Farm

Was supposed to hay

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has not been the week I expected.  I tried to beat the rain last weekend.  We had cut the hay (no real choice if a weed patch was going to be prevented) and I really wanted to make it into hay bales.  I spent one evening and on into the dark and finished rowing the hay.  Mr Professional had done half during the afternoon and I finished after dark.  The rows are very easy to make into tall rows.  I told myself not to do it but after turning around at the end of the field it just lent itself to the large row.  I also had to get off the tractor twice and cut the grass off of the driveline.  Once it almost seized stopped turning there was so much on the shaft.  It was very hot when I cut it off.

 

Mr Professional and I spent Sunday, Mother’s Day, mowing the front lawn.  Annmarie wanted the lawn mowed.  I spent 2 hours just picking up bones, sticks, branches, dog toys, and disassembling the calf pen we had created in the yard.  While I did this Mr Professional worked on mowing the lawn.  We had to break out the weed eater and the drive handle on the mower broke.  It was one thing after another.  Luckily we managed to get it done and after I cleaned up I went out to the barn garden and checked up on the plants out there.  I think one of the Seaberry plants might die.  I had one climbing plant die and I need to run the sprinkler a little more often.  I also spent some time and weeded around the planted items.  My goal this year is to just keep everything alive and let it get some roots in the ground.  I am not looking for hardly any growth.

I went out yesterday and spread wildflower seeds all over the barn garden.  It has been raining a lot so I am hopeful that some of the seeds will take off.  I will probably have to get in the garden with the weed eater and knock down the grass.  I may even spend some time weeding.  I used to hate weeding but it was not so bad the other day.

It started raining right after I got the hay rowed.  I got an extra day off mid week with the expectation that the rain would hold off for two days and let me get the hay put up into bales.  This did not happen.  We had 1/2” of rain one day and 1/4” the next day over 24 hour periods.  We even tested the hay moisture percentage to see if it could be baled before the rain but Annmarie got 39% and 49% on the two samples she did.  She keeps zapping them in the microwave to get a dry weight and wet weight.  We are thinking about getting an actual meter to do this in the field but for now we can do it the old fashioned way.  We could use the oven also but the microwave is probably faster.

My goal is to go out this afternoon and collect three more samples to see where we are at after all the rain.  I will then hopefully spread out all the rows again and let it dry quickly.  It is supposed to rain again in two days!! I may be baling in the dark.

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So instead of haying I worked on the upstairs bathroom.  I need to get the tongue and groove wallboard installed and oiled so the plumber can come do his part.  Unfortunately, Annmarie stated that I needed to follow the angles of the mirror.  It took me four boards and on the final board five adjustments to get it to fit properly!  Each try requires me to walk downstairs, outside and go over to the old house and use the saw or jigsaw.  It took me almost 2 hours for that single board.  So when Annmarie said I could use a reject piece for the opposite side I was overjoyed!  It would be able to just slip it in even though it was a solid blue piece she was willing to insert it into the plane side.  Function over form was going to win.  Unfortunately, there is a slight difference and I had to cut it for its own unique angles and spacing.  It was off by 1/8”!!  So the color scheme was maintained.  I was going to square off the mirror with boards over the top of everything but again the design won out and I am now cutting everything to mimic the mirror angles and we found some brass finials online that are 1.5” diameter and I will nail six of those around the mirror to keep it from falling out away from the wall.  I also forgot to stick the 1/2” double switch box extension behind the wood so I will now have to remove it and use a different type of box extender.  My goal is to keep plugging away at the bathroom until it is done.

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Haying adventure begins

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Yesterday we decided to get ready for haying.  Unfortunately, there are always things to do on the farm and we had decided that this was the weekend to work animals.  On a good day this is complicated.  On a bad day it is worse and at the best of times it will stress any relationship.  Any one who thinks they live in marital bliss just needs to come work animals with their spouse and they still have to get the animal work completed no matter how hard or complicated or how many times you have to walk back down to the other end of the pasture!  All in all it was not bad, we had to use the dogs on the sheep even though they started in the ram pasture.  They would not go through the gate into the back barn area and then they would not go into the barn.  The dogs did great, Annmarie runs Mouse and I run Zeke at the same time, the dogs are trained to only follow commands after their names are said plus Mouse does better with Annmarie and Zeke works with me better.  Don’t get me wrong, all the dogs like Annmarie better as she lets them up on the couch for hugs.  Zeke is just used to the curmudgeon approach to sheep commands and Mouse is fairly sensitive and takes it personal.

