Author: Steve Hardin

Winter is coming

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It was time I use that fancy welder I purchased last year to actually make something. It has been almost two years since I took the welding class so I had to practice and get up to speed on a few things. I love my new welding hood, I especially love the grinding setting on the glass so it doesn’t darken when you are using the grinder. The only real problem with this is you have to remember to turn it to weld before you set that first arc or it is very bright! I only did that once this time. I had to replace the upright square tubing for the seeder aperture controller. A couple of years ago I kinked it by lifting it into the back of the tractor. It vibrated in half yesterday and needed to be repaired ASAP as I was getting ready to plant all weekend. I went to the local scrap/fabrication yard and picked up 2’ of 1.25” square thick walled tubing for $10. While I was there I scored some more large bale hay! A true miracle in this year of low hay yields. I will be picking up the hay as soon as I get the grass seed planted. I went home, ground the old part apart, prepped the tubing and got the welder to work! I was able to weld it, I still need more practice, I burned through the pipe on one side and then had to go back and fill it in. I only had rust paint available, I tried black first but the nozzle was plugged.

Mr Rainman has been coming out for the last three days and prepping fields. I had visions of spending this weekend planting and I think it is going to happen. I was able to plant about 1.5 acres of Triticale today and one acre of grass. I have been planting the difficult areas first. It took me most of the day to get the cultivator dialed in and working the way I want it to. I should have the aperture opening adjusted for grass by tomorrow. Once I have that in place then Mr Rainman can plant all day Monday and Tuesday. I will have to pick it up again on Wednesday. My seed order from PGG did not come in yet, I had some leftover (double recommended #) and I purchased some more locally. I want to use the PGG grass on the large 7 acre field out by the road. The weather channel says it is going to freeze this week. The planted fields done with the cultivator look good.

The sheep are just not with the plan. We should be having lambs dropping out everywhere and we have had one set of twins just born in the last two weeks. Mr Rainman and I will tag and band them all in the morning. They are just eating hay and doing nothing most of the time.

Our local wheat fields were planted last weekend with Club wheat. The Club variety seems to do well in our soil and it is fetching a very nice price.

The plumbing hole down at the mother in law’s house is covered. I just need to go down and finish cleaning up around the area.

The Kubota tractor got its first oil change today, it already has 140 hours on it! Mr Rainman worked on smoothing out the fields and removing organic matter while I used the green tractor to plant grass seeds. I managed to break off a bolt that I had tightened yesterday and then I proceeded to break the angle adjuster on the seed hopper. I stripped the threads, I took it off to try and get it back together and realized that I could have moved it an inch forward by changing bolt hole, I didn’t know I could do that. When the new one comes I will hook it up correctly for the type of use it sees on the farm.

The front porch still needs those last boards installed, I just picked up the column trim this week and the gates need to be hung to keep all four legged critters off of our deck. The quail are all over the farm. Saying there are over 200 is no exaggeration. I am hoping the winter is perfect and the quail all make it through. We could have a real bunch of them by next year.

Fall is here

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I have been busy, we just got done with the Pendleton RoundUp and I don’t get any stuff done on the farm for about ten days around that event, my paying job requires a lot of attention during that week. The nice thing was we got some rain on the last weekend. We had 0.56” over two days and have had a total of 0.91” of rain in the month of September. This is excellent news for us but it did take a few days before it was possible to get back out in the fields. My helpers have been out hunting so I have been on my own. I spent two days getting field #1 ready, Mr Rainman had picked so many rocks I only ended up picking four bucket loads over two days. There is probably a couple more bucket loads that are obvious but the huge rocks are all gone and even the medium sized ones are gone. I don’t think I will break a sickle bar mower tooth on any of the rocks left. I have some organic matter on the edges of the field that needs to be piled up out of the field and it will be ready to plant. The field still has too many weeds for us to plant alfalfa in it yet. I am unable to get fall barley or fall oats locally. Most of the fields are too muddy to plant in the spring. So my only choices are grass or triticale. Triticale has a pretty narrow window to harvest in and that is problematic for me as my other job takes up time. PGG did not have grass seed in stock so it had to be delivered. I will be checking in on Monday and get more ordered. Annmarie wants us to plant grass seed in the upper field. This will allow me to still spray with 2-4-D and get a handle on the thistle weeds.

