Author: Steve Hardin

Tying it all together

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Annmarie was gone for the weekend, this allows me to basically work until I drop. I am not sure its the best plan but I am fairly consistent in its application. She leaves and I spend all day outside just tearing stuff up and cooking things that are not good for me. Now this time I was better about that as last time I made myself sick.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 came out first thing in the morning to help me on Saturday. My ultimate goal was to get the old house torn up and put together today. Since we only got about 80% of one room yesterday It was going to take some concerted effort. I had Thing 1 tear into the old bathroom and Thing 2 and I moved the planer and edger away from the walls so we could tear down the wallpaper and some door trim. The original living room now has the fence and compound radial arm saw.

We tore into the old kitchen next. I handed stuff out. Its easier to just empty the room and filter out what goes back inside. I left the two milk separators and the old washing machine in there. We put the coolers and snow tires in it also. We have three sets of snow tires so we need to check sizes before buying any new ones. I got rid of the handmade fruit dryer. It had a live mouse in it and was made out of plywood and window screens with a fan in the bottom. The mouse got away when it was being carried out to the burn pile. The old bathroom really was a bathroom! We moved the old propane stove from our house over the hole so nothing could get inside. We may use the propane stove to heat this building so we kept it.

The center room had two layers of linoleum on the floor, and the boys tore it out. the floor was brand new underneath. The wood has never been walked on or seen daylight. It is in amazing condition.
There were two doors leaning up against the wall so I used one to cover the opening to the kitchen. Its about two inches too narrow and six inches too short but it covers most of the opening and keeps the dogs out. I found some old mouse poison so I set that out on the shelves of the kitchen. We have cats but obviously they need some help.

The finished main living room no has the saw. The shelves on the right hand side are home to the shop lights until I can get them installed.

This old parts cabinet got moved and cleaned out with 409. I converted it into a place to hold all the screws and nails. I need to see if I can add in some areas for bolts and nuts also. My drawer for that is getting full and its hard to find the part you want. The not well fitting door needed new hinges and I found a coffee can with some used hinges I had picked up at a yard sale a few years back. I knew I would use them at some point. There is a hole on the outside of the house that was an entrance to the rafters. The door fell off and it has been open to the weather since we got back. I need to get a ladder and install a new door in the next couple of weeks. I picked up an old wooden cabinet that is currently stored at Sarah’s that I would like to install on that wall but I need to stop any water from coming inside first.

I had Thing 2 go through all my scrap wood. Any that were shorter than 3′ got tossed out onto the burn pile. I just had to make a decision to let it go. When I get all the storage stuff up into the old chicken coop then I can store more wood in the old house!

I found some cool old knickknacks. I scored three old melamine drawer pulls. They look brand new. I was hoping to find 20 of them but no go. I found a cool old lock and no key and a couple of old cast plates.

As I continued to fill up the old kitchen with antiques that I have no idea what to do with and things that I may need in a couple of years it occurred to me that I should start looking at the old chicken coop. It has a concrete floor and just needs glass to keep the critters and weather out. Once I had the windows in then I could move all this stuff that just needs stored up to that building. I have a bunch of extra windows so now I just need to see about how to make them fit. If I had that storage area then I could really utilize the entire space for my woodshop. I do need to install a door between this tool room and the other two rooms to minimize the dust in the tool room. I plan on ripping out about 50% of the wall between the two main rooms to allow for more working space. I also need to install a new back door. The current one has fallen apart, lost its glass and is held closed with bailing wire. I would like a 32″ door with large window but I will rip out the door casing first to measure the actual door opening. I may be able to get a 34 or 36″ door into the old hole. I decided that it was time to get rid of some of the cast iron I was hoarding. I ended up keeping one Wagner pan and two cast iron teapots. Now I just need to get a small sand blaster to clean them up.

When they were loading up the sheep on Monday a few got away and one of our solar lights by the front gate was a casualty. I managed to find one brand new one stashed on top of a freezer and installed it on the fence.

I stopped to go make lunch and had Thing 1 & 2 keep working on tearing out flooring and wallpaper. I made my famous chicken salad. It is very good. I made 5.5 sandwiches. I was only going to eat 1.5. I brought sandwiches, gatorade and grapes outside as everyone was covered in dust. When I asked how the sandwiches were Thing 2 stated “its okay” then about 30 seconds later he said they were “good” but he only ate one sandwich. Thing 1 ate three sandwiches after asking his brother if he was going to have a second sandwich. So he obviously didn’t care for the chicken salad. Maybe it had too many vegetables in it, I added onion, celery and jalapeño.

