Author: Steve Hardin

The race is on

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I am definitely not ready for haying, yet I now have to pivot and do it anyway. The neighbor who lets me hay their property called on Thursday and said it’s ready. I told the wife it is too early, by almost 3-4 weeks. I went over yesterday and yep, I have to come cut and bale hay. The grass is starting to go to head and needs to be cut! This is the earliest I have ever had to hay. That means I need to get the sickle bar mower on the tractor.

Normally, I put the sickle bar on the Kubota and rake and bale with the John Deere. Of course, on Thursday evening I had driven to the far end of the property and while I was there I mowed a path into the weeds on the backside of the creek. The only problem with this is I hit a huge rock! It broke off one of the brush hog blades about eight inches from the tip. I drove back home in the dark and Friday morning when I was walking over to the machine shed I noticed a line of hydraulic fluid going down the driveway. I may have a leak big enough to take the John Deere out of commission until it is fixed. I will have to look at it and see if I can find the leak.

Our flower bulbs need some water so I spent an hour and installed a new sprayer system for the flower bed. I turned it on and got a good soak. We have some bulbs that have not emerged yet and I think it is due to a lack of water. Annmarie wants me to get the big pots with chives moved back out to the front door porch entrance. I will need to get the dolly to make it reasonable, those are some big pots.

When we were out in the garden yesterday we picked four pieces of asparagus! We had missed out on about six pieces that were too big and already heading out. If I remember right we need to cut those off till later in the season so they produce more spears. We did not do that, I will need to go back out and do that.

I tried to get the pickup bed emptied. I had soil bags back there for the new asparagus planter. I was able to carry and empty about half of them before I just made a pile next to the truck. I ran out of time due to installing the water first. We needed the pickup to go pick up a new bee nuc so we would have two hives! They only do direct hive sales once a year and they don’t start loading until 1930. We got our bees around 2000 so most of ours were inside the hive. When we got home I moved the frames from their starter box into one of our boxes. I decided to “free ball” it and not wear any protective gear. Annmarie came out to hold the cell phone flashlight. I was down to the last two frames and got buzzed. I panicked and stepped back, Annmarie got stung on the arm! I settled down and finished the frame transfer and then we leaned the starter box lid next to our frame box. Our hope was the bees would just climb up into the hive. We decided to put the second box into the lavender so that the bees would not get mixed up with our others.

Spring is here, for sure

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Last weekend I was able to get some much needed spring work done. Annmarie’s number one project is getting the irrigation pump up and going. Honestly, we need it but I am going to have to crawl down into the mud and dig out an entire section of filled in mud and weeds and it is not making me excited.

Instead, I broke out the brush hog and proceeded to mow the entire area around the houses, barn, machine shed and grain bins. I also mowed the fence lines alongside the wheat field and the corner property. I have to mow the fence lines to keep them cleaned up. I do want to get down to four corners and get that entire corner fenced in but it keeps getting moved down the priority list. Instead I mowed it so maybe I can get to it later in the summer. I was able to mow around the CRP edge and alongside the paved road to knock down the weeds. I will need to spray those areas in 2-3 weeks with a broadleaf spray, probably mix some 24D and Milestone to knock down anything trying to creep in from the road and fence lines. I did not see any bunny rabbits, in the fall they were all over the place on the edge of the CRP.

The county got a grant to eliminate a specific type of invasive weed that has been emerging in our area. We are going to participate in the grant. Invasive weeds are the worst! It took me about two days to finish all of the mowing and I only had to crawl under the hog once to cut out some fencing I had sucked into the mower. Okay, twice I had to crawl under it but I only had to cut the fence out once. I did not see a single coyote the whole time I was mowing. I also have started to pick up the big rocks I hit with the mower and just toss them in the tractor bucket. I need rocks down at the house so I might as well collect them with purpose. Next time I won’t have to worry about a big rock being in the way.

Our cows should have had calves by now. I obviously did not count accurately. They still don’t have any calves. The price of cattle at auctions are crazy. They are up to $5-6/lb for small 300-500# feeder steers. The price of beef next year in the grocery store is going to be crazy. We charged $4/# hanging weight this spring for beef. We are obviously going to have to raise the price of our grass fed 100% natural beef.

