Farm

Bull fence

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Today I finished painting the downstairs! I even considered starting in on the wood trim downstairs but I really want to do the windows first as the bugs have started coming around. I have the caulk to seal the wood trim to the window and the walls so no bug can sneak through. But the wooden shims have not arrived yet. I purchased a box of them and they will be here this week. I wanted cedar shims and I am going to leave the cedar closet lining boards I put up in the windows temporarily in place and just put the trim over them. They have helped keep the bugs out.

So instead I went out and started working on the Bull Enclosure. It will house the rams also when we are not using them. We have decided to pull the male species off of their respective herds at least a month prior to anyone having a baby. We don’t want the mothers to be stressed or harassed. I marked of a pen in the barn lot that will allow us to use the old lamb shed and lean to out back as shelter. The shed will be off limits unless we allow access. I have set it up so I have opposing gates that will allow us to block off the shed or allow them access to the shed and no where else. I broke out the hot pink paint marker and a tape measure and put a T sign every 8 feet. I will need to dig 57 holes! I think if I reuse what is present and use the old cedar posts I think I can come up with 40 posts maybe 45. I will buy the rest. I want to use railroad ties in the corners and two next to each gate side. I am going to install a 10 foot gate near the shed and another 8 foot gate on the back side of the fence past the lean to. I am contemplating one more near the culvert, but I don’t think so. Each gate is a weakness to be exploited by the bull. I managed to get 11 holes started tonight. I was unable to drill a single hole down to the depth needed even as wet as it has been.

The mistress was working hard and I had to replace one bolt on the auger and just as it was getting dark the shear bolt for the auger gave so tomorrow I will need to replace it before I can get started. My goal is to get all the holes started this week and then take a five gallon bucket of water and put it in each hole. I will do this every day and then drill it out the next day until all the holes are the right depth. I will start setting posts as soon as I can get a hole down to the right depth. I will set all the posts and put woven wire and smooth wire on the outside of the fence and I will line the inside of the fence with 2×6 boards. I will have to go 4 boards high to provide a sufficient barrier. So I will need to buy 2000 linear feet of 2×6 which also happens to be 2000 board feet. I want to buy 16 foot boards as I put the spacing at 8 feet apart, this means I need 125 boards. I will also need a saw and a whole bunch more wood anchors, another 500. This is the expensive part. That will cost me around $400 just for the metal screws.

I have the 10 foot gate, I will have to go scrounge around in my gate pile to see if I have another 8 foot gate. I may need to use a 6 foot gate.

The sheep have been hanging out on the back hillside. The gate nearest the creek is so badly damaged that it is not useful and needs to be replaced. I have simply not gotten to it and the sheep needed to go out on the back hillside anyways. We have had so much rain in the past few days that the back creek is up about 8 inches and running muddy.

Stock trailer

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I finally managed to find a stock trailer! Last week I spotted one for $2500 which was my max upper end. I wanted to spend around $1500. We had been looking for over three months with no success. We had found a lot of horse trailers in that price range but no stock trailer. You ask, what is the difference? Well there is a difference, the first part is look at the back door. It will slide open halfway. This allows you to load animals directly from a chute. The second part is halfway down the trailer there is a divider that can be closed widthways. This allows you to push some animals into the trailer and shut internal gate. This then lets you load more animals!

This trailer is a 1979 model! It has a flat spare and another low tire. The lights only work on the right side and all the running lights are broken. On the plus side it has rubber mats the entire length of the floor. I will be getting it licensed after I fix the lights. The tires will be soon also. We are stoked!

Tax day 2017

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Tax day at our house is always an exercise in frustration and irritation. One would think that every year it would get easier, it does not! I attempt to keep receipts every year and on the big ticket items I am very good, but the little things add up and I don’t always keep them. We keep trying but it seems like a certain percentage always get lost and per Annmarie’s mantra, “no receipt, no deduction”. She is not a creative accountant type, she believes in sticking to the rules when it comes to taxes. Over the years I have come to appreciate this approach as it saves us hassle in the long run.

