The hay is all baled and ready to come in the barn, so Mother Nature has decided it’s time for rain. It rained every day for a week!  When I went to go look at the hay there were several large sections that did not get cut. The weeds and hidden ditch and soft ground stopped this harvest notion. I also did not go up and spray weeds this spring. I would have had to drive over the green barley.  This has caused the weeds to grow unchecked. They are out of control. So I did the only thing I could think of and fired up the tractor mower. You know it’s bad when you need four wheel drive just to push through the thistle patch. It’s quite healthy. 

This was really my wake up call to get this area fenced in. It serves two purposes. One I can delineate a spray zone to keep weed free outside the fence and two it lets me turn the animals loose into the area after the hay is cut to forage for a few weeks. It will round the corners off in the fields but overall it will help. Mowing was the first big step. I took a good crack at it after work one night but had to stop due to a lack of fuel in the tractor. Of course this was the day our instant hot water heater took a nosedive and quit working. Mowing in July in eastern Oregon is a very very dusty prospect. I mowed alongside the barley hay field. I have some teenager help coming tomorrow. He had asked if I had any work a couple of weeks ago. I asked him if he was busy on Thursday and Friday, and he replied in ear,y afternoon. So I made our start time 0530!  We can still get in 8 hours on Thursday.  

This is not a bull proof gate.  This is one the bull lifts and crawls under.

New gate in progress

I was sure the fencing excursion was complete.  The fence looks great, its been redone all the way to the road.  I had plans to help Sarah unpack and straighten out in her new house but had to go on EMS run.  Then after charting and going home for breakfast, I had a nice visit with a friend who came out to mow the lawn.  The lawn was mowed on Thursday so we had coffee and chewed the fat.  I finally got in to see Sarah when Donna called to say the bull had gotten out into the wheat field.  I was beyond flabbergasted!  How could this happen?  The fence is perfect.  I knew there was no way he could get through yet he was out in the wheat field, so evidence would suggest otherwise.  Unfortunately, at the same time I got another EMS call.  I sent Sarah’s boyfriend out to the house and told him to get the dogs, put Mouse on the 30 foot lead and push the bull back into the bottom pasture and figure out where he was getting out.  By the time I got back out to the house the bull was back in the lower pasture and Julian had figured out that the bull got through the gate.  The gate was just a cow panel wired at both sides across the 16 foot opening.  He had just lifted it in the middle with his horns and crawled right under.  He is no slouch in the mental capacity/Houdini mindset.  I had some old used gates I had picked up this spring stacked and ready to go but had not put them into the fences yet.  I really was trying not to fence very much this year.  It was supposed to be a slacker year on the fence.  Instead I have rebuilt three sections of fence and need to do two more!  I am going to have to find time for the other two sections or they are going to bite me in the rear. 
I had to go get the tractor and Julian brought the gate.  The gate was quite a bit smaller than the opening so we just used the cow panel to create another rock crib.  This does multiple things for us.  One it makes the gate usable, two it stabilizes the wooden rock crib which is starting to twist from the pressure of the fences attached, and three it gives us a place to toss all the large rocks.  We picked up rocks from the adjacent field and an old rotted rock crib.  The first three rocks were almost 800 lbs each.  The tractor could barely lift them.  The first one went over fine, the second one I almost tipped the tractor over on its side, Julian had to stand on the tractor and hang away from the tire to provide enough counter balance to let me lift the rock over the fence, the third one was so wide and deep that the only way to stop the tractor from tipping over was to dump it out.  I left the third rock, it was just too dangerous to move.  We moved six buckets worth of rocks over to our rock crib then had to lift them with the bucket again and drop them in.  It did not go near as far as I would have liked.  Over two ton of rocks and it looks like a drop in the bucket. 

New gate up, still need to finish filling the rock crib. The bull is proving to be a formidable opponent.

Wheat kernels look a little small, harvest soon will see

We chained the gate closed with two separate chains!  The bull should not be able to screw with the gate anymore.  I need to work on getting more rock into the crib and a small piece of cow panel to go over the blue gate so the sheep don’t just crawl through it.  Since there are currently no sheep where they can get to this gate the urgency has been lowered on the panel.  I also forgot to wear a hat so three hours in the sun has created a very red dome on my head. 

We looked at the wheat on our way to inspect the gate tonight and found that the kernels next to the road appear to be very small.  They should be harvesting soon so it will be interesting to see what the yields really are.  Our upper hay field has been cut so pretty soon I am going to have to start moving hay.  I never did buy that hay elevator, so it will have to be moved up onto the hay stack with pure manpower.  I really need to get one for next year. 
I keep saying my farming crisis are finished for the year but I keep being wrong.  I suspect there is a pattern here I just need to figure it out. 

 This is a dumb problem. I had to finish the fence redo.  It’s all stretched tight and rebuilt from Donna’s house to four corners. I had the daughter’s boyfriend out in the heat helping me finish it until sundown on Wednesday night. There is one little section at the end of the barley field that needs to be stretched. That piece will only keep the animals off the road and into the barley field. But since the fence next to the field is all complete there is no need for that little stretch. I can finish it late this fall. 