Before I could dig out the irrigation inlet area I wanted to decrease the amount of water flowing though the ditch. So I went into the orchard area and dropped a 50 gallon drum lid over the culvert intake. This backed it up a little but it just went around the lid. I ended up having to dump eight loads of mud in front of the inlet to slow down and displace the majority of water out into the orchard. The cows were unsure what I was doing but did not seem to mind the water flowing through the orchard.

On Sunday I had no more excuses to not dig out the irrigation ditch. I really wanted an excuse or two but the delay returns were not worth the cost. I really thought there was a concrete floor between the concrete sides. I am unsure why I thought it but I did. The mud and weeds had filled up the entire opening and channel except for a one foot wide shallow track where the water was actually moving. I started digging and tossing it over onto the low side of the concrete. It was nasty dirty and the mud kept splatting when it landed and if it did not splat then I had to beat it off the shovel by banging it on the concrete. I was covered in mud in no time. As I cleared the area out I decided to find the concrete bottom and started to just dig downwards. There is no concrete bottom. But I did dig it deep enough that the water started running over my knee high waterproof muck boots. I just gave up on being clean and just kept digging the mud out. I dug it down till the water went over my boots then quit going down. It is all cleared out now. What I really need to do is create a large wire gate that can be pulled down and a backhoe brought in to clean out the ditch and pond area. I am going to try this as is and then decide later if we need to bring in a backhoe. Now I have to start ordering parts for the pump inlet and get the manifold built. I also need to put some all thread through the support beams. Plus, I need to create a pump bracket so the well pump can sit up on its nose. Lots of stuff to do before it is ready!

Mr Golfpro is coming out every week and keeping up with the yard chores. This is helping out immensely. Our flowers are starting to really bloom.

A little rain

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The beginning of last week we got a weather alert stating that there was going to be heavy rain in the foothills of the Blue Mountains near us. We need some rain for the wheat and the hay so rain is a good thing this time of year. Well we got rain alright, almost 8/10” of rain in less than 24 hours. The mountains were all covered in snow and then it warmed up fairly quickly. Our back creek is part of Stewart creek. It is an intermittent waterway, it dries up in the summer on the upper part of our property. Down near the school house there is a shallow spring that puts out quite a bit of water and there are a few more springs that come together enough to get the stream running again. The water level can fluctuate pretty dramatically when we get more than half an inch of rain. This definitely counted as a dramatic change. The really nice thing was the water all stayed near the creek, it didn’t flood out anything on our property and it ate into the banks some more causing the stream bed to widen even more than it was.

I even drove up to the far end of the property to see if it was flooding upstream from the house. There was no flooding anywhere on our property. All of the ditch work and bank work was not needed but we knew that it would try to flood again eventually and we have managed to harden the fields well enough now that I am hopeful the water will stay contained even in a bad flood. Our front ditch never even raised in height. Usually, during a flood the water diverts to the front ditch and both beds contain the water so our house does not get flooded.

The water came down pretty dramatically in two days. It is back to normal flow pattern now.

Trying to get rid of cheatgrass

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Last weekend was spent going around in circles! We are trying to get about three acres cleared of cheat grass. The stuff has totally taken over the fields and there is nothing left but cheatgrass and thistles. I tried to plant grass about a decade ago without any success. It got choked out by the cheat grass. Our plan is to keep killing the cheat grass until we cut down on the number of seeds in the soil. I will keep spraying Round-up and plowing the field under until we just don’t get much cheatgrass emerging. We got a really good kill on the grass and I was trying out the new plow that the Gingerman brought over. It is an old rotating or flop plow that allows for the direction to be changed. It took a few hours to get the number of pulls on the rope figured out. It cycles through a transport/lower/lower/flip cycle depending on where you are in the rope pull cycle. Plus, there are a couple of springs that need to be replaced. I had to get off and kick the levers every twenty minutes. I do have the springs on our grocery list so I do not forget them. It took me two days to plow, disc and harrow the three acres. When the equipment is only 2-4 feet wide it can take a while!

Annmarie went out and checked on the bees. They are doing great and finding all different colors of pollen. They are not even bothering to eat any of the sugar water we put out for them. We pick up our second hive in the evening of May 1.

