I can wait for the right price. I managed to get this wonderful trunk in the early afternoon and went to pick it up. I am always amazed by small towns. the lady selling it knew Annmarie’s grandparents on both sides and her daughter used to maintain Jim and Ruby’s lawn and garden while they did their summer Oklahoma pilgrimage. She offered me some flower planting’s from Iris’s old flower garden that she took over 30 years ago! So I will make arrangements to get some transplants this summer.

I take some of my best pictures accidentally! I was fumbling with my phone camera trying to get shots of the trunk to send to Annmarie, as she is in Washington, DC for MathCounts. I snapped this beauty below and decided that it was a keeper!!

I also managed to glue and nail on the trim for the air return register. All those pegs are covering up a screw hole. I countersunk the screws so I could put a dowel in the hole and cover them up. I just filled the top of the screw with glue and pounded in the dowels. This caused glue to ooze out around the dowel. I glued all the oak trim pieces and then used air gun to nail them in place. Since it was just trim I did not clamp them on after I did the glue and nails. I figured that the glue and nails was sufficient to hold the trim in place. I wanted to give this 24 hours to dry before messing with it. I would like to get it done and stained before Annmarie comes home. It will stink when I stain it and with this weather I need to do it inside the house.

I managed to snag 7 panels 8.5 feet by 3 feet for the barn. We need another portable wall inside to allow us to give the mothers more room to be with their newborn babies. I really need to add 10 feet to the front of the barn and hook it over the L shaped area that is unused on the other side of the tack room. I have not done this yet and will not have time this year. Next year I want to do the greenhouse so the addition is a couple of years away.

The lady from the morning messaged me and said they would take the price I was offering. I offered to get them today. Nope, they wanted them gone on Saturday. This I do not understand as all things take time to sell. But I offered to meet them in Pendleton, then her husband blew out a tire by Echo, I ended up driving to hermiston, getting gas and having to drive back to the broken pickup. I was able to make the transaction in the dark, on a side road off the highway. Not the most ideal circumstances I agree. I texted a buddy to call me back and my location before getting out of the vehicle and I had the killer attack dog Gizmo with me. He stayed in the pickup keeping warm. I follow the same rules for craigslist, always carry cash and always go armed. Smart meeting places cover most of the problems but weird stuff happens. I have met some very nice people buying on the internet, very few bad experiences. It gives me faith in mankind.

One of the gates will be used inside the barn. I think I can build what I need for about $400 versus the $1500 in panels I was going to have to buy. It won’t look as pretty but it will be very functional and the sheep are pretty easy to please.

Today I got the air return all sanded and ready to stain. I have a hard time getting the dust off of a project and ended up taking a very damp rag and wiping everything down to get the last little bit of dust. This looks great and I totally want to get it stained. I just need to wait a few hours to make sure there is no leftover water on the project. I suspect if I was shooting for a satin smooth finish I could not use a damp cloth as it would cause the wood fibers to lift.

Birds are here

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Life is happening every day around us. We keep seeing more and more birds and are now pretty sure that this pair of ducks have been coming back for several years. I spotted them up the creek last week when I was discing and Annmarie saw them down by the house the other day. If I can get the shallow ponds dug this summer I may line a 8×12 foot section of bottom in the lowest spot with a pond liner. This should act as a very durable weed barrier and allow a small open spot of water to be visible in the spring in both ponds which will hopefully entice the ducks into nesting.

We looked at the spring head again yesterday and the watercress is starting to fill up the waterway again. I have to pull it out several times a year. I think that two domestic geese are our answer. I don’t want ducks as they are not tough enough. I think the geese will survive the predator attacks better. Unfortunately, I don’t want super mean geese that bum rush us whenever they see us. So far I have only found one pair that someone is willing to part with and they are super aggressive. I don’t want them chasing the sheep or cows. So maybe next year I raise my own.

We had not seen the quail in a few months and were afraid that they might have all gotten eaten. But yesterday Annmarie spotted them on the back hillside. Hopefully this year we get the quail back in droves. We only usually have one to two coveys on the place. This is why my mother-in-law doesn’t want the hunters to shoot quail. The pheasants are like weeds, no matter what we do they come back and are plentiful. Eventually, when I run out of tasks and hobbies I would like to contact the ODFW and try and get a remote setup to raise quail with minimal human interaction so they are wild and turn them loose on the property. I am going to start putting cow panels around the rose bushes in an attempt to create more habitat.

Annmarie spotted five barn owls on her 2 mile drive home yesterday. We have lots of hawks of different varieties but the owls are usually an occasional sighting phenomenon. We only see our great horned owl every few months now that it has moved down to the schoolhouse. There used to be a mated pair but we have not seen them together in years and I am not a birder, they all look alike to me.

