Author: Steve Hardin

Alpaca sheared!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is that time of year again and I am getting behind on the blog. Last weekend Mr Rainman and I took Saturday to shear the alpaca. Ideally we would have done it a month ago but it was not a true priority yet. We have learned that they must be sheared before the cheatgrass comes to a head or else their fiber just gets loaded with organic matter and it is very hard to shear them when they are filthy.

They will find a dirt patch and just roll around trying to get as dirty as possible. We used to do it midsummer and it did not work out well so we have slowly been making it earlier and earlier every year. I think April is probably the perfect month but it has to be dry enough that they have not been rained on for a few days.

It went pretty smooth this year. There are only eight now, not 12 and that made it a reasonable day. Doing 12 takes a lot of time and effort. We decided early on that we would do the three siblings early as it is only their second year getting sheared. They are still smaller than most of the other alpaca and they were a lot crazy last year when we strapped them down to the shearing table. They all three did amazing! There was no standing on the table and panicking off and on throughout the shearing process. They have wonderful fiber and we have been separating out the fleeces, one to a burlap bag, so that Annmarie can clean them as a single animal, store them and spin them all from a single alpaca. We used to put their names in the bag also but we are over that. She can tell who it is now just by the fiber quality and color.

The babies are changing colors! They were all white and all brown when we got them but now they are turning into a multicolored blend. When we were shearing we noticed the color change happening. Neither one of us got spit on directly. We had one unsatisfied customer who kept drooling stomach contents onto the table and complaining throughout the entire process. The babies need a lot more work on their toenails than anyone else and we had to ground down teeth on three of the alpaca. Next year we are going to have to cut off a few fighting teeth.

I did cut two fairly badly this year, it just happened. The cuts were about 3 cm. Any bigger and I was going to have to suture the skin closed. Luckily, we just slapped some of the blue wound cleaner on it and let them go. Some years it just happens and yes I had sharpened blades. As we worked toward the last alpaca Mr Rainman and I decided that 6 is the ideal number of alpaca. Snoop looked great this year and even being old as dirt I suspect he has another year in him. He is at least 15-16 years old already possibly 18 years old. There is a brown one that is all skin and bones, I suspect he won’t last the year. So the realistic goal is 6-8 alpaca. Usually when we find them for sale there is a buddy for sale at the same time as they don’t do well alone.

Mechanic, I can sing sorta

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well the correct final parts arrived for my Italian Abbriata baler. I needed a special welded sprocket to drive the pickup forks. I can mechanic, but I do not particularly like it. However, no one around here will work on something that they did not sell, let alone a piece of equipment that has one American dealership and is made in Italy. So I get to be the mechanic. I ended up replacing five gear sprockets, two chains, various bolts, nuts and pins. I have more spare parts but I have learned that the chain can only be tightened once before it is just time to replace it. I purchased a chain from them and it was twice as long as I needed so I already have the replacement chain. I got the baler put back together and greased, it is ready to roll, I think.

Next I put the sickle bar mower on the Kubota. Now this is the mower that I dropped on my foot last year and broke it. I was pretty gun shy around it and this caused me a few problems. I had to repair two items on the mower and one of them the fastest way to correct was to weld it. My weld did not look bad but it broke about an hour into the mower use. I did not have enough juice to penetrate as deep as I needed. I will need to do something else. For now I just tightened the bolt down as far as it will go and am careful. I greased all of the points on the sickle bar then oiled the blades. It worked! There was a lot of discussion on whether I should start cutting now or wait. I am leaving town next week for a week to go visit navy buddies I have not seen in decades.

I ended up cutting the orchard, upper part of field 2 and went and cut Mike’s field. He stopped by and said it was cleared of all hoses and obstacles so I did it also. I am not going to cut anything else yet as it is supposed to rain on Thursday. I am going to turn it tomorrow and hope to be baling by Tuesday. I don’t have a conditioner so it takes longer for the grass to dry out.

We still have a horrible cheat grass problem in field 3. It is bad. We are going to work on killing the cheat grass down by Mother-in-law’s house. This other field will get added to the kill list.

Rock Wall

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last week I was still waiting on the parts from Delta to fix the bathroom sink so I had a free weekend from the bathroom. The weather was gorgeous and I am ready to get the front yard fence up. We have a decorative metal fence, purchased years ago, that needs to be installed on the front rock wall. The plan is for it to keep the dogs on the hillside during the day and allow us to use the sheep to graze down the hillside. When the sheep get in the yard they eat some stuff I don’t want them to eat. We also want to start planting more flowers for the bees and the sheep will eat those also. Long story short, the rock wall needs to be completed before the fence can be installed. This entails a lot of tractor work and the moving of a lot of heavy rocks.

The ground is dry enough now that I can go up on the hillside and dislodge rocks. You do not want any slick surfaces when you are coming down the hillside and with a bucket full of rocks. As it was a bucket full would still put me onto three tires when I turned downhill. I had to drop the bucket several times and bounce it off the ground to level myself out. I moved rocks and dumped them into the yard for half a day then spent the next two and a half days building the rock wall. The left side was already done, I just had to raise it about a foot and add some more dirt. I am stealing dirt from the area behind the old chicken coop. I am trying to make that area flat so I keep stealing from there. I had been using it for the secondary dike I installed alongside that part of the creek.


The dike is in my field and it is only about 18 inches high. I would have only needed about eight inches during the last flood. By the time it gets that high it is really wide, it just needed a little help to stay in the correct channel. I doubt we will have any more floods as bad as the two we had but I think I have finally gotten all of the areas reinforced and added to so we don’t get widespread flooding.

