Author: Steve Hardin

House weekend ready

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By Friday I was ready to have some time off and was looking forward to getting a project completed on the farm. I usually spend Fridays cleaning the house. It allows me to spend all weekend outside. I knew we could not cut hay as it had just rained the day before. So instead I worked on the bathrooms, kitchen and floors. The puppy, Milo and I went all over the house. We are working on getting him to follow one of us around when we are present.

I picked up and then realized that I needed to do something with those hot peppers that I had dried over the winter on the breeze porch. They felt dry and had been up there for eight months so I figured I could just use a mortar and pestle to grind them up. Nope, they were not crunchy dry. So I broke out the food processor, broke them off their stems and filled the entire food processor. I fired that bad boy up and this fine powder started to leak out everywhere. My nose started to run and my voice started to change. I had some big chunks around 1/4” that would not break up so I poured all of the powder and chunks into a quart jar with a screen lid. We have those for growing sprouts.

The wife called while I was trying to wash up and clean the food processor. I could not talk and my nose started to run like a raging spring runoff creek. She was trying to carry on a conversation on the phone and I had her on speaker phone. She thought I was dying and I was unable to voice any reassurances. I finally managed to get everything rinsed off and tossed into the dishwasher. I started the dishwasher up despite it only being half full. That noxious powder needed a different home.

I took the quart jar and put it in our new food drying for 16 hours then on Sunday I poured it all back into the food processor. This time I took that sticky food wrap and put it around all the seams on the food processor. I also filled a sarge metal bowl with hot soapy water so I could immediately immerse the dirty contaminated food processor into water to cut down the dust. This time I let it run for a few minutes and those little chunks broke up. I dumped it out into two small containers and then dumped the food processor into the soapy water. I only hacked and gagged a little bit the second time. I am unsure what to do with the killer powder now. But I have it!

Can we mow?

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All I wanted to do on Sunday was mow cheatgrass. We had to bend out part of the metal skirt on the mower on Saturday and after mowing into the dark I had managed to bend it back. Mr Rainman said we had better fix it before going out to mow as we would just have to fix it again the next day. So we broke out the welder and grinder and then really looked at the mower. Wow! After 15 years the poor mower has cracks, bends and broken stuff all over the frame. We tried to bend the skirt but even with pipe wrenches we could not get it back in place. We had to split the skirt with a grinder cutting blade and bend smaller pieces. I would then attempt to weld them back together.

I did wear heavy leather gloves, arm and chest protection. I still managed to drop hot metal on my ankle by sitting too close to the welding. We had to cut a few filler metal pieces that I welded in place. I was also able to weld some of the cracks closed. I am still having trouble at time with making holes and then not being able to fill them. I keep getting a little better at welding every time I do it. I don’t expect to ever be an expert but in a couple of years I will be passing. Currently, I would rate my welding skill as good enough to hold stuff together. Welding overhead is not very fun and requires a lot more technique. This took a couple of hours to complete.

I am trying to use up all of the different types of spray paint I have on hand so color matching an item is not really a concern. Once I get all the extra used up I will keep green and black on hand. For now I am just getting a coat of paint on to help provide some needed rust protection.

The mower worked like a champ after that when I went out and mowed. After working on it last year and this year I am hoping to be able to ignore it for another five years. I do recommend eye protection as the rubber guard on the intake area is no more and occasionally stuff comes flying out.

Hay storage remodel

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I have been thinking about hay so Mr Rainman was mowing fields, the cheat grass is trying to take over parts of the farm. I went in and moved out the last of the broken hay bales and started to dig out the hay storage area in the machine shed. Once I had all the hay out I cleaned it out with the bucket and started working on digging a “T” shape at the back of the building to allow me to put in a French drain that will remove moisture and drain it out into a water sink in front of the building. The runoff from the roof is collecting and causing moisture issues.

Mr Rainman and I spent about two hours digging ditch and moving the dirt out. We are waiting on gravel to be delivered. I ordered it and it came this week. The ditch needs to be a little deeper and then I will install the drain and fill it up with gravel. Once that is done the entire bottom will be graveled. My hope is that I can get the Gingerman to come over with a bigger tractor and stack the bales 3-4 high. I could store 45 large bales in that area if they are stacked. Once we have the inside all completed we will work on a French drain on the backside of the machine shed. I dug a gravel trench years ago and it did make a huge difference but now I want the majority of the moisture to go away fairly quickly. We are no longer just getting “a little” rain at a time now. We are getting 1/2-1” at a time! This causes other problems. If you had not noticed the problems tend to change therefore causing new problems that old solutions no longer cure.

Once Mr Rainman left I got on the tractor and mowed cheatgrass until dark. I remembered why I need to not wear my hearing aids with ear muffs after the muffs pushing my ear up against the hearing aid for four hours. I had a heck of an external ear ache that lasted a few hours. Plus, the external pocket battery did not have enough juice to recharage my Bluetooth speaker headphones so I had to mow in silence. I charged them up that night so that would not happen again!

The wife says I managed to snore and moan at the same time in my sleep that night. She believes that I should do some form of baseline exercise year round instead of diving right in at spring time and working myself into the ground or until I cannot physically continue. It does make more logical sense, no question about it. In another month or so I should be past most of the pain.

