Author: Steve Hardin

Winter is coming

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Well Winter is definitely coming, we had our first freeze this fall. It dropped down into the low 20’s F and there is snow visible on the mountains and low foothills. We got rain instead of snow but Winter is coming. This spurred the decision to finally go and pickup the big bales of alfalfa that I had purchased this spring. My supplier holds them for me as I almost always pick them up late! I am a reliable customer so it works for both of us. I had been selling off the old small round bales from the machine shed and I managed to get the last of them unloaded and sold the day I went and picked up the large bales. I could store most of the years alfalfa in the machine shed if I had a tractor that could lift 1400# bales 14 feet into the air. But since I do not, I put 15 bales in the machine shed and they are the very last bales that I feed in the late winter/early spring. The rest go out onto the hillside in field 4b. The animals all get locked out of that field and I usually buy a big tarp and toss a lot of pallets on it to hold it in place. After buying the vinyl sign to use as a tarp and seeing how thick it is I bought two 12’x40’ signs/tarps and will lay those across the top of the large bales. I think they may even survive the winter. They should be here by the end of the week. Mr Rainman/me bent the loader support on the Kubota. It is for removing the loader and helping it be freestanding. The pull pin got displaced and the arm popped down while a big bale was getting jostled in place and it bent. The main pin had to be cut in three places to get it to let go! A 2# hammer and punch could not drive it out. The pin has spring clips so it will have to be a special order item. We were able to keep moving hay and that was the important part.

One of the things observed when we got the machine shed cleaned out was that there is a pretty damp back corner of the hay storage side. I had put down pallets last time and that worked really well to keep the hay from rotting. Years ago I had dug a trench on the backside of the machine shed and filled it with gravel to increase the drainage removal from the roof runoff. This did help quite a bit but it looks like it needs more help. Next year the gravel needs to be dug out and some French drain hose installed and then replace the gravel. I will also run the end of the drain farther away from the building. This should help quite a bit. The front ditch works wonders but I made a big sink hole for all of the water to go into and I did not do that with the back section.

Sunday we went out first thing to sort the cows. It was cold again so I put on a long sleeve shirt, knit hat, knit neck warmer, insulated carharts, large bulky quilted long sleeve over shirt and insulated gloves. I had a heavy vest ready to go but decided that I was dressing for -20F instead of 22F. I put the puppy, Chance, on a lead rope and we opened up gates to get the cows to the corral so that the bull could be sorted off. Once the bull is in Alcatraz we can put all of the cows into one herd. We can run one herd of cows until January when this years calves need to be weaned off. We will sort off the market cows and the calves and put those 11 cows down by the houses and keep the other above the house, there will be three fences and 100 yards minimum between the two herds. In reality there are a bunch of buildings and earthworks that prevent a line of sight from happening. They can still talk to each other and will especially right after we separate them. It is about 3-5 days of lots of hollering and voiced displeasure from both parties.

Chance did great once she got settled down. She wanted to sniff the hillside and find coyotes. She does not like other dogs as they are interlopers on her property. She does fine with our other border collie but not any other dog. We have not discouraged this as our coyote problem is immense and we want her to alert us if she spots one. Mr Rainman and I merely walked to the schoolhouse, had to run halfway up the hill once and then casually walk the cows to the hen house pasture. Once there we were able to separate the bull from the rest of the herd, opened the back door to Alcatraz and he went in as directed. We did not even have to use the corral to sort! I took Chance into the front barn lot and we worked the cows in an enclosed space. I let her run around with the lead rope trailing (there is nothing for the rope to catch on) and giving her commands to move the cows. She did great! I can now get her to lay down while she is mid chase on one of the cows. She will stop and drop to the ground. We need more work on her directions, left, right and circle around. The true key though is to be able to turn off the dog no matter what the circumstances, once you can do that training the other commands is easy. Once we let the cows out there were about 18 sheep that had come in still in the area, so I had Mr Rainman call Chance and work the sheep. We want her to respond to multiple people. A one person dog is great when you are the only one working the dog but having one that will listen to other people is handy. She is a true people pleaser so this fits right in with her personality.