We are also now seriously talking about a large subterranean greenhouse heated by passive solar energy. All these food scares and bacteria outbreaks really make you conscious of the food chain. The shorter the chain the better.

Now that the weather is changing the working dogs have started to get overheated. An hour out working the animals and they start wandering over to the creek to lay in it, drinking is secondary to immersing their bodies. Last year we shaved them and they did great all summer. They were much more comfortable and worked better for us. Sarah shaved them for us last week and they are getting used to it. Mouse thinks the process is humiliating and hides for a day or two afterwards. They both look kinda funny for about six weeks until they get a little hair back. It also makes it much easier for us to find ticks on them. This wet weather has caused the ticks to come out of hiding and we have found three already. Gizmo is taking his cues from the big dogs. I make them wait and sit before they can have food and he so wants to come eat but he keeps looking sideways at the other two and they are holding still so he waits.

We sent out a deposit on a new ram for out flock today! We figured that May was our six month mark and we should be safe to get a new ram. Yesterday during our walk around we spotted as brand new baby lamb born hours earlier, they just keep coming!! We are going to get a full blooded Katahdin ram this time. He has good genetics and the breeders are doing genetic culling and comparing them in a national database for growth and disease traits. Way more work than we want to do but so handy for us to look at when choosing a new ram. If this guy works out good for us we may keep him for several years and use that farm in the future. Here at Muttville Central we want happy healthy animals that are super self reliant. This is a harder task than you might imagine as the industry has bred self reliability out of a large portion of the breeds in an attempt to concentrate on size, growth rate or fat marbling. We are looking at disease resistance, ease of birthing, twins, growth rate, size and ease of handling for us these characteristics determine how many animals we can raise and how well they do.

This is why we have a mix of three main crosses, Katahdin, Barbados Blackbelly and Dorper. There are certain characteristics of each breed we like and we keep mixing in different rams and keeping the sheep that meet our above requirements. Its working well for us. We don’t vaccinate, we worm every 1-2 years as a precaution. We have never had any type of infection go through the herd that killed any animals. We had ORP, basically a oral herpetic type disease, go through a couple of times it came in on some sheep we purchased. That is it, no other problems in 8 years. We totally attribute this to our low bioload. The animals have so much pasture to roam on that they just don’t sit in one place and live. This also accounts for why our animals are such good grazers. We also allow the animals access to shelter year around and in the winter we lock them up in the barn every night. The barn gets dug out every year and fresh straw laid down throughout the winter. Now that we have upped our barn cat population I have not seen a single rodent in the barn!

Alone time

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Now that the easy part was done and the field is burned off it needs to be disced. My little tractor can just pull a double set of four foot discs. It doesn’t like to do it and I have to use four wheel drive and if the ground is too wet I cannot get enough traction to pull the discs. The field was a little wet but I managed to get it done over the course of two days. I always have something else to do on the way to pull the discs. I stopped on Saturday and pushed the burn piles together with the tractor and got one end of the double downed trees burning again. I hope they burn up the entire tree but I am not holding my breath. All the extra limbs are now on fire so it should be pretty easy to work around. I then went and dug the front ditch out for another 25 feet in the upper prime pasture. If I don’t clean it out it starts to grow in and spread out. It was also eroding the ground behind the large blackberry bushes and I just about could not get the tractor past. I am using the dirt from the ditch to backfill a new passage by the blackberry bush. I looked at the upper prime squared pasture and it needs some more ditch work. My initial digging is helping but I need to extend it out and dig a new exit channel, but I had already messed around long enough so I hooked up the disc and started to drag it around the field. I also made a vow to pick up every single rock I found. I had an offer from a friend to bring in a big piece of equipment that would smooth out the entire ground. The trick is rocks are a killer on this machine so I vowed to pick them all up! I just tipped the front bucket upwards and every time I spotted a big rock I jumped off and threw it in the bucket. There were not very many rocks, I bet I got less than ten in the few hours I went in circles.

There were lots of voles and mice throughout the entire field. I almost regretted not bringing the dogs as they love killing them, but they eat every one and after 15 or so each they get some very smelly farts. So I left them in the yard, knowing that Zeke was off the run and hoping he would stay put. I kept spotting various wildlife but I never could get a picture! I chased up a vole and this hawk swooped down out of the sky, snatched it and landed on a nearby wooden fence post. I watched that bird for almost a minute before deciding it would stay put for a picture, as soon as I reached for my phone it flew away, vole clutched in its talon.

I spotted a four foot bull snake partially in a vole hole, again I stopped the mistress and watched for 30 seconds then reached for my camera. The picture above with no snake but various vole holes was taken 2 seconds after it disappeared down the left most hole.