One of the things I noticed about working with the brothers is that when they are together I have to be more diligent about keeping them on the straight and narrow. When they are not kept busy they are easily distracted. I just kept barking orders occasionally it seemed to work.

I am trying to talk Sarah into having a yard sale at her house during Pilot Rock community days to offload all the stuff on the tarp. We have more up in the new bathroom area that can go also. I think she is going to do it! I found this old school desk. I like it better than the one we picked up a couple of years ago but I had forgotten about this one.

All of this area will be alfalfa by this time next year we will have gotten our first crop off it. Looking forward to only moving 50# bales.

Sheep sorted

Steve HardinLeave a comment

After the good news this morning that we had a buyer for the sheep I took down the Craigslist ad. When Annmarie and Sarah got home we went out to work the sheep. We had to reinstall the chute and put up sorting panels to separate the barn into three sorting areas. We also tossed out three bales of straw all over the ground. The small momma area needs to be dug out again. Bubba did it but it was the last area and he wasn’t very committed. I will get it later after the heat wave lets off. There were some tools and boards that had to be moved also. Once we were ready we brought over the ram and wethers from the orchard. We sorted off the ram and three boys. We are trading two sheep for a pig and have a coworker of Annmarie’s that wants to utilize most of the animal. So I will help him kill their animal. We may do all three so he can use up the parts of the other two that won’t be used. I would rather someone use up as much as possible. Those four animals got shut up into the momma area.

We then ran the main herd in through the back part of the barn. Annmarie had me leave them in the ram pasture. I would have normally let them out onto the back hillside and down by the school house. Leaving them cut down the amount of walking us humans had to do. All the sheep ended right in the sorting end of the barn. We ran them through the chute and pulled off the rest needed to make 50 animals. All the keep animals were in the middle of the barn. We let the sorted females go out into the barn lot. Our feed quality on the back hillside is not very good, we had several very skinny ewes. I will be tossing them out hay on a daily basis for a while.

We then resorted all 52 sheep, we had two little ones that had to be put back in with their mothers. We sorted off the biggest 35 animals to be sold tomorrow. The other 15 we put out in the orchard. They will fatten up for a few more weeks. Our ram is now officially in the herd so we should have babies in February of next year. Our bull needs to come off the herd the end of March. So they can keep each other company for a couple of months. We have a steer also so he will need to go in with the bull also. The bull will be better minded with company.

It is really the middle of the night

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Here are some pictures of the Bull Corral. I still need to get in there and use a harrow to tear it up and smooth it out. Everything is so dry and loose that I don’t want to get in there with discs I think they will go too deep. We are going to keep the horses in there for another five weeks. At that time we will have three of the cows slaughtered and they can then have the entire barn lot. The cows have free access to the upper prime lot so they can eat their fill. The horses were getting fat on that same all you can eat menu. They are quite vocal about being on rations. Mika would not come over to the fence and let me rub on her. I did not give her food until she acquiesced and let me rub on her face and side. I have learned that the horses are just like the dogs with that group mentality. You have to be the leader or they just won’t do what you want. Once you are the established leader they are much happier.

Annmarie woke me up at 0200 Thursday night, actually Friday morning to tell me a cow was mooing. Now in her defense at 0200 I am not thinking straight so she prefaces this with the following statement “Before you say anything that will speed up your ability to go to sleep when was the last time you heard the cows pitching a fit in the middle of the night?” I did actually pause before talking and I also heard the cow let out a moo. The moon was incredibly bright and it was very light outside so I went with that excuse first. It didn’t work. She got up to go outside and check on the cows. As she was getting dressed I rolled out of bed ready to go outside. She asked me about clothes. Again, this is simply an impediment to getting back in bed quickly and its 0200!! She made some statement about us maybe needing to go down to her Mother’s house and she didn’t want to see me in my newborn glory. I capitulated and put on pants, slippers and grabbed my Walther P22. I headed for the front of the barn as I was pretty sure it was the pesky annoying bull hollering. Annmarie was on the back hillside flashing a light around looking for cows. I spotted the bull laying down and all four cows just chilling. Mission accomplished, time for bed. We met at the bridge so I could report off on my findings when she states maybe the other cows, all the way down by the schoolhouse, are causing the ruckus. Normally, this could be discounted as no normal human can hear this far, but Annmarie’s hearing is not normal. Not by a long shot, she can hear as well as most owls. I am truly amazed at times by what she can make out or hear, her students can attest to this also. We headed back out to the pickup when I was saved by the annoying bull, he hollered thereby convincing Annmarie that was what she had heard. Once at the bedside I was back in bed in under 15 seconds. She had to get up early but I decadently slept in till 0830! It was amazing.

