It is done, almost…

My help came in spades today.  A young man who is out of school for the summer told his mother he needed some money.  She said she may know a person who is willing to pay for some hard manual labor.  He came out this morning and mowed for 4.5 hours!  I had more work for him digging out post holes, they need to cleaned of all the loose dirt.  He said he needed to get home.  His mother said he was dragging tired by the time he got home!  I told him digging out the barn was the next job and it was going to take 16 hours.  You would have thought I told him a month.  He seemed amazed that something could take that long.  Oh, to be young again. 

Phil and I tackled the corral.  I wanted to get done.  The ten foot gates had to have a 3/4 inch hold drilled through a railroad tie.  I do not have a 3/4 inch drill.  We ended up using a 1 inch drill and it still took forever.  We finally got all the holes drilled and all the gates hung.  I have one gate that needs a cow panel attached so the sheep and baby calves cannot get out.  I also did not get the connecting wires across the top of the chute ties.  I need a bigger washer and a 5/8 inch drill 14 inches long to get the holes done easily.  There are 14 ties I want to connect at the top with cables to prevent them from spreading once the cows start fighting in the chute. Oh, and I need Packy to come measure my chute for two custom gates that he needs to manufacture. I also want him to build a new pump bracket for my sprayer so I can use my quick connect on the tractor.  I also want a couple of hooks and a holder for my spray wand.  It will be a lot easier to use with those improvements. 

It is totally useable now.  No animals can be trapped in the chute with a gate.  We could slip 2×4 between the posts to make a temporary gate.  It wouldn’t be fast to remove but it would stop them from leaving the chute.  I am hoping to have Packy out in the next two weeks.  I may even get him to make a gate for the new fence and make a gate for Donna.  I have several jobs for him. 

Phil and I were able to go down to Donna’s and chase the momma cow into the lower field and I snagged the dead calf.  I drove it up to the bone pile.  The scavengers will be happy.  If not then the bugs will be happy. 

I even scraped all the dirt around the corral and cleaned up all the junk next to the driveway and put it away or moved it away.  It looks very nice.  I am considering scraping it down further and putting gravel every where.  That will wait as I will need about three loads of gravel to accomplish that objective.  Annmarie told me I was on irrigation duty after next week.  Once the front fence is up all my efforts have to go to getting the irrigation pump up and going.  We will be able to irrigate the lower pasture and the orchard from the front creek.  It is a grand plan and one which I will strive to meet.  I want to do some other things and this must be done first before I can go play with other projects.  I have a new fence line I want to install on the back hillside, and one on the lower pasture.  The place is starting to come together.  They are using a rock picker to get the rocks out of the old CRP field and I asked that they dump them in a couple of locations so I could pick rocks for the new fence rock wall.  I also need to order a rock hammer so I can shape the rocks. 

Ram pasture all mowed and beautiful.

If you look really close you can see all five gates I hung.

I could not ignore it, I had to go outside and work on the corral.  My personal goal was to be done by Sunday and if I took Saturday off because I had no helper it would put me behind.  I spent two hours digging holes for the front fence.  We filled three holes with water in the hopes that the tractor could dig them easier.  Nope, it did not work.  I still had to beat them up with a breaker bar then dig them out and back to breaker bar.  I hung five gates by myself.  All of them Powder River gates so I was able to set them up on blocks and just screw in the through the hinge holes.  No drilling a hole and screwing in a peg and then adjusting it ten times to get the distance correct.  Only two of the gates were new, we reused all the old gates.  I applied lots of WD40 and the old gates were just perfect.  I may find some machine oil that will stay in place longer than WD40.  My helper is supposed to be out on Sunday. 

I went down and checked on the cows again.  I saw both babies and they were in different spots then yesterday.  I watched them latch on to a teat.  I did not wait for the milk moustache.  My mother-in-law called in the late evening, one of the calves had gotten stuck in her front yard and was not doing well.  She went down to the edge of the yard to help it out and the mother panicked and charged her plastic fence.  The cow broke right through the fence and almost got a horn into Donna.  The calf subsequently died.  I checked on them when I got home but could not get any closer than 20 feet.  I opened up the lower pasture gate and am hoping the cows just go into that pasture.  I will go down in the morning and grab the deceased baby and take it to the bone yard.  Hopefully, this will not be that difficult. 

Sides done.

My helper didn’t show up on Saturday, girl problems.  I had to buy some calf milk replacement and a cow bottle.  One of the calves was not getting up.  We had a baby calf.  I went out to check on the calf with my half a gallon of milk and found two calves!  I watched both of them latch on and suckle.  I did not wait till they were finished and look for a milk moustache.  Gary from work took pity on me and came out to the house for about three hours.  We finished up all the boards on the corral.  Only thing left are the gates.  It is starting to really take shape, the best part is it is getting done quicker than I had anticipated.  I took Gary out for an early dinner.  I always feed my help! 
I was unable to get close to either calf.  Both mothers are super protective and there is no way I am gonna get my hands on a baby without getting horned by an angry mother cow.  I will wait until we run them all into the new corral!

Sides done.

Future front fence location to the left of the screen across front of driveway to new corral.

Just how many projects should you work on simultaneously?  I have a couple, maybe a few.  I am currently attempting to get the new corral up and working.  I started in on the drain line for the gutters that come off of the end of the barn.  The gutters off the end of the barn need to be done, The main irrigation pump channel needs to be finished digging but that requires me to rent a backhoe for a day.  I need to finish working on the irrigation pump fittings.  I need to pull the small irrigation pump and get it fixed.  I need to finish digging the hole in the yard so I can install two more no freeze outside spigots in the yard.  I decided to start drilling holes today for the new front fence across the driveway.  I have some help coming for a day next week so I am going to have them work on the front fence and the gutters on the barn.  Hopefully, the corral will be finished by then.  I still need to install the scratching post and fly powder triangle stand for the cows.  Of course it is time to start spraying the star thistle again this year.  I purchased a few hundred dollars in herbicide yesterday, so I need to use it up. 

I have a couple more projects in my head but not actually started so I didn’t think they would count.  I wanted to run the new fence gate right up to the concrete walkway but the buried telephone line runs directly in the corner next to the driveway.  I know this because I cut it in half once already when installing the lights (which no longer work because they need to be rewired.).  The corral hopefully will only take us two more days.  I only have Phil for two more days, so it needs to be done in two days!  I think it is possible.  One of the items coming up is cleaning up the old house.  It is a mess from all my projects this year.  I need to spend one day just cleaning up and putting stuff away. 

New corral taking shape. I did not use a level if you had not noticed.  It is a corral.

Wire panels in place.

I was very tired the other day after getting off of a grueling shift at work.  I had only slept a few hours but just could not make myself go lie down.  Instead I spent a few hours out in the heat installing all the metal panels in the corral.  It was something I could do alone and be fairly efficient.  There are some tasks I can do alone they just take four times as long to do them alone.  The panels make the corral look like a corral.  You can see the animal flow and it is starting to make sense.  I did eventually go inside and take a nice long nap!  I bought some cable to go across the top of the railroad ties on either side of the chute.  I don’t want the thing spreading out over time due to the animals bouncing around on the walls.  Annmarie and I are still discussing how I should install the cable so the posts won’t turn when force is applied to one side of the wall.