Author: Steve Hardin

Looking for love in all the wrong places

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It’s been a long week. Our little ankle biter dog the Sproutmeister died. It was fairly sudden over two days. He was never in pain and now has a forever place under the lilac bush in the front yard. 
Between AnnMarie and I we chose to get another Brussels Griffin. They are not easy to find and we are fortunate to have a good breeder locally in Hermiston. She had a couple ready and we went over and picked up Gizmo on Friday. He was 16 weeks old. He has the head of a rough coat and the body of a smooth coat. He is an idiot. So we are now working to teach him the basics. We are trying to create a safe zone for him in his kennel area. He weighs 6 pounds. He is slurping up our free time. 
It rained all weekend so I could not mow the lawn. I will try and get it on Monday I managed to get out on Sunday and get the tractor working again. I hooked the sprayer up to the headlight switch. I forgot to turn off the headlights and ran down the battery. I had to pull the battery and charge it this week. The tractor actually starts better with a full charge on the battery. That is the original battery over five years old will be six this fall. I was cleaning horse poop out of the barn lot. AnnMarie called me on my cell phone. I have started listening to my music over my phone so if someone calls I actually hear it. She said that Packy had called and said our bull was down at his house. I told her let me go look on the tractor. I counted 11 cows but didn’t see the bull. I texted AnnMarie, we have 12 cows. I found the hole while talking to AnnMarie. There is high tension wire fence running up the hillside but down by the schoolhouse it had to terminate due to the uneven terrain. The opening is about 24 inches wide and I had boards nailed across it. He picked the boards off with his horns. The neighbor was moving his cows on the back roads.  We are pretty sure this prompted him to go after more females. Packy was out spraying and ran him into a pasture, lent us a trailer and helped us load him up!  We are always grateful for all our neighbors. It helps having a pretty distinctive breed everyone knows they are ours. 

 

We let him out in the barn lot and then I grabbed tools and a panel and walked down to fix the opening. Guess who was already down by the hole?  The bull had jumped down into the back creek and eased through the the water and under the fence to get into the schoolhouse pasture. I have not dropped the fences down into the creek yet as it just snowed again yesterday in the mountains!   It is a runoff creek that dried up in the summer. It’s pretty low now but I am not ready to trust the runoff quite yet. 
I placed the panel across the hole. I managed to smack myself in the upper lip with a springy rose branch and gave myself a fat lip and abrasion. This caused some swearing and ungracious thoughts toward the bull. I got it nailed in and wired to the existing fence so he cannot just pop the staples out. I walked up the road and ended up fixing the fence from four corners to our driveway entrance. I spent about 1.5 hours just before dark getting it all repaired. 
 

We have a new resident in the barn. This large orange tabby tom has been living there for almost three months. The dogs all know he is there but they cannot seem to find him. I am not sure how this is going to affect us getting kittens to live in the barn. We may just have to raise them in the backyard. Maybe we can only get three. 

I need to get the forklift forks installed so I can install the 4×8 foot window in the upper part of the barn. I am going to use the tractor as a man lift. 

Time for spraying.

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A lot has happened in the last week causing me to get behind on my posts. I spent last weekend spraying. I have heard it before that chemicals are bad. Unfortunately weeds are worse. They take over and choke out all the beneficial plants. The upper prime pasture has taken me almost three years to get straightened out. It looks great this year and is bright green. I had closed it off for ten days after the first few weeks with animals on it. This let it jump back up to 6 inches plus of grass. I sprayed it with 2-4-D and something else that burns big bull thistles. I spotted three baby killdeers running around the blackberry bushes. I didn’t see a parent killdeer until almost an hour later. 
I sprayed 150 gallons of spray over about 15 acres. Luckily for me the weather was amazing and cooperated both days. 
 
The international tractor is up and working.  I did figure out the gas gauge doesn’t work so I will have to keep an eye on the fuel level. I even had them add the warning triangle!!  I fixed the chain holding the hydraulic pto to both three point hitch arms. One side had broken loose and was linking the hydraulic lines. I really want to be able to use this tractor with forklift arms. It would require some custom fabrication costing around $1500-2000. It would be much cheaper if I had the bucket attachment and could buy the clamp on forks. Those only cost about $400. 
I found the bucket attachment!!!  It was out by the grain bins. I just need to get it reinforced with some weld on plates and it will be ready for clamp on forks. I have two projects that I need a forklift for and have been putting them off. Twice we have had freight delivered and had to pay extra for a lift tailgate versus having a forklift on site. The last thing I need is to watch a YouTube video on how to drive it. It is clutched and I can make it for forward and reverse but when I want to go fast do I keep shifting it up like a truck?   Or do the higher gears just mean less power at low speeds and a higher overall speed? I don’t know. 

 

Sarah came out and shaved Mouse also. Both dogs look very naked. We have not had a single tick on them yet and even Mouse has cut down on his creek time since getting shaved. 
I have been able to get the lawn mowed every week in between the rain storms. 
 

