Skinning/washing pole and cutting table.

 Yesterday was a productive day.  Kelly, from work, came out to the house and we worked on installing a pole system so we can skin out and wash off an animal carcass.  I put it near the chicken coop so we could get a hose to the area for cleanup and it is out of sight from the house.  So if you are inside the house you cannot see it.  There were a couple of old small power poles stashed on the property so we used them.  I may have to shorten the chain so it is right next to the cross pole.  It will give us a few more inches of lift.  The poles are sunk into the ground three feet so they are pretty sturdy.  We reused the old wood bolts and washers from the foot bridge that was replaced last year.  The 45 degree pieces are from the trumpet vine arbor that got broken from the ice sliding off the house roof.  I am trying to repurpose as much stuff as possible so we don’t have to buy new. 

The cutting table is a stainless steel top from a restaurant remodel that Lee is doing and he brought it out for me.  I happened to have some cedar left over from the new foot bridge so we used cedar legs and supports to make the new feet for the table.  I still have to install three braces about 18 inches off the ground but we used up all three drill batteries and needed to wait for a recharge.  So after a snack we opted to go up to the boneyard and shoot guns instead. 

Just installed poles and farmer me.

 The weird thing was the sheep carcass I had just taken up there last week was gone!  A few tufts of hair was all that was left.  Yet there was a whole dessicated possum that had been untouched by the predators.  I guess everyone likes lamb. 

I found another piece of old equipment out by the CRP field.  I will try and drag it down to the scrap pile after I figure out what it used to do.  Just looking at it I cannot tell.  I am pretty sure it is missing a bunch of pieces so it is most likely going to be scrap metal.  There was an article this week in the local newspaper about theives stealing old scrap metal from farms and selling it.  The sheriff’s solution for this problem is for the farmer/land owner to sell the scrap themselves before someone steals it.  A very pragmatic solution for a problem that you cannot police.  This was why we moved all the aluminum irrigation pipe near the house last summer.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I will roundup the last of the pipe this year so it is all in one place. 

Stainless steel cutting table.

I would like to install a little deer netting around the newly installed apparatus and plant some pasture grass seed.  I need to protect the seed from the chickens then as it grows protect the new sprouts from the sheep.  I can hopefully get that done this weekend. 

Now I need to start back in on the fence and making some more fence stays. 

Future barn roof.

I went out after dinner for a couple of hours and finished the gate so we could let the cows back out into the car area.  I had to redig the gate center post and add a couple of posts.  I was a little generous with my guesstimate when I installed the gates and drilled the holes with the tractor.  I got it to work out. 
I unloaded all the used tin roofing from the trailer and stacked it so it is ready to go when I start back in on the barn roof some time this summer.  Not sure when that is going to occur as the fence has priority.  I picked up all my tools and equipment at the new gate area today, now I just need to go down and toss every thing into the trailer and sort the burnable, scrap metal and trash.  I want to get it all cleaned up.  One of the advantages to fixing the fence is I have managed to scrounge up another six cow panels for use elsewhere.  I will need at least three to cross the creek on the new divider fence I am installing up the hill, but that leaves me some extra for future use.  I think I will use one of them as a gate on the upper hillside also.  It is not a gate we will be accessing often but a panel will make it a lot easier to open and close when we do use the gate. 

Redone fence on the right with new gate in the distance.

New corner with double gate, I still need to clean up my mess.

 It looks like the fence goes on forever!  I need to run this fence all the way down to the road which is just past the building on the right hand side of the picture.  The fence has a curve in it so I am just going to run the woven wire down the curve and make it snug.  I am not going to straighten out the fence rows.  It would take too much time.  Up on the hill the fence lines are all straight.  This is actually the only place on the whole farm where the fence is curved to follow the field line and not a straight line. 

Sheep attempting to steer clear of the dog.

Annmarie has been very ill this week, which caused the cows to choose a day I was gone to act out.  The stupid little bull got out again, crossed the road and jumped in with 20 full size angus bulls.  Annmarie was afraid they would just stomp him into the ground so she drove down to see him with Zeke in tow.  The bulls were treating him like a teenager calf and pretty much ignoring him.  Annmarie decided to leave the bull alone and just notify the bull owners.  She went back to the house and had Zeke chase the heifers into the barn lot.  The bull owners came and put our bull in a horse trailer and brought him back to the house, he ended upin the barn lot.  Which so far has been impenetrable.  No one knows for certain where he got out but I am certain it is the incomplete gate area.  I need to get it done.

