Month: August 2024

Lambing Summer 2024 begins

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It has begun the first ewe has had her babies, a set of twins.
This happened four days ago and we have had to go down to the school house every night and push the sheep back up to the barn lot. We need to make sure that no new babies get left down in the lower fields at night. They will be coyote food if they don’t come in. We have isolated the twins and their momma in the back barn lot. She has to be fed every day and the horse has to be fed every day now. This is probably a good thing for the horse as she is not at the old hay pile we just dug out of the barn doing an all you can eat buffet. We had to buy a new water trough for the corral. The horse cannot reach down into the spring directly behind the barn, it’s too steep. The old trough was torn up and leaking. So now we have to water the horse every other day also.

We only kept the rams in with the ewes for two months to limit our lambing length but these twins are pretty small, we think she may have been a couple of weeks early. The bull needs to go in with the momma cows also. That will be this weeks project, to get our other female and one steer in with the bull and the heifers.

Mr Rainman worked on the gazebo pad this last week. Gravel, water and compactor is starting to make a really nice pad. He thinks two more passes and he should have it all leveled out. Then we can put up the lower ring of the grain bin. Once that is in place we will measure and mark out all the spots to drill holes for the concrete pillar footings. I ordered the 6”x6”x10’ posts and concrete anchors on Friday. They will be here this week. Once we have the spots marked we are going to use the tractor to drill the holes. I have enough Sackcrete left over from the back bridge footings to pour these footings. The plan is to get the building up and a roof on it before winter. I still need to get the part that goes over the middle of the roof. They did not sell me that part. I may have to wing it while I look for a replacement.

I spent most of the day trying to get the front porch lights installed. I thought it was going to be easy. Nope, I am really unsure why I thought that but I sure did. First, the fancy siding piece was not lined up with the electrical box. Plus the box makes the hole very deep and there needs to be some kind of extender. I went to town twice in an effort to find the correct parts and screws. After five hours on two lousy lights I got them installed. I still managed to break a glass pane. I hid it. The only real problem when I flipped on the power was I had a 50/50 chance of wiring the one light correctly. I did not do it right so now the light is on 100% of the time. I will need to get some wind shock resistant light bulbs and to tear apart the one lamp and wire it to the other black wire.

I did manage to get all of the 1/4 round needed to finish off the porch and the pressure treated boards needed to redo the trumpet vine trellis. The hope is we can get the porch and trellis completed this week and the holes dug and concrete poured for the gazebo.

Little Dumper to the shop

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It is happening, the second to last item that is needed before Little Dumper can be used on the farm is one step closer to getting completed. Mr Gingerman got the new radiator installed last weekend so it could now be driven into town to the brake place. Unfortunately, the back brakes have a huge leak so the brake line for the back brakes had to be capped off and the pickup only had sorta functioning front brakes. This was doable as I had planned on taking all of the back roads to town and only anticipated having to stop 3-4 times on the entire trip. So I set aside Friday as the day to move it into town.

I put my last two gallons of fuel I had on the farm into the fuel tank. I keep a five gallon can full of high octane ethanol free regular on the farm for small equipment. I had to pop the hood and turn on the battery. We installed a manual battery shut off switch under the hood. This way we don’t have to worry about an infrequent ground wire. The battery will be ready to go at all times. Due to the infrequent use the Little Dumper will have this seemed like a good plan. Plus, I already had the switch for an old tractor we sold and it was brand new. This meant I had to get the hood up. After five minutes cussing and repeated attempts I kept getting the hood loose but could not get it lifted. There was some latch trick I was missing. I called Mr Gingerman, yep I needed to jiggle the latch continuously until I found the sweet spot to get the second half released. Once I knew that it only took a couple of tries.

