Author: Steve Hardin

Day of infamy

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This really wasn’t my day all week. We have had a plugged tub drain since Sunday. I have poured two different treatments of lye down it. I have used the plunger and unknown amount and then used an industrial concentrated size Liquid Plumber. I did manage to get the water to trickle drain after purchasing a $20 rotosnake to try and clean out the drain. I could not make the second ninety degree corner with the snake no matter what I did. So Annmarie and I each took a shower and the water did not drain. On Tuesday, I called for a plumber and was able to get a service time on Thursday afternoon. We both ended up showering at our mother’s houses. I even crawled under the house one evening and looked for a clean out to use the rotosnake in, there are none under the house.

Today is Thursday and the plumber came out early in morning while I was in town. He called and said it was fixed about 20 minutes after saying he was headed out to our house from Pendleton. The reason the water would not drain was because the tub drain lever had gotten moved to the closed position! I have not taken a bath in over 30 years and it simply never occurred to me to check especially since Annmarie was gone all weekend. I am grateful the tub drain works. It does work well as I had to clean it today after the mess I had made in it.

I proceeded to go outside and finish the gate extensions on the corral. The two cows that needed to go to the butcher tomorrow are wild and one is the crazy jumper. My helper is out sick so this was a solo job. I was able to sort the four cows in the ram pasture fairly easily. I left one in the back pen and put the other three out in the horse stall area so they could see each other. I was able to get the rest of the herd into the barn lot pretty easily. I needed to get crazy #34 into the trailer, that cow had jumped out of the corral twice in the last year and avoided getting slaughtered both times. Now that the corral gate and wall extensions were completed I figured it was a done deal. I figured wrong.

I had to call Annmarie to come help me and to bring the border collie. I guarded the area leading to the spring because the temporary panels I normally use are in two separate places doing other jobs. The spring area needs to rebuilt after the flooding and I just have not done it. After five tries the cows went into the back barn area. It still took us several more tries to get number 34 into the corral with eight other cows. The one cow I had already sorted off was too small. There were two huge steers in the corral now so we proceeded to try and sort everyone off. We got it down to just those two and then got them into the chute but one ran into the trailer, turned around and can back into the chute causing a pissing match between two angry steers. They ended up popping the gate into the third offset pen in the corral. I had not extended that small gate as the cows were not supposed to go in there this time.

By the time I got around Annmarie was hollering that the cow was stuck. Yep, #34 had tried to jump the gate and got his front foot jammed down beside the gate on top of the gate hinge. Despite the cow trying to pull down the fence, no amount of pulling was getting that foot loose. I had tried to push the foot up, then got a rope and tried to pull it up over a board. After about three minutes I placed a frantic call to my nephew who lives a couple of miles away. I think the only thing he understood was I needed help ASAP and it involved a cow as the cow was bellowing and shrieking two feet from me. I was able to pull back on the railroad tie while #43 was trying to rip it out of the ground. The cow was beyond all reason.

We ended up putting two ropes over its head, one was perfect and went over the horns but the other went over one horn and the cow’s neck. At this point not getting gored through the corral fence was barely possible. We tied off both ropes to separate railroad ties. I unbolted the gate and attempted to get it off the hinges. Crazy #43 managed to kick it off and then fight the ropes. We had to take a break and get the other cow in the trailer. That crazy cow kept trying to get over the trailer divider the entire time we tried to get #34 into it.

When we went to get #34 in, he got away and managed to get out the downed gate about three feet and now truly raising hell as he could sense freedom. I ended up using the tractor to push him back through the gate and then got one of the ropes stuck under a tire. Annmarie had to cut the rope. Luckily, it was the old rope, not the brand new one she had gotten out of the tack room. We managed to get the rope tightened down and the gate open to the chute. #34 ran down the chute by himself and Annmarie slammed the door shut. There are still two ropes around him that will not be back until after the steers get butchered. The trailer looks like a bouncy house with both steers in it. We put an extra strap across the back and left it backed into the corral.

This is a stupid problem. We are definitely going to be taking every single crazy cow to the auction in the next month. Once the calves are weaned. We need calmer cows. The corral is hard to jump from one area to the next. You have to climb a seven foot wall every time!

While I was moving cows I noticed that the white ram in Alcatraz had some abrasions on his forehead. I fed them then went around to the back of the pen and noticed that the gates were falling down! I did not have time to fix it so a little redneck twine was utilized. It only needs to hold for another day.

Motivation or Anger?