50% completed front yard rock wall

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I decided to just finish the front wall today. After Saturday, I decided to finish the right front rock wall. I noticed that the ground was quite a bit lower next to the wall. So I started spreading the dirt farther out into the yard to make everything level. I used over 10 yards of soil to build this back up. The tractor bucket only holds 1/3 yard of dirt. I planted orchard grass so we can see  what it looks like. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The best part was this wall was rebuilt from an original one that was buried about 45 years ago. It had probably been up for 50 years before that. There is an identical wall on the other side of the bridge. I need to spray the grass and kill the greenery so I can easily dig up the wall. 
The barn swallows have returned to nest and raise their young. I was headed to the house with a load of dirt and off to my right eight swallows were swooping around each other. Just as I focused on the group one of them dropped a white fuzzy feather. It fluttered in the wind as each bird dove attempting to snag the coveted nest liner!  It took about ten seconds of watching the feather flutter in the wind before a talented flyer snagged it and raced off. 
 
Since this was day 2 with the tractor I decided to do a little more work. One of the problems we had with the back barn lot was the sheep want to go over the fence.  The hillside makes it look like it will be an easy jump to get over the fence. I wanted to cut a four foot wide road/path next to the fence. Unfortunately, this is easier said then done. I tried to go from the bottom next to the creek but the tractor was on a slant and almost rolled into the creek. I managed to get it headed up the old road I made a few years ago. I then decided that if I picked up a bucketful of dirt along the upper side of the hill I could then get lined up and create a road. I would have my uphill tires in the rut allowing me to create a road. I managed to get into the rut and tried to make it flatter. When I got to the bottom near the water I started to slant toward the creek. I then tried to back up the road and the tractor slid into the fence. The only way out was forward. I ended up with one front tire on the bridge and one in the air. I used the bucket to keep the tractor from rolling and then got lined up to drive directly up the very steep hill. The tractor went up the hill no problem. Luckily it has been three days since any rain. I drove back up to the top of the new path and made it flatter. When I got near the bottom I kept going back and forth on the loose dirt near the spring runoff and compressing it down. Eventually I was able to drive out the bottom on all four wheels. 

 

Yard work can happen

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I spent Friday relaxing and reading a book. I do occasionally take a little time for myself. It had been a long week at work. I still managed to get in one bucket of mastic on the library floor. I only have the outside edges to tile now. I need to go through and cut all the tiles to fit before I mix any more mastic. I will use a piece of blue painters tape to mark the top of the loose tiles. Otherwise I won’t be able to tell they are not stuck to the floor. When cutting that much tile I tend to get very wet. The tile saw uses water and I think I need to change out the blade. I am pretty sure I have a new one out on the wall. It’s pretty slow cutting the tiles. It has not been the same since I used it to cut all the granite tiles for the kitchen countertops. 
 
Saturday was amazing!  The weather was perfect and I just could not stay inside. I decided to work on our front rock wall. I had visions of getting it done but it has been in the works for several years. I don’t have enough rocks available to get it to be height I think it needs. I went out in the barn lot and snagged the extra rocks that were hiding in the sheep manure pile. I also picked up the few loose rocks in the barn lot. Several years ago I had piled a bunch by the old chicken coop. I had found a buried pile and finished digging them out of the ground. I also found a pile half buried in the ram pasture. It took the tractor to get them out of the ground. I had to back fill the area as I created a hole in the ground that would have injured any human trying to walk in the area.  I still have a small pile by the waterfall and a small pile over by the lamb shed left. Probably only three buckets full and not near enough to finish off a project. As I was picking rocks in the barn lot I think I am going to bid this year on labor from one of the sports teams. I would like all the metal scraps and wooden pieces policed off the ground in the barn lot. I think 4-5 people could do it in 4-5 hours. I would like to get it all neat. The sheep and horses were enjoying the day also. 

I worked on the wall most of the day. It looks pretty good but I noticed it slants down away from the yard. There used to be a chain link fence across the front of the yard and the ground slipped away toward the creek. You can still see that slant. I would like to get that leveled out. Hopefully, the weather will be good enough on Sunday that I can finish. 
  

 

Water everywhere

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 It rained again Wednesday night. All night long. This would not be a bad thing but the ground is absolutely saturated with water currently. By the time we got home that evening the back runoff creek was at its highest for the year and all muddy. We were super glad that we have not yet lowered the fences over the creek.   This very well could have been disastrous. 

We decided that this year we would shave the border collies. They get super hot and dirty during the summer. The weeds stick to them and they are just generally messy. Sarah came out and was going to do both dogs but Mouse jumped in the front spring. 
I suspect her was onto her nefarious plot to make him bald. So instead she was only able to shave Zeke. I have been laughing for days!  He does not even look like a border collie. Sarah tells me I should of gotten a blade that allows the dogs to have some amount of hair left. I did, she just didn’t know it so now Mouse will get shaved with a number 7 blade. It got down to the high 30s right after the shave so Zeke had to spend two days hanging out on the breezeporch with Sprout.  He would go out in the morning and start shivering. He has been fine these last couple of days. The shock of being naked has worn off. 
 
Our bull on the back hillside out our kitchen window. The boy sheep are out there also. Look at that flat back!!  He is a beautiful animal that throws amazing calves. We are so happy with him. He is going to get to stay well into his old age. Until he starts to have performance issues then he will have to be hamburger.