Month: May 2021

Haying season has begun!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I brought the tractor home this week from its repairs. It has the back hydraulic takeoff connectors repaired, a hydraulic leak under the tractor and the front wheel bearing seal all fixed. It is no longer pouring out oil from multiple locations on the tractor! They even power washed all the grease off of it. I wanted to drive the tractor home via the back roads and not use the trailer, it would have taken about 90 minutes to get home. Annmarie told me to just take the trailer! I would have needed a ride to drop me off and had to make a special trip to town instead of just driving the pickup to work. I used the trailer.

One of our cows had another calf so 4/6 have now had calves. Unfortunately they are taking their time. So next weekend we are going to herd them all up to the barn and sort them so the four babies can be tagged and banded. We will have to get the other two later. I don’t want to have to tag and band a 8 week old calf. Mr I Need a Belt Bad was excited to hear that we would be working cows next week, we will see how excited he is after he has to help catch and hold them down.

Mr Professional came out yesterday and got the sickle bar mower attached to the tractor. I had to work all week so no weeds got sprayed. I am on a new drug regimen for my post covid pericarditis. It is back to tearing up my gut and the constant chest pressure is starting to wear me down again. I have been instructed by multiple parties that I am to take it easy. So I have added napping to my schedule and only get to do a few light things in the morning on the days I am not working. I hate it. But I am tired and I want to get better and limiting my activities will help.

Today Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out and we set him on the yard first thing. Our front hillside has sprouted with cheat grass and it needed to be mowed. We have some clover coming in and have vowed to not use any herbicide on it in an effort to get it established. So we had him mow and bag all the cheat grass with the mower on the low setting. It did not disturb the clover and it decimated the cheat grass. He had one instruction when I set him up with the mower, do not hit the black hose connecting the sprinklers! That is actually two directives as he was instructed to mow the hillside and not hit the black pipe. I had to use a wire wheel to clean off the sickle bar mower goop so the grass slid over it and was using the grinder when he came over to tell me that he had hit the black pipe!! He had one job! I grumbled and told him to finish mowing and we would fix the pipe later. He was back five minutes later showing me a four foot chunk of pipe he hit that was not connected to anything. I had removed it a couple of weeks ago as it was not needed and had just tossed it to the side. So even though he violated the rule, no hitting of the black pipe he maintained the intent which was to not interrupt our watering capability.

He then got set up with the weed eater, a new experience for him, and yes he had goggles and hearing protection. He did not like the weed eater as much, it is heavy, you have to use a chest harness and it does wear on your arms. He ended up mowing about half the front yard and will finish the rest tomorrow. He should even have some time to work on the garden also. Mr Professional came out and pulled the hay rake out, sickle cut the orchard and worked on weeds. He is also working on getting the chain saw put back together. We need to do some creative repair to the plastic handle. I am picking up a couple of packages of JB weld to create a fix.

I mowed the hay today with the sickle mower. I got about four acres cut. I have maybe another two in one field but it can wait a week and the #1 field can wait at least another two weeks. We are going to try and spread out the cutting so we can get it baled in between and it won’t get too dry like it did last year. I suspect we will be cutting the neighbor’s field mid to late week and starting in on it also. The goal is to get 35-40 ton in the barn, shed, buildings. I still have about 12-14 large bales left over from last year. I use two per week when it is bare and no feed available. We will have to hook up the trailer to the tractor to feed out the small bales. I love the way the grass lays down when you cut it and the smell. It is very relaxing.

Boring is necessary

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I had lots of help on Saturday, Mr I Need a Belt Bad and Mr Professional came out. Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I helped Annmarie sort sheep first thing in the morning. We had the sheep in the barn first then set up the gates. It’s easier if we do the gates first but the simple fact is using the gates and sorting chute is one of the best decisions we have made when it comes to raising sheep. It doesn’t take up much space and we can sort them whenever we need. We never want to sort the sheep, its always a need. We needed to sort off more lambs that were over 90 days old. We got 18 more pulled off and even managed to mark three of the little girls as savers and future breeders for us, they are incredibly calm. We proceeded to push them through the front hillside and over into the orchard pasture. This would have gone smoother if Mouse had not decided that he knew how to herd sheep better than Annmarie’s directions and just as they neared the gate he broke and rushed in. There was some chasing of a particular sheep and yelling and some creative word play. On the next attempt the dogs listened and the sheep went through the gate. This all leads to the necessity of a woven fence on top of our rock wall to keep the sheep out of the yard. We also want to keep the dogs out of our yard so we can get a no hole yard. This whole process only took one hour. It used to take around 2-3 hours before the chute and then you had to chase the sheep around the barn and dive on them or catch them mid air when they tried to leap away. It was entertaining but a lot more work and we are not getting any younger. Our ram is starting to lose weight and it looks like some of our ewes are pregnant. We hope so as he only has one job.

Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I then stayed in the barn and proceeded to get it ready for hay. We did this by putting all of the netting and hay string into empty 50# feed bags and tossing them into the back of the pickup. The dumpster is still on the property and got emptied Friday so it needs to be filled again. I was hoping that I could be done with one more week but after emptying two hay rooms and picking up all of the netting and more buried twine we filled the entire dumpster with the addition of all of the feed bags from the chicken coop. I still have a lot of items in the old house that need to be round filed so the dumpster will have to stay for one more week to get filled for the last time, a total of 6 yards of trash will have been removed from the farm. I sure am glad we have weekly trash service. Once we had all of the trash corralled we went into the barn and reorganized some wood. I had built a loft over the sheep feeding area and had been storing wood on it. We reorganized the room over the tack room and then moved and restacked all of the lumber except the 1×12 boards into that room. I used the 1×12 boards to toss down and cover some of the holes in the decking. We are going to start haying soon and we have a couple acres of cheat grass. The flood ruined a couple of the fields and now there is a lot of cheat grass. I just about had it under control in a couple of fields and it is back. So we are going to hay it and use it for bedding. The bales will be stored up on the walkway and you will be able to just cut them open and dump them off the walkway. The sheep will break them up and spread them out. It’s a great use for them and stops me from having to buy straw. It also lets me work out any kinks in the baling process before I get to the good grass. Practice is essential as we have only used it for one year. When it comes time to clean out the barn I need to open up all of the doors and use the leaf blower to blow the dust off of everything. I will need goggles and an N95 mask for that as it will be very dirty and dusty.

Mr Professional arrived and started to work on getting the lawn mower running, he had it fired up in no time and started in on the lawn. Mr I Need a Belt Bad went to the back garden to weed for the second time. All of the grass that he missed last week had gotten some rain, sun and some extra room to grow. It had taken off and he was able to knock it down one more time. I will mix a little Roundup now and keep it in a little one gallon hand pump sprayer. I used it every 1-2 weeks to knock down the grass instead of having to pull weeds all the time. Weeding sucks. While they did that I finished spray painting another three metal gates. If I waited much longer the rust was going to become much worse. Mr Professional fired up the weed eater and I knocked down an especially tall spot in the yard then proceeded to weed eat the berry garden. Once we had it down, we went around to each plant and pulled out the weeds by hand to create a weed free zone around each berry bush. I may even plant some blueberries as well as the berry garden is doing. I am going to bring over our large water trough and get it set up for strawberries. This will keep them from spreading all over the place. We do have a mole out there and I am going to have to set a trap. We tried to find the entrance hole but couldn’t find it. So all of the mounds got spread out so I can decide wear to set the trap.

Mr Professional and I set up my Christmas present and I now have two targets mounted on the hillside at 100 yards. Now to see if the sheep will leave them alone. I was able to use the rangefinder to figure out how far objects on the hillside were, 150-200 yards. The side by side had a flat front tire so we took it off and I will get it fixed this week. The tractor is the key piece of equipment that is missing. As soon as it comes the sickle bar mower needs to get attached and fired up to do a job.

Spraying

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Thursday was a perfect day to catch up on our field spraying. The side by side is all ready and as long as I put a quart of oil in every time I add five gallons of fuel it works great. Yes it is burning a lot of oil. I am hopeful there is a treatment I can add to the oil that will extend its working life. Now that we have the big marine battery installed under the driver’s seat it starts right up! It is pretty amazing to just turn the key and have it start.

We are mixing 10 cups of 24D, 3 cups of sticker and 7 ounces of Milestone to 50 gallons of water. This is killing the broadleaf and the thistles are dying. I noticed after looking at the fields we sprayed a month ago that it was time to spray again. New broadleaf weeds were 3-7 inches tall and ready to be murdered. I was able to spray all of field #1, 2 and 1/3 of #3. This was incredible progress, the wind finally started to pick up so I had to call it quits. During this time I realized that our home weather station is broken again. I kept trying to check the wind speed (no spraying over 15mph, I like to stop at 10mph). The trees were moving the wind was blowing and our weather station little round cups were not moving at all. Turns out they have decided to stop going around and around in the wind. So we researched another brand and purchased a new one, this one using sound to measure wind speed, it has no moving parts! Our hope is this will last and not cause us problems. Luckily, the pole I installed on the last replacement can be used for the new one so this will save a lot of time.