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Yesterday, I made sure and put a strap across the lower portion of the entire back gate on the stock trailer before leaving moving the trailer. I kept it backed up to the corral while I installed it. I am still not sure it is necessary but after the previous evening I am taking no chances. I headed out and got about halfway down the driveway when I realized I had forgotten the cut sheets and had to go back. The puppy was going to spend the day with grandma so he got to go with me. I needed to stop at the feed store but they let you take dogs inside and he is still getting socialized to all things different so it will be good for him. When I got to the college I warned them that the cows were crazy. Unbeknownst to me, the middle divider gate had not gotten latched against the back wall so at some point when I was making a turn it flopped into place and the latch actually worked. So the three cows were trapped in the front of the trailer when I stopped. The bad part about this is I have to go into the trailer to open it. I did and luckily the cows ran past me and into the college pen system. The cut sheets were handed off and only one of them still had an ear tag. The damn cows are worse at ripping them off than the sheep are.

Milo and I shopped for some cable and eyelets for the Gazebo. We want to install a string of light inside with a dimmer and light sensing system. I have the lights and control plug ordered and they should be here next week. He does great with doors, people and confusion, a real trooper. It helps that he is calm and cute. After he was dropped off at Grandma’s I headed home to install the cable.

Nope, I let the sheep out of the barn and promptly got the tractor to pick up all the lumber needed to fix the corral. I am unsure if it was out of frustration and the desire to not repeat the experience or just leftover anger at having to chase the cows for an hour and a half! I picked up the last of the 2×8 rough cut tamarack boards I had purchased years ago for building Alcatraz. We had them and some 1x12x16’ boards stored in Alcatraz on the old concrete granary foundation. I need to dig a little more dirt out of the foundation. The damn rockchucks have been digging and living under the board pile. So they kicked up dirt and caused a couple of the bottom boards to rot. But for the most part the lumber is in good enough shape to fix the corral. The boards on top are pretty twisted but a heavy duty construction anchor bolt straightens that right out. I used the rest of the lag screws leftover from the Gazebo. I had bought a bucket of 500, half were used on the Gazebo and a quarter were used on the corral. I had a box of 50 six inch lags that I had to also use on the corral as some of the locations needed a longer screw to get to the good wood. I was only going to do a little bit of the corral but the longer I did it the further I needed to get to completion. I used every single board I had and the last one had to be spliced together, there was just enough.

Once I had the corral walls elevated it was fairly obvious that three of the gates would need to be raised. I am going to use the 1×12 boards for this. I will be sandwiching them on each side of the gate to form two uprights then bolting another board across the top. I decided that I needed to use bolts instead of lags and I did not have 32 5.5” lag bolts and assorted accoutrements. I went back to the hardware store to get all of the needed pieces but it was already evening and time for chores again. I put away all of my tools and finished the evening chores.

When I was taking pictures of the corral I realized that the day was quite stunning and took a few extra pictures. I love the old grain auger and am always trying different pictures. I also made it a point to go out and take a picture of the crazy psycho cow that must go to the abattoir. He is not getting out of it this time, #34 I have your number!

Psycho cows

Steve Hardin2 Comments

Where to even begin, it started almost like any other staycation day except I knew I had to sort cows in the evening. I am taking three in to become hamburger and steaks in the early morning. Last time we ran over the hillside for an hour until the everyone was exhausted before they would come in off the hillside. Since I was going to be doing it alone this time I figured to outsmart the cows. I brought a big bale of hay around and put it in the old ram pasture. I had to push the main herd of sheep out first. This will make it so I will need to push the momma/lambs into the barn first and then move the Y gate and push the rest of the sheep through the barn lot and into the barn. In the morning I will have to do that in reverse. Otherwise, I will get all of the sheep mixed together.

Once I had the large bale in there I opened the gates onto the hillside and waited for the cows to let themselves into the pasture! I did this at 0900 so I had a solid eight hours for them to figure out where the good eats were at.

In the afternoon I worked on getting the Gazebo wired for power. I had to drive in to town last evening and get more conduit parts. I did not have enough to make three corners. Luckily, I still had some cable lube so I could pull 12/2 wire through a half inch conduit. It does not like to make corners or 100’ without any slippery help. I was able to get all of the conduit glued and the wire pulled to a box inside the Gazebo. I still put a wet cover on the outlet box even though it’s inside the Gazebo. I have a double outlet all wired up and managed to get the rest of the ditch all filled in. I still have one outlet to wire at the brick box before I can flip the breaker back on. That won’t take very long tomorrow to get it done then there will be power out at the machine shed again.