Before taxes can be started I have to do my part. I collate and add up all the farm income and expenses and drop it into categories every year. I started doing this years ago for the blog to track various project costs. We have learned that my projects don’t always fit into the IRS definition of a category. This causes complications when trying to do the taxes which leads to hollering from the office to downstairs, which leads to tension. Ideally, the solution to this would be to find some chore outside the house to do while taxes are being prepared. Normally, this is a solid approach but on tax day this does not work. I know some things that are essential to filling out the tax form due to my unique category building system. This caused so much angst last year that I threw out my divided binder with the “Steve” categories and wrote on the outside of a folder the needed categories. This year I broke everything out by those categories. Those essential categories according to me were: Income- Sheep, Eggs, Cows, Alpaca and Hay. Expenses- Animals, Feed, General, Equipment, Vet, Tractor/sprayer, Business Expense, Fencing, Irrigation, Alpaca.

I am told that the IRS doesn’t officially recognize my need to create categories and has their own system. Income is pretty much the same and can be gleaned from my data set. Expenses however are a little different: Animals, Truck expenses, Chemicals, Conservation Expense, Custom Hire(machine work), Depreciation, Feed, Fertilizer, Freight & Trucking, Gasoline & Fuel & Oil, Insurance, Interest on equipment loan, Rent or lease on vehicles/machinery/equipment, Repairs & Maintenance, Seeds & Plants, Supplies, Taxes, Utilities, Vet/breeding/medicine, Purchased Animals.

I have the new categories written down for next year so hopefully my summary will be more in line with what the IRS and Annmarie want. The only real problem with this is the tax laws have changed and no one is exactly sure how they are going to be reflected next year. So I am going to just keep on plowing forward and hope for the best.

So here is 2017 according to Steve for the farm. Again, we lost money, but we are starting to turn the corner. It has taken us many years to get things up to speed and develop a plan while we were doing the catch up. This fall we will plant the upper bottoms with Roundup ready Alfalfa. We will then buy our own haying equipment in the early spring. We will be putting up our own hay. We are only going to hay approximately 20 acres. We have no intention of doing any more than that. This choice to stay small has allowed us to buy equipment designed for micro farms. We are getting a hay mower, rake and a round bailer that will all work on our 25 HP tractor for around $25K brand new. One of my jobs this year will be to clean out a spot in the machine shed for them to be stored out of the weather to increase their longevity. This change should save us $5-6K in feed expenses and will allow us to sell around $3-6K in hay annually and the sell of hay could very well purchase the equipment allowing us to get “free” hay. In reality, labor is not free just because we do our own. We are confident this plan is sound and I have two of the fields ready to go and the third one is still in the works. It has some water issues that I will be working on in this summer. I am going to round up to whole numbers on the finances for ease of data manipulation so my numbers may be off by a few bucks. I did it to the penny for Annmarie.

Income: $5992

Sheep (76 animals) $5200

Eggs (2912 collected) $792

Cows $0

Alpaca $0

Hay $0

Expenses: $16, 731

Equipment $3933 (old tractor to get running after the shop $327, flatbed trailer to get welded supports and repairs $1172, Pickup repair, new tires, new brakes and new muffler all were broken $2295, fuel for tractor 47 gallons $139)

Vet $568 (Mouse $197, Zeke $371 he had a fox tail in his ear this summer)

Tractor/Sprayer $526. (Mower repair $180, herbicide $275, insecticide $71)

Business Expense $40

Fencing $1926 (30 yards of Gravel $635, 500 wooden stays and 122 used T posts and several rolls of smooth wire and clips)

Alpaca $706 (Shearing table was all of it, I was able to shear all the animals in one day with the table. We looked at buying one but it was around $2k. It is the only way to shear more than 1 or 2 animals. This is now all stored in our barn. We are working on making connections with people to work on sorting and roving it. Annmarie will do that this summer).

Irrigation $93 (power for the pump, we didn’t use the pump much this year)

General $268

Animals $2609 ($2500 for 21 adult breeder sheep)

Barn Improvements $238 (this year I need to finish the siding and raise the walls in the momma area again, we had sheep jumping out over the walls I did not raise. I would also like to build two more wall feeders.)