I spotted various baby killdeer running around and had to stop once to let them get out of the way. I really wanted to get that ash layer down into the dirt before it rained so it could get absorbed into the soil and not washed or blown away.

I was circling around and suddenly a hawk jumped off the ground on the far end of the field. I looked over and spotted a nest with eggs! So I skirted around the nest and left a patch of grass and weeds for the hawk and its nest.

The amazing part of this is driving the tractor is a very good core workout. I hear the scoffing now but try to stay on the seat with the tractor bouncing around and trying to throw you off constantly. I finally put the seat belt on and tightened it up across my upper thighs but this does not stop you from keeping your stomach and back muscles tightened the entire time.

I disced the far side and was working down near the upper prime pasture end when another hawk jumped out of the grass and there was another nest with eggs! The amazing part of this is we burned the field on Friday but both nests were placed such that fire could not get to them but the birds could see predators coming. I finally ran out of fuel and had to drive back to the house.

I ended up getting more diesel then digging out the barn lot front creek by hand. I will keep digging a small patch at time until I get it cleared all the way up to the spring.

Sunday I did the same thing, as in I procrastinated in going right to the discing portion of the day. I stopped in the upper prime pasture, as there was no fire to play with and started working on my ditch network. I had tried to dig a small pond but there was too much water and it was forming another swamp. I needed to dig a channel connecting the side ditches with the main ditch. I did this then dug the side ditch down and extended it out into the field. I really need to dig out the center of this area as I have dug a horseshoe shaped ditch. I started digging the dirt out of the middle of the horseshoe with my box blade on the tractor but I only got about ten loads out before it got too muddy. Once the tractor tires fill up with mud and the ground turns muddy I cannot use the box blade. This is the seventh year on my original tractor tires. I am going to try and milk them along for another 2 years. It will be an expensive fix to replace all four tires, probably around $1500-2000.

I did manage to get the entire field disced except for the two hawk nesting areas and the upper end where the super wet low spot is located. I have circled the wet area on the picture below. It is probably almost an acre and it is still too wet to work with my light tractor. What I want to do is let it dry out a little more then get in there and drag it down about 18 inches and use that dirt to build up the entire surrounding area to keep it dryer and let a natural swamp occur. The real trouble is it always dries out in the summer which limits the type of plants we can plant. I would like to plant some type of native grass that can survive the wet time and the dry time. I want to place tall “pecker poles”, 2-3 inch wooden posts that are 8 feet tall. These will be easier to see when the alfalfa is planted, therefore allowing us to avoid the damp area with the haying equipment and tractor. I may even put up some bird nests for the red winged blackbirds. I would love to put up bluebird boxes but I have only ever seen one bluebird here, we are too low in elevation.

I started dragging the dirt out of the swamp area but the predicted rain turned into a deluge and I was loosing traction and body heat fast. I stopped long enough to hike up onto the rock bluff to take pictures. Zeke decided that he had enough confinement time and had dug his way under the yard fence and joined me. He did kill lots of vole and mice while he was busy getting covered in mud.

Every time I go up on the hillside and see the old rock wall I want to rebuild it. Since it has taken me multiple years to work on the one behind my house this will have to wait until I win the lottery or a parent needs a summer punishment for their child. The child must not be afraid of snakes and must be able to move 150# rocks. This probably limits my options way more than they were before which was slim to none before the lifting requirements were added.

Next week I attempt to get the yard mower running as I told Perm Boy that the fuel container was in the old wood shed. Turns out he found the only can of diesel not out in the machine shed. I had to drain the gas out today and managed to get the mower to start once and then it died. I put fresh fuel in it after emptying the tank. I also need to spray some weeds! Oh and the trim inside the house needs to be finished. I did no trim this weekend as the field took precedence. I will now be able to spray both fields and then they can sit idle until this fall. I suspect I will need to spray one more time this summer.

Name Game

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s that time of year again, in the search for cheap help that works hard I have yet again reached out to my neighbors and friends. I have scored another new helper. As is tradition here at Stewart Creek Somethings he needs a name for the blog. The longer I do this the more pressure there is on me to actually pick something good! This pressure could be self induced but it is still there and even before my help arrived I was aware that today was the day I would bestow a new moniker on another fellow individual. I enjoy the permanence of the written word, once the moniker is in play it can never be taken away.

On the proposed work schedule for the day was picking up boulders from the back hillside to line the yard fence so that Zeke cannot dig under the fence. He has to go on the overhead run every day still. Mouse and now Gizmo cannot get out of the front yard. Zeke is a firm believer in making your own exit plan.