The cows fell for my ploy! All the edible cows were in the ram pasture eating on the hay. I snuck around and locked the gates shut. The cows ran around crazily but did settle down after I left. Once I had the wiring done I hooked up the stock trailer and backed it up to the corral. I was all ready to go. I used to try and sort them and then leave them in the corral overnight. I have had a couple of escape artists in the past so I opted to wait until right before dark to sort and load them. I got them into the corral pretty easy. The five I wanted to sort off all had horns. There were ten of them and one was the largest. This is the one that jumped out of the corral last year and avoided a trip to the butcher. I was able to sort off two and then ran them into the trailer. I have a divided trailer so I shut the divider to keep them in. Next I managed to sort off the large one and two small ones. I got everyone else out of the corral and then sorted off the two small ones. The crazy big steer was in the wrong pen, it was in the further one where we had the horse trough. I tried to open the gate and get the cow to circle around and go into the chute. Damn thing bum rushed me and I had to jump into the chute myself and slam the gate closed. The cow just went crazy and jumped into the water trough and managed to get its front legs on top of the corral fence. It kept trying to climb the corral fence. I did lots of swearing and in about 30 seconds the cow got over the corral. By the time I grabbed the dog and jumped into the pickup the steer had jumped the fence again and was in the wheat field. The dog and I went to the far end of the field, she was following the pickup. It went down hill from there. The dog went for the cow and refused to be called off. We almost had the steer out of the wheat field when the dog got in front and turned it back away from the gate. I currently have a voice like a toad from hollering. Eventually, the dog went into the pickup with me but despite me trying several times to herd it back with the pickup I was unsuccessful and the steer ended up jumping the fence into the pasture with the mommas and calves.

I gave up and drove back to the house. I still had the rest of the edible cows in the back barn lot I just needed to sort off one more and I would have my three. This is exactly why I do not keep a rifle in the pickup. I was at the point where shooting the steer was a great option and fine choice. It is so infuriating. I parked the pickup and am headed to the corral to sort off one more when the two in the stock trailer start trying to jump the divider. I had not closed the back of the trailer as I still had one more cow to load. Yep, those bastards ended up pushing the gate open and running back out into the corral. It turns out that I need to fix the spring that is supposed to hold the bar that locks the closed gate in place. It is not working at all and the entire thing needs some lubricant so the spring can actually hold it closed not halfway.

At this point it is becoming a joke. I managed to sort off one more crazy horned cow and get all three into the corral. I opened the chute and got them to run down the chute into the trailer. It’s like I know what I am doing. I run down the chute following the cows so I can pull the gate closed. Nope, the last cows jumps in the trailer and then turns and tries to get out. I holler and end up having to jump out of the corral as all three cows come barreling out. I kept them in the corral and tried to get them back into the trailer. Not happening the lead cow keeps trying to climb the corral sides. I had a large stick and that just made the cow madder. I figured out that I could put the stick across the corral chute to prevent the cow from climbing out. This further enraged said cow. Finally, I just opened the gate, let everyone back into the corral then chased them back into the chute. This time I did not jump into the chute, I ran alongside it and as soon as the last cow went in I just slammed the door shut. I promptly got into the pickup and backed the trailer against the corral. There is absolutely no way to get out of the trailer now. We will leave at dark, early in the morning. I think I may have to put a strap across the back of the trailer in the morning before heading out. I think the stops at the bottom of the trailer may not be present but I cannot tell and honestly I need there to be no cows in the trailer before I explore that hypothesis.

Mr Rainman and I will be raising the corral walls another two feet next week so the crazy steer can be sorted off. This is a stupid problem to have. The horned cows we have are crazy! As soon as we wean off all the calves from this spring we are going to take most of the horned cows to the sale. It is not worth this much hassle and hazard. The polled cows we have are very mild and calm.

Staycation day 10

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It is not really day 10 as I had to work on Monday but it’s close enough. The Gingerman spent Sunday with my daughter working on a creating a yard gate for my mother-in-law. He got it all up and attached with extra support inside garage so gate doesn’t sag. I have a welded horseshoe chain ready to go. I just need to meander down there and get it installed.

Mr Rainman came out on Monday and cleaned up a bunch of rotten wood and emptied some old decking out of the grain bin. It sounds easy but there was a lot of stuff and the spot he did it is looking amazing. We are going to empty the chicken coop first of all of the rough cut maple and black walnut that is stored out there. Next year we will take the black walnut from last year and get it stacked out there also. It’s waterproof and we will put stickers on the green stuff and just stack the other nice and tight. That will be a lot of weight to hold everything down. We will put wood stickers on the concrete so the wood has an air gap. This will free up a lot of space in the old chicken coop.