I have seen over 8 bucks on the property. There is one nice sized buck, we will see if he sticks around until hunting season. There are several does with brand new fawns running all over the property this week. The fawns appear to be only a few days old. 

The chicken coop is all cleaned out. I just need to make the baby chicken area fire proof before the next batch of chicklets are brought home. I will line the entire area with concrete board. 

I shot my mouth off and am paying for it in more ways than one!! Yesterday I decided to move the bull out of the corral down to the schoolhouse. I was tired of feeding him and I am sure he was tired of being confined. I opened the gate and he proceeded to run toward the upper prime pasture bellowing trying to get through the fence.  I had both dogs and turned them loose but the bull would just run to the end of the fence then turnaround and run to the gate. Zeke and mouse could not get him to go toward the schoolhouse. Mouse took a foot to the jaw, rolled a time or two, jumped up and went back after the bull. I finally called the dogs off, went and got two shaker sticks and proceeded to harass the bull.  Even that was not enough.  He kept coming, I had to smack him twice with the shaker sticks to get him to turn around.  He finally headed over by the cars then down by the alpaca gate, once at the gate he looked up on the hillside and saw the other batch of female cows, he hollered and took off at a dead run!  I had the gate open and he just ran right into the lower field.  The cows then went right into the schoolhouse pasture without any prompting.  I walked down there with both dogs, having taken Mouse off of the lead rope because we were done working animals.  As I am closing the gate into the schoolhouse pasture I notice several sheep outside the fence on the road again!  I had to cross the creek and go out over by the wheat field.  This is when I notice one of the problems, that section of fence I had never repaired is in serious need of repair.  The sheep have figured out that it won’t hold them and there is a poop highway along the mowed access road leading out to the pavement.  By the time I got down to four corners I could not find the sheep and Mouse did not want to listen anymore.  The more angry I got the worse Zeke did.  He just wanted to lay down and not move.  Of course I kept screaming that at Mouse who wanted to ignore me, then Zeke not cooperating made it worse.  I needed the 30 foot lead I left over by the house.  We ended up walking the whole length of the farm and pushing a lone ewe into the upper prime pasture with the babies. 
I had to leave the fencing for Sunday as I was picking up Annmarie at the airport. 
 



Old fence redone 2/3 complete

Sarah’s new paramour volunteered to come out and fix fence with me yesterday.  I said 0700 on Sunday and they were quite prompt.  I offered breakfast and he refused, we grabbed water and then filled the back of the pickup with tools, 75 T posts and 40 wooden stays, all the T post clips I had on the farm, 10# of fencing staples, a roll of smooth wire, a hammer and two pair of fencing pliers.  We would have had two hammers but I forgot one in the shed.  While loading up the T posts the dogs were running around when suddenly we heard this high pitched screaming.  We looked over in the area over by my gate stash and there was a baby deer that had gotten its foot caught in the fence.  Mouse had found it, we called the dogs away and the deer was so scared it managed to free itself and run off down by Donna’s house.  We saw the mother deer run out into the wheat field.  Annmarie and I had just seen this baby the night before when we came home.  It was no worse for its encounter.
 We had to clean up around a rock crib, we tossed all the scrap wire and boards onto the top of the crib then had to rebuild one about 2/3 of the way down the fence line.  Once the rock crib was secure then we removed all the staples for the three strands of barb wire and proceeded to tighten them up. We ended up snapping one of them in half with just the applied pressure and had to add a second patch.  It took 3.5 hours to get all this done.  We did take a break for lunch and some more water.  The last 1/3 needed another rock crib redone and it has a large portion of the woven wire buried in the dirt.  This wire is rusted and fragile.  It all needs to be replaced.  While we were rebuilding another rock crib we noticed a three foot garter snake with a vole in its mouth.  The snake had just come out of the grass with a little vole and the vole was still alive.  The snake held on till the vole quit struggling and died.  About this time, 30 seconds after spotting it, I remembered I had a camera in my pocket.  The snake must be afraid of paparazzi because I no sooner got the camera out then it slithered away. 
A friend from Idaho stopped by and we called it quits at 1500.  Unfortunately, I had on some loose baggy pants and after drinking a gallon of water all day and some Gatorade I ended up with a rash.  A painful, walk funny kind of rash.  If my pants would have fit better this would not have been a problem.  I have been losing a few pounds working on the farm and I am sure it is not worth this pain.  I still have 1/3 of the fence to finish…
 

Bathroom plant attempt.

While Annmarie was gone I picked up two more house plants.  They are in the bathroom and look like alien invaders.  The bathroom is the perfect spot as they just need a high humidity to survive.  The plants are hung from an oval seashell.  They look alien, and I have been told they don’t belong in the bathroom.  I am going to have to find them a home on the jungle breeze porch.  I brought a plant pole that will hold five hanging poles with macramé hangers over to our house from Grandma Ruby’s house.  I have a plant basket with a bunch of plants in a single basket from my father’s wake that I want to break up and give their own space.  It will look good.  I gave away my two huge plants that I had had for over 10 years.  They were taking up too much space. So now I need to fill it in!  I even managed to start two new African violets from leaf cuttings.  Ruby would be proud, it is a first for me.