We set the barn up before pushing the sheep in, they are finally getting used to the sorting chute as a group.  Making them go both ways through it helps them understand it is part of the routine.  Once we had the sheep inside and started taking a good look at them and who was going to be culled we opted to wait another 30 days.  In one month we will be able to wean all the lambs and we can cull the 10 ewes for sale.  We have 10 that are old and scraggly and they need to go.  So they got to run back out the chute to freedom.

The cows were next, Annmarie and I walked down to the schoolhouse as the cows saw us coming and ran in the opposite direction.  We typically don’t use the dogs when there are new born calfs on the ground as the cows just want to chase the dogs and not move where we want.  We got them into the ram pasture after three attempts.  Luckily they didn’t start really getting stubborn until we were up by the house and we had a closed gate stopping them from running backdown to the schoolhouse.  We tried multiple times to get them to go into the back barn lot and they would not do it.  I hollered and eventually Annmarie agreed to let me use the dogs and her and Sarah exited the area and went into the yard (behind the fence) to watch.  We forgot to do a video.  The dogs and I pushed the cows near the gate, then Annmarie came out and the dogs pushed them through the gate.  We had to call the dogs into the back barn area to get the cows the rest of the way in.  We sorted into two groups, Annmarie sprayed fly stuff on them and then Annmarie and Sarah caught the newborn little calf girl and I put in the ear tag.  Stupid ear tag pliers kept misbehaving, making the two women on top of the calf holler at me.  I got it!  I have offered to do the pinning but we have discovered that I have the hand strength needed to make ear tag and banded work and the women cannot do it so I am relegated to the easy tasks.  We are missing one calf.  The problem with this is two fold.  We know there was a cougar at the neighbor’s house 4 days ago.  The other issue is the calf is only 4 days old and the cows will hide them.  So we could of just missed it.  We will keep an eye out and see what happens in the next 14 days.

Mr Professional and I worked on the sickle mower for the tractor yesterday.  It is brand new and owners manuals are not the same as operators manuals, nor are they assembly manuals.  Turns out we had to tighten almost all the bolts, two leaky hydraulic connections (there are only two) and move a part they put on wrong.  It then took us a couple more hours to figure out how to get it to adjust right per the instruction manual.   We managed to bend a weld on a stop that we still cannot figure out how it functions, so it will need to be welded back in place eventually.  By this time it was time for lunch, he went home for lunch and I even went inside and ate (I normally skip lunch).

After lunch I went out to mow the nearest field, Upper Prime (I really need a sheet with all the names on it for the fields as I occasionally change the names!).  This field was solid cheatgrass last year and I used it to practice with the hay equipment.  It is still about 75% cheatgrass so it will again be practice.  It will be filler food for the horses and cows.  I will look into spraying it down mid summer and reworking it in the spring with peas.  Something to start killing off the cheatgrass.  It takes me about an hour an acre to cut and it took some practice to figure out how to use the sickle mower and get it to function optimally.  Speed is the key, you must go fast so the grass rows up or it bunches up and clogs the tines.  Also, cutting will have to be done in the afternoon as wet spots at the base of the grass gum it up dramatically.  I had a few wet spots that I ended up butchering multiple directions in an attempt to get them cut.

The Upper Prime Squared field (next one beyond first, away from house) looked great!  It had about 25% with cheat grass but the rest looked good and about 50% looked good enough to sell.  The same problem here, I encountered three wet spots out in the field.  Luckily, they were not muddy but it was highly evident that the surface water was more plentiful.  We had sprayed for thistles but had only used 2-4-D and the thistles were shriveled up but not dead, they got put into the hay.   Again, we will spray as soon as we get the hay put up.

The real problem is it is supposed to rain Wednesday and Thursday.  I knew this but did not want the cheat grass to get more of a hold so went ahead and cut anyways.  We will turn on Monday and hopefully start baling on Tuesday night.  It is going to be close.

I tried to get done before it got dark, I even held off turning on the tractor lights until it was not possible to do without them.  I need to down grade the front light still so it doesn’t pull as much juice from the battery as my big one.  I have one that is about 1/3 power that I am going to install.  I will leave the big one mounted just in case I need it, I can just unplug my other and plug it in.

There are lots of rooster pheasants all over the place!  I did not see a single hen, but I saw roosters strutting all over the place with no regard for their safety.  I saw a thousand voles at least.  The dogs would have loved it but the sickle bar mower hidden in the grass does not make this an option for letting them run around.  No quail or foxes were spotted in 8 hours of mowing.  I did manage to eat my nuts and some Carmel popcorn while driving around in circles.  I got pretty good at moving the sickle bar and gaging how best to mow an area.

