Farm

Honey do list

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well I had a whole list built up in my mind about what we were going to accomplish over the weekend. This did not come to fruition as the wife had other ideas. Not only did she have other ideas but she was frustrated enough to demand a “honey do list day”. I don’t get these very often and I try to avoid them (as do most men if they are honest) but it was happening so I opted to just roll with the punches.

I started the day with a full cup of coffee and when Hoss showed up we dug right into the list. The front yard sprinklers are throwing water too far out into the driveway so we moved them down the hill another 6-8 feet. This did require us to lower two more T-posts with the grinder.

Next on the list was moving the woven electric fence from the orchard (it has only been there for the last 4 years) and into our front yard. The plan was to install it on the hillside, next to the front spring to stop the dogs from going on the front hillside. We are watering the front hillside until it turns green then I am going to kill it with Roundup. We want to do that twice this summer then plant clover seed this fall. We are hoping the clover will get established and choke out any other weed.

Once that fence was in we fired up the chain saw and cut down the volunteer trees growing from the exposed roots. This prompted me to start trimming some of the low branches on the big trees. We had only been at it about 20 minutes when the wife came out and declared that task was not on her list! Technically, it was not on her list, but the sprinklers were and this would make the sprinklers cover more ground by removing the low hanging branches. This argument did not work and we quit cutting down branches and just tossed the downed branches over the fence to the sheep.

We now have four ewes living in the orchard. Number One Ewe is so pregnant that earlier in the week when Annmarie was moving them back to the ram pasture at night old number one just gave up, laid down on the ground, neck laid out and refused to move. So now she and three of our oldest ewes are in the orchard away from the main herd so they don’t have to run up and down the whole length of the farm every day. She is getting old and skinny, it looks like she is carrying twins again!

We went to the old house next and cleaned off the porch and put away about 50% of the tools laying around. Getting everything off of the old house porch took longer than I expected. We had a lot of parts and pieces of old hardiboard from the downstairs floor. I tossed out all of it but the four intact full sheets.

I was able to set up the radial arm saw so that I can just open the side door on the building and extend out the support arm and cut long boards. So not only is it no longer on our front porch but it is still usable!

The front porch now looks like a front porch. Annmarie is thinking about refinishing the wooden chairs and repainting the front fence and painting the bridge! I am all for it.

Hoss and I also went down and planted two new trees for my mother in law and cleaned out the weeds away from two other trees that have cow panels around them. I managed to hit myself in the head with the T post driver. It does not feel good. I did not see stars or have to take a knee.

Annmarie and I went to the farm supply store one day sale to get fencing materials for the upper prime squared pasture. I think I am going to ask Annmarie to burn a map onto a piece of wood of all the different fields and add their name to them! She doesn’t agree with me on all the names.

After dinner I went out to the 7 acre field and started trying to clear out the dead Sumack branches along the field. I started by pushing them up the bank but after about 50 yards I realized I was creating an impenetrable wall! So I started dragging the branches down off the berm and making one big pile. I was told today that it would go faster if I rented a small backhoe with a grapple. I believe this to be a true statement but it costs several hundred dollars and I would only get 8 hours of engine run time. My tractor works I just have to break up the sumack with the bucket and go over the same spot several times. So I am sticking with the already paid for version of cleanup. This will take me about another 25 hours to get done. It’s already too dry to burn so I will end up making 3-4 large piles on the edge of the field and will burn them this winter or next spring. This may mean I can only plant about 5 of the 7 acres this fall.

Barn Blues

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have been having Hoss work on the barn during the week. He usually comes out first thing in the morning and works until it gets hot. He has been digging out the barn with the tractor and by hand. I put in an hour or two after work but I am the one who tore up the barn floor with the tractor. There has been a few boards buckling near the back of the barn. I almost had to rip them out last year and reattach them to the floor braces. After I let the floor dry out they lowered themselves and I opted to leave them alone for another year. Now that I have ripped one out of the floor with the tractor I will have to pull up four rows, clean them all up, clean up the loose poop and then attach three rows Once I am down to one board only I can measure and custom cut it to fit the gap. The floor is tongue and groove and I did not leave any gaps so there is not a lot of movement allowed in the floor. On Wednesday when I went out to the barn for an impact driver I spotted a large pile of poop up against the wall below. I was just starting on Annmarie’s list of to do and thought that a few minutes with the mistress would do me good. So I climbed up onto the tractor and started to scoop up some poop.

Holy smokes! The pile was hot! It was steaming and the temperature was over 80 degrees. I ended up having to scoop up the entire pile at the end of the barn. The 8 inches of rain in one month we had caused us to have more moisture in the barn than is normal. When you dig up the floor with the tractor and leave it in a loose pile you aerate it. Once it gets oxygen with that much heat and moisture the composting process went into overdrive. So now the race is on to empty the barn. The only nice thing is the undisturbed floor/straw manure layer is so dense it doesn’t get a lot of oxygen so its not heating up. It just smells horrible when you disturb it. Hoss has marching orders to finish the barn up this week. It only needs about 6 more hours to be complete. Once it is empty we will let it sit for a couple of weeks then put all of the sorting chutes back inside. We will need to count sheep this month so our buyer will know how many we are selling. We are not even sure how many we are selling until we count them and get a feel for how big they are. He wants them on the bigger size so it limits the number we have available.

