Well I finally managed to get some tractor time in yesterday.  Since I cannot get the 10 ton of hay yet, I decided to put away the tractor and its attachments.  This involved getting diesel for the tractor since I only had a little over a gallon from the dealer upon purchase.  Did you know that all gas cans now have safety features?  They have an actual valve so they cannot tip over and leak.  This makes them a lot harder to use, but since beggars cannot be choosers and I need a 5 gallon can for diesel I am the proud owner of a plastic gas can with this hokey plastic handle valve contraption.  I did manage to get the fuel in the tractor without too much difficulty (took forever).  It fired right up (after I went back in the house and got the key, forgot it).  I managed to flop the post hole driver into the bucket and drive it all to the lamb shed.  I had to let the roll bar down to get in the main door.  I had to move an old sheep panel out of the way and managed to flop the post hole digger out onto the ground.  Of course that meant I had to back out, turn around and back in again to get the mower off of the tractor.  I pulled the three pins and kicked on it till I managed to move the arms out of the way (was wishing for a hammer).  Supposedly the PTO connection is just a splined piece of metal and I should have had to just pull to get it disconnected.  I pulled and pulled, ended up cleaning all the weeds out and still couldn’t see very well due to the safety covers that were keeping my fingers away.  I finally got the right angle and it pulled right off.

Now it was time to do some work!!  The main driveway needs to be scraped to fill in the potholes.  I purchased a box blade for this purpose but have never used one before.  Instead of just winging it and trying to smooth the driveway I figured I had better practice with the box blade first.  The salesman told me there was a learning curve associated with the box blade.  What he didn’t tell me is that it can be hard to hook up.  Especially, when they set it on uneven ground with the attachment points pointing downhill and stuck on a piece of protruding iron hiding in the weeds.  Said iron pinned the blade in place (it is very heavy).  At one point I was frustrated enough to break out the directions!!  Damn things did not help so I had to go back to just figuring it out (back up, align the holes and put the pins in place, Duh?).  I did it eventually (45 minutes later).

Off I went to the orchard to tear up some ground.  About 5-6 years ago the front creek got flooded and it tore up the orchard, causing a channel to be created.  The bad part was there is about a 60 foot section that is deep and shaped like a narrow V, this caused me to go onto three tires both times I was mowing the orchard.  Three tires are not very stable.  I almost tipped the rental tractor over.  The V needed to vanish.  I started to just drag the box, not a whole lot happened. We have some form of large grass clumps and the box would latch onto those and stop the tractor!  I made a couple of passes with very little effect.  The solution to this is to lower the ripper blades on the box blade.  I extended them as low as they could go (have to do this individually by moving a pin) and started again.  I ended up making multiple passes to just rip up the ground.  I spent a lovely 2.5 hours dragging and moving dirt with the bucket.  I only had the tractor on three wheels twice, only almost tipped it forward once and only got stuck four times!  Annmarie came out and made me quit.  There is nothing more relaxing than to be on the tractor, playing in the dirt and listening to tunes on an i-pod.  I need about another 4-5 hours to finish it up but it looks much better now and the head of the V is gone.  I just need to take the steep part of one side of the V down now.  It is so steep that you cannot take the tractor along it, you have to go straight up and straight down. 

On a side note, the horses like the tractor far too much.  Every time I stopped and got off they would run over and start exploring the tractor with their lips.  I am making a mental note to not leave the tractor alone with the horses. The great chicken experiment is kinda working. Two leghorns are boycotting the chicken enclosure and roosting outside somewhere.  Now there is only one leghorn (Farm 6, predators 16).  Stupid chickens.  I didn’t get eggs yesterday, Sarah will get them tonight and we will see how many green eggs have been produced in the last two days.  Then I will make some culling decisions. 

I am continually amazed by the ongoing battle of wills on the farm.  Earlier in the week we were visiting with our mother-in-law (who lives 100 yards from us) and she was espousing the beauty of her roses (now that I had managed to corral the sheep in the orchard for the last 6 weeks without them escaping and eating her roses) and marveling at the fact that my fencing job was holding up.  The very next day I spotted the sheep out by our cars (meaning they got out somehow).  My back was killing me but I hobbled out and plugged the spots I thought had allowed the sheep to sneak out.  When I got back from the chiropractor the sheep were out again!!  I could not find the hole in the fence and my mother-in-law had no more roses!  The sheep love rose greens and the flowers and unopened buds!  So I tried to just herd the sheep back toward the fence to see where they were getting out (they tend to try and go back the same way they got out sometimes).  They were going out a side fence into the bottom pasture and then going through an open gate into the house area.  I spent another couple hours fixing that and wiring everything in place.  I need to fix the old fence but simply do not have time.  I still have 1/4 mile of new fence to install to get the upper barn lot enclosed.  I have to put that off a little longer until my back feels better. 