I remembered why I did not want to do the project about two hours into the hand digging portion. I had to get a pick axe, shovel and breaker bar to move the old rocks out of the way. I ended up digging down to the original footing from the previous rock wall and building back up from there. I made it about half way on the new side. I still need to raise it about another ten inches but I figured I would get the wall up and then work on raising it and adding more dirt. I am only going to go over to the rose bush, end of the upper wooden fence.

As I was driving back and forth collecting rocks I got to study my favorite tree on the farm. I keep thinking I should go up and thin out the dead wood out of this tree but I love the way it looks and the birds use it as a primary stopping point. It is slowly dying and has been for the last 20 years.

Beautiful spring day

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Saturday was amazing, the sun was shining and it was a near perfect day. Since it was going to rain on Sunday we opted to just make it a work outside only day. Once the sheep were done we started to look for my set of small discs. Mr Rainman and I went all over the farm. We could not find them anywhere. I ended up mowing all around the upper CRP field. I mowed down by four corners but hit a buried baling twine bundle and had to take thirty minutes to cut it out of the mower blades.

The kids brought down a bunch of concrete from their remodel. We are going to use it to help stabilize the bank. It keeps getting eroded by the seeps, water and sheep. They have at least three more loads and I think that will make a great addition to this corner. We should be able to stop the corner from falling in.

The seven yearling cows that will be sold or eaten this fall got pushed down by four corners. They are in amongst the trees. We are going to start killing the cheat grass in the two fields near the mother-in-law’s house. We hope to get water on them so we can keep getting the cheat grass to sprout then kill it and start the process over.

I was able to sell five, one year old lambs this weekend ($120 each) so there are seven left to sell by this fall. It was very easy as we just pulled them off as we wormed the entire herd. They came and picked them up a couple of hours later. We just ran them out into the corral and down the chute into their horse trailer. The corral makes loading animals very easy.

The gate gremlins were out in force this weekend. The teenager cows got out of the lower pasture the gate was open. The horse got out of the barn lot, the gate was open. The horse got into the ran pasture with the sheep and was trying to eat the green grass, the gate was open. The surprising part of this is that each gate was left open by a different person! No one was harmed and the animals did just fine. This stuff happens.

I was able to get down to field one and mow the newly made ditch. Mr Rainman spotted some fresh coyote prints in the mud. We have not seen any yet this season but they are obviously out there. I went to the other side of the creek and worked on getting it mowed down. I managed to get the huge hole filled in! That has been there for over 25 years. Someone buried two huge track backhoes in there and spent three days trying to get them out. They left a huge hole that was never filled in. The edges of the hole were straight walled and over eight feet high. It is not safe to drive the tractor in that area without knowing exactly where you going and where the hole is located. I got the entire thing filled in and now anyone can safely go back there and mow it down as needed. That has been on my list for over 15 years and I just never got around to doing it. Usually, when I wanted to do it the ground was so hard that I could not move the dirt. I even used the little John Deere 2520 to do it.

Sunday I was able to work on the baler. Unfortunately, I am missing two parts. One that never got sent to me and one I think I sent back accidentally when I sent back the wrong sprockets. I am pretty sure that one is on me. I have the part numbers written down and will get them ordered first thing on Monday. Otherwise, all of the other parts are all installed, tightened and adjusted. I can get those two parts and the new chain on in less than 90 minutes. Mr Rainman did remind me that we may need to do some maintenance on the sickle bar mowers before we use them. I think I have all the parts for those already.

Lambing final tally

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. It was time to worm everyone. We have to wait until the lambs are old enough to do it and no one else is going to give birth. So we ran them all into the barn and proceeded to run them out through the chute system. Mr Rainman did the snagging and holding while I used the oral drenching kit to just pump some wormer down into the back of their throat. This thing works so much better than drawing up syringes. We also knocked V shapes into the ewes we are going to cull after the lambs are weaned. We marked nine ewes for culling. When we go to pull those nine off of the herd in July we will cull anyone else who is not fat. They will have had access to all you can eat green grass and their bodies should have been able to put the weight back on by then. We already have some ewes getting fat on the green grass. We want to cull hard this year so lambing next January will be easy on everyone.

Mr. Rainman found a two week lamb that was weak and being ignored. We ended up taking care of it for 24 hours as our normal go to person was out of town. We managed to keep it alive despite it not really wanting to eat. It is now with it’s forever home and if it is gonna make it will be there.

The barn got put together, we tore down all the jugs and hung the panels on the walls, put up all of the buckets and feeders. When we go to clean out the barn we will just need to take the feeders out.

We also got the alpaca shearing area all cleaned up and ready to shear. Hopefully, we can shear the alpaca in the next week. They just need to be dry, it rained off and on all day today. We got 1/3” of rain and it was needed. The garden and grass fields needed it. The parts I ordered for the new pump are still not here. I am afraid the tariffs and shipping issues may have delayed its arrival. Hopefully, it gets here in the next two weeks.

  • Date of update- May 11, 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 73
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 42
  • # of ewes still pregnant – should be ZERO, but I saw one today that was so fat already. It would have to be an immaculate conception or a through the fence encounter.
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 27
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-35
  • # tagged female lambs-30
  • # of bummer lambs – 3
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
  • Total # of lambs on farm -63
  • % birthing rate- 174%
  • % production rate -150%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86%