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There was to be no new fencing this year…

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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Annmarie told me this year I was not to fence.  I had a lot to do and after spending most of last year doing nothing but fencing I needed to focus on other things this year.  Now I do not disagree with this but we really did need some more fencing…

Barb Morehead took this terrific photo of our little beautiful calf, and kindly shared it us.  He is named Valentine for the heart he wears on his forehead.  We were really hoping he would be a she.  He will still be good eating.

We have been slowly working on getting our berry/lavender grow area ready.  Unfortunately, this necessitated building a fence around the space to keep the herbivores away from our food.  The pine trees got cut down several years ago and I sprayed the area with Roundup a week ago.  This plant attack has done nothing but point out where all the thistles are located.  I have been slowly killing the thistles with a shovel.  I cannot use any other kind of herbicide or I will kill anything I plant in the ground.  I also tried to order ground cloth so we can plant our lavender through it but could not get any online that was not horribly expensive.  I still spent almost $400 on cloth and thought I had gotten a good deal.  I had to drive to the Tricities to pickup our bathroom vanity so I bought all the ground cloth that Home Depot had available.  The only reason they still had it was it was in a box high above and no one had bothered to check there yet.

A Pallet of stained brown tire chips was delivered on Thursday in one single great big bag weighing 1100#.  I need to finish killing the thistles then weed eat everything down to the ground then put the ground cloth down.  I have had a couple of boys working on the fence.  Since they were going to do most of the work I decided that we needed to fence in the orchard also.  Our orchard area is fenced in already but I wanted to just put up an interior fence around the fruit trees so that we can take all the skirts around the tree down.  I want to keep a 2’ tall cow panel ring around the trees only.  This will keep any animals from rubbing on the tree or eating the bark at the base of the tree.  This will also double the number of rings I have available for more trees.  There are seven young fruit trees so we can plant seven more trees.  I picked up two at Home Depot Thursday, Hardy Kiwi trees.  The fruit only gets to the size of a Kumquat but it is supposed to taste like a kiwi and it looks like a kiwi.  I bought two as they are small!  The plants are about 2 inches tall and its a single stick.  We will see in 3-4 weeks if they were alive or not.  We also bought some coconut fiber mats to go around the trees to keep the weeds down.

While we were working on the fence today the alpaca kept trying to sneak in through the gate.  I had to exit the gate to get wooden fence stays and they tried to bum rush the open gate.  They are very curious animals and will seek out new experiences.  One of them stood by the fence and made super weird noises today.  A noise even I had not heard before.  They won’t move if they are laying in the road either.  They will win a game of chicken every time, even into death.  The delivery guys are scared they are going to cream one, I am kinda surprised they have not hit one yet.

Today we got the orchard fence completed.  It looks good and even our border collies cannot get out of it.  I can move the border collies to the orchard and let the sheep into our yard to mow now!  If you try and keep the collies inside the house all day so the sheep can eat the front yard they make you crazy.  Zeke keeps ring the bell  hanging from the front door.  You have to remove the bell or he will just keep randomly ringing it and laying in front of the door waiting for you to let him out.  Mouse will come lick your hand repeatedly until you let him outside.  It is a tossup as to which Border Collie is more annoying in their attempt to get what they want.

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I also found out that we have a red fox living on the property.  It has been spotted twice this week and I am sure I am down at least two more chickens.  I thought it was a raccoon and tonight when I was putting the sheep into the ram pasture I found a dead chicken head on the hillside.  I am told it has a den over by the fencing supplies storage area.  I will have to take a look for myself this weekend.

Bathroom is Taking Shape

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have been tinkering in the upstairs bathroom all week.  I sneak up for 30-120 minutes to try and get some more work done.  I managed to get the right side of the backsplash sided and needed the mirror installed to start working my way up the wall.  I took the mirror apart and scrubbed the wooden base in the kitchen sink with a lot of Dawn dish soap and a nonscratchy pad.  It was filthy.   I had to just put a temporary board in at the top to keep the mirror in place.  I pigeon toe nailed the wood above the tiles.  I wanted to cut off the curves and make it a 90 degree angle.  This would have made cutting the side piece much easier.  I was vetoed.  So I have attempted to cut all the angles and getting the tongue and groove to match at the same time.  I was pretty dang close the first time, but Annmarie cut me some paper angles to make the curve part easier. I have not attempted my second try.  I had broken my jigsaw (at least 15 years old, cheap and made of plastic) on the first attempt so figured I needed to replace it if my second attempt was going to work out.

