Author: Steve Hardin

Spring cleaned out finally

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Gingerman and the daughter came home for the weekend. I had plans on not doing anything outside as we needed to get the Christmas decorations finished. Annmarie had her village all set up but the rest of the house had nothing but a bare tree. Saturday morning it only took about an hour to get all of the rest of our Christmas stuff set up. The Gingerman had brought his large chainsaw with big bar and he wanted some directions on which trees to cut. This gave me a great reason to abandon the Christmas setup (we were on the last thing). So I put on a vest and went outside, the weather was amazing, it was almost 50 F. I grabbed a chain and fired up the Kubota and we drove out to field #4b.

Way before we moved back, 18 years ago, someone had felled a bunch of large trees and then they pushed them next to the existing trees instead of removing or burning them. There has not been running water down that part of the field for a long time before we moved back. We have had running water now for almost five years from the spring above. I have been wanting to cut those trees up and burn them forever but they are so massive they won’t come out with the tractor and I tried to burn a few and only got a partial burn.

The Gingerman was able to make a few cuts before his saw heated up and quit working. So this gave me time to move the pieces out and start stacking them up. We opted to just keep the piles on each side so I did not have to try and carry any wood across the spring. I was able to drive the tractor through the ditch and onto the other side without difficulty.

This worked pretty great as the Gingerman kept helping me and the saw kept cooling off. So about the time I had everything on the pile he was able to cut a few more pieces. There were a couple of casualties. I managed to poke out one of the headlights from a branch sticking out of the burn pile. I was trying to get closer to dump off wood on the center of the pile. Near the end I used the tractor forks to break up dead branches from the live trees and managed to bend the backstop on the forks some. It still works just fine, I just twisted a part near the top of the backstop.

I ended up feeding the cows a large bale then dropped off the forks and the weight bucket on the 3 point hitch. The tractor dealer is coming out this week to take it in for some annual maintenance. I have a list of items that need to be repaired also that I will tape to the steering wheel tomorrow.

I am hopeful that Mr Rainman can come out one day this next week and finish cleaning up the small branches near the spring and hopefully we will have a burn day soon. We want to burn both piles.

That only took a couple of hours and I decided to get started on creating our vanity for the bathroom remodel. So I started tearing apart the dresser and removing the bottoms from all of the drawers. Normally, I would not do that but this had been inhabited by a lot of mice. So I sanded the entire cabinet inside and out. I want the vanity to look aged so I half sanded the finish. I will clean it up then stain over it all and then seal it up. It should still look very old. We need to order new handles and drawer pulls. I still have one drawer to tear apart but someone at some point has already tried to repair the dresser. So I have been sanding glue and chipping drawer bottom out of the grooves. Originally, those bottoms would have been held in place by two nails at the back of the drawer. They should have been super easy to remove. Instead they had a lot of glue and extra nails. The last drawer has OSB glued to the bottom! This will be the drawer that I cut part out for the plumbing. I will have to do this to one of the top half size drawers also. They will be super narrow in the front, 6-8” at most.

I will draw out the holes on the top and then drill them out. This way I can just take the vanity to the stone countertop place and have them match the top shape and the holes.

Less crazy is a good thing

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I came home early on Monday so Mr Rainman and I could sort the cows. We wanted to wean off the babies and move them down with the teenagers, then sort off the bull and put him in Alcatraz, pull six horned cows off the herd and load up into the trailer to go to the sale first thing Tuesday morning, and let the other momma cows go toward the upper pastures. This was all preceded by getting the cows into the corral. Despite three attempts the two of us could not drive the cows toward the corral. We need the arena panels to go across the spring access in the barn lot, the cows just kept breaking around us.

I went into the house and retrieved the border collie Chance so that the cows would move. There were some explicitly worded commands given once she started to ignore me. Eventually, we got the cows into the corral. Mr Rainman had just finished the last of the repairs on the corral on Monday and it worked. We managed to get six of the horned devils into the trailer.

They were dropped off at the auction house and the check for their sale already came to the house! It was pretty much what I expected for cows who are old and just had calves weaned off the day before. The important part is that they are no longer on the farm. The herd was already calmer once we got the crazy out of the group.

We are back to having to do nightly feeding of the sheep in the barn again. They take seven bales spread out amongst the feeders. I set out 10 bales initially and figured out what they could eat in a day from that. There are a couple of bales in the feeders that they don’t particularly like so if they want to nibble on something they are there. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of feeding the sheep at night, chase all the sheep out first and shut the door of the barn before feeding. The first night was total chaos with the sheep running around and jumping on the bales as I attempted to unwrap them to load them into the feeders. A couple of the bales had to stay on the floor as I could not get them away from the sheep. I now follow the cardinal rule when feeding and it is a lot more organized and a lot faster.