On that same note, I have suddenly started getting fewer eggs again.  Our new cats are turning into egg suckers!!  They are sneaking into the coop, biting the shell away on top to form a bowl and drinking the entire egg.  The only thing left is a hollowed out shell.  I have been chasing them out for a week, but these last two days almost a dozen eggs have been devoured.  We know it is not the chickens because they eat the shell also.  So we are going to feed the cats some more food in an attempt to curb this problem.  We already go through 80# of cat food/month.  The real trouble is we need the cats to keep the vermin down.  So I have to be very careful to balance out the needs of everyone when disturbing our little ecosystem. 

Sarah went out and counted chickens tonight.  We have 52 chickens, four of those are roosters.  One of those four is a Brahma, who was supposed to be a girl but his pathetic attempts at crowing have marked him as a boy.  We have not gotten a green egg in at least one week, so I will be taking a close look at the easter egger chickens that are a couple of years old.  If they don’t step up to the plate and start laying eggs they are not going to make it into winter.  I want to cut my feed expenses.  I need to so the price of eggs doesn’t increase.  I don’t think my market can bear another price hike for at least a year maybe more.  I have already decided to take out two roosters ( the brahma gets to stay as he is very pretty and should be ginormous!), our injured rooster’s limp has been getting worse causing him to be added to the hit list.  Sarah locked the chickens up in their pen tonight. This should keep the cats out and the chickens in allowing us to get an accurate egg count over the weekend.  Remember, 25 of those chickens are not laying yet as they are too young. 

I have already started worrying about irrigating the property next year.  I need to fix the electrical box, rewire some crappy wiring that was done (by a contractor), put in two new 3inch thick 12 inch wide x 10 feet long support planks (two of them) for the irrigation pump to sit on (old ones are pretty rotten) and clear out the mud.  That doesn’t include putting all the working pipe together after finding all the pipe stashed on the property (six different locations I have found this year, just found a new one last week), lay out the pipe, find and purchase at least six (preferably eight) 3inch T irrigation sprinkler joints.  Not sure how much they cost, but  on Craig’s list I saw one for $30.  I need to stack all the kinked, bent and broken pipe in one location.  I may even have to have someone come out and run the pipe through a straightener.  A fourty foot piece of irrigation pipe runs around $80-$100 new.  I need about 30-40 pieces.  I think I can find it already here but I may have to do repairs to some of the existing pipes.  The irrigation and the barn are next year’s two big Summer projects.  Maybe tear down the old grainary if someone (you know who) arranges for help and comes and does it with me. 

The price of hay has risen dramatically.  I am going to feed barley hay (cheap stuff) at $145/ton (I need 10 ton) to the sheep.  I have seen hay priced anywhere from $80/ton (full of weeds per add) up to alfalfa at $245/ton.  This has also caused the price of all meat animals to go up.  I am going to sell the next two lambs at $100 each then raise the price up to $125/animal.  The going rate is around $2/lb live weight for lamb, boy can that add up fast.  We are not going to go there as that is pretty steep.  I would like to get it so that the sheep are paying for the hay (over the Winter) and irrigation (electricity and supplies for the Summer) with a little left over (not very much).  

The life of a farmer is never ending.  Wait until I get the green house installed…  just one more thing to look after. 

Well the back creek is truly dried up now.  No more runoff water from the mountains.  It lasted an incredibly long time this year.  We are hoping that that creek will start to run year round in the future.  I fenced again today, it was a mild 92 degrees in the shade.  I stood out in the sun and pounded metal posts into the ground and braced the railroad ties together with twisted wire.  Let me tell you that driving posts into the ground in mid-September is nothing like putting them in the ground in the spring.  My help was sick today, I was granted the privilege of driving the posts in by myself (Sarah usually stands on the other side of the post hole driver and we do it together.  Works well and we can put in more posts than I could do alone.).  Some of those posts I had to hit 30 times to drive them into the rocky (concrete like) ground.  It was not easy, but as in all things in life it needs to be done and I am running out of time, so it gets done the hard way.  I managed to string up a single strand of smooth wire to use as a marker for placing the metal posts.  I have to string the wire anyways, it only made sense to use the wire (instead of string) as my alignment marker. 