I had shed the gloves, hat and neck warmer by the time we got off the hillside and by the time we got to the hen house I had taken off the outer jacket and was just wearing my Carharts and a light long sleeve shirt! I should have known, the rule is to leave the house with enough clothes that you are just a little uncomfortable and want more to stay warm. Work and exercise will give you the needed heat to stay warm and you won’t sweat.

We put in another gate into the alleyway from the hen house pasture. This way the animals can always get to water. The main spring on the farm originates in that pasture. We have had the gate leaning up against the fence since last year when we finished the alleyway. Now the cows will always be able to get to water. I even chained the gate open so it cannot accidentally get closed. There is one more gate still to be installed there and one small section of fence to install so that the cows can get to most of field four but not the area where we store the cow hay.

Some things continue to amaze me. We had a volunteer pumpkin grow at the main burn pile. The alpaca did not eat the plant, flower or pumpkin but the most amazing part was the plant got zero water. This summer we went over two months with no rain at one point. Annmarie made pumpkin purée and froze it today. We will be eating the rest for dinner tonight. I am going to plant several seeds around the pile in the spring! Who knows maybe this is the trick to growing pumpkins. The quail are everywhere, we have very large coveys all over the farm and we have started to keep a quail feed block out front by the old farm equipment pile. We hear quail all of the time now whenever we are outside. Heck, we even have a new pair of barn owls on the place. They have decided to roost in the large trees out front just before sunrise. They talk back and forth and are quite noisy. The coyote hunters have tried two more times without any success. They did see more coyotes but could not safely shoot them. Pretty quick we will be locking the sheep up at night and only letting them go out into the ram pasture as they will have lambs.

Predators 13/Farm 4

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Well it is finally happening, someones have managed to actually kill a coyote on the property. I was not sure it was going to ever happen as no one had been having any luck. Everyone could only catch glances and quick peeks of them. I used to work with several people who have perfected the art of coyote hunting so the Three Stooges came out last night at dark to hunt coyotes. Larry, Curly and Moe all came out with custom rifles and thermal scopes. After seeing how amazing the thermal optics are I told the wife I needed one, she says I won’t want to go out in the dark and sit or hunt coyotes in the dark (she is right, I would rather watch TV or do chores). So I will not be getting a fancy setup any time soon. My suppressed pistol for protecting the chickens at night is good enough for me. It also makes it easier to fall back asleep after chasing chicken killers off when your ears are not ringing loudly.

The Three Stooges managed to kill three coyotes in five hours and saw a total of 8-9. They think they have mapped out most of the travel routes and believe that the next couple of times they can thin out the coyotes fairly aggressively. They think there are 10-15 coyotes on our property. This would explain why we lost so many sheep this summer. The best part of this is that they are very happy to come out and provide this service. I would not have guessed that there were 15 coyotes but I sure knew there was more than three.

Next month we should start having lambs. The ewes are now coming in every night by themselves. We did more research and are thinking about putting three sets of bells on three sheep. It is supposed to help with the predators and should help alert us. It’s a fairly inexpensive thing to try.

The two rams are currently out in the barn lot with the horse. We will separate out the bull from the cows this next week, then the sheep and bull will go into Alcatraz to spend the winter. The rams will go back into the herd around January hopefully.

Freezers moved, winterizing begins

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This has been a very productive last couple of days. Mr Rainman and the Apprentice came out on Sunday. The Apprentice is coming down with something and slugged through the weekend but it wasn’t easy. She managed to get the dirt shoveled mostly into one end of the new bridge. We think that there was a blacksmith shop right outside the old house next to the creek. There would have been water in the creek then and we are finding layers of coal scraps and a whole lot of iron scraps and horseshoes. They were storing coal in the old woodshed on the right hand side. The space is about 11×4 feet and has a side door on one end so you could really toss in the coal. There is a high hole cut into the wall at the far end to allow you to unload coal into the storage area.