I had only cleaned out the passenger side earlier due to the driver door not working. Mr Gingerman had adjusted the front fender so the door can be opened. I had to get a large box and scoop all of the trash, dirt, broken floor mats out into a box to toss it all away. I was able to get the beast started fairly easily. It sounds amazing! Like really amazing since it had not been run for 25 years. I attempted to put it into reverse, but there are no marks on the shifter. I had it in the wrong gear and felt it as I let the clutch out slowly. It turns our reverse is all the way towards your knee and down to the seat.

It has been 25 years since I have driven anything this old. This was evidenced by me taking off in first gear. That gear is low and slow, it is designed to start off with a full load of wheat in the back in the middle of a field. I hit second gear immediately then tried to slow down with the brakes. NOPE! There were brakes but stopping was a 30-50 foot process. On the plus side as soon as I let off the gas the drivetrain started slowing the vehicle down without the brakes. I then tried to shift into first gear while the vehicle was still moving. NOPE! There are no synchros in the transmission. Again, I knew this but 25 years…

I took a picture as I was going down our driveway. The blurry picture is due to dirt and the original window. My goal was to keep the speed down so that brakes were really unnecessary. As soon as I got on top of our hill I got it up to fourth gear and was whizzing along. I am unsure how fast that was because the speedometer does not work. It was fast enough that when I wanted to veer to the left at the Y intersection I panicked a little. There was a vehicle coming from the other direction and it hit the intersection before me. I almost had to keep going straight as I could not slow down very fast. They managed to get through the intersection in time for me to turn left thankfully. I slowed down to third gear.

The old pickup is a one ton vehicle with no rear shocks. It has this huge stack of leaf springs to absorb the weight and distribute it equally. This does nothing to make the ride smooth. Instead when we hit a couple of bad washboard spots in the gravel road I felt the back end kick loose. It had way more air time than ground contact.

I only had to waive two vehicles past me. Otherwise there was no one on the roads. Now I was able to roll the driver’s side window down and use hand signals to notify everyone else on the road of my intent. For the most part everyone gave me a pretty wide birth as I was concentrating on driving and steering fairly intently. I think they sensed a certain amount of trepidation on my part about me being able to keep the vehicle moving down the road in a predictable manner.

I got to the shop without any incidents and they are going to do a complete brake overhaul. We decided that it was not a rush job but I did not want them to take as long as it did to get the tires for the truck earlier this spring.

I looked up our total amount into getting the truck up and running again and so far we are into it for $4446.05. That does not include the gasket kit for the rebuilt master cylinder or the brake work by the shop. Hard to believe we have literally just done the basics to get it up and running. That won’t even make it street legal. We will need to fix the lights, turn signals and brake lights and speedometer to get that. I believe there is a seat belt waiver due to the age of the vehicle but I don’t know. Another thing I would have to look up. Luckily, that was never our intent. We want a mini dump truck on the place to move soil, compost and rocks. That is what we need and we are closer than ever to our goal.

Farm projects progressing

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The siding contractor is done with the siding. We just need our gutter fixed and a screen replaced. Mr Rainman has been working on getting our porch ceiling painted. He used a thick primer to fill in the gaps between the boards. We thought about painting it white but were afraid it would be hard to match our siding. Annmarie remembered the porch ceiling being blue when she was a kid. I had to look up why blue and the reasons vary quite a bit. It was supposed to keep away evil spirits, it represented the sky so it made the porch feel bigger and it repelled bugs. We are going with the first one.

Primer done
First coat

The annual barn clean out has been happening over the last two weekends. Mr Rainman started it by getting a main path dug all the way through the barn (5 hours). I have worked on it two more days a four hour day and a three hour day. We have managed to get most of the barn dug out in 12 hours! This used to take 40-60 hours to do. We started earlier this year and it is really wet still inside the barn, so there are no hard sheets of dried stuff. It is scrap-able with the manure forks. I took the forks off yesterday and used the bucket to scrape the muddy material loose and then just leave it to dry for a while. Mr Rainman had ambitions of finishing it next week. The rest all needs to be hand dug. It should take about six hours.