The chickens have learned to let us know when they are out of food. They will come running whenever they see you and become shadows. They won’t leave until you feed them. Once fed they all crowd in and try to get to the same feeder even though there are other choices. Our lone rabbit out front is still alive and kicking, we see it almost every day now. The quail are every where and are amazing. I am sure they are my favorite gamebird. The one we have not seen a lot of are pheasants. We had a lot last year and I am not seeing as many this year. The pidgens are multiplying and starting to get over the magical 30 total number. Once they stay at 30 for a year, they multiply at an exponential rate the next year. There are a bunch of dens/holes in the upper fields from coyotes but I have not seen any coyotes this year.

The pregnant sheep have spent the weekend on the front yard and hillside knocking down the weeds and grass. The dogs are out on the run so they are protecting my hens and chicks plants and the trumpet vine from a sheep induced thinning. There is enough green grass that I think I will have to let the sheep in 3 of 7 days. Some of those ewes are so pregnant they can hardly walk. We expected the herd to be done lambing by now not just three ewes and no one in the last three weeks. Thank goodness we went and bought a replacement ram!

It’s supposed to rain

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Well it’s midweek and I was able to get some work done at home. I had to juggle some things around as I will be covering shifts at work the rest of the week due to shortages and Covid. Mr Rainman has been working on getting field #1 ready to plant. He was able to disc yesterday and pick up rocks in the fairly nice part of the field. Today he spent four solid hours picking rocks only in about 1.5 acres and applying them to the new water berm I am building up there. I am trying to get the old berm back into shape and then build a secondary berm to stop any overflow or breakthroughs from flooding the entire field. It will take me about another two years to get it all done. I want it in place so when I plant alfalfa I won’t have to worry about the field getting flooded and ruined. He was able to get the entire field picked of rocks and all disced. I just need to go up there with the harrow and it will be ready to plant.

First thing this morning we took a couple of hours to clean off the old house porch. It was covered in tools from all our summer projects and the deck. We managed to get it all sorted, put away in old house or taken out to the machine shed. We even swept off the porch and took out the trash! I proceeded to swap out the rusted painted screws in the tin around our pillars. I had to scrub the rust away then install the new painted screws. I also cleaned up some of the old caulk around the pillars. I did caulk the bottom of the pillars but have ordered a plastic molding to go around the bottom of the large pillars so they match the 4×4 covers. I was informed tonight that I need to order some 1/4 round for the top of the pillars. I was just going to put white caulk at the top. I am told that won’t look as good, the plastic trim is a special order item so I will have to get that ordered.

After lunch I took 40 minutes and stripped the hair from our Brussels Griffin. He is a terrier and you have to pull their hair out instead of shaving them. He is used to it and just sits in my lap. He doesn’t really like it around his nose or lower legs. He is now super soft and cuddly. Annmarie got the John Deere tractor tire repaired again. They installed the tire on backwards last time so we had to get them to turn it around. We installed the tire and hooked up the planter/seeder to the little tractor. I ended up having to replace one tooth on the cultivator that was broken. It had two different hay strings wrapped around it and some metal bailing wire and a piece of barbed wire! Those all got removed and the equipment adjusted so it merely needs seed in the hopper and its ready to plant! We are supposed to get 1/2” of rain on this upcoming Friday & Saturday. I will be working so no time will be lost due to the weather. I found a hydraulic leak on the new tractor but do not have a metric wrench that big, so I will need to buy some more tools, dang. The sheep have still not had any more babies.

