Author: Steve Hardin

Pest war declared

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Late last week, with this weird weather, the box elder bugs started coming into the house in droves. I mean herds, waves of attackers with constant stragglers.  I broke three fly swatters in that time period. These are not your average run of the mill flywatter. These are telescoping!  They have 1.5 times the reach of a standard swatter and can shrink down to 1/2 the length also!  They are truly amazing. I have been killing a hundred bugs a night in the house. I have utilized chemical warfare inside and outside the house. This has resulted in a slight decrease only. I started popping the ceiling tiles out and using silicone caulk in all the crevices. That helped some more. I then sprayed the ceiling seams with more chemicals. I moved the vacuum cleaner down to the living room so I can use it several times a night to suck the bugs away. I use it on the live ones. 
All of this effort over a two week period has resulted in me only having to kill three bugs tonight. I think I am finally gaining ground on the bugs. The best part is four more of my fancy telescoping bug swatters have arrived. I will wield my repaired weapon until it is no more functional. I sealed the beam edges with spackle today. I want to get the sheet rock work done before I start the tile floor. 
 I was assaulted from another front while I was in the midst of my bug battle. The mice have invaded my chicken coop!  They are so brazen now that when I go to get chicken eggs I see them scurrying around in broad daylight. Unfortunately, they have been eating my chicken feed. There is grain all over the floor so I am unsure what to use as bait. I asked Annmarie to pick up some mouse traps. She got me a dozen. I had determined that peanut butter was going to be my death temptation. Four days ago the traps arrived and I snagged a pack of four with the intent to put the fear of Steve into them. I just set the traps with no bait. I was hoping they would just run over the trap and trigger it. Three nights ago I caught two mice with no bait. Two nights ago I caught one mouse and triggered an empty trap. Yesterday, I caught another mouse and another trap was triggered. I found two old traps out in the chicken coop and set those. There are now six killing potential energy machines awaiting to be triggered. 
This does not include the 9 mice the dogs have killed out in the barn hay pile in the last week. 
The barn cats are a very necessary item for the farm. We never had this problem above five cats. We only have three now and we started with nine. So it looks like we will get 4 or 5 this summer and hope they can survive 7-9 years. It is just so outrageous to get them all fixed. We don’t want kittens every year. 
The war is not over. 
I went out today and started my first fire in the ram pasture. It took a while but I got it going. By the time I drug all the boards and twigs over to the fire over a course of three hours I was exhausted. After a shower I was good for nothing. 
 

Nah, it snowed

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A lot has been happening but nothing is really moving. It’s weird. The weather is very unsure of where it is going. Today we are again surrounded by snow on all the mountains. I had a conference all weekend so I took Monday off to catch up.  I actually left a little early on Sunday, after four days I was tired.  Sunday I needed to go out and check in the hay in the lean to for the cows. I figured I would need to pitch fork it to the front for the cows so I was carrying a pitchfork with me as I left the barn. 
I had just gotten past the sheep about 30 feet from the barn when I realized the ram was sizing me up and getting ready to bum rush me. He charged, I turned the pitchfork around and clobbered him upside the head!  We kept this up four more times. At this point I realized my grave error in not bringing the dogs with me. Yes, we usually do chores with the dogs but Zeke has been sneaking off and pissing me off. So I just left them in the yard, not a good decision.  I had to get serious about thumping the ram upside the head, he just kept charging me!  I started swinging for all I was worth and finally laid one upside his head and ear that made him turn and saunter away with his head held sideways. I managed to get to the cow feeder. The sheep had managed to get into the area and make a mess. I shoveled hay back up to the front of the feeders for the cows. 

There was a moment there were my love of the new lambs went away and survival started to kick in while battling the ram. We love his babies but I will not be ran into the ground. I now take the dogs every time. 

I also decided to tear up the gravel road and smooth it out. It was pretty smooth but the top three inches were loose. It rained for the next two days causing even more mud!  I need to rework the driveway when it is a little drier and we can pack it down with vehicle travel and not rain. 

We are going to have to order another 10 yards of 1.5 ” gravel and 20 yards of 3/4- gravel. The big rock is for our dirt road and the little stuff is for fencing and drainage in the barn lot. We are going to have to rework the entire horse area. It’s needs new fencing and a new drainage system so it is not an 8 inch deep mud pit. 
 

Spring?