Feed $5825 (Dogs $285, chickens $60 we had a bunch of food left over from last year this caused us problems due to the mice problem so we have worked on upping our cat population for rodent control instead of buying poisons, Cows $3500, Sheep $1758, Alpaca $200, Cats $22)

Total loss for 2017 $10, 739

So if we didn’t pay out $5k for feed and sold $5k worth of hay we would break even and our cows are now where they need to be as we have 10 cows and by next year they will all be bred. So that will be around $5-6k in sales. Our hope is to be profitable in 2 years. It has taken us quite a while to get here and there is definitely a learning curve to doing it. Also, it takes time to build herds and fence. If you don’t use time then you have to have a lot more cash up front.

Yard fence

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I came home early on Friday just so I could work on the Gizmo fence. He has learned the many splendors of the snack potential in the barn and surrounding area. As soon as we let them out to potty he is running for the fence and squirts through the 4×4 hole. Once he is out of the yard he will not come back. It does not matter if you can see him and call him. He pretends he doesn’t hear you hollering “I can see you!”. So I will be installing a 2′ chicken wire fence using hog wire clips. It was cold, windy and rainy that afternoon. I used 1500 clips before I got cold. I only have a few hundred clips left and will have to order a few thousand more to finish the job.

I went to Bimart to get bagged dirt for our elevated trough beds in the back yard. It was a wonderful sunny day so I grabbed a bunch of different herbs with the intention of planting them outside. Once I had all the dirt unloaded and planters ready I opted to actually check the weather on my phone. No go on the herbs, its supposed to snow three days out of the next week. So I took them up to the breezeporch to survive another two weeks. Annmarie wants to create planters that go inside a tin can on our 3D printer so that all the herbs can go in the kitchen windowsill. I am afraid the herbs won’t get big enough if we keep them inside. We are starting to really like cooking with fresh herbs. I am really starting to like the idea of an underground greenhouse 10×20 feet long. I want to grow a few citrus trees, tomatoes year round, herbs year round and greens year round. I think it will be very cool. Water will be the real issue but I think I can store a few hundred gallons in 50 gallon barrels that will get us through the winter. Annmarie has agreed to listen to the plan and it is on the list for next year. I am sure it will cost $2-4K. Our wood trim arrived on Friday. Everything stained and finished I just have to cut it and install it. This is everything for our entire house. All the doors, all the windows, all the floor trim and the trim necessary to complete the stairway. It of course started raining and wind blowing on Saturday that caused me to finish covering the trim. I had covered it up after delivery but I had left open the left end and a few garbage bags with some tape closed it all off. I cannot install any of this until I finish painting so on Saturday I started to paint the downstairs. My goal is to finish all painting this week. So hopefully I can start installing the trim next week. My plan is to bring in the air compressor and then setup the chop saw on the front porch.

We had another set of twins born this week! The babies just keep coming. Next weekend we will have to tag and band the babies that have not been touched yet. This mother was so crazy we felt the need to lock her up with the twins in the momma area. She jumped out over the back wall! I am now going to have to raise that wall by 18 inches and raise the height of both gates just to keep these crazy mommas inside the pen. We locked her in the barn alone with her twins for four days so they could gain some strength to be able to keep up with the herd. Our internet sucks and is slow. I have discovered a way to speed up my picture uploads to the blog. I climb up the ladder 24 feet in the air and use my cellular data plan. Instead of each picture taking me 2-4 minutes they only take 10 seconds. This is a farmer update that most people will understand.

Internet hotspot at the top of the ladder!.

Squirrel!!

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I was supposed to be fencing all day today to keep the bull away from the heifers he is not to breed. He has a different plan and it starting to become highly annoying. I spent two hours yesterday with the dogs moving him away from the heifers. It was an exercise in patience. I finally started tossing dried cow poop patties at him. He didn’t like that and it seemed to move him better than anything else I had tried.

