I managed to finish getting the barn dug out this week. I figure my total time on the barn was around 12 hours. This is a far cry from the 40 hours it used to take me. Using the manure forks on the John Deere and just figuring out how to make it into most crooks and crannies with the tractor has cut way down on the hand work. I probably only had to do about four hours of hand digging. The next big thing is to haul the old round bales from the lamb shed and put them into the overhead walkway so we can use them as bedding. They are three years old and have virtually no nutritional value but will make great bedding. I used to buy straw but using old round bales has zero cost associated with it. I used to spread it out when I put it out on the floor. Now I just spread the rolled bales evenly throughout the floor and the sheep break it apart and spread it out throughout the barn. If I have a gap or two a week later I just dump another bale in the shallow spot and the sheep do their magic again. I do need to reset the chute and bring in the four feeders from outside. This will need to happen next week as I am thinking about taking some sheep over to Hermiston next week.
Annmarie wants me to work on getting the old compost out of the barn lot so the horse will quit digging in it for a snack. About 1/3 of the way into digging out the barn I remembered this so I started to put the bedding into the momma/baby area. This has a very shallow soil depth and does not hold water very well. I am hoping to increase the soil depth so I can add some seed. I figure this area can take next year’s material also and I will hopefully have something to work with after that. As I was filling that area I noticed our chickens in the front ditch eating out of the water. They had waded into the shallow water and were eating bugs out of the water. I had no idea chickens would do that! I have only ever seen water birds do that. The chickens do have all you can eat grain available so it is not because they are starving. It was pretty weird.
We had several people send us pictures of Annmarie in the Mounted Band so I picked a couple I liked to add in here. Roundup is pretty much nonstop for us with me having to work in the ER and Annmarie working and doing Round-Up stuff also so not a lot gets done on the farm except feeding animals and collecting eggs.
Our honeybees are still alive from the nuc we purchased this spring. The flowers are fairly sparse this late in the season so we have had to start feeding the bees sugar water. So Annmarie took out one frame so a one gallon frame feeder could be dropped into the hive box. I scraped it and let it gravity drain into a bucket, we got almost a quart from the one frame. We are using it all for ourselves! We are hopeful that we can get one more hive next year and then we can start to actually harvest some honey. I set the frame and wax back outside so the honeybees can clean it up and get it ready to be used next year.
Stewart Creek Somethings 