The new town chickens we were given are so stupid, they keep flying into the yard where the dogs are residing. Every day, Annmarie or I chase some chickens out of the yard. The kids came down to stay the weekend and they bring our older Border Collie dog Mouse. Our young Border Collie, Chance, just harasses the chickens all day long. She has not killed any yet. Mouse killed two last weekend. Honestly, we warned the chickens that the yard needed to be a no fly zone for their own safety and they ignored us. The chickens are just too stupid to live.

Needed Rain

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The weather forecast was for rain all weekend. I figured I had better get the 50 bags of soil out of the back of the pickup before they absorb any more water! I loaded them all up last week alone and they were not that heavy when I put them in there. I was able to get the four new blueberry bins filled and ready for plants. I had to refill our regular bins. Every couple of years they each need a bag of soil to top them off again. I added one new bin to our herb area and think we can get another 3-4 bins squeezed in there. I am not sure we will fill them all with herbs but we can put in low growing veggies. I was also able to fill in a new six footer bin we purchased last year for strawberries.

We had two more new bins in the berry area. One is a new asparagus bin. I cut the bottom of the bin out, it was rusted out, to allow the plants to dig down further into the ground if they want. This bin we are not going to over plant with any strawberries. The strawberries tried to choke out our asparagus in the first bin we planted. The asparagus is still alive but we were just able to keep the plants alive last year. We did not get any asparagus from it. The plan is to just plant a straight asparagus only bin. Once the asparagus is well established I might look into some type of flower that is compatible that will just grow on the surface and is a low to the ground and a late bloomer.

The six foot bin was for more strawberries. I had planted some in the garden area in with the squash as we had more plants than space. So I transplanted them to the new bin and I expect them to fill in the entire bin by the end of the summer. They are pretty aggressive. We did get a lot of strawberries last year! I really need to build a little arbor around them so I can hang bird netting from it and it will be much easier to move out of the way when picking.

After fifty bags I was ready to be done! I am not as young as I used to be and I can feel it these days. For some reason my knee started to bother me. I think I was crouching down in the gravel and forgot I was old. The rain held off on Friday until I got back from town.

I needed to protect the wild rose bushes in the driveway and was going to buy 8 foot T-posts and some horse fencing. But by the time I priced it I was going to need $400 worth of fencing and posts to circle three wild rose bushes. We have to protect the rose bushes from the alpaca. They love eating rose bushes. They will eat rose bushes before anything else. I ended up buying four 16’ cow panels at $33/each instead. I set them up in a square like shape and they are standing up by themselves currently. I had to turn them upside down so the large openings were on the ground. This lets the quail and pheasants crawl through the fence to hide and eat from the quail block. I will probably toss in some old trimmed tree limbs into the enclosure to create a hiding spot. We have been working on creating more habitat for the quail all over the farm and it is paying off. We have a native population of about 150-200 quail now.

I was able to get eight bags of Sackcrete mixed by hand and poured into the hole I dug by the concrete weir. When you back the water up by the pump, the water was leaking out of the dirt berm. I am hopeful this will stop that. If not then we will line the pond with a liner to allow us to fill it up with water for irrigation. I cannot move the irrigation pump alone, it is just too heavy. I need to get the pump out of the way so I can pull the wooden supports out and then jump down into the concrete weir and dig out all of the mud! I have not cleaned it out for a long time and it has about a foot of mud built up in it. All of that has to come out so I don’t have to fight mud and grit on the sprinkler end of the irrigation. I went to town again as I needed a figure 8 Clevis so that I can pull the new plow. I want to plow those two fields I sprayed. I of course could not find the one I know I own somewhere. It was raining by the time I got back from town.

On Sunday the Gingerman helped me move the old irrigation pump and I was able to pull the boards off the weir. I am going to have to get some all thread and drill through the boards to pull them all back together. I had sandwiched eight 2×4 together in two bunches to make a platform for the pump. They are starting to come apart. After that we went over to the Gingerman’s place so that I could crawl into an old water tank. I needed to install a plug so that we can get the tank ready for our fire suppression truck. We just need to get the tank up on the truck, clean it out and get everything hooked up. We have most of the pieces already.

Overall it rained over 0.27” this weekend as of publication time.