Author: Steve Hardin

Really?!

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I am working on getting that color on the walls. No color goes on in one coat. I haven’t found any paint that goes on in one coat. Painting is the worst! Its kinda like bamboo torture without the blood. Its just as painful. I am down to one wall in the living room and the hallway. I just need to plow forward and get it done. Unfortunately I keep getting distracted by other things.

We have been trying to get the sheep to eat down the ram pasture and they are getting out onto the back hillside. The only cure for this is to drop the panels down into the creek bed. This cannot happen as we may eventually have some kind of Spring runoff from the mountains and the fence cannot be in the water at that time. Very bad for my fence. This has led to the dogs getting to work the sheep. Both border collies are very happy with this arrangement. The sheep are starting to get used to the dogs pushing them around again. It helps when both parties know what is expected of them.

I have removed the wooden roof from the stock racks and all the wire and extra bolts from it. It is ready to go over to Hermiston and get sandblasted and powder coated. It really isn’t that expensive. For $325 we can get it looking good as new and won’t have to worry about it rusting in our lifetime. I need to find the time to get it over there.

I did get the color on the walls in the living room. It took a few days for us to get used to it. Once I get the curtains hung and the window trim installed this will look very nice. We almost have a finished house! Doing the paint and all the window and floor trim just leaves two bathrooms and a floor to finish in the spare room. Not bad for a total tear down and gutting of the structure. I am sure that after I boasted it would only be 2 years when we started and it has been 10 that Annmarie might not agree with me 100%.

Multiple irons

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I have been playing catch up last week.  I am trying to do multiple things at once.  This is not working well for me. I just keep flitting from one thing to the next. I had to put the baby chickens outside. I wanted to paint and they are so dusty I needed to dust every day. I called it quits when they started sitting on top of the water dish. They are growing like weeds out in the baby area of the chicken coop. I have also managed to not catch the coop on fire this time with the heat lamp. I have enough concrete board to line the baby area this summer so it is fire proof.

I am currently trying to convince a coworker to raise two geese for me past the gosling stage or about 2 months old. I want to try keeping them up at the spring head and see if they cannot keep the waterway clean. If they can then I will move them to different sections of the waterway to keep it clean versus me having to pitchfork it clean three times a year. I am trying to let some livestock work for me. I hope it works. img_5553

I have one wall in the dining room done and the kitchen done. Next up is to get the color on the wall near all the windows. Our trim is stained and ready. I just need to get it delivered and then start installing it. That will be a big job. I figure it will take about 2-3 weeks to get it all in.

I am so small

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We had another set of twins born four days ago. They were premature and absolutely tiny. This puts them at a high risk to not make it but their mother is psycho crazy! She bolts and bounces off the fences and gates whenever we get near. We managed to lock her in the barn for two days with the twins. The first one died that night just too little to live. The other one is hanging in there. We locked them in the momma area and let them out of the barn but the crazy momma got the baby stuck across the fence then would not go into the barn. No matter what I did she just kept bouncing off fences and bowling the baby over. I finally just let all the sheep in and mixed her and the baby in with the herd so she would calm down.

This strategy of mixing her in with the herd has worked so far. The baby is still alive and she is giving it a workout. We are now using the sheep to mow the yard and front hillside. This serves three purposes:1. I don’t have to mow it.

2. The sheep get extra food.

3. I don’t have to fertilize it.

This is a win win situation. Its called natural growing, the only problem with it is you have to be very careful walking down the concrete path for about a week until they are done and I have had a chance to hose off the concrete and bridge.

Thank goodness my paying job starts again tomorrow!

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I finally managed to do something I had not done yet and get the tractor high centered. This doesn’t seem like a big deal at first but I was going downhill and pushing a huge rock so I was not paying attention to the rocks in front of me. I ended up getting both back tires off of the ground! I had to use the bucket to push me back and four wheel drive to let the front tires push us off the rock. The mistress yet again came through for me.

I really wanted to get the last two rock cribs filled up with rocks today. Surprisingly, I did not wake up with my back feeling like I had been kicked repeatedly. My butt felt like i had hiked for 25 miles and was sore all over, so i must have been lifting right. I was attempting to maintain perfect posture while lifting. I started around 0900 and only took a light coat and light hat. Yesterday, I started out with too many clothes and had to keep taking them off. I just decided that to stay warm I could work faster.

My goal for the day was to clear the rocks from one side of the new fence line so I can drive the pickup down the fence row to work on it. This proved to be harder than I anticipated. The rock cribs hold a lot of rocks but the hillside is littered with them. I hardly made a dent. There are a couple of patches where I got all the rocks. Looking up on the hillside you really cannot tell where I picked rocks. I stopped for a lunch of Gatorade, granola bars and hot coffee from the back of the mistress. Some people wonder why I work so hard at home. The above picture is why, it was an absolute beautiful day, no wind, not too hot, sun was shining and spring is coming. I sat there and drank a cup of hot coffee from a thermos I had in my tractor canvas bag. It was an amazing cup of coffee.

I also got the road cleared of rocks almost to the top of the hill and graded out a spot for a six foot gate to be installed next to the vehicle gate. This way we can open the small gate for animal only access.

I now need 35 T-posts, 35 wooden stays, four railroad ties and two horizontal supports for H braces. The real question will be if I can drill four holes with the tractor. If I cannot do that then I need to build two more rock cribs!!Ready for double gates

Rock cribs contain rocks

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I realize that this may seem like an obvious statement but have you really thought about it? I had lots of time today to contemplate this reality. The panel would normally cost $24 and the post around $14. Then after filling a couple of rock cribs I can say it takes three hours to fill one! Three hours of knocking rocks out of the ground with the tractor and then hand loading them into the bucket and dumping them into the circle with the mistresses help. She is as hard worker and really needs a bath. After said bath I need to take a hammer and beat out some of the dents and spray a little green paint over her rusty spots. She deserves to be pampered a little every once in a while. I only had one close call today. I had managed to get this humongous rock into the bucket then felt it necessary to throw in more rocks until the bucket was full. I backed down the hill to the rock crib and then lifted the bucket high in the air as I approached the metal circle. Just as I was attempting to tip the bucket forward the tractor went onto three tires and tired to tip over. I managed to keep the three tires on the ground but could not empty the bucket. I finally managed to back up enough to dump the bucket out onto the ground. I had to make three loads with the tractor to get it all into the rock crib. I am now only grabbing one rock when it fills half the bucket. It’s just too hard to control the tractor with that much weight on one side of the bucket. This is exactly why I keep the roll bar up on the tractor and wear a seat belt.

I had Annmarie do the math, there is 84 cubic feet in each rock crib. That is a lot of rocks! A whole lot of rocks. I am hoping to get the last 1.75 cribs filled. Once that is done then I can go put the hole post auger onto the mistress and see if she can drill two holes up on the very top of the hill for the upper gate. If I can get both those holes in I can install two railroad ties and build a H brace. Once the H brace is in I can run fence the entire length of the hillside. This will then let me install the upper and lower 12 foot gates. This will then just leave a ten foot open section on the bottom of the fence near the house. I will need to add another 4 foot circle and fill one more rock crib. If I can get the cribs filled and the H brace built tomorrow then I will be on schedule with the work. I need 35 T posts and 34 wooden stays. There is one more spot I am not sure I can drive in a T post.