We are having raccoon issues again. We have one coming to the back porch where we feed the cats. The Gingerman and wife failed to kill it. I have not seen it yet but keep getting woken up by the dogs barking which causes me to get out of bed and attempt to see the raccoon. No luck, but I am not losing chickens yet so I will keep after it. Eventually, I will get lucky or the raccoon will get unlucky.

Annual alpaca shearing

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Last week we got 1/2” of rain in two days! This was much needed rain but it did put a kink in the thought of cutting hay. I lined up some help for Friday and was afraid the alpaca would still be wet and we would not be able to shear them. I wanted to do it about three weeks earlier but failed to send off my blades to be sharpened soon enough and had to wait for the newly sharpened shearing blades to arrive.

I was on puppy duty that day so Milo had to come out to the barn with me to shear alpaca. I had him tied to a lead in an attempt to keep out of the way. He was no always out of the way as he is a puppy. We had the area all set up and the alpaca in the barn lot ready to shear by 0830. Mr Calm helped me shear and Mr Rainman worked on weed eating yard, planting strawberries, cleaning up, stringing power and stopping to help us catch a new alpaca most of the time.

The shearing went amazingly. We took a 15 minute break and even stopped for about 35 minutes for lunch and still got done in 5.5 hours! The difference was there is not a ton of dust and no dried cheatgrass in their hair. I did not wait until the dead of summer for the first time! I have nine blades for nine alpaca due to how fast they get dulled. I only used 2 blades for everyone and we were done incredibly fast! No dirt and cheatgrass caked in everywhere made all the difference. I did knick one of the young ones a couple of times. Their skin is incredibly tender. Plus, one of the young ones had a couple of bad feet where the toenails had curved under its hoof. It was definitely deformed. We only kept the fleece from the five younger alpaca and of that only kept the best part, the saddle. It had almost no vegetable matter so should be super easy for Annmarie to clean and spin.

The old hair from the older alpaca and the seconds from the others will all be used out in our flower beds to keep the weeds down. It makes a great weed barrier. We have enough now to cover the entire area as long as we can keep the puppy from eating it. He loves to play in it. When we had only one alpaca’s worth the wind was blowing so much that the pile kept moving. He was barking up a storm and lunging at it. He was gonna get it! I had to move him over to the hay room entrance steps so he would calm down. Eventually he decided that a nap was needed despite the noise, the wind and all of the hair blowing around.

More babies

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It has been the season for babies. Our cows are now having calves and they are all coming fairly quickly. We have six calves on the ground now and I think there should be 1-3 more possibly. This means our bull did his job! Now only if the rams would learn from the bull, we have had the rams in with the sheep for almost two months now and Annmarie just saw them mounting a ewe the other day. We’re taking them out next week as we do not want to lamb for five months again. We will only have to lamb for two months this way. Which is a good thing as the rams are almost as wide as they are long. They are getting incredibly fat free ranging with the ewes. Everyone is fat and most of them have about half their winter coat rubbed off. The lucky few that have managed to clear their coat look great!

We did it again, and got another puppy. We have gotten used to having an ankle biter dog running around at the house. A dog with no job. We really liked the Brussel Griffin breed but the last two dogs have died young and had a lot of respiratory issues. Annmarie has been doing a lot of research and we like the terrier breed overall. We ended up getting a Border Terrier. He was over in Montana so we drove over and back in one day! Fourteen hours in the car is a little much. It has been a week now and Milo is finally settling in. He spends two days at each Grandmother’s house while we are at work. I have Fridays off so he is hanging out with me on Friday. The only real problem we are having is crate training him. We have been sleeping on the floor near the kennel in an attempt to get him used to the crate. It’s sorta working, we keep scooting the pile of blankets further away from the crate every couple of days. He does not appreciate the need for him to sleep alone. He is incredibly food driven. He can eat all of is food in about 15 seconds. So we have had to start figuring out how to slow him down. We were using a treat toy but we have to refill it three times for any meal. Our daughter told us about snuffle mats. I had no clue this was a real thing. Ours came a couple of days ago and it takes him about ten minutes to eat every meal now. This means he can actually breath while eating. Potty training is going well but going outside every hour is probably the real reason it is working.

Our lambs are doing well and we have been putting the sheep into the barn lot every night. So far, I do not think we have lost any lambs or ewes to the coyotes. I used the sheep to mow the front yard again. I am going to have to figure this out eventually after we redo the front lawn. The boom truck they are using to install the new siding is very heavy and we have large ruts in the ground now. The dogs had already been digging holes so the yard is a mess. We need to get the front rock wall completed and the short metal fence installed on top of it. On we get that done then we will kill the entire yard, regrade it, install underground sprinkler and then replant it. We want to go with some form of grass substitute that doesn’t need mowed or mowed 1-2 times a year. Once we do that the dogs will be kept out of the area around the house and can hang out on the front hillside. We are going to install the gazebo this year so the dogs can shelter out of the weather.

We want to install a drain in the center of the gazebo so that no rain or water can accumulate inside, it will also make it easier to clean out. I will put some lights and power inside but I will make sure the outlets are water proof so the gazebo can be washed down with a hose. I just need to order a couple of dump trucks of gravel to get this process started. We will be installing seven upright posts, installing the walls and then start pouring the concrete floor. We will concrete in the seven posts to provide stability and anchor the structure down to the ground.