Experiment a success

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Today we went and picked up the sheep from Hermiston. They probably could have gone a couple more weeks but we can maybe start a little earlier next year. It was a success for the land owner and the field looks great. Their first cutting of hay next year will look very nice. We brought all of our light panels from the barn and were able to form a chute to the trailers. Initially, we had a Y setup but the stupid sheep did not want to go through the chute system so we had to push them and do one trailer at a time. We took down the temporary fence and rolled it all up, we will reuse it next year. The field was so wet that no one used the water trough, they just drank from the various low spots that had a few inches of water. We ended up just loading up all of the sheep into the two trailers then drove them to our house. We backed up to the corral and then unloaded each trailer into the corral area and then we sorted the sheep off into three batches. One group went back into the trailer-those were Wil’s, one group to the back pen-all boys, and last group was all females and the two rams. Since we have three pens that worked great and all of us managed a single gate to move them in or out of the chute as they were moved in. This worked great and took us about 45 minutes.

Once Mr Horse Tamer had his and left we sorted off all of the lambs and put them back in with their mothers. We also sorted off the two rams and moved them into Alcatraz. Then we sorted the boys and took 13 off that are already sold and turned them in with the mothers. They won’t get slaughtered until early January. That left us with 18 lambs that will go to the auction next week. This will be the first time we have ever taken any to the auction so we hope it treats us well, but you never know. We had to move the feeders back into the barn and filled them all with hay. We won’t have lambs until early April 2025.

Mr Rainman and I worked on getting the bee shelter completed this week. He got the posts set and frame built. I made a trip to Home Depot and got three sheets of roofing tin at $45/each. The prices for materials these days are amazingly bad. Now is not the time to build a new building. We were able to use up the last of the 1x8x8’ boards on the shelter. We had to go to a board and batten siding pattern as we did not have enough lumber to go over each side twice. It is very loud inside the enclosure when someone is working on the roof with an impact driver. If the bees complain of the noise we can line the roof with plywood to dampen the sound. I will wait for the complaint department to voice an issue before doing this. We did have to put up a panel to keep the alpaca and cows out of the shelter, they had already found it before we had the roof on it and were hanging around. I had opened up the orchard to allow them to come in and knock down the foot tall grass. Now that there are no leaves on the trees they will leave them alone.

We were also able to but the boards on the new rock crib on the corral. It used up the last two rough cut 2×8 inch tamarack boards I had left from building Alcatraz. We cobbled it together and Mr Rainman will fill it with rocks tomorrow and put a panel over the new gate so the sheep don’t crawl under or through it. We used the old gate today to keep them from going through the new gate, by propping it on the inside of the new gate.

We have finally started getting eggs again, we are getting about a 30% production rate which is normal for us in the winter. Wil is hatching 30 chicks for us so that should get us 15 more hens. By mid summer we should be back up to 30 hens.

After all of that today, I needed a nap and I got one!

It’s cold outside

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Winter is finally here. It is down in the low 20’s F at night and barely over freezing during the day. So it is not super pleasant to be outside. I have been so busy that I have not done much around the farm. Luckily, Mr Rainman is still cleaning up and working on small things. He was able to get the three posts installed on the corral. The two internal posts required that the old posts get reset and tightened up also. There is not a bit of wiggle in that side of the corral now! You used to be able to grab the rail and move the fence a few inches in each direction. The last thing for the corral is to finish building the rock crib. It just needs some wooden sides and wire mesh inside that to hold all the rocks inside. It will take 4-6 hours to fill the entire space with rocks but by the time it is completed there will be no moving that side of the corral and the new gate will be anchored securely.

The Gingerman spotted that our main gate into the barn lot broke at the base on the hinge side. When the gate was used it was starting to flex apart due to the break. In true farmer fashion, he plugged in the welder, dug around in the scrap pile and dirt to find some old small metal pieces then proceeded to just randomly weld them in place until the crack was repaired. He then tack welded the hinges as the bolts were not holding them rigid. He also raised the gate a few inches and dug out the hinge side so it no longer drags when you open and close it. The gate works better now than it has in 15 years!

Mr Rainman also got all of the holes dug around the bee platform. I had to make a run over to Home Depot last week so I was able to get all of the pressure treated lumber necessary for building an arch over the bee platform. I am going to use the same 1×8”x8’ pieces we used on the inside of the fencing shed to sheet the outside of the arch. I also have some leftover metal roofing from working on the barn that I will use for the roof. The wind just tore up the empty hives we had on the platform. If there had been bees in them I am not sure we could have salvaged them after the storm. The bees are hard enough to keep without us just letting the wind destroy them. We already have a new Nuc ordered for the spring and Annmarie is fairly confident she can split the hive fairly easily now. I would like to see us going into next winter with three hives.

