Author: Steve Hardin

Catch all before starting Barn lighting

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The Apprentice came out on Tuesday for her final before school push and we did some work. Well, she did a lot of heavy lifting and I did some other stuff! She worked on moving 120 blocks over to our bridge foundation area. After we get the foundations poured we are going to lay the bricks from the foundation over to the gate and woodshed. But before we can lay those blocks someone has to move each block, weighing 33# each! She got it done!

I was able to get an email reply from the livestock auction house near Hermiston and we pushed our little bull into the trailer. I drove right over, dropped him off and was gone in ten minutes. The check will be in the mail, he needed to go so we could make room for our bull and two rams to go into Alcatraz soon. Once we do that I can make one herd of cows as the young heifers will not get impregnated. They are for eating next year.

I stopped and got some supplies to store more pipe in the overhead of the machine shed. Eventually I will be installing this drain pipe in the barn lot on either side of the barn. I have added some drain pipe already but this should really help with keeping the mud under control in the fall and spring especially. I even remembered to cover up the pipe openings before hoisting it into the air so the birds don’t nest in the pipes. Thank you Mr Rainman for that suggestion.

I dug out the light post near our front bridge, the sheep had knocked it over and honestly we don’t need a light there. I poured a concrete footing and will build a bricked outlet box. I also dug and inserted a piece of conduit so eventually (hopefully next year) I can get the 16’ grain bin outdoor kitchen area installed and we can have some outdoor lighting. Hence, the reason for having power available.

We also managed to find two dried black walnut boards from the old chicken coop to use inside the house. One is for the new dried spice shelves I want to add in the laundry room and the other is for the upstairs bathroom. There is one spot next to the toilet that is still plywood and needs a covering. Unfortunately, I need a 21.5” x 26” triangle and my wood piece is only 20” wide. So I am going to cut a 3” square piece and glue it on one side so I can sand it all down at the same time and cut my triangle from this fabulous piece of two inch thick black walnut.

I of course set all this wonderful wood out on a stand in the yard to sand and it started to rain the next day as soon as I got home from work. I had to run out and move the wood in out of the rain. One would think I pay attention to the weather but I don’t, only during hay season.

As it was pouring down rain today The Apprentice and I worked on getting the 12V lighting system installed. We managed to actually draw out a plan and get all of the lights mounted. I started to run wire but there was a disaster at work and I had to go in. So we will hopefully get all of the wire runs completed tomorrow and maybe even get the lights to work! It’s a pretty ambitious goal.

Bridge Foundation

Steve Hardin2 Comments

Mr Rainman came out over the weekend and we worked on getting the foundation ready to pour. We built the forms out of old wood pieces we saved just for this purpose. We cobbled it together as we could not drive metal spikes into the ground, too rocky. I had to run to town to buy a pallet of Quickcrete (56 bags). We then went to turn on the mixer, our prefill check and it did not work! So I ran over to Home Depot and got another new mixer. It will only do 3.5 cubic feet at a time but it is way cheaper than trying to rent one and it is a super tight location.

So the next day Mr Rainman moved 50 bags of Quickcrete from the trailer back to our work spot and after I emptied and mixed ten bags I let him fill the concrete mixer while I shoveled the mixed concrete and tamped the poured concrete. We were only able to mix two bags at a time. It took us about five hours to mix and pour 50 bags of Quickcrete. We got the first side poured and now have to wait seven days before we can pop the forms off and rebuild them on the other side. I will have to go buy another pallet of Quickcrete to get the other side done.

I was wrecked by the time we got done. I was exhausted, I am getting too old to go out and do ten hours of hard manual labor every day on the weekends. Annmarie tells me the answer to this is to start working out every day so I don’t have to recondition my body every spring. I think after 12 years of me listening to this same speech she may be on to something, maybe. I was trying to finish the dishes so I could go to bed early and knocked over a bottle of olive oil. I had glass and oil everywhere so my bedtime was delayed another 20 minutes. After I moan a few times, while awake just moving around, I am guaranteed to sleep downstairs so I don’t keep the wife awake all night. I even manage to wake myself up when I turn over in bed and start moaning because my shoulders and hips are killing me. I keep telling her that pain is transitory. It has been four days since we did this and I feel way better, no moaning at all. I used to be able to snap back after just one night, now it takes 3-4 before I feel human again and it’s usually just in time for the weekend to start and me to do it all over again!

This may sound insane to some but it keeps me busy. I cannot imagine just sitting around and honestly, I feel better and do better if I am able to stay busy. I don’t do idle well any more. I used to do it a lot better but over the years I have come to appreciate what can be done and I can see the impact I am making on our home and I appreciate it. There will come a time where I won’t be able to do these things and I want to know that I have done what I could while I was able.

Round-Up Week

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s been a while since I blogged. I blame it on the Pendleton Round-Up. All the locals say time stops and all projects go on hold while it occurs and the reality really does reflect the saying. I have been picking fruit non stop every few days and Annmarie has been drying it, canning it or freezing it. We managed to get the 50 lambs sold before the coyotes ate any more! A person from the west side of the state came over and got all 50, he was gone 20 minutes after arrival. We had them all ready to go. Honestly, this is the best way to sell lambs, all at once. We got a fair price $100 for all over 60# and $80 for all 40-59#.

The apprentice came out for a few hours a couple of days and weeded the hillside again and went in and cleaned up the lavender patch. The patch looks great, I just need to trim it all for the winter and we will be ready for next year. We have about five plants that have taken off on their own and need to be replanted. She is about ready to go off and learn to be a farrier at the end of the month. We will have to tear out our garden soon as the temperature has started to dip down to 45F at night. We have prunes drying in dehydrator now as soon as they are done we will dry the last of the spices before winter.