We emptied the big freezer into coolers, unplugged it and hooked up a heater to blow into it while we went out and worked on the coal side of the wood shed. I had “borrowed” the wife’s really good (expensive) hair dryer in case I needed to get the ice out of the freezer, but the heater was the bomb and had it all melted out in a few hours. We kept wringing out towels, finally used a plastic tray to catch the melting ice.

I sprayed foam insulation into the cracks of the walls in the woodshed. Unfortunately, the can top was leaking and spraying foam all over my hands. I refused to quit using it and ended coating both hands with foam. I have only ever done this one other time and it was years ago. Thirty minutes later I realized why I had only ever done it once, its miserable. The only way to get the stuff off your hands once its dry is to peel the skin off your hands. This does not work out well until day 2-3.

We unwrapped the old billboard vinyl sign I purchased and attempted to get it on the walls and floor of the space. We got it about 80% installed before we needed to go get the freezer moved and filled again. The vinyl is 6 mil and was not very expensive, a 14×44’ sign was only $125. The idea is to line the entire inside of the room with vinyl and with the new metal screen over the window opening I think we can get to a fairly bug free storage area for all of the bee hive extras. We are going to use the metal hanging shelve holders as a way to put our frames up on the wall and hanging free. I think Mr Rainman and I can finish the room in one more day and then we can fill it up with all of the supplies.

We were amazed at how easy it was to move the large freezer! It’s the only one we actually emptied prior to moving. We got to the freezer room entrance and could not get the handle portion of the front door through the opening. Nope, we could not just take off the door handle. We had to move it back out and take the entire door off the freezer and then put it back on once the freezer was through the doorway. Hamburger is in the small chest freezer, fruit and vegetables have a couple of shelves in the small upright along with lamb and the tall freezer has beef and a little pork. We have another pig coming soon. One can never have too much bacon as evidenced that there is no bacon left in the freezer.

Mr Rainman and I got the stock trailer hooked up to the pickup and backed right up to the corral. In the morning we needed to sort sheep and load them up so I could drop them off. Afterwards, I spent about an hour shoveling dirt into the low spot by the gate in front of the bridge. It won’t get filled in by itself.

Monday started at 0600 by attempting to chase the sheep into the barn. They were down in the barn lot area and went to the back of the barn easily, but we could not get them to go into the barn. Mr Rainman and I were not effective. I went and got the puppy, Chance , put her on a lead rope and she had them in the barn in about three minutes. She is doing great! Stays when I want, lays down on command. She broke once but went back down within three feet of the original spot. I really think that by next spring we will have the “off” command (down) drilled in well enough that we can stop her even when she cannot stop herself. She is almost there. Mouse pouted as he had to stay in the yard. Mr Rainman took one of the best pictures of a sunrise we have seen on the farm.

It was still dark outside so we did a light check in the barn, our first one when it was actually dark! The lights are amazing and are going to make things very easy this winter. We tried to just push all the sheep to one end of the barn then I wade in and snag all of the boys. I did this four times and we could not find the fifth boy. The stupid rams kept trying to mount the pregnant ewes so we decided to pull them off, it was time anyways. We have two rams and 40 pregnant ewes and four whethers, not five. The coyotes ate our lamb, we had the other four sold. I dropped off the lambs without any difficulties and Mr Rainman spent the day winterizing the watering system and trimmed the lavender.

Field #1 ready for animals, still not completed

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Monday was spent fencing some more in field #1. A new fence around seven acres is no small feat. Not to mention the new section is curved like a C so it makes it painful to stretch. I really wanted to get the fence up so we could let the animals in to eat grass. The road side and wheat field side have an old fence that needs repaired. Unfortunately, sometimes the repair is more painful than just stringing up new wire.

The Apprentice and I got the last 500’ of fence up and even got it all clipped onto the T posts with a single strand of smooth wire on top. I used a four foot piece of pipe as a cheater bar to really crank down on the fence tighteners until the fence started to sing when I ratcheted up the tightener a notch. I opted to not install the wooden stays yet. I wanted to get all of the fence up and without the stays the fence will hold the livestock. Mr Rainman and the Apprentice can get all of the wooden stays on three sides of the field installed on Wednesday while I am at the paying job.