I started out fine, went and got my drill so I could install the gate hinges. I found all my fencing tools in the pickup and needed the tractor to move rocks. So I chased the sheep into the front yard to finish mowing the lawn and then alternated driving the pickup and tractor to get them both through the gates into the barn lot. I did get Zeke to load up in the pickup, he always wants to ride and then on a fluke I told Mouse to load up. Damned if he didn’t do it on the first try! So I had both dogs ride in the back of the pickup through the barn lot. We then unloaded and took the tractor up to the far upper bottom pasture to get the smooth wire dispensing bucket and some wire. Well there is a lot of water running on the wheat field side of the bottoms. Usually, there is not very much water on this side. I ended up digging out the ditch in a section in the upper prime pasture. When I got into the next pasture it was even worse. I had to clean up two sections of the ditch I dug earlier and then tried to dig four channels in a swampy area. All the dirt I take from the swampy area I put on the edges of the swamp. I will try and build up some of the low spots in an attempt to keep them from getting so swampy. I am going to have to dig a couple of small ponds. They will only be about 18 inches deep and 6×10 feet across. I just need the water to settle someplace and then evaporate. I may have to see if I can find some used grape poles to build a visual ring around the water so we don’t accidentally drive the tractor or equipment into the water or swamp.

I then drove up unto the middle pasture that has not been burned yet. WOW! There is at least 2 acres of swamp. There is running water through the middle of the field. It looks like a ditch may end up separating the field in the middle. This isn’t such a bad thing we just need to be able to get by the ditch on the upper and lower side. I think I am going to have to install one of my new culverts up here to ensure cross field access. There is no question that we will not be doing anything in these fields in the spring after we plant them with alfalfa. Not even spraying the first year until we can see how the field and alfalfa does. I am hoping it takes up some of the water. I managed to get stuck again in the upper pasture and could not get out. I have only ever pushed myself with the tractor bucket backwards in an attempt to get unstuck. I had about a 30 foot liquid mud trail in front of me and i was pushing myself further into the swamp. So I figured out how to pull myself with the bucket! Its not as easy as pushing but it is possible. I then went to load up the wire and realized I needed to drill some post holes for the gates up here. I had the auger on the tractor and ended up digging 7 holes. Which made me aware that I need to dig holes in the barn lot ASAP. This was nice all dirt bottoms and each hole took me 5-7 minutes to dig. I cannot let the barn lot dirt get any harder or I will never get a hole dug. No hole means more rock cribs!I managed to get started on the fencing at noon. The dogs got to terrorize the hillside, the CRP, the creek and occasionally the chickens. Mouse had a thing for chasing the chickens today, I had to call him off three times. Zeke ratted him out every time by perking up his ears and slinking toward the sound of distressed chickens. Zeke either runs away or stays close, he never does anything halfway.

Mouse loaded up into the pickup a second time on the first jump. I had to talk him into it and make Zeke jump out and show him how it was done. He was a little light on the jump but managed to scramble in without assistance. I got the upper gate installed. I had to create a chain that is attached to hold it open so you can drive through. Otherwise the gate is angled such that it automatically closes. I managed to get the tractor to finally hold a roll of wire such that I can just walk away and it unrolls without any problems. I have been trying to figure out how to do this for four years. The trick is the bar has to touch both sides of the tractor bucket and the chains hold it level. The horseshoe is one of my gate latches. I am running out of them again. I usually have them welded ten at a time and I keep using them up. I didn’t get all the fencing done. I still have the lower gates to install. I had some gate posts hooks but they are too big for the ones already installed on the gate. So I will just buy smaller ones it is easier. I need to fill one rock crib, so three hours of hard labor with the mistress doing all the heavy lifting. I have one spot just to the right of the rock crib on the right side of the picture that needs a rigid panel installed to keep the animals from crawling through the gap. I am pretty sure I can use a piece of scrap from the horse enclosure that is still propped up in the front yard. I keep using those scraps in an attempt to get rid of them.

The sheep finished mowing the front yard! I will now have to get out a hose and wash down