I started spraying weeds today.  In reality this is a necessity.  There is currently no way I can control the weeds without using herbicides.  There is about 25 acres that I am trying to keep clear and there are not enough animals to keep up with all this rain!  Needless to say it took me over two hours to get the sprayer hooked up, strapped down, powered up, parts purchased (two separate trips) and running.  I sprayed a brand name called “Banvel-d” a couple of years ago.  When I went to buy more herbicide today that brand was not being carried so instead I purchased “Rifle-d”, much cooler name.  The sprayer has one small leak on a nozzle assembly, but it will work just fine.  If I am in Pendleton later in the week I can pick up the part and replace it, but for now I am going to keep spraying weeds.  Had a heck of a time in the orchard, the milk weeds and thistles are so tall that the mule kept getting high centered on the weeds.  Lots of forward and backing up to get over the weeds.
Annmarie and I were walking back from our in law’s house near dark and the weeds were already starting to wilt!  I may have the concentration a little strong, but I did follow the directions on the bottle.

We have been locking up the chickens every night since the Chicken Butler is currently nonfunctional.  Unfortunately, Annmarie informed me that the chicken door has been opened the last couple of mornings after she locked it up at night.  I have lost another 5 hens.  I am down to only 16 laying hens…  this is killing me.  At this rate I am not going to have any chickens.  We had a gate locking mechanism on the chicken door that has to be turned just right to lift off the latch.  So tonight I put a large carabiner on the latch.  I do not see a raccoon getting that off.  I have also expanded my kill zone.  I set up a trap at the in laws on her back porch.  Something is eating sunflower seeds off her deck at night.  I also set up another live trap outside the chicken yard.  I NEED to KILL the nasty predators before I have no chickens left.  Again, this is a stupid problem to have.

I have a weekend already lined up for my bridge endeavor.  The second weekend of July is the start of bridge construction.  I am going to tear out the old bridge and get the four pillars and footings poured before that weekend so it will be build time.  I have someone coming to help me finish it up.  Looking forward to getting this out of the way.

Ditch crossing before tightening fence and installing cable over the water.

Well I gave it a go today.  I was hoping to finish the orchard fence today and just could not get it done.  I got all the crossings buttressed and stabilized.  I strung up the woven wire fencing and put on the first row of smooth wire.  I had to cut the panels in half as I do not currently have enough available to make the entire crossing.
We turned the sheep loose in the orchard tonight.  When I came back from my parents one sheep was already outside the fence.  I am thinking she crawled under the gate and didn’t jump over the low fence…
I will keep thinking that all weekend long.

I had to run wire in X shape between both posts to stiffen fence end. I bought 60 feet of cable for the two crossings and ended up with an extra four feet.  Good thing I didn’t buy 50 feet like I was initially planning.

Annmarie was commenting on the beautiful sunset so I ran out and managed to snag this picture.  It was truly a very gorgeous event.  Glad I caught some of it.

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Old fencing by the equipment graveyard looking into the foothills of the Blue mountains.

Here is the view after we pared down the number of posts and cut off the extra height.

So what is wrong with this picture?  I did not think to look down the fence line (assumed they were all lined up) and Annmarie pointed out that I would be moving another post yet again tomorrow.  This will be the fifth time I will have moved a post on this section of fence alone.  The automatic post hole digger was nice but I sure did get the holes all over the place with it.

Sarah and I went out and pulled up the extra railroad ties today.  We loosened them with a chain and the pickup, then pulled them up.  This worked okay for the first two posts, but the third one was too heavy for us to pull out.  So we inserted a chunk of tall wood under the chain and cinched the chain at the base of the post and used the pickup to force the lever action.  Worked really well, should have done this for the firsts two posts.  
I trimmed off the tops of the posts today with the chainsaw and cut in ledges for the stiffening boards.  I only had to cut on nine posts and I had to sharpen the chain saw three times and fill the gas four times!  Those ties are very hard.  My poor chain saw bar was smoking and getting duller by the minute.  Sparks were flying.  I hate seeing sparks when I am using my chain saw.  Luckily there weren’t any more posts.  It is a twenty minute endeavor just to sharpen the blade each time.

Now that Annmarie pointed out the post that needs to be moved again, I will have to do that first thing in the morning.  After I get the post re-positioned then I can tighten the ends up against each other and install the cables across the irrigation ditch.  Once that is all completed I will be ready to string out wire.  Not sure I will be ready for wire tomorrow.  I will try very hard to get some wire up and in place.  If I can get just the sheep woven wire up we could probably turn the sheep loose in there this weekend.