This is the moon on the ill fated early wake up. I took this just before dark over the back hillside. Who knew I was documenting proof for the blog in advance?

WAR has begun

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We had the Professional come out and evaluate our two sheep kills. He said to call him back when the wheat was harvested as it provides a good spot to set up. Wheat was harvested a few days ago and we have been bringing the sheep in every night into the ram pasture next to our house. No sheep have died in the ram pasture but Annmarie found another dead animal up on the hillside! Three sheep already this year! We definitely have a problem. I will call the professional on Monday to get him out. This means a total mobilization is in the works. I am going to have to start carrying a rifle when we go out to work animals and in the evening I am going to try my hand at calling in the coyotes with a hand call. The odd part of this is that I would rather be doing something else as catching a wiley predator can take time and patience, neither of which I have in abundance.

We have 40 sheep for sale on Craigslist and have not been getting any takers. Today I was going to spread out to other Craigslist regions in hope of getting a single buyer. At 0600 our old buyer called and wanted to know if we had any sheep for sale. We do, he is now working for someone else while he gets back in the saddle. We negotiated a fair price and he will come on Monday with cash in hand to pick up our largest 35 lambs, with a return visit to pick up another 15 in a few weeks. We are going to have to cut down our herd size to only 45 ewes to do this. But since we are not looking to drive to the sale and we really want a regular buyer the downsize is good for a few years. If we can get a regular buyer we are willing to jump up to 100 ewes. Our expansion can wait a few more years. This gives me time to fine tune a few more things in the barn. Plus, we can figure out how to put up our own hay.

I got this beast yesterday. My first set of junk yard special discs broke apart and need some serious repair. I got this set of Left hand pull discs for $250 and for an extra $50 they delivered them to our house from an hour away! I paid cash, and ten minutes later they were pulling away! Luckily, I had been putting off going into D & B and buying a set from them for $1000. They are in great shape, have grease zerks and the tractor had no trouble pulling them off the trailer. I will give them a spin next week after this heat wave breaks. I will have to do it late evening after dinner. The only thing I need to buy is a Clevis to go onto the tongue so I can attach it to my tractor.

Bull corral eventually

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This is gonna be dinner in just a few months. He just doesn’t know it yet. There are 3-6 bucks living on the place now and they make a circuit every day. My nephew and I both drew buck tags this year. We have been scoping out the deer. They won’t be huge animals but they will be good eating.

The wheat is harvested now and it came in at 42 bushels to the acre. This is the best it has been since we got back. It looked amazing. The largest problem we were told was that the deer had made huge trails and snacking points throughout the entire field.

I had to drop off the raccoon carcass on the boneyard so I snagged the old tractor rim that was buried up there. I am going to turn it into a fire pit in the ram pasture. I may even try and figure out how to build a spit for it.

Between a few hours here and there I have managed to get the bull corral operational. I still need to put up four rails in one spot over the woven fence and I need to figure out a latch for the gate that cannot be undone. We got all the scrap wood and scrap metal out of the enclosure and created a flat spot for the water trough. The trough will hold 265 gallons of water. Annmarie drug a hose out there from our house, about 250 feet and it took an hour to fill it. The horses are now living in it and we are feeding them twice daily. They were getting very fat and needed to come off the all you can eat buffet that was the upper prime field. They do not appreciate the genius and ingenuity it took to make the corral.

I need to drag out the lamb shed with the tractor. It is ankle deep in horse and sheep poop. I have some old windows in there from when my parents changed out their windows ten years ago. I am going to build a platform on the end of the barn so the large window can be installed. I am going to build 2×8 foot platforms like a set of steps twelve feet off the ground. So five separate steps covered with 1/2 inch plywood sheets. I am going to use the leftover tamarack railing. Once that is in place then I can climb up and install the window casings and we will be ready to man handle the window into place. I will probably get rid of the other windows. I have used a couple of them in various locations. I may look at the old chicken coop before I toss them. I may be able to glass in the open portion of the chicken coop.

We have decided to not expand the barn. We have only had one person call about our Craigslist ad. They only wanted to buy ten sheep not 40. So I wrote their information down just in case. I am now going to advertise in the surrounding area Craigslist towns. See if I cannot garner some more attention. If that doesn’t work then we are going to look at the small animal sale in La Grande. I am just unsure about the auction as you just never know what the final price will be. I certainly don’t want them sold for $30 an animal.

I have four left over panels that were not used in the corral. They will cover 32 feet. I think I need to bridge almost 55 feet to create another wall. So I am actually going to have to break out a tape measure and some spray paint and lay out another fence. This will make getting any animal into the sorting corral very easy.