Today the girls and I went out to worm the whole flock.  We had a couple of boys to rubberband (castrate), and one to retag.  Zeke herded everyone into the barn then the girls started to try and catch everybody.  The girls wanted to just grab fur and hold on.  I kept encouraging the belly flop method but it wasn’t catching on.  I finally had to start catching also.  The belly flop method does work, I may have had more sheep dung covering my entire body than either girl but my success rate was higher.  I even had a twofer!
We found a couple of uhohs.  One of the little boys I banded had a testicle!  I missed it.  So later I will have to fix it.  I sat one of the ewes on her butt to worm her and noticed she had a necrotic udder.  She must have caught mastitis.  The oddest part is she never got sick and her baby never suffered.  We spent three hours out in the barn and all of us were sore.   I put her down and took her body up to the bone yard.  I had to use the tractor as the pickup needs a new rear end and a new fuel pump.  Both are going to cost some money.

One of the good things to come out of today is the girl’s motivation to assist me in building a sheep sorting chute is very high.  They do not want to wrestle 50 sheep again any time soon.

I spent around three hours Tuesday fencing.  The weather was overcast and cold.  One of those days were you never sweat, never really get shivering cold but cannot seem to stay warm, almost perfect fencing weather.  I went back to the gate area and concentrated on the right hand side.  I installed one H brace on my 45 degree corner and tightened it with a diagonal wire.  I then tightened the old fence to the new posts.  Luckily, there were some old cedar posts in the pile of fencing that I pushed away from the corner earlier with the tractor.  I dug a few posts out, cut them shorter with the sawzall (truly an all purpose fencing tool) then used an old shake roofing axe to split the posts lengthwise to use as wooden fence stays.

I have had to stop using the metal stays, as the cows and horses push on the top wire and bend them.  Now I save all posts, split them and use them as stays.  The best part is the stays only need to be about 4 feet long.  Which is great for rotten posts, I just cut the rotten part off and it makes the perfect length for a stay.  I stopped earlier in the week at the local fence building company and asked for a quote on 500 wooden stays.  I haven’t heard back yet.

I have a little bit of the woven wire left to patch.  It gets a hole and i just randomly wrap wire across the hole until it is covered.  It looks like a drunk metal spider attempted to build a web and then passed out midjob.  It does keep the sheep in.  All in all I finished 50 feet of fencing and only have 1 mile left!

Future gate sight into lower CRP field.

Monica and I went out to do some fencing.  I made it to the PGG spring extravaganza on Friday and was able to get 10-15% off on all the supplies. I have spent $925 of the $2000 fence budget.  I managed to pickup three gates, four rolls of smooth wire, 10-6 inch wooden posts, 50 metal T-posts and some large fence stapels.
Before we could go out I told Monica to put on some blue jeans.  She ran around the house and came down stairs without jeans on.  I questioned her attire and she responds with “I don’t have any

Corner future gate.

Corner future gate.

clean jeans”. I laughed and told Annmarie obviously I wasn’t getting through. We found some clean jeans for her to wear outside and fence in. We dug holes and set posts all day long. The corner we tore out with the tractor and changed it to a 45 degree angle.  It was miserable outside, cold and the wind was blowing all day.  I still need to put in all the “H” parallel posts in and tighten the posts together.  Then I can restretch the fence, install some sheep fence and this little section will be done.  Nice thing is I have all the supplies for this section of fence.  I saw a whole load of woven wire going to the metal scrap yard last week.  All I would have needed for the entire summer.  So I went over on Friday to buy a ton (2000#) of wire.  Nope, they had crushed it all!  They are cleaning up the whole yard and getting ready to build a shop. 

Corner torn out and posts in place.



Posts in the ground and gate wired in place.

Again, the tractor came through in spades.  We attached the post hole auger and drilled the post holes.  It takes 6-10 minutes to dig some holes but there is no way I could do it in that time by hand.

So now I have to run over and load up on roofing tin before they crush it all.  I am ready for summer after that.  Unfortunately, it snowed yesterday and the wind is howling so spring is not quite here yet.