I plan on moving most of the tool storage from the old house out to the old chicken coop. Most of those tools and supplies are super specialized and I have them all sorted into separate bins. This way you can just grab a specific bin type for the needed job type. I only do tile work occasionally, same with painting supplies. I am also going to sort out most of my corded tools and give them away. They work just fine but I use battery powered almost exclusively now. It is so convenient when I am out and about on the farm. He also got the back drainage tank set up with a drain. This sits under the roof valley and catches the water and ice as it comes off our roof. We split the drain pipe in hopes that it would not freeze up this winter and crack.

I keep running to town every couple of days to get little things for the next project. I had to go and buy electrical conduit and wiring plus some miscellaneous wiring items. I figure that by the time I am completed there will be about $250 worth of electrical supplies just to get a double outlet of 110V out to the Gazebo. We want a string of lights around the inside of the gazebo. We have a set upstairs on the breeze porch that you can set the brightness on and I can wire in a timer if needed.

Today I worked on getting all of the conduit installed. I glued the main line together and pulled 130’ of 12g wire through it. I was able to install the wiring in the brick box I made last year. There is quite a bit of humidity inside the box so I used vulcanizing tape and electrical tape in alternating layers to keep the moisture out of the electrical connection. It takes a while to get it all taped up and it is pure misery to remove but it’s how we did it when I was in the Navy and it held out against salt water so I figure I should be good for a few years at a minimum.

I wanted the conduit in the Gazebo to be fairly hidden so I mounted it under area where the countertops are going to be installed. I had to loosen the gazebo anchoring bolts into the 6×6 boards to make enough room to jam the conduit behind the posts. This makes for a nice clean conduit run. I will need to anchor it all back in place tomorrow.

Snoop, ancient black alpaca, was whining at me over the weekend until I gave him an apple over the fence. The alpaca are incredibly noisy and if they want something they are more than capable of communicating that desire to you via a cacophony of altering sounds. I have been feeding the animals leftover apples for days now and still have 2-3 more days worth of apples to feed out. They were the rejects from my mother’s trees.

We still do not have any more lambs! It is the most bizarre thing ever. Yes there are still some pregnant, about 8-10. I checked on Little Dumper on Monday but the person in charge was not present and I was unable to get an update. I need that truck so we can get a bunch of rocks to put on the hillside to stabilize the gazebo downhill side bank.

Staycation day 8 Final 10% completed

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My goal this time off was to actually check items off my list. I love the first 90% of a project but that last 10% is always painful! The last 10% of a project can take 25% of your time and by the time it gets to the true detail work I am tired of it and ready to move onto the next project. So what you are going to see are a lot of completions of little things that I have ignored for years!

Last winter I had the outside chicken door freeze open and/or shut. In a bad ice storm it is going to freeze. There is no way to really effectively block that without applying some type of heating system. I just want to stop the water from running down to it and then freezing in the night. To stop that I took an old metal wring from a whiskey barrel and cut and bent tabs then attached it over the door. I caulked it top and underneath to ensure that the water cannot run down the back of the door. This should work 98% of the time, we will see how it does this winter.

I spent a day cleaning the wife’s office. I had not been in there in a few months and I was applying for school last week and noticed that the office needed a good once over. I ended up vacuuming and dusting and removing all spiderwebs. I oiled down the window sills and cleaned the windows. After I did all of that I realized that I had never touched the Murphy bed we bought at auction. I have to repair it but I had not even cleaned and oiled it. So I spent a couple of hours and rubbed orange oil/beeswax combo into the wood. It looked amazing once I was done so I was determined to get it repaired. I ended up finding some furniture barrel nuts and a bronze sleeve bearing. The wood is torn up around the place they had the old screw attachment located. So I decided I could drill an oversized hole, insert and glue in place the bronze sleeve and then use locktite to keep the barrel nut at the right location. I ended up having to drill out the support straps a little to get the barrel bolt through it. I opted to let the super glue dry for a day or two before I did any assembly.

Yesterday, Mr Rainman came out and we really worked on knocking out a lot of little projects. I cut the last piece of oak kickerboard to go under the oven cabinet and we nailed/screwed all three pieces in place. This way the dog’s play toys cannot go to purgatory. I only had to fish out two toys before installing the boards. You can see from the pictures what a difference it made. The picture on the left is before I completed it and the one on the right is after they are all installed.

