Author: Steve Hardin

Sheep shenanigans.

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I sold some lambs to a fellow coworker.  He did not want to send them to the butcher as he had a way to cut them up himself.  I offered to help kill, clean and skin them.  Annmarie and I were very excited to be getting rid of the last four whethers.  He was busy and had a change of plans a couple of times so it took us a while to get our schedules synced.  The plan was 1200 the day after Thanksgiving.  He called me that morning saying he had to stay over at work till noon and could we do it at 1400?  I said sure but I have to quit at 1700 to go to my other job.  Sarah, Annmarie and I went out that morning and we sorted out four whethers and put them out in the new momma area.  I tried to stick them in the barn but they kept leaping over four foot doors.  Sarah and I set up buckets, knives and a bucket of hot bleach water to sterilize the stainless steel table and clean off knives.  My coworker showed up after only driving by then entrance to the place once.  We went to catch the whethers and the little boogers pushed by the edge of the gate and got out with the main herd.  We had to take Zeke off of injured reserve (he has a foot lac that he keeps pulling the stitches out of) and chase all the sheep back into the barn.  Once in the barn it was decided to just catch two whethers at a time and kill them immediately so we did not have to keep catching them.  I was game to try the technique of slicing the carotid arteries with a fillet knife without cutting the trachea.  Just insert the knife behind the trachea all the way through and turn it sideways so the animals bleed out.  There was no great spot so we just put them up on the ledge and hung their heads out the barn window.  This technique worked good until the last one then I accidently knicked the trachea and i ended up covered in blood.  

We carried them over to the skinning pole and commenced with the messy work.  Trouble was it took us an hour to do the first part, so we only had two hours to go.  I am not a professional butcher.  I am capable but not quick.  At 1700 we still needed to finish skinning one animal.  I had to run in and get ready for work.  Sarah had to run to the boneyard and drop off a set of entrails so we could toss the second set in a bucket.  As she is driving through the gate I heard a crunch.  I was hollering across the field not to dent the new pickup.  We decided she should wait till the next morning to make the second trip to the boneyard.  She stayed out and helped clean up and carry carcasses to the vehicle while I got ready for work.  

To top it off, we still have two more whethers!  The second time around we found two more, we obviously need to update the spreadsheet.  The lucky tag numbers were 24, 30, 34, and 32.  

Water is not my friend.

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Every year it seems like we have a water pipe break, usually in the winter.  Last year the nozzle in the back yard standpipe broke for the first time.  I replaced the faucet valve and it worked great this year.  Annmarie wanted me to dig it out and put in a frost free standpipe but I did not.  It was not an issue until last year and it is only about 18 inches from a 40 foot tall maple tree.  I did not want to hurt the tree or dig the hole to gain access to the pipe (4 feet down in the ground).  On Monday, Sarah texted me this picture of the ice art on our lawn.  

The valve had cracked again (frozen) it is made of bronze and the standpipe is iron.  I had to go to the hardware store and buy some heat tape, a cap for the pipe, insulation and plastic to repair, heat tape and water proof for the winter.  I had to string an extension cord from the back door outside outlet to the standpipe.  So far it is working like a champ.  Annmarie and I had a discussion as to why this has only happened twice in seven years.  For all the previous years when the other pipe broke that stempipe was drained of water and when the water was turned back on there was an air lock in place so no water was in the pipe until I started using it in the spring again.  It made sense at that point.  We have a lot of water discussions and I am usually incorrect in my assumptions (wrong).  So in the spring I will sharpen the axe and Sarah and I will dig out the hole and attempt not to kill the tree.  

Progress of a sort

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Winter is coming.  We had snow in the foothills this weekend but a warm wind came in the last two days and melted most of it off.  We are feeding everyone at night around the barn.  The cows are right outside the fence near the barn, the horses in their new enclosure off the barn and the sheep inside the barn.  All this close proximity makes it nice, we just don’t have to move the hay as far.  I cleaned up the house some more, picked up piles and found spots and put stuff away, also filled our trash can.  I can go on thinning binges were everything gets pushed out of the house.  I want to get the library downstairs rearranged and I think we are going to get rid of our yard sale couch, on the breezeporch, and instead put another love seat up there and move an old rocking chair into the library.  The old couch will go to the burn pile.  

