Rebuilt rock crib.

I went to all that trouble to move the snow and it is gone!  No more snow.  In our world this sudden warming can be quite the problem.  I have four fences that go across the creek.  When we went to bed last night there was a strong chinook wind blowing.  The back creek was still covered in snow and there was no running water in it.  As soon as I got up this morning I turned on the back porch light to see if the creek was running and indeed it was.  This means the fences have to be lifted out of the creek bed.  They have to sit directly on the creek bed when there is no water present or the sheep crawl under them.  The sheep will jump the creek and drink from it but they will not wade through it to crawl under a fence.  I anticipated this not being as easy as it sounds.  At the first crossing I ended up refilling about half the rock crib and retightening some upper fencing before even pulling the panels out of the creek.  I ended up fixing three sections of fence, repairing two rock cribs and lifting fence panels from four separate creek crossings. 



Poop covered dog!  Does he looked ashamed?

Zeke snuck away while I was working.  I called but he stayed gone for over 30 minutes.  When he came back it looked like someone had rubbed cow poop over his entire body!  The smell was awful.  He had to stay kinda close the rest of the time outside.  Not too close due to the smell.  After the creek crossings were fixed we walked down to the school house to look at the back irrigation ditch.  The horses on the school house pasture have eroded part of the ditch wall and it is leaking into the pasture.   Down near the school house it is just running out into the pasture.  I need to get down there with the tractor and dig some more ditch.  The trouble is it is very muddy and slick and I am not sure the tractor would do well. It needs to dry out some first.  The trouble with that is I don’t want the weather to dry out until late spring.  I want us to get snow or rain. 

Would you want to be a chicken?  Even though they do have it easy, following rule #2 it is not safe.  I had another Turken die from natural causes.  Not sure what did it.  I have not lost a single chicken to predators this year yet.  Despite the fact that my chicken door quit working a week ago.  I need to remove it and bring it in so I can cut out the motor and glue in a new one.  It is on the to do list for tomorrow.  It was on for today but I decided to catch up on the blog instead, besides it was snowing and cold all day.  We have not collected a single egg for the last two weeks.  Annmarie had to go buy eggs at the store.  She was not happy about that. 

I don’t know if they are just not laying due to predator harassment, nonfunctioning chicken door, weather changes or just finished molting, all are possibilities.  Another thing could be we have an egg eater.  Since we are not finding the shells in the coop it would have to be an animal that can haul off the eggs.  We had a feral outside cat that did that for a while a few years ago.  I don’t know.  This is very frustrating.  The plan is to fix the chicken door and make sure it functions properly for a few days.  Then plug the heat lamp back in and fill the five gallon drip waterer full of water with the heat lamp warming it so it doesn’t freeze.  I will secure the entire perimeter fence so no chicken can get in or out.  This will only work after I fix the hole in the back of the chicken yard fence that the sheep ripped out during the summer by getting stuck and throwing themselves at the fence.  I would like to keep the chickens penned up for a week.  We can then see if anyone is laying eggs.  Annmarie also suggested I move the chicken camera inside to point at the nesting box entrances so I can see if something is sneaking in.  It has infrared lights on it so I would even be able to see in the dark!  I will try the easy stuff first then go to the camera.  We have to view the camera footage on the computer manually.  It just takes time. 

Annmarie told me eggs are going for $4/doz farm raised and when I was at Safeway over the weekend they had a sign up saying they were out due to a shortage.  So maybe it is not just my chickens…

It is amazing how hard it is to keep up with the blog, something else always comes up.  I have been meaning to stay current but there is always something else.  Work is getting in the way of my farm time recently so that is the current excuse I will be peddling.

First section of fence retightened and new wooden stays inserted.

New fencing tool box.  All tools and nails/connectors in one spot!

I am pretty sure I found the spot where the escaped calf got through but it needs a couple of metal posts pounded into the ground.  This is hard to do when the ground is frozen.  It will have to wait until we get a few days of not frozen.  I only had a few metal T posts left so I went to the metal salvage yard and picked up 70 second hand posts for $2/each.  A great price, I just have to work each one through the metal vise to straighten it out.  The trick is to not take any that are kinked.  They will instantly bend at that same spot when you try and drive them back into the ground.  I would like to get about 250 more.  Unfortunately, I took every one that was salvageable.  So I am always on the lookout for some good used T posts. 

Our upper fence got torn up when someone ran a car through it earlier last month.  It is repaired now.  That was very nice of them to fix their damage.  I just need to go install some tamarack stays.  There are not any wooden stays just some of those twist on metal ones.  Those are useless and not worth the $0.80 paid for each one. 

We had our large tree up by the hand dug well fall down.  Mother nature sneezed very hard one night (over 65mph winds) and the tree just could not stand up any longer and blew over.  We loved the tree because the red tail hawks raised a new set of babies there every year.  I saw the hawks last week so we are hoping they will move to another tree.  None will be as tall with that open view.  Our front trees are taller but have all their leaves with no upper dead branches. 

When the five tons of hay was delivered it came on a large flatbed trailer.  The kid driving it could not get into the barn lot.  The ground had thawed out and with five tons of hay on the trailer and some slick mud he just could not get into the barn lot.  All that work to rearrange the hay in the barn for naught!  I had him back up to the machine shop and we unloaded it into the tall side of the machine shop.  He said it would take us 20 minutes to unload.  It was closer to an hour, ahh the exuberance of youth.  We just put up a cattle panel to span the 16 foot opening and attached it at both ends.  This sounds like a decent plan but the bull had other ideas.  He hooked it with his horns and laid it down and pushed up against it to reach the hay pile.  The cows had an all you can eat buffet on three separate occasions.  There are now three large metal T posts running across the opening now, courtesy of my nephew.  I can no longer back the pickup right up to the pile, but not having the cows in it tearing it up is well worth the price of carrying a bale of hay.  If there is any hay left in the spring it will get moved to the barn. 

It started snowing, February 2, yesterday and has continued all day today, finally.  We have dire need of any and all precipitation.  We are below the annual precipitation and if we want to have wheat and green grass we need a lot more moisture.  I really wanted to sleep in this morning as it has been a long week at work but it did not happen.  Not only did I not sleep in I had to go outside at 0800 and feed cows, horses and sheep.  We are feeding the baby cows separate from the adults and I had to straighten out the cow panel feeder back into a square with the pickup and a chain.  It is almost back into a square now.