Author: Steve Hardin

Haying completed, for this year…

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Mr Rainman and I went over last weekend and finished getting the rest of the woven wire up in the field in Hermiston. The only thing left is to get a row of electric wire mounted near the vinyl fence on one side of the field and we can drop off the ewe sheep. It only took about four hours for the both of us but I am not even sure I could have done it alone without cutting the woven wire near each tree. I would not have been able to get it behind the tree alone intact. It of course ended up raining on Sunday afternoon.

Today I finally managed to get the last of the hay picked up and haying done for this calendar year. I had some help loading the trailer and the back of the pickup. Loading the back of the pickup allowed me to only have to make one trip! I had to toss some of the small bales from last week back into the machine shed before I had enough room to empty out the trailer. There is probably almost 5000# of hay in small round bales ready to be fed. We will feed out the small round bales before I use the large bales. There is probably 6-8 weeks worth of feed in just round bales and that is really dependent on when we get our final freeze or snow flies.

I have to say that loading and unloading two ton of hay by myself is not quite as easy as it used to be. I am definitely more tired than I would have been even five years ago. Again, working until 0300 at the paying job then haying the next day is not a normal schedule. I just need to get all of the hay equipment cleaned off and put away back into the machine shed for the winter.

My next project that I hope to get to this weekend is getting the bricks laid down for the gazebo. I just have to get the compactor running then spread out the sand and compact it down. Then it is merely laying out 1600 bricks in a pattern.

Haying more done

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In a self defense move, I rolled all of the completed bales to the outside of the upper field. I was pretty certain I was going to have to pick them up alone and I wanted to make it easier on myself. I also wanted to leave the upper field clean so after I moved all the completed bales I went through the entire field again and raked it up a second time into four long rows. I managed to get another 20 bales out of the leftover grass from the first baling.

I left the bottom for an around a week, the Gingerman went over and raked it up into rows so I could sleep after working the night shift. It rained a 1/4” of rain later that week so I let it sit for a few more days before turning it again. I then let it sit for another five days in the hopes that it would dry out.

When I went over to bale it I had loaded up on shear bolts so the toolbar was all ready for me to repair any issues. I broke almost 25 shear bolts just baling the small bottom area. I would get close then an entire section of wet damp grass would jump into the baler and break the shear bolt! There was a very large amount of swearing involved in getting that field all baled up. By the time I was done it was taking me about three minutes to replace the shear bolt and get the tractor up and going again.

I had Mr Rainman for two days last weekend and we concentrated on getting the lower bales picked up one day. We were able to load up 30 bales into the back of the pickup, strap down each of the three rows and then creep up the steep rocky road in 4wd low. We only lost part of one load when the strap popped loose. We put 30 bales into each cow feeder at the house. So we filled all three feeders, one for the female pregnant cows, one for the feeder cows below and then one in Alcatraz. Currently, the only animals in Alcatraz are our three rams. Eventually, we will have to sort off the bull and put him in there with the rams.

We took the wettest bales and dumped them out for feed to be immediately eaten. Unfortunately, despite the farm looking like a food desert the cows and sheep are ignoring the lush green grass available in the feeders. Obviously, they know something we do not.

2/3 sheep moved

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This last couple of weeks have been a blur. I am tying to get things wrapped up before Winter officially gets here and I simply don’t have enough time in the day to do everything. I am covering night shifts at work and they are random so it is taking its toll on me. I had to work last weekend so the the kids took our lamb/cull sheep herd to Hermiston for us. It took them two loads and there are 68 sheep over there now.

I still need to get over there and finish fencing in that new pasture so we can take the pregnant ewes over. Mr Rainman is going to help me next weekend and we will get the fence up and get the sheep over there at the same time. I have several random nights this week and a two day class to teach at work so my fence building days are limited.

My Jerusalem artichokes are doing very well! They finally formed flowers and the bees are loving them. We are still trying to decide where to put them permanently. A lot of it is going to stem height. I won’t really know how well they did until I dig them up. I am going to leave them alone as long as they have flowers on them. They are a great flower for the bees as it is incredibly late compared to everything else.

The pigeons have been taunting me. I have not had time to go out and work on thinning them out. We had five at the beginning of the year and there is probably over 40 now and I have only managed to kill eight. I came home and the entire roof of the barn peak was covered in pigeons. By the time I could take a picture, most of them had flown away. I have not forgotten about them! If I do nothing we could end up with a couple of hundred next year. They really are the rats of the sky.

Our flower bulbs came in the mail so I will need to get the right half of the front yard flower bed set up soon. The plan is to move the temporary fence, finish lining the inside of the area with small rocks and level off the area. I will dig and plant all of the bulbs on this one side then I am going to lay down a single layer of chicken wire directly onto the ground. This will keep our, digging to the earth core, border collie out of the flower bed. Hopefully, she will not see it as a challenge.

Haying half done

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It has been a long couple of weeks. I am still covering random night shifts at work so I am trying to squeeze in haying in between the repairs, sleep and rain. I was going over to cut the neighbor’s field when I realized that the stop nut had fallen off of the sickle bar transport bar. It is of course Metric and I do not have a replacement laying around, but what I did have laying around was a whole bunch of cable clamps of various sizes. I clamped one of those onto the bar and it works great as a stop nut! This will now be my permanent fix.

I ended up having to cut the field twice, it was pretty thick, tall and wet so it wanted to push down and avoid the sickle bar mower. Once I had it all down I had to leave it for five days before I could turn it the first time. It is beautiful grass hay but if I bale it wet I am just going to create a fire hazard at our place.

Said neighbor convinced me I should cut his lower field also. It was even taller and wetter than the upper field! It also had a lot of sprinkler heads poking up out of the ground. I managed to get it all cut and only cut off one sprinkler head 3/4” PVC pipe riser.

I had to turn the upper field two more times before I baled it. Even after all of that I had a two sections of the upper field, about 10 bales that I had to wait until I did the lower section as they were just too wet.

Bathroom remodel day 47

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Well it’s that time again, time to actually go back to an old project and try to get it closer to the finish line. The bathroom is totally functional at this point. Never mind that there is no storage or that we cannot hide electronics. The shower has hot water that gets you clean, the sink dispenses water and the toilet flushes, the crucial tasks can be checked off the list. It was going to rain on Sunday so I decided to start in on the custom bathroom cabinet. I bought furniture grade 3/4” oak plywood at a paltry $95/sheet. I was disappointed to learn that it was necessary to trim all of the edges of the plywood to get rid of the damage on the edges. I don’t have a furniture grade table saw so I found this guide rail and put an expensive blade on my DeWalt skilsaw and made the first cut. I then had to go back and tape the edge I wanted to cut and cut through it again to get a clean cut. The first cut still caused some tear out on the laminate.

My goal is to get all of the pieces cut, then sand them all, then assemble them. I will stain it once I get it assembled. I am going to just go with the Tried and True finish. I like it and it tolerates moisture fairly well.

The guide rail did okay but I will need to run the pieces through a table saw. I have about a 1/8” difference near the middle. I need an expensive guide not a $30 guide if I want a perfectly straight edge. I did this a couple of weeks ago and have only managed to get most of the small pieces cut since then. I need some help getting the table saw down and running them through, Gingerman has agreed to help but our schedules have not been coinciding recently. I am working intermittent random nights for the last month with another month to go and it is really slowing down my projects. You tend to want to sleep the next day after being up all night.