I ran the tractor for a little bit this last week.  I am trying to get the last little bit of mowing done since that is the current attachment on the tractor.  I mowed a path to the new gate past the barn lot.  This way the cows can be fed without driving through the barn lot.  I still have to use the tractor to get the foot deep ruts out from Winter.  Unfortunately, when mowing tall grass you cannot always see what you are mowing.  I ran over an old pile of used baling twine (from hay bales that were fed), pieces of hog wire and a coil of old barb wire.  Not good for the mower, it killed the engine on the tractor.  I had to get out and crawl underneath the mower and cut off all the twine and unwind the other assorted metal pieces.  I am going to start picking up big rocks and old piles of wood and fencing.  That way when I mow I won’t hit anything.  This is a long term project.  I figure it will take me about three years to get the little stuff all picked up.  It is much better than when we started but it takes time and you really have to work to not just throw some stuff on the ground. 

My chickens are starting to pick up production.  I collected 14 eggs today.  I had to adjust the times for my night light and closing time for my automatic chicken door.  I need to count the chickens to see if any are disappearing.  I haven’t taken chicken inventory in over a month. 

Took Annmarie out and she sighted in the 30-30.  She did great.  At 20 yards she can get a six inch grouping with three rounds.  We used the tires (future elevated garden, eventually) out in the ram pasture as a back stop.  Those slugs tore huge chunks out of the back of the tires.  No way is an animal going to get away from her again.  She put thirty rounds through it and is going to practice some more tomorrow.  Sarah is going to have to reload more shells!!

Well, the chores around the farm are not doing themselves.  We just got back from four days of camping and had a blast.  Truly enjoyed ourselves for the first time in a long time, very relaxing weekend.  I got to beat on people with sticks and pointy objects.  Of course, no one did anything on the farm while we were gone.  No little brownie doing all the chores while we were out having fun.  We did come back with eight bales of straw (archery and combat props) for the sheep to bed down this winter.  I really want an even ton of straw.  I figured I would put the call out on Craigslist for a ton of straw in the area.  I need to start concentrating on purchasing hay for the winter.  I want to lay in 10 ton of hay.  I think we will only need around 6-7 ton but just to be safe we are going to buy some extra.  The nice part about having a dark covered barn is the hay does stay together and safe from the elements.  We just make sure and feed the oldest hay first.

The sheep don’t like being locked up in the ram pasture, so I opened the side gate into the orchard today.  I am hoping the five holes I plugged in the orchard solved my escape problem (five separate holes plugged).  I am not real hopeful, but the only way to figure it out is to let them back into the orchard.  I tied the gate high so the horses could not get out but the sheep could push their way in to the orchard.  I am crossing my fingers for luck.

Going to have to get back on to the fencing starting this week.  Plus, I need to look at the old sheep shed and clean out an area for the tractor and the horses this winter if needed.   I am not sure I can get the fencing  completed and the horse lean to done before the weather turns.  It is the goal, I am just not sure how realistic of an endeavor it is.

The back creek is still running.  It is a little weird as the water table has lowered to the point were the water comes out near the chicken coop.  Above that level the back creek is totally dry. So it counts as having water, since the sheep and chickens can still use it to get their daily water dose.

It is here!  The tractor arrived this morning.  It was all clean and shiny upon delivery.  I had to work on the trailer all day, but I just couldn’t help myself so I jumped on the tractor and took it for a spin.  The mower was attached so I fired it up.  It worked great but boy there was a dust cloud.  Luckily for me I was driving into the wind toward the cattle guard.  The only problem with that is I turned around to go back.  I was covered in dust and couldn’t hardly see, finally had to shut down the mower.  For future reference, if mowing in the Summer I will need a dust mask and goggles.  So the tractor is no longer clean, it is filthy.

I managed to get the trailer all cleaned out, rearranged and emptied of most unnecessary items.  I had to go in to the tractor place to sign the contract.  Just under $20K for everything and no interest for 5 years.  A sweet deal.  Came inside the house once it got too dark to see and listened to our answering machine messages.  It was the tractor place thanking me for signing everything but they need my $2K check.  In all these discussions I don’t recall us having to put any money down. When Annmarie got home I asked her if she knew about the $2k down?  It was a surprise to her also.  So tomorrow I have to cough up $2k for the down payment.  It is doable, but I would have saved expressly for the down payment that I didn’t know about.  On a more positive note our payments will be just under $300/month.   Not sure why I expected to be able to just buy it without any down payment, but I did.

The sheep were out again today.  Only four this time, the lead ewe her baby twins and her 10 month old daughter.  I cannot figure out how they are getting out, everyone else was stuck inside.  I did go over and mess with the fence over the creek, there is no gap now.  I let the four sheep back in to the ram pasture and hopefully this stops them from getting out.

I let the baby chickens out of their pen today.  They didn’t come out but I gave them the option of it for when they are interested.  It will take them about a week to become brave enough to wander around the house.  We could use some more bug eaters.  I also spotted three tiny brown eggs so the Brahma’s may even be laying some eggs themselves.  I will have to add them in to the chicken hen laying count.