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I took Thursday and made arrangements to drive over to the Tricities and pick up our completed vanity top.  They had our vanity, the top (they made it) and our sink, this was to ensure that they got all the parts matched.  It was sitting up against the wall in their office and the person that helped me carry it to the car was sad to see it go!  He said it was their display piece and showed off what they could really do.  I happen to agree with him and he said it was a pleasure to work on as it looked very nice and the cabinet was well built and would take the weight of the granite slab without any problems. All of those are included in the reasons why we wanted to use this old washstand that was in the house when we moved in.

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I had to cut out the right side of the drawer so the plumbing can all go on the right half.  The problem with this is we still wanted the drawer to work.   So I built a box and reinforced it and cut out the part where the plumbing is going to go.  The picture on the left is from underneath the cabinet looking up at the bottom of the drawer.  This was before I cut the holes in the top for the water supply and sink drain. I used old Zinc flat head screws that have been on the farm for forever to put all the pieces together.

Today I started drilling holes for all the plumbing.  The water supply side (small hole) needs more wood cutout from underneath.  There is another 3/4” piece of wood along the back of the cabinet and I need to move it back 3/4” from the hole so that the faucet can be clamped down to the top.  Two boards and a piece of granite make the hole too deep for the faucet per the instructions I found online.  The plumber has the actual faucet and will bring it, the toilet and all the plumbing parts to complete it once we get the walls installed and oiled.

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I will need to hit this with some Murphy’s wood soap before I take it upstairs so it starts out clean.  I am really looking forward to having a second toilet in the house and especially one that you do not have to go downstairs in the middle of the night to use!

 

No Real Work

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Today was the day to get the rock garden finished.  I just needed to run to work in the morning and then get to it.  As I was pulling into the driveway, Mr Experience was pulling into the feeding field to clean it up and drag the arena groomer around it.  I spotted a brown spot in the field.  Annmarie and my mother in law had already convinced me there was another calf to drag into the barn and tag/band.  So I thought this calf was that one and I was going to get lucky.  Nope, it was a brand new calf who was skinny and hungry and weak.  I carried it down near the schoolhouse and we tried to get the cows to run to it.  Nope, they ran the other way, I ended up walking halfway over the farm to get them to find the calf.  I then sat on the hillside for 45 minutes watching to see if anyone would feed the calf.  I had no cell phone and no hat so I just laid back on the ground and watched through slit eyes.  No one fed the calf.  I finally went and got the calf after Annmarie came down to check on us both.  We carried it back to the house, I made Annmarie carry it for a while after it peed on me.  She wanted to stick it in my car as it was down by mother in law’s house.  I said no and carried the calf to our house.

Now there is a new problem, there is no pen for the calf, we don’t have a bottle for a calf, and we don’t have colostrum supplement.  So I opted to stay with the calf in the front yard to make sure the dogs left it alone.  I managed to take a nap in the sun in the front yard with the calf.  Again, I had not bothered to put on a hat.  My bald head is going to pay for this mistake.  Annmarie fed the calf, it promptly went back to sleep while I set up a sleeping area for it.  The calf is just a newborn baby and it thinks we are the good guys. I need to work on getting the calf sold ASAP.  Gizmo has already decided he must protect it from everyone and is sneaking into the pen and sleeping with it!  He is so annoying sometimes.  I managed to sell the calf to a coworker for the price of the supplies this evening!

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The little tractor broke on Saturday.  The hydraulic cylinder that turns the front left tire (brake side of foot controls) broke.  It is seven years old and it is starting to tell me about the things that are worn out.

 

 

Their is an upper triangle of land almost an acre that we started to get disced up today.  We will finish tomorrow and it will be ready to plant peas in.  The feeder field is ready for peas also.  I want to use the peas to offset the weeds.

I managed to dig a hole under the rock wall to run the front sprinkler underneath and get my rock garden watered.  I was going to stick the sprinkler in the upper corner to spray everything but I was missing a fitting.  Annmarie told me to just add on more pipe and put it in the middle so it would water everything.  I took her advice and it now works perfectly.

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Annmarie was still buying supplies when I went in to eat lunch.  I found some pickles from 8/2019, some sprite from last year and for breakfast I had jam from 2016.  Nothing killed me and I almost have the entire refrigerator cleaned out.   Annmarie tells me I have blisters on top of my head from a horrible sunburn I obtained by falling asleep with the calf.  We both needed the nap!!