Field prep continues

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I spent 2.5 days dragging farm implements around the place trying to get the fields ready to plant. Mr Rainman has gotten field #1 all disced but the organic matter needs to be moved off of it and some rocks picked. The disc is not really helping on the third pass so we will use the harrow/arena groomer to smooth it out and get some of the large patches of straw off of the field. I have the triangle all ready to go and I got the south side of field #2 ready, both patches will get triticale planted. I have the North side of field #2 ready but it is going to get grass seed planted as it still has moisture in the soil even now. The grass will do well and will let me keep using broadleaf spray on the field to get the thistles under control. Field #1 is going to get oats planted. I still need to pickup oat seed. I need a day to disc up field #3. It needs to be mowed first. So that field will take about 12 hours to get ready. I am hopeful that I can start planting seed in about 12 days.

We are bringing the cows in every night to hang out in the back barn lot area. They don’t have access to water during the 8-10 hours they are out eating so at night they want to come back for water and plums. They stop at the plum tree every night and won’t go past until you give them a handful.

Their are quail all over the farm, I see them every time I go out. I don’t see as many pheasants as I did last year. Pretty sure I found a coyote den today when I was out in the field but I did not see any coyotes but the hole in the ground in the field was new. I filled the hole with some vegetable matter so I will be able to tell if something moves it to get in and out. We still have the bunny rabbit out in the machine shed. It just hangs out and kinda hops out of the way but does not run away when you go in the shed. We got 0.34” of rain on Friday! It was amazing and we need another 0.5” this week. It will be perfect for planting then unless its enough moisture to get the seeds germinated just before a freeze. The stupid sheep have had no more lambs in the last week. We are so grateful we got a new ram, this one is just taking his own sweet time.

I need to get my tire fixed for the John Deere but when I had them repair it they mounted it on backwards so now I have to take it back in and get them to turn the wheel around. I want to plant with the little tractor as the seeder will obscure the tire track marks from the little tractor but not the bigger tractor.

The plumbing is fixed! We have water again, the plumber needs to finish a couple of more things then I can fill in the hole. We like having water. I was able to pickup the three pieces of Trex decking I needed for the front porch and the stair railing pieces came in on Thursday. So all of the pieces to finish the deck are here!

Field prep

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Holidays are the best because I have four days off in a row, but they also suck because I have four days off in a row. When I rolled out of bed this morning I did not want to dig a ditch but one still needs to be dug. I am getting Mr Rainman to come out tomorrow. The plumber wants to replace the line back at the junction which means digging out another 25 feet and potentially having to build a wooden support for the heat pump so we can tunnel under the four feet of the old concrete pad. The pad is pretty broken and cracked so I would not feel safe without supporting it before tunneling under it. We just need to get to the foundations of the freezer room so we can drill a hole into the room from underneath. This will let us run new Pex pipe and should stop us from having to run a heat tape. I remembered tonight that I have a small portable sump pump so I will break that out in the morning and we won’t have to do the bucket emptying that I have done the last two times. I should have remembered it earlier.

I only have about 2 hours of mowing on the fields left but I stuck with dragging the disc around in circles today in an attempt to get the field ready. I now have all of field 2 disced and now want to run the arena groomer over it all to smooth it out then plant with my cultivator/seeder. I am going to plant grass on the East side of the field as there is still moisture in the ground and plant some leftover triticale seed I have in the 1.5 acres on the West side because it is much dryer on that side. I would love to get about 4 more days in field one to finish the ditch and embankment work. I want to create a second ditch and embankment on the inner field about 20 feet in. I am going to run a fence on top of the second berm so I can run the animals into it after it is harvested. At the rate we are flooding lately the additional berm will be needed.

I think it will take two days to get all of field 1 disced. Then one day to disc field 3 and another for field 4. So I have about 120 hours to get all of the fields ready and planted. No problem with my other full time job in the midst of a pandemic. Luckily, I have a couple of helpers and I am going to have them working quite a bit this month until we can get it all done. We are seeing a lot of quail all over the property. We have found three dead deer on the place in the last three weeks. No signs of injury, I suspect that wasting disease is present in our area. I have seen two live does and a little buck this weekend. We still have at least one bunny rabbit. It lives in the machine shed and sneaks out to eat. We know there was a second one around but we have not seen any baby bunnies.