So we went to the far end and worked on the ditch crossing and did battle with the downed black walnut tree. It landed right where we needed to install a railroad tie and put the ditch crossing in place. We managed to get it installed and the paneling cut and in place. The last thing was to install the gate and we had it done enough. Which was a good thing as both of us needed a day off and no fencing. The Apprentice has collected an astounding amount of bruises and scratches in the last two weeks.

Annmarie is inspecting our hives and deciding whether we are going to get any honey this year. The bees split and they have not managed to make as much honey as last year so far. So I don’t know if we are going to get to harvest any.

The quail are everywhere! It is amazing to see how many we have this year. They are really calm and just run around everywhere.

We did have one of the brown alpaca just keel over dead Sunday night. The nephews found it on Monday. It was one of the old ones and was mighty skinny. I had been giving it the side eye every time I saw it when I was headed down the driveway. We now have 10 alpaca. It’s plenty and at least five of them will just come right over to the cars for a treat. If you open the trunk on the wife’s car they will just push up to the hatch opening and expect something. They are so insistent at that point that they will even let you touch on them until they get said treat.

Freezer room closing in

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I had a plan on Sunday to get the freezer room almost done. I knew I would not be able to install the insulation in the ceiling as I need it purchase one more roll first. I figured if I could get the last section of the wall covered and then I could use something on the ceiling to hold the insulation up. I wasn’t sure what but I have two full sheets of wood paneling and 1/2 sheet of 3/16” plywood. I think it’s enough to cover the ceiling. After I got the siding up, four separate pieces of varying types and sizes of siding, I figured I could use the scraps of 1×4 boards I had used for trim in the office. I had just enough to cover the ceiling liberally and make it easy to install the paneling. Paneling is not designed to be hung upside down and it will need a lot of wide headed screws to hold it up. This took a lot longer than I had anticipated. Piecing things together may not cost much in materials but it does cause you to use a lot more screws and a lot more time.

I cut off a little piece of the thick bathroom future countertop, after sanding two edges I glued them together. I need to cut a triangle shape and was missing about two inches of the tip of one triangle to complete the top. I will leave it glued and clamped for a few days as I will not be able to work on it until then. I will need to put a new blade on my skill saw before I cut the triangle. I plan on sanding it all down first up to 80 grit, cut the proper shape and then finish sanding it. I was hoping I could crawl underneath the counter and screw up from the bottom to hold it in place, but I don’t believe I will be able to do that. I don’t really want to just use glue. I may have to drill four holes in it, about 1/2’ deep and then attach it directly from the top then fill it with a walnut dowel glued in and sanded down. I am going to have to use a polyurethane coating to seal the top. I need something that can get dusty and will be easy to wipe off when its cleaned. This is still an idea that is incubating, hopefully by the time its sanded down I will have finalize my attachment and finishing plans.

I have two very nice pieces of three foot by 20” chunks of two inch thick black walnut. I am unsure where I am going to use them. Once the freezer room is done and the freezers are moved I will start working on my office area. I have the inner door (old wooden exterior door), it just needs a new opening created that will hold it. My current door opening is not square and about an inch too short and too narrow. I will have to reframe the top and one side to make it fit correctly. I keep fluctuating on what I will setup in the man room. I believe I am going to setup the reloading equipment on one side and then start working on a jewelry bench on the other side. I will need to keep an eye out for a scrap kitchen hood to use as a soldering exhaust hood. Annmarie is so happy with her indoor “grow” super quiet vent fan that I think I will use that as the suction source for the ventilation.

This will get the room closed up but I will still need to buy a new back door and a new window. I need to fix the back porch as one corner is trying to fall apart. I will also need to line the entire inside of the room with boards. Needless to say it may take me a while to get this done!

Annmarie spotted our barn owl! Their used to be a pair of them but in the last few years we have only spotted one. Their was a mated pair on the farm for over 30 years. Maybe the pair is just hiding so well that we only ever spot one at a time?