I was able to spray all of the fence lines along the fields also with the hand wand. This has caused me to realize that I need to install a hose on a reel for the spraying that is self retracting. This way when I get off the side by side to spray I can move around more than 12 feet. I am going to have to look at what Harbor Freight. I am sure a frame will have to be welded to our current setup to get it to fit and be stable.

I was able to spray all of #4 and another 1/3 of #3 on Friday before the wind made it impossible to continue. The fields look better and I need to cut at least one field as it is all cheatgrass. The sheep don’t like to eat it but after last year we have learned that if I bale it we can use it as bedding for the entire barn. The sheep will spread it around and then pee all over it. If I have enough of it I don’t have to buy any straw to use for the bedding. The best part is the compost pile gets hot enough the next year to kill all weed seeds. Unfortunately, the tractor is in the shop for repairs. The front wheel bearing seal requires too much work and a hydraulic press which I don’t own. When I took it into the shop I found another leak from it sitting on the flatbed trailer. I had them quote me for fixing the wheel bearing seal, for fixing rear hydraulic takeoff connector, the hydraulic leak and the bucket controls are sticking so they are going to fix that also, for the low low price of $1200. Annmarie heard the quote on the answering machine and wants to talk about a new tractor! I do need a new tractor but we are waiting two more years until Meathead is out of school. So for now we will repair the tractor and continue on.

I net wrap I ordered came and a spare hydraulic hose for the sickle bar mower. I really needed the actuator arm for the baler. It is bent and the constant pulling on it is making it worse. I will need to call them on Monday to see where my last two rolls and the actuator are.

Weeding

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Saturday evening Annmarie and I had to go down to the far end of the property and get the sheep. They were in an area they were not supposed to be and had to crawl through a hole in the creek crossing. I knew the flood had damaged the creek crossing fence but had not been down to repair it yet. The sheep found the hole like they always do and went through. This area is still fenced but I just did not want them in there yet. I took Mouse as he doesn’t work well for me and we are trying to reinforce the dogs training and obedience. It took a while, it would have been faster had I listened to Annmarie, this does seem to be a trend in my life. She really is the smarter individual. It got done and Mouse listened much better to me then he had at any time this year.

Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out again on Sunday. I had some things to do inside and it rained again last night, so mowing the lawn was not going to happen again. I turned him loose on the grass and weeds in the back garden area. There was a jungle and lawn attempting to grow and he tackled it with a pair of bent needle nose pliers! He got the entire area cleaned out, I have a few stragglers that I will hand spray with Roundup and put them out of their misery. I even went and got the leaf blower out and blew all of the winter leaves out and cleaned up the area. It looks much better and this needed to be done.

I stayed inside and did some inside chores, cleaned up and even hung up another oil lantern. Annnmarie’s grandparents had these drop down cast iron stands for lamps. I took one last night and scrubbed on it nonstop and got it fairly clean. I also cleaned up an oil lamp from them also. The lamp was stunning! It had an amazing color to the glass and we wanted to showcase it. So I hung the lamp shelf in the bathroom on the slanted wall that was never going to have anything in it. The lamp looks great and it will be a nice reminder of them.

After 24 hours without a front porch I was ready to be done, using the back door nonstop is going to be painful. So we finished pulling nails out of the porch and laid down temporary sheets of OSB I had out in the machine shop sitting around. The dogs and everyone else appreciates the return to our routine. Once we start back up with the supplies this is going to be a big incentive to get things completed in a timely fashion. I may even take some time off to just see it through to the end. I think we could be done in a week.

