Author: Steve Hardin

Weekend finale.

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I am all caught up after this post.  I will make a pinky promise to do better and try to be more timely in the future.  We have been using Zeke every night to put the sheep in the barn.  We have not been locking them in at night just putting food out and letting them leave whenever they want.  Usually, they will spend the night in the barn and leave while it is still dark in the morning.  They haven’t been eating hardly any hay, so there must be more out on the back hillside and pasture than there looks.  The horses have been picking at their food, the only one who has been eating their nightly allotment is the cows.  We have been feeding for the last 10 days. 

Now that the sheep and Zeke are starting to get the routine down it only takes about 10 minutes to get the sheep in the barn.  As it gets cold and the forage goes away the sheep practically put themselves away in the barn because that is where they get fed.  
Our bees made it through another summer and are still holed up in the barn wall.  I am going to leave them alone again this year and hopefully get to them next winter.  I want to get the sorting chute inside the barn and some stairs up to the walkway before I mess with the bees.  I need to brace myself first, it may become a painful undertaking. 
One of the guys from work is coming out soon so we can kill a sheep and he wants to cut it up himself.    I told him there is a skinning pole all set up out here.  We can drag a hose out, of the wood shed, and hook it up to the faucet so there is running water.  
On a plus note, Annmarie got our weather station to work!  I am very excited.  I miss not being able to look at the wind speed and our rainfall amount.  These are useful items to keep track of in the blog.  I will be updating the chicken spreadsheet soon and get that out here also.  Have a great month. 

Taming of the cows.

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We moved the cows out to their winter pasture.  For us this means out front of the houses on the main road into the property.  This lets us feed over the fence just outside the barn and keeps the cows, horses and sheep all in their separate area so there is no food competition.   Everyone has been working on taming the cows.  The adults will let you feed them apples directly from your hands.  The bull seems to like women better than men.  He waves his horns in the air for an apple then lets Sarah rub his head between his horns.  Our goal is to be able to just walk up and rub on them.  It sure makes them easier to work around.  The babies are still pretty jumpy.   

I managed to get the spare tire out of the broken pickup with some help from Kelly.  Unbeknownst to me the lowering mechanism for the spare tires is pinned together and the pins are easy to break.  Kelly fixed it with a piece of copper wire from some Romex cable I had in the old house.  Once the spare was down I got the new used tire moved over to the undamaged rim.  It is on the pickup and it is ready to be moved near the house so I can reach the power cord so I can create the beast!  OPEN AIR FARM TRUCK WRECK.  no roof, no doors and seat covers made out of a plastic tarp and duct tape.  A pure genius inspiration. There were some damages noted to the suspension on the vehicle when we crawled underneath it, I would not trust it at highway speeds.  Good thing the farm truck will never go over 15 mph.  
I went in to the parts store to buy some new lights for the trailer and fuses for the pickup.  I picked up two lights and had to order the fuses.  Both lights were the wrong size and they haven’t called to tell me the fuses are in.  I will have to stop by this week and get it sorted out.  
I went out and tried to drag the pear tree to the burn pile with my little tractor.  No way, the front tires were off the ground and it only went one direction which was not the direction I wanted to go.  So instead of cutting the tree into two pieces I went over and scooped up a big scoop of rocks with the bucket and then chained right back up to the tree.  It worked great, front tires stayed on the ground and I got the whole downed tree to the burn pile in one trip.  The weather is nice and dreary and we have had some rain so the burn pile is itching to be burned, but the last two days the wind has been terrible.  I need a calm day before I burn.  Just waiting for an opportunity.  

Chickens are on the move and reorganized.

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The chickens are going places!  The babies got moved out to the baby pen, I cleaned it all out and set it up with a five gallon bucket and the drip waterers.  This system works great and doesn’t make a wet mess all over the ground from water gettting thrown around by the chicks.  We still have eight naked neck turkens running around and getting bigger every day.  I have been keeping the heat lamp going for them and not only does it keep the chickens warm it keeps the water from freezing as it hangs near the heat lamp.  I got the light timer reset and the egg production has been steadily increasing, we are getting around 10 eggs per day now.  I still had three hens that needed to be culled and Sarah came to me saying they needed a chicken’s foot for her current play at school so on Saturday I snapped necks and removed a foot, Sarah plucked some feathers for decorating the foot.  The old hens went up to the boneyard.  The foot was then placed in a dry coke can in which I had cut the top off and filled with table salt.  Today we decided that it was not drying out fast enough so we changed out the salt and put it in the oven in the salt bath at 170 degrees for a few hours to speed up the drying process.  Once it is dry Sarah can attach the feathers.  It will be a cool prop for the play.  

Our sheep don’t like fences.

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Well I am still behind on the blog.  I aim to catch up this month.  Life has been very hectic and I keep making excuses to not write the blog.  Journal keeping is demanding and I had let it overwhelm me.  We have a photographer friend who sees the most extraordinary views of the world even in the simple things.  I am refocusing and taking that approach, realizing that I cannot get everything done when I think it should be done and to just deal with the items as they appear.  The distractions are just new tasks in a different direction.  I can get back to the original goal eventually. 