We have some of the very first cooking stones that Pampered Chef ever made and one of them is a large round pizza stone. It occasionally just rolls out of the open fronted storage area. Annmarie wanted me to install a wooden stop to prevent this potential tragedy. The stone has survived several rolls out onto the tile floor undamaged. I sanded down the front of the cabinet and glued then pin nailed and clamped the little 1/4” stops in place. I will rub a food grade finish on them tomorrow so they will be off the list. The slot on the left holds the stones but I wanted both sides to match and if someone accidentally puts the stone on the wrong side it still will not roll out. The stones are very well seasoned and cookies just slide off of them after all the years we have had them.

The back door trim got reinstalled for the third time. The mud room outside door keeps shifting with the weather. I think I have gotten it figured out this time. I ended up doing some latch work and should have it perfected. If I have to remove it a couple more times I will need to recut a new piece due to all of the nail holes.

We had to bring the table saw around to the front of the old house so that the window trim in the mud room could be finished. I needed to cut a custom width on the inside of the window. Luckily, we were able to find four pieces of scrap that were wide enough to work. I trimmed off the joint sides and kept the middle. I had to shim the window trim quite a bit to get it to fit correctly. The outside trim was just an intact 1×4 that we cut to size and sanded down. I will rub finish into all of this trim tomorrow when I get the trim in the kitchen. The pneumatic nailer and compressor had to be brought over. I am missing my 18g midsize nailer. We have looked everywhere for it but I do not really want to buy a DeWalt trim nailer to replace it, those things are expensive. So we made do with a larger finish nail.

The mud room does have an attic enclosure. I was up there when we first moved into the house as I had to run wire for house power through it. We sealed up the gaps and then installed the old trim back up. Due to adding a wall we ended up having to leave off the back board. I painted it all today after the caulk had time to dry. I am not sure we got the right white paint can correct. When it was wet the paint looked a little off. I won’t know until it dries and if it is really noticeable there is enough leftover paint to repaint the entire ceiling so it will all match.

Friday the last of the oversized roofing screws came in. So on Saturday I got back onto the machine shed roof to finish screwing in the roof ridge. It only took about five minutes to complete but before I could get down I wanted to remove the antenna pole that had been on top of the machine shed. Another thing I should have used the boom truck for along with the ridge line installation. So instead I just crawled up onto the hay room roof ridge and scooted over to the pole. I was able to unscrew five of the six anchors. I had used one off brand type with a weird star shaped pattern. I stayed on the roof and Mr Rainman went to get bits and then put it in a leather glove finger held in place with a rock jammed into the finger. He then tossed it up onto the roof at me. I could not move at all so the throw practically had to hit me for me to catch it. There was much cajoling and when that did not encourage him to throw harder some name calling may have been utilized. He could not find the correct head type so he had to throw me up two 1/2” open end wrenches so I could unbolt the pole from that half of the roof anchor. We ended up having to move the ladder, cut the grounding wire holding it up then move the ladder again and unhook one of the anchors. It came down finally. All the usable parts were removed and salvaged for later potential use and the rest tossed onto the metal scrap heap. That has been up on the machine shed roof since 2017!

After four attempts at welding and a couple of days to spray paint the house number was ready to be installed on our fence. I argued pretty vehemently against its current placement location. After I installed it I was unsure why I thought this location would not work. It turned out pretty nice, the paint covers some of my juvenile welding but it should hold together. I think the wire fed welder would work better for this kind of job than the stick. But I have not yet setup my wire feed side of the welder. I will need to do that next year.

Mr Rainman stayed very busy today. He mowed our entire lawn and tossed it all over the fence for the sheep and chickens. This should help remove some of the foxtails from our yard. The yard is pretty rough and not very easy to mow. He repaired the drip line in the lavender patch and put all the spare repair parts into Annmarie’s shed. Some weed whacking was done on the front hillside to knock down the rest of the thistles.

We don’t have any bees currently but Annmarie wanted us to expand the bee area so that she could easily walk around the hives and set stuff down without it always disappearing into the grass. He installed approximately another 50 blocks and the area is definitely large enough for 2-3 hives now.

Lastly after much discussion it was decided to dig the electrical ditch so I can run a single outlet to the gazebo. This way we can have the pellet grill out there and a string of lights. Unfortunately, where the ground is not getting hosed down by the sprinkler it is incredibly hard. So Mr Rainman started digging and then put water on in a couple of locations to soften the ground for tomorrow. I was able to go in and dig out another ten feet of the ditch and then start it all the way to the Gazebo. I took the hose and made water run down into the ditch from the gazebo side. I did this three times so hopefully in the morning we will not have any trouble getting down far enough for the ditch. I will need to buy conduit on Monday after work so I can wire it all up this next week. Mr Rainman is only going to be able to help three day in the next couple of weeks. So I will be flying solo most of my staycation. I am very happy with the progress we are making on the list.