Mr Professional came out to look at replacing the front bearing seal on the tractor. Once we figured out you needed a hydraulic press and had the potential to damage the bearings we just hooked up the trailer and loaded it up. I will drop it off at the dealers tomorrow at lunch and get it fixed. We will need it in a couple of weeks to mow. I need to get the parts for the second sickle bar and get it up and ready also, we may get to make some hay this year. We are working on adding a large marine battery to the side by side. It will go under the drivers seat so we can hook the sprayer up to it and it has a voltage sensing switch that will isolate the main battery if it starts to go low so we will always be able to start the side by side. I am draining the little batteries trying to run the sprayer as much as we do. The sprayer hose all needs to be replaced, I have all the parts but just have not done it yet. I need to weld on the extensions and just get it done. There is always something. I have one good day in me on the weekends and then take it easy on the second day. I am feeling better but I am not out of the woods yet with my post Covid symptoms. It has been five months now since I caught it.

Porch begins

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I spent Thursday cleaning and emptying Annmarie’s grandmothers house so we could close on Friday. It took longer than I thought it would but I managed to get it all wiped down and the wood floor oiled. We went in and signed paperwork on Friday afternoon, we no longer own it. The new owners have plans to fix the roof and do some remodel inside the house. This will allow us to focus our time and energy into the farm only. We are going to use the money from the sale to put on a new porch at our house and to help convert the old house into an office space/maker space for Annmarie and the second room will become a reloading area and jewelry construction bench. We are also going to convert the old kitchen into a freezer room. Each freezer will get its own breaker and I want to install drain pans under each freezer with a drain drilled through the floor so it will be easy to defrost and clean.

Saturday the plan was for Mr I Need a Belt Bad to come out and mow the lawn! The sheep knocked it down so he should have been able to plow through it with the mower and we would have been good for a couple more weeks. Unfortunately, it started to rain early Saturday morning and then continued to rain most of the day. This put a damper on the lawn mowing goal, it rained 1/2”! So instead we cleaned out the pickup which needed it badly. I also still had items from Sarah’s that I had just emptied out yesterday and we had to sort through it all and bring it inside or put it in the old house or send it to the dumpster. Once we had that taken care of it was time to make some progress on the porch.

We really needed some accurate measurements so annmarie could CAD up the new porch using TREX products. She is going to make a parts list also so we can just go in and order everything at once. This will be super nice as we are going to need porch railing, step railing and we want to put 12v lights into the risers on the steps leading up to the front door. I will need to bring a 110V outside box out to the front of the house. This will mean crawling under the house and seeing what is what! I know there is a spot I can tap into I am just unsure where it is, I think there are three places, two I know for certain but its been at least ten years since I have crawled under the house. I am sure the spiderwebs are thick as thieves under there. I figured the only real way to get an accurate measurement was to pull all the decking off of the original porch. We needed to look at the supporting structure and see how much was going to need to be replaced. So Mr I Need a Belt Bad, Meathead and myself tore up the structure. Mr I Need a Belt Bad was the cleanup specialist and proceeded to make a large burn pile out in the pasture. We kept up at it and had the entire porch decking and eight feet of the substructure torn off in three hours. I was surprised at how fast it went. The two front boards along the outer edge of the deck will need to be replaced all around the porch. They are rotten from the water. We will replace with pressure treated wood and that will help considerably. It was a good thing we did tear it off as the decking went under the house four inches! Annmarie used to complain that there was a BREEZE blowing under the front wall and making the entire house cold. Once we installed the tile floor and sealed the floor to the wall this went away. Yep, there was no insulation and no covering, the wind was literally just blowing straight into the house. So we will need to insulate and then seal off the bottom part of the wall. As an added bonus we let Mr I Need a Belt Bad be the pyro person and had him light the porch slats on fire. He went out one time to shove the fire back into a tidy circle and realized that the fire is hot, what he didn’t know was if he had been wearing cotton or wool long sleeves it would have protected him much better. He didn’t get burned and the fire took a while to light as it had been raining!

The dogs had gotten under the porch and dug a nice hole. Plus over the last 50-70 years a lot of dirt had built up under the porch. We shoveled the extra dirt out and proceeded to smooth out the area. This will make the additional pillar supports much easier to install. One corner post that holds up our second story breeze porch is about 50% off of the support! So we will need to fix that before the deck gets installed. The pillars are sitting on all kinds of scrap metal pieces, old plow shares, old metal discs and some pieces I think are joint pieces for railroads. I am unsure on what exactly they are.

Mr Professional came out and planted the rest of the Lavender. Annmarie found our old diagram and I was able to update it. We still have eleven spots that need plants but I think we actually may get some lavender from our Grosso plants and maybe even the Folgate. We will see, every one of our Melissa plants died over the winter, we replaced every one and added some more and will see how they do this winter.