We had to pick a day to sort the sheep when I was available, this turned out to be six days before the kill day.  Zeke was itching to have a shot at the sheep!  He loves working, Annmarie took him up on the hillside and they started pushing the sheep toward the back hillside gate.  Sarah and I went up on the back hillside to redirect the sheep toward the gate.  Unfortunately, the sheep had all summer to forget about Zeke and he had all summer to lose his control.  Zeke ran all over the place and the sheep balked at every gate.  It took all three of us and the dog forty minutes to get the sheep into the barn.  
Once we had them in the barn we used a 16 foot cattle panel to block all the sheep into a 8×20 foot section of the barn.  We used all the feeders to create a wall to which the panel could be bungy corded.  (We still don’t have a sorting chute.  It’s blueprints are locked in my brain.)  Annmarie and Sarah went in with the sheep.  We had a list of ten sheep we needed to kill, an older whether, lams and some want to be whethers (boys I banded too young and missed a testicle).   Annmarie waded in and started catching sheep.  It was fairly obvious whenever she grabbed a ram, as the fight was considerably harder and prolonged.  These caught sheep were then tossed out into the old horse area.  The plan was to let them fun around for six days with us supplying food and water.  We ended up having to catch an even dozen sheep as there were a couple more rams we discovered. I fed and watered them and inside we went.  
At 2200 when we went to bed I could hear sheep every where bawling at each other.  An inordinate amount of noise, enough for me to think there was maybe a predator out on the property.  So I grabbed a pistol, bill cap clip flashlight, hand flashlight and Zeke and we went to investigate.  Stupid sheep, there was only two sheep were the belonged.  Six had gotten out by pounding at the cow panel gate and bending the lower corner enough to crawl through.  All the sheep with horns chose this escape route.  Zeke and I spent 45 minutes getting them back in the approved area, with me spending 15 minutes to reattach the gate so it cannot occur again.  After that there were still not enough sheep in lock up area.  Four more sheep, with no horns had crawled under the gate on the other side of the lockdown area.  It took another 45 minutes to chase them into the barn and back out into the lockdown area.  At one point I had to take my hat off and put it on a post with the light shining at the sheep so they thought there was a third person herding them.  I then drug some feeders over to the gate to block off the exit.  After some contemplation, I decided the sheep would have 6 more nights to figure out how to get out.  I and Zeke pushed them all into the square pen, I moved the food and water into there and tied the outside gate closed.  I did not want to be back out there till after midnight every night.  
We fed and watered them every night till Mike’s mobile slaughter came on Sunday afternoon.  We saved 9 hearts and livers for a coworker’s dogs.  We also saved three skulls with the best horns, full curls that I want to have nature clean up for us.  Once they are all cleaned, next spring, I will mount the skulls on the barn. 

Fields back in service.

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 My mother-in-law, Donna, has decided to place the fields back in service.  They were due to come out of the CRP program this year so she was approached by a local farmer to put them back in rotation.  They want to burn the fields to cut down on the weed seed, let it sprout, spray with herbicides and then disc back under a couple of times so they can plant in the spring.  The funny part about this is if you plowed you would cut back on the weeds dramaticaly but you lose soil and moisture.  There is always a trade off and I don’t know of anyone around here that plows any more.  Of course there is a huge 5 bottom plow out in the equipment area.   They had to move the big John Deere tractor, but after installing a new battery it would not move or do anything.  The mice have chewed through the wiring. Luckily, they had a large CAT with rubber tracks and were able to chain onto it and drag it out to the equipment area.  There was a seeder out in the field also, that had to be moved before burning commenced.  After the weather cooperated they just burned last night.  I thought it would all torch right up, but there were sections where it doesn’t even look like a fire passed through.  I was pretty amazed.  They pulled the disc around well into the night after the fire burnt through and were back at it first thing this morning.  

The cows are back out front near the cars and are doing well.  If you go out with an apple they all will come over and take it from your hands.  You can even touch noses and the occasional head.  They are not as tame as the horses but after this winter they should be a lot more easy to handle.  The three heifers are pregnant again!  They are starting to put on baby weight and size.  I am looking forward to fresh beef next year.  
I had a date for slaughter lined up for the sheep but it was when I was away.  Annmarie and Zeke tried to sort the sheep into the old baby area and the sheep rammed the external door off its track and got away.  Annmarie says Zeke was not helping, more like causing problems.  He has been a pill so the last two weeks we have been practicing tight control on all dog behavior.  He is much better and waits and listens better.  I had to have some help to reinstall the door it was a two person and a lever manuever.  I rescheduled the slaughter day for later this month.  I will help sort the sheep even if it means I need to feed and water the for a couple of days in the pen.  They are scheduled for two weeks from today.