The trouble with this plan was on Thursday there was no wind and it was a beautiful day. It was the perfect burn day and I still have a 8 acre field to burn. If I wait much longer then everything will dry out and I will have to wait till next year and I don’t want to do that. Thursday night someone told me it was supposed to rain over the weekend so it was a total do over on the priorities. Zeke was going to have to spend a little longer on the run when we go to work.

The young man came out early, dressed for work, rubber boots, jeans and T shirt and a bottle of water. He only forgot leather gloves but I have come to expect that so I always have extras stashed at the house. We loaded the propane tank into the back of the pickup and went to get more propane. They could not fill it, it kept leaking. Now this is the newer propane tank, I think the gas station needs to fix the washer on their propane nozzle. I was hoping we had enough gas to get the job done. Now this young man was a fire newbie, and had never intentionally set a fire before. I had him run the hose out, gave him the 2 minute safety speech and then had him light the outer edges of the field as I drove around the edge. He walked and started with the torch, I didn’t think about just having him sit on the tailgate. He is young and can use the exercise! We lit the whole outside and then waited 30 minutes and started to light patches here and there. At one point he starts playing with his hair saying how it has “so much body”, and its fluffy. His hair is touching his shoulders, he calls it a mullet (not long enough yet) and I couldn’t take it. I told him the reason his hair was frizzy was because its burnt!! He got too close to the flames and his hair curled up on the ends! Now he wasn’t that close, I kept checking his arm hairs to make sure they were still present every time he got back in the pickup. He finished the day with arm hair and eyebrows intact so it was a stellar day. After the burn revelation he kept playing with his hair and saying how he was going to get a perm. Hence a name was born, “Perm boy”.

Perm boy and I burned along the creek, burned a stand of blackberries that really took off, we lit two piles of dead trees that had been there for years and we lit all the old patches of hay on the ground! We even burned up a broken hay bale over by the grain bins! I almost drove up on the hill and burned the old old fallen down barn but it still has a lot of dead tall grass all around it and I didn’t want that to get away. I need to get the sheep in there first and eat it all down then I can safely burn the broken up board pile that has not been a barn for 40 plus years.

Blackberries burning are pretty hot. I went down to look after it went out and discovered that they had totally filled in the entire waterway. I really need to burn out three more patches that are touching the water. If we had had a bad runoff year they would have acted as a dam and caused us problems.

We had an hour to kill before Perm Boy had to leave so we dug out the front creek in the yard by hand. It looks a lot better now. I need to continue this all the way up to the spring. Perm Boy splashed some mud onto his blue jeans and had a slight panic about them not ever getting clean again. We had the its only mud speech. At one point we had a discussion about the large dent in the door of his pickup and how to get it mostly out easily and quickly. I told him it added character to the rig. Besides every dent in my pickup was put in it by various teenagers at one time or another. He informed me that he would never put a dent in it, strong words from someone who just got his drivers license two days ago.

We got a lot done, I am going to spend the weekend discing the field so I can then start spraying weeds. Perm Boy did good, I asked him back as we still need to get rocks so Zeke can come off the run.

Another baby

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Thursday we were lamb bombed again! Annmarie went outside to go to work and heard the tell tale mewling of a newborn lamb. We had moved the sheep over to the orchard to eat down the grass. We have been rotating them to eat down various fields. We are currently rotating them between the ram pasture, the orchard, the back hillside and the barn lot. As soon as the orchard is eaten down we will be moving them back to the barn lot. It is already six inches tall!

There was a brand new baby lamb over by the yard fence all alone. All the sheep were at the other end of orchard. The lamb was covered in mucus as it looks like someone just squeezed and dropped. Annmarie had to be in to work for a meeting so she wrapped the lamb in a towel and put it in a small cardboard box in front of the propane stove. It needed to get warm. I was finishing my shower and then I would be on lamb duty. I made up a bottle and sent a text to our bummer adopter. She was willing to meet me in Pendleton so I just loaded the lamb up in the cardboard box and transported it into our rendezvous point in my car. I never even checked to see what gender it was, not that it mattered but it was still pretty slimy despite me using an entire dry towel on it and a second one.

My mother had some lilac bushes torn out of one of her rentals and I am going to try and transplant them. I am not sure if they will take but dropping them into the creek has snapped a few of them back to life. This makes me very hopeful that they will survive. The hard part now is finding a spot where the animals won’t eat the plants while they are trying to grow!

We are looking at starting our own hydroponics inside the house. This lettuce scare with everyone catching Ecoli is making us leary of bagged salad. We are getting serious about the greenhouse but unfortunately that is going to have to wait until next year. The bull pen is eating up this years greenhouse money.