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Everything is changing so fast. One minute it is freezing cold, the next it’s warm and rainy then it’s snowy. Mother Nature cannot decide which side of the fence to stay on. 
I found a dead lamb in the barn a couple of days ago. Mouse found it buried in the straw, neither AnnMarie or I ever saw it alive. It was the only lamb we had die out of 50 babies. Not too shabby. 
I am ever grateful we bought an extra 20 ton of hay. We are almost halfway through it. This winter has been long and brutal. Something killed one of our cats in the yard last week. All of our dogs were inside with us. We think it is a raccoon. Unfortunately, we will now have to get a bunch of kittens this spring. We will get an entire litter and create a kennel out of metal wire and raise them in the horse area of the barn for a few weeks. Once they are settled into the barn we will feed them every day and see if they take over. Our goal is to get them attached to the barn. When they get old enough we will get them all fixed. We are not real keen on having more kittens. We are down to three cats now. So we will get 5-7 kittens. 
The cows and sheep in the barn lot are eating the large hay bales very fast. Tonight I managed to push a bale behind the lamb shed and almost into the lean to. I then cut all the strings and jammed it into the building. There is a feeder panel across the front that will let the cows eat but no one can play in the hay and waste it.  I am hoping this forces the sheep to eat some of the barley hay we have been feeding them. I would like to get it all used up this winter. 
Donna called yesterday to let me know that the lower cows needed feed also. One of the new babies had slipped between the smooth wire and was on the road. Someone stopped and put the calf back in the schoolhouse pasture. I will probably have to line the fence with sheep fencing. Those cows actually let me get the bale in place and the feeder around it before rushing in to eat. 

I counted laying hens today. I have 22 hens and am collecting almost 14-15 eggs a day. We have a pile of eggs on top of the fridge. Both annmarie and I need to find another customer. 
 
 
 

Back creek started up

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Yesterday the back creek started running. It is purely fed from mountain snow runoff.  The weather was warm but we had a couple of days of rain and I don’t think the ground can absorb any more water currently. So our creek is now running. The screwy part of this is today we are now under three inches of snow with a predicated total of ten inches coming tonight. Winter is truly unwilling to let her hand off the snow switch.  
It has been busy around here the last week. We had another calf for a total of two in the last ten days. In the next two weeks we will need to run our bull band into the shoots so we can tag and band. 

Our sheep have had two more lambs. We have a few who are obviously off cycle. I have four lambs to tag and band now. That will need to happen in a couple of weeks also. 

Thank goodness we bought extra hay. We will have fed about 40% more than normal this winter. I am super excited about not having to scramble for hay. 
Another great thing has just occurred. We had our tractor place RDO haul in the old 1950’s International gas powered tractor to revive it. It had not been started in over 8 years. They put in a new battery, new starter, spark plugs, distributed cap, oil filter, fuel filter, hydraulic fluid filter, partially rebuilt carburetor, changed oil, cleaned out fuel tank and lines, new ignition switch, added headlights (it had none), pumped up the tires and it is a mean running machine!!!  We only had to pay $2435 to revive it!!  It should be able to lift the big 1300 lb hay bales. I just have to drop off a check from Donna for the tractor and we will be able to load and unload hay ourselves!!  This is great news. As soon as we get it back to the farm I am going to see if it can handle a large bale. 
The chickens are going to town and I am now getting almost a dozen eggs a day. We are going to need a couple more customers. 
 

Rock wall 2017

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I will live!  Those are profound words for 2017. Theoretically, I do realize that pneumonia is bad but never having had it I had no personal reference. It is horrible. Once I got to the point I could breathe I figured it would be almost over. I was wrong, this crap is going to take a while to get over. I am getting sick of taking it easy.
 On Friday I attempted to burn weeds. It was too wet. I got nowhere. I did spread out the last of the large 1.5 inch gravel. The mistress did all the work, I just had to direct her. I even did all the chores on Friday. I was feeling pretty good so on Saturday I decided to ramp it up and do more.
 Actually, I was scheduled to work but they called me and put me on call so I jumped on the mistress and we drove around to the back hillside. When the weather hovers at freezing it limits what I can do outside but it was 38 F so the ground was thawed out and workable. When there is nothing else to do and the weather is perfect I like to work on the rock wall. If the weather is too nice then I can fence or burn weeds or do something else. The rock wall requires the weather to be just good enough to not do anything else. So “perfect” for the rock wall means not good enough for anything else. 
The last time I took the mistress, my John Deere tractor, to do rock wall work we almost went off the wall and into the dry creek bed. It was sloppy muddy just like yesterday. I decided to flatten out a space on the hillside of the gate so I could maneuver easier. I had forgotten that I would actually have to place big rocks in the bucket and work on building the wall higher. So every 10-15 minutes I would have go get off the tractor and move rocks and keep stacking them onto the wall. My real goal was to get some dirt behind the rock wall so it didn’t fall down. I also managed to flatten out the approach so the mistress didn’t feel the need to drop us off the wall. I didn’t slip toward a certain ER visit once. Which is good because I don’t have my Lifeflight membership decals attached to the mistress yet. She needs a good hosing down and paint touch up first. I spent three hours outside and finally quit as the temperature dropped into the freezing zone. 
I need quite a bit more dirt to level off the ground. My goal is to put in 40 hours of work on the wall every year. I will get there eventually. 
 
I was exhausted!  I could not believe how tired I was after three hours of intermittent labor.  I went inside took my second shower of the day and promptly laid down on the couch. I have a few more weeks of recovery it appears. I slept for 13 hours last night and have just laid around all day today. 
 
One of our cows just had a calf on Monday. I have still not seen the baby yet but several other people have. I am not sure what gender it is. Annmarie said it’s all brown but it is not a keeper. It’s from one of our bull’s daughters so we will be selling it for food.  I would like another one so we could sell them this summer as a pair for someone else to raise up. It just makes it easier to not have to keep the bull away.