I had another project for my mother that I was able to get completed before it froze. I said I would be able to do it at the beginning of summer and managed to get it done with a lot of help from a lot of other people. My mother and sister did a great job. Now I can start working on the back bridge foundations.

The quail are everywhere! You literally cannot walk around anywhere on the farm without running into a covey or if you sit still you can hear them calling from all over. They are so used to people that as long as you are 30’ away they will just ignore you. This bodes well for a healthy population going into winter. We also have two covey of Hungarian partridges. We usually only have one on the farm. We also have a bunny rabbit living along the driveway again.

When I leave for work and the moon and stars are out I always try and take a picture with my phone. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. I keep trying.

Predators 11/ Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Sunday morning we went out to do more fencing. The Apprentice just keeps coming back for more, which is a good thing. On the way out to field #1 we passed two dead lambs! Both kills occurred in field #4 near the barn lot, one near the old well and one near the dry creek bed. The one near the well was about 2/3 eaten and the other one was barely touched. After some righteous anger outbursts, now there are only 50 lambs to sell, we continued on to field #1 to fence. I did text the person who was supposed to come buy lambs on Monday. They eventually texted back and had some issues of their own and will not be able to come get lambs until Saturday. So we need to keep all 50 alive for one more week.

When we were installing the H braces we used a rolling measuring wheel to mark out 315’ approximately as each roll of woven wire is 330’. The plan was to be able to tighten one roll of wire at a time. A single roll weighs 185# so tying more than one together and trying to get it tight is brutal. It’s hard enough trying to get 185# of wire to stand upright using a hand tightener. I made sure and brought along a four foot section of pipe to use as a cheater bar when the tightener got too hard for me to tighten by hand. This allowed me to get another 6-12 inches of tightening.

On Saturday the black walnut tree was fine (see pictures from previous post) and then this morning the thing had split in half! It looks like there was a natural wishbone and the amount of walnuts caused the tree to just split in half. We are going to let it see if it can live by spending half its time on the ground. Who knows, maybe it will survive and do well. The turkeys roost in the tree also so maybe we should blame them instead of the huge number of walnuts.

We fixed the H brace and then tightened the fence to it. Once that was done then all of the T post clips had to be installed. I showed the Apprentice how to do this but it takes quite a bit of practice to be fast at it. I am doing about 2/3 of the fence. But I have had a lot of practice! We then did the wooden stays. This really makes the fence look good and it keeps the animals from pressing down on the smooth wire. We then rolled out another roll of fencing and got it up! Due to to curved nature of this fence we had to go on the outside of the railroad tie H braces in two spots. We clipped and stayed that section and then rolled out another 330’ of fence and called it a day. We are both getting very tired and sore.

I opted to do coyote patrol that evening and night. We don’t own a spotlight yet (it’s on order 300k candle power). But the moon was supposed to be out and I lined the pickup headlights to cover the area and used a powerful flashlight. I stayed out there from 1800-0000, 6 hours and never saw a single predator. Honestly, this is the most stupid problem ever. I am looking into a thermal scope and a flat shooting rifle. What we really need is a drone with a thermal camera on it that can be auto launched, flown over the farm then allow it to auto land back at it’s starting point. This way I would know whether to go out and deal with the predators. I am also looking into some thermal binoculars. The thermal binoculars and the spotlight with a good scope might just be enough. I have done the math, a protection dog costs about $1600 a year by the time you count for food and vet costs. This is a cost that continues year to year. A rifle and binocular cost is a one time event.

Fencing field #1 again

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Saturday was dedicated to more fencing. The goal is to get enough fence up around field #1 to let the animals into it. So the Apprentice and I loaded up the pickup and Kubota and headed out to get some actual fence installed. We rolled out the first 55 feet of fence, stretched it, put the T post clips on and then needed to install the wooden stays. I let the Apprentice use the DeWalt fence stapler and after she pulled the trigger a couple of times she said “that has some kick” and did not really want to staple anything with it. So when she held the first wooden stay and I ran the stapler she complained of pain and stinging from the stapler (it hurts). So she found a large old wooden fence post and she leaned that against the wooden stay then put her body weight onto the wooden buffer and had no more problems. She rolled out 330’ of woven wire along side the T posts and when we got to the next H brace we realized that it had not been completed. There was no X of tightened smooth wire in place. We left the smooth wire at the house because we thought we had done all of the X’s.

This necessitated a change in tasks so we went to installing T posts with the tractor. We did pretty good until we got near the end and then we started to bend the posts into a U shape. We fixed this by clearing the grass debris away from the post insertion site and I used a pounding technique with the bucket instead of a steady downward pressure. This got all of the T posts into the ground.

I decided to call it a day and we headed out of field #1, but when we got to the gate I realized that not having a direct gate into the field from the wheat field side is just horrible. It makes for this long convoluted route to get into field #1. So I stopped, had the Apprentice go grab one of the unused gates and three railroad ties to bring back, it took a couple of trips and some finagling on her part but she got all of the stuff to the needed spot. I took the John Deere tractor and tried to drill three large 12” holes into the gate opening I had fenced off. I managed it eventually but each hole took 10-15 minutes to drill out. I also realized that the hydraulic fluid leak is worse than I had guessed as the auger got stuck down into the hole with the 150# weight I had on the auger. I added three old tractor weights to the top arch and it makes the auger work even when the ground is hard. So I had to remove said weights to get the auger to come out of the hole. On a plus note, at least we dug out the main batch of holes with the six inch auger first. This saved us a bunch of time. So now the holes are dug and we just need to clean them out, set some posts, put in some wire X supports and then hang a gate. I was so glad to be done for the day.