I had to go to the feed store today to buy more metal fence posts, cable and connectors for the orchard fence.  I figure by the time we are done with the orchard and barn lot fence we will have spent over $1000 this year on fencing supplies.  They add up fast and that is with me getting used woven wire from the scrap metal guy.  Nice part is all the fencing I am doing is going to last at least twenty years without too much maintenance.  Learned the hard way that you cannot just haphazardly throw stuff up or you will be constantly fixing it.
Sarah read an article on how to raise colony rabbits.  You just create a large pen and they live in the large enclosure.  This cuts down on maintenance and upkeep (as I eye the far hillside by the creek).  I would have to bury the fence and ultimately put some bird netting over the top to keep the birds of prey away, but it sounds very doable.  They could just eat hay like every other animal we own.  I would have to run an electric fence around the outside of the enclosure to keep all the predators out.  I like the idea.

Hard to see the posts now that they are trimmed and quantity minimized.

The baby lamb is growing and is very fast now, hard to catch the little booger!

Well I spent most of the weekend fencing.  Sarah and I set railroad ties in the orchard on Saturday.  She got sick about 2/3 of the way through.  She is so not used to hard manual labor any more.  I ended up finishing with some help from Annmarie.  We are trying to get Sarah to take her drivers license permit test so she can start driving.  This means she has to practice driving when we are on the farm.  I made her drive the pickup when it was out in the orchard.  The only problem with that is there was an irrigation ditch on one side of us and four foot drop off on the other side.  The pickup needed to be turned around by jockeying it back and forth.  Witch then left her with a drive over a 10 foot culvert and eventually to a 10 foot gate opening.  After much yelling and screaming (partly out of fear for my life and frustration with the amount of time it would take to get the pickup out of the ditch) we did make it out of the orchard.  We had to stop twice so she could finish crying, but she persevered (dad would not let her quit) (and only the front tire went into the ditch while crossing the culvert and she managed to back out) and the pickup doesn’t have any new dents.

Anything not in line with the metal posts will be removed and on the far side a couple more will disappear also.  After the fence is installed I will shorten the posts.

Orchard fence with tie posts installed, they look tall because I have not cut them off, will do that after stringing and tightening the fence.  It is the very last step to the fence construction step.

This is my second attempt at an orchard fence.  The posts are very obtrusive.  They are sticking way up in the air and making an eye sore.  After some discussion it was decided that I need to minimize the number of posts utilized in that fence line but I didn’t know how to do that as I am crossing the irrigation ditch twice.  So my engineer wife came up with a great idea.  I had to install extra posts so that I could cross the irrigation ditch at a ninety degree angle.  I was using boards across the ditch to stiffen the posts and the longest board I have is 16 feet long.  She told me to use a piece of cable and I could then hang wire panels from them.  So I am going to do that.  This will allow me to pull up four posts and I will remove two more from the back side of our people gate.  This will let me remove 6 of the 13 posts.  Great ideas usually never occur in my life on the first or second try.  This is why experience is invaluable, but how do you get experience if you have never done it before?  By doing the same thing over and over until you get it right!  This whole farm thing is one big learning curve.  I am still not over the hump of the bell curve yet.  After I finish the fencing, the bridge and rebuild the barn then I will be at the hump.

So on Sunday, I went up and set the posts for the upper barn lot fence (I need a new name for that area, may start calling it the spring pasture for the spring (water) that surfaces there).  Way more posts, but not as obtrusive as they are very spread out.  I will be installing three gates on that section of fence.  A new gate in the outer fence so that the person leasing the pasture can drive in and out of the pasture without going through the barn lot.  The ruts in the barn lot are over a foot deep now after having had a tractor drug over them.  That new gate will also allow me to tighten the fence.  There was nothing I could pull to as most of the fence is pretty loose.  I needed an anchor point.  After all that fencing is completed I want to put in one small internal fence to separate the barn lot and the spring lot.  This will give us six separate pastures to rotate the sheep and horses through.  Should be plenty of opportunities to keep the animals rotated and the grass happy.

Horses up by the house, they keep trying to stay in pen sized areas.  We are pretty sure they didn’t see a lot of pasture.

Purebred Arabians, they are so tame they come when called like the dogs, sheep, and chickens.  It is incredibly handy.