I fixed our front screen door.  The latch was not catching very well, so a $0.20 rubber stopper from the hardware store got jammed down behind the latch panel to keep it from bending inwards with use.  I also set the retractor cylinders to the winter position so they close a little tighter now.  
My aunt is giving us an old upright freezer so I went out to the shed and rearranged everything to make room.  It will go right inside the door and give us a total outside freezer capacity of 40 cubic feet.  Who doesn’t need that? It should be enough to allow us to get rid of our meat locker at the butchers.  It is going to come in handy next year when we have beef! I am looking forward to eating our own animals. They have lived a pretty pampered life.  Since it is winter I am back on an exercise regimen which means for the next month or so I should make pretty good progress on my back wall.  It just feels better when I get to do something constructive while exercising.  Anyone who doesn’t believe lifitng rocks and building a rock wall is exercise is welcome to come over and give it a try.  If they really like it I will only charge a small fee for the priviledge!  I am going to have to start bringing in some dirt soon.  I was thinking about knocking down the hill with the tractor and making it a gradual slope down to the wall.  Still not sure what I am going to do about building it up.  I may grade the road above a little more and just use that dirt.  

How long is a work day?

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On Monday, for Veteran’s day, Sarah and I went out to the orchard to burn the wood pile.  This is the second largest burn pile on the farm.  The one on the upper hillside is huge!  It is where we piled all the unuseable wood from the barn remodel and various other wood piles discovered in the barn lot.  Our orchard burn pile is mostly composed of trees that have been blown over or limbs from various trees all over the farm.  I had dragged the big pieces of multiple trees onto the pile but we still had a lot of little branches to pick up.  Sarah wanted to know if we could roast marshmellows once we were done, I said sure.  I sent her out with a large paper bag full of newspaper a lighter stick and asked her to start the fire as I got ready.  I did tell her to ball up the paper and to start it on the SE end of the pile.  Twenty minutes later when I went outside there was a thin stream of smoke from the NW corner of the pile from some smoldering paper.  No flames, no wood burning.  I then proceeded to start the fire in the SE corner of the pile, sheltered from the wind with lots of single sheets of newspaper balled up (previous lessons as a pyro as a child can come in handy).  The fire took off in no time with the wind fanning the flames.  

Once the flames were soaring I let the child know that we would now start at the far end of the orchard and start throwing every stick of wood onto the fire throughout the entire orchard.  We used the tractor to drag over the last few large pieces of wood that could not be carried.  The bucket of the tractor became a wheelbarrow for all the little pieces of wood.  After about 4.5 hours of picking up branches Sarah asks if we are done.  I tell her no, we are just getting warmed up.  She then says we have been out here all day!  Out of curiosity, I asked her what she thought the normal length of a workday was?  She said 6 hours.   I laughed and then we talked about 8,10, 12, and 14 hour shifts.  We only had a six hour workday and got to eat roasted marshmellows at the end of it.  

Farm 2, Predators 1

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It happened some time last week, I lost a chicken.  I found the carcass outside the chicken coop mostly eaten.  I knew it was coming, there was a lone chicken that had decided it did not want to sleep in chicken knox.  Its stupidity needed to be rewarded so I just let it do its own thing.  

Two nights ago at bedtime I was turning out the back porch light and happened to glance outside and spotted a huge possum eating the cat food.  I grabbed the .22 pistol by the back door and stepped outside, the possum was gone.  I had forgotten to grab a flashlight so only had the porch light to see out into the dark.  Today, I cleaned off the laundry room shelves but moved the pistol so it would still be handy and put a large flashlight next to the predator killer.  
Tonight Zeke wanted to go outside and run around before bedtime.  Sometimes I let him go out for 30 minutes and terrorize the cats and anything that moves in our yard.  Annmarie and I were in the kitchen and we heard him raising a ruckus and barking nonstop outside the kitchen window.  He is not a barker, almost never barks.  So I grab the pistol and large flashlight and go out the back door.  Zeke is running around the base of the maple tree barking up at something, a raccoon!  He had treed a raccoon.  I went over to the base of the tree and brought out the pistol, as soon as Zeke saw the pistol he took off for the front bushes.  He does not like guns, if he could vote, it would be for gun control.  Big scaredy cat, will tear into cow with large horns but don’t let him see a gun.  Once the dog disappeared the raccoon started down the tree not scared of me a bit at the base.  I shot it once in the head on its way down, no more chicken killer.   Sometimes it seems harsh to someone not living out here, but we don’t go out of our way to harass the wildlife we just enforce the .22 rule around our house.  The predators cannot eat the chickens, cat food or cats.  Those animals all serve a purpose on the farm and cannot be spared.  Now I just need to get that possum.  The amazing thing is now that I have a working automatic chicken door I actually have to cull my own birds and get eggs year round.  At the beginning of the year I was only gettting one egg a day.  It was awful.  So we will continue to enforce our boundaries.