Beginning spot

We will have gotten the whole thing done in under 20 hours which is pretty amazing. I keep getting better and better with the little John Deere tractor. I think the real reason is I don’t want to get off and pitch fork as much crap as I used to, before becoming more aged. I am getting more efficient as I age!

We have been having some trouble with random people coming down the driveway. We had installed a ring camera this year and are now having to monitor it. For some reason we have someone on a motorcycle who keeps coming onto the property. Annmarie is making another sign to do down by the driveway cattle guard. Once we have the gazebo up we are going to install a 16’ gate across the driveway down by the first house. Initially, we are going to keep the gate open and only close it when we work the animals. If we keep getting unknown visitors we may have to install a solar automatic opener with a battery backup. This will force everyone to stop and push a button to open the gate. If we install an auto gate opener we will bury an auto sensor from our side that will open the gate so you can leave. I am hoping that we won’t have to do that but when we install the manual gate I will weld new hinges on the gate and install a double post and offset post for latching. This will make the installation of an auto opener very easy.

We got the side fence temporarily back up so the dogs can no longer steal cat food or harass the cats. This week we will start in on the gazebo! This is our next big project. I am thinking it will take us about six weeks to get it all up in the air. We will still need to finish the floor inside, create countertops and an entrance cover and ramp. For now just getting it up with the roof on it is the goal this year.

I had to order more parts for the micro hay baler. I needed another $500 worth of parts and am probably going to have to pop off the wheel on one side to be able to reach all of the gears. I will definitely be ordering a spare chain and will only allow myself to take out links one time before just replacing it. The chain only costs $150, all of the gears are over $2k.

Farm 7, Predators 3

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It’s that time of year again where the predators start to enjoy fresh chicken and lamb. We have not had much rain in the last three weeks, about 1/10” last week. This has not been enough to keep anything green around us. The raccoons start to think that chicken is a great meal and the coyotes start to like the idea of lamb. Mr Rainman has been going out in the mornings when he arrives and trying to shoot the two coyotes in the upper fields. So far he has missed on three separate occasions. I have been up there seven times and have yet to see a coyote. He thinks he may be scaring them away, we are humoring him at the moment.

The dogs have been barking early in the morning before we go to work. I was able to spot three raccoons running in front of the driveway headed to the barn. By the time I grabbed a pistol and got through two gates to the barn I was able to get one shot off as the coon climbed into the barn and on top of the hay stack. We know they are in the barn as there are two huge piles of raccoon dung in there, like 20-30#/each. They can make a heck of a mess. This is the third time we have seen them but only the first time I have managed to get a shot off. My mother-in-law states they have started coming to her house again to eat the cat food. They pick on the cats and can kill them. Not to mention can add about 50-75# of animals to feed depending on their size.

Friday evening she called me to say that there were several raccoons on her front porch. Normally, I just grab a pistol and walk down there but the raccoons always start to run before I can get close. So I decided to drive the pickup down this time. I grabbed the suppressed 22 pistol and three extra clips. Unless you manage to hit a raccoon directly in the head it takes about an entire clip to put one down, especially if it is very large. We try very hard to not just wound them so lead poisoning by quantity is my strategy.

Luckily, I also have a green laser on the pistol. This helps dramatically when shooting around buildings and other animals. If I would spend some time practicing with the pistol every month I would probably not need the laser. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that. I could be building more fence or completing another project. So I use a crutch to help me. Plus, in the middle of the night the laser is essential when running around in the dark.

I ended up killing four raccoons. I took 40 rounds of ammo and used 36 rounds by the time I was done. If there had been six raccoons I would have run out of ammo! So I will need to buy another couple of clips. I just fill my front and back pockets with spare clips before I head out of the house. I do keep the empty ones and put them back in a pocket instead of dropping them on the ground. I would lose them nonstop if I dropped them on the ground.

No cats were harmed despite them running all around while I was trying to kill the raccoons.

We put the live trap in the barn but as usual no raccoon is foolish enough to go into it. It has been up for a week with zero results.