We are still getting ready for the bathroom remodel. I have ordered the tile for the last two walls, which look like linen wallpaper. I am looking at the custom cabinet design for the right side of the vanity that I want, so I can start in on it soon. This has to be wife approved, it will be made out of oak plywood.

I did the cabinet mock up and the wife did not like the single door on the sink side of the cabinet. It will house all the electronics, my electric razor, hearing aids and any other items that need electrical outlets. This will clean off the countertop. So I had to move it to the front. Now I just need to go buy my three full sheets of 3/4” oak plywood. I will have to do the doors last but they can wait for now.

Still no snow

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The plague has struck again! Both of us were sick this week and are finally getting back to normal. The kids came down this weekend and we were able to tear down the old bed frame and clean up the other spare room. We then moved the box Murphy bed into that room for company, usually the kids and proceeded to clean out the other room. It used to be Sarah’s bedroom eons ago. We had purchased a sewing table for Annmarie and I needed to get it assembled and set up an area for her to sew. Clothing is going up in price and the quality is not as good so she is going to start sewing her own work clothes. I have two vests that need done and now that I have gained some girth it is a perfect time. My two other ones started to get too small ten pounds ago. I will need to cut a plywood top to go over the top of the two dressers. She was able to find a cutting mat that is 36×48” so I will put that size sheet of plywood over the two dressers and the mat will fit right on top of that. We have a sewing light and I was able to find a lamp for the room but we need another overhead light over the cutting table. I have ordered another draping stained glass light and will put in a new hook for it when it comes. The stained glass lights just do not put out a ton of light. I have started to overcome this by just putting in more lights. I am pretty sure I will be adding a second light to our master bedroom. But I will need to go up into the attic to do it which will mean pulling up some of the floor in the attic. It won’t be as simple as when I did it before the attic floor.

This would have been simple if I had not just used every scrap of plywood I had on the farm inside of the fencing shed! I have to go to Hermiston and order tiles for the bathroom this week so I will get a piece of plywood to cut for her cutting surface. I need to get the tiles ordered and start working on our bathroom vanity and towel storage cabinet. There was a shopping event on Saturday where you could visit six different sites and go shopping for various Knick knacks. Annmarie was able to find a new potential bathroom vanity. This one is a lot longer, a whole whopping 10.5” longer. But honestly, that is a lot of counter space! The old one we were going to use was 33” wide and this one is 43.5” wide. This one is also taller. I like the higher one and think it will make it much easier to use the sink. The new one needs more work than the other one. I need new drawer pulls and all the drawers need new bottoms. I will need to hollow out two of the drawers on the new cabinet. It is doable but I will need to start on it ASAP.

Mr Rainman came out today and we were able to get a few little things knocked off the list. We installed the new Gazebo lights so thy are now remote controlled. We also took the light strand from the Gazebo and mounted it alongside the old house to light up the walkway and cat feeding area. Now when I think there is a raccoon out back I can just flip the light on, via my phone, and I will be able to see the entire area behind the old house. No more hiding for the raccoons. I was able to program the light via my phone so it can be turned on remotely. I just need to get it programmed to come on for an hour every night around the time we feed the cats.

We put the trellis back together next to the house. I will need to train the trumpet vine in the spring to follow the new trellis. The fencing shed anchor bolts came but I could only get four of them to drive in the entire length. I kept hitting something so old and tough that my impact driver would not move the anchor, no matter what I did. So there are now four anchors and more supplies inside the shed holding it down. I am not too worried about it going any whereas it did nothing in the 70 MPH wind.

My windmill got ripped out and tossed on the ground and our old chicken coop door got torn up by the wind. The windmill lost a blade and we put it back up but had to hammer it into the piece of wood so now it won’t spin. So I will need to get another one and this time I need to make sure it has bearings and some way to make sure it does not blow away. The latch on the old chicken coop got torn off. It needs some screws and may need to be rebuilt. It will depend on how rotten the wood is and attempting to repair it will let us know that. At this rate we may be able to get the drying lumber pieces moved out to the old middle granary. It is all cleaned out and ready for wood. Some of the wood has about two more years to dry out. We will be putting all of the maple and black walnut out there.

Mr Rainman has been organizing the machine shed and tossing out all of the accumulated trash. He has been doing a great job on getting things organized again. It is an annual process as I do not do as you go throughout the year. Once we get the old chicken coop lumber moved out then we can move all of the tools from the old house out into the coop. This will then create a single room we can use as project space.