It rained 1/10″ on Wednesday. I had the lawn almost mowed but the rain put a temporary halt to my efforts. Running the mower for 3 minutes then taking 3 more minutes to empty the bag and restart the mower makes it very tedious. I would like it to rain one to two more days that much so our hay fields green up a second time.

I found this freeloader on the plywood sheets on the old house porch. I let it go under the bridge, hopefully it will survive.

Hoss disturbed one of the swallow nests in the rafters of the barn by driving in and out of the barn. The nest fell off the 2×6 it was hanging onto and the nest had baby birds. He spent ten minutes catching all the baby birds running around on the floor and put them and the nest up on the ledge inside the barn. When he came back the next day the only thing he found was a pile of feathers! One of the barn kitties probably had a bird snack after he left.

I am going to live

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have had the plague for the last week and the sleeping and feeling horrible is making me inactive. I hate it but luckily Hoss has already started in on the barn. He emptied it out and is now digging it out. He took everything out! It does make it easier to clean but I had a couple of panels screwed to the wall so he had to work at it.

Yesterday I just could not stand staying inside any longer. I saddled up the mistress and we went into the barn and tore it up! I was only able to last 1.5 hours before I wilted but I did a bunch of stuff in that time. I went in and showered and just laid on the couch until bedtime.

Today I went out and worked on mowing the lawn. I had to repair the mower first, it needed the keep run handle cable replaced. I had purchased this part last year and installed it today. Here is the real problem, its 2″ too long. I reread the tag and yes I have the part for my tractor. I ended up cutting the cable and using my high tension fencing splicing tools to put it back together. It worked just fine, but boy I wish the parts fit like expected. I mowed half the lawn then mowed the front hillside.

Gizmo thinks the new wood window casings are made just for him to lay about in the sun. He is not shy about scooting out and making his own space amongst the glass insulators. I used to space them out evenly but he kept knocking them over and moving them around so now they stay grouped together.

The front hillside sprinklers are now working! I have one on the very end that is high up in the air that doesn’t work. It’s too high! I will have to do something different.

Nothing got broken

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The kids killed it on their hay pickup day and managed to fill the first hay bin room. They moved a bunch but did not finish. Tex underestimated how much was left on the ground. There are 1050 bales to move into the barn. So Hoss came out the next day to finish picking up hay. I had gone to work for a couple of hours to finish stuff and to try not to give everyone the plague. The first load took him 1.5 hours to load and he commented on how long it took to do alone. I kinda chuckled as most of this stuff I have to do alone and it takes 2-3 times as long to do it that way. I told him how to stack it on my way to work. While at work I start getting these frantic texts from Annmarie saying there is an issue at the farm. Hoss sends me a text about an “issue”. I ask for a picture, because really a picture is worth a thousand words.

Annmarie sends me this picture. It could have been so much worse! The trailer is still on the road. It’s sitting on rocks in the front and back so it’s stable. The axle is not bent or pinned on any rocks. The bank just gave away. Now I failed to mention to Hoss to not use this crossing. I knew the rocks were giving way. After the flooding we had this spring they washed out the gravel and created a soft spot. I had filled the gravel twice but realized that the cure is going to be me pouring concrete walls about two feet to either side of the culvert all the way down to the water line. There is no other good fix. I failed to pass on this nugget of information to Hoss or Annmarie. So Hoss started to unload the hay and when I came home we looked at it.

He wanted to get some handyman jacks and lift it up and push it over. I finally looked at it and said we could just use the tractor. I would drive it down to the spring and get the bucket under the tires and push it over onto the road then drive around and pull it out. It only took five minutes once we had it unloaded. Now Hoss will use the other crossing only until we fix this one, which will take a while because cleaning out the barn then building fence are our priorities.

Simple communication could have averted this, one more lesson for me on why I should talk more.

Three musketeers

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have the plague and this is hindering the hay pickup issue. I got Slim and Tex lined up to come out Tuesday morning at 0600 and start picking up hay. I was approached by a friend to see if I needed more help out on the farm on Monday and I decided Monday evening to call them and have them come out Tuesday also. This way I could have Slim drive the tractor and Tex and Hoss could load from each side. While they unloaded hay into the first bay I would have Slim clean out the milking area of the barn and the second hay room as I was sure they would fill the first hay room. I had a plan.

Everyone arrived at 0600 and we spent the first 20 minutes cleaning out the pickup! It was not horrible but it did require some effort and I found a coat and hat I had misplaced in the process. I also think I found a handful of tools that I had misplaced. We tossed out all the trash and even emptied out the bed of the pickup.

I then spent 7 minutes teaching Slim how to drive the tractor, the most important part being always wear your seat belt. I figured she had never pulled a trailer before but going slow and her brother, Tex could give her pointers. Tex and Hoss jumped on the trailer, I went to work and hopefully the hay gets put into the barn magically.

I had to come home early due to the plague, it had gotten hot so they had quit. The first hay room was full and Tex wanted to know how to stack it in the second one. I told him and he said he would come out and finish in the late evening as he was leaving for California tomorrow! I told Tex I would pay him when he finished. He was confident there was only a little over one load left.

Hoss was still here and I walked him around the farm and we discussed him digging out the barn and helping me with some fence for the next couple of months. He was agreeable to this. This was very fortuitous for us.

Tex came out that evening and unloaded two more loads into the barn and said there were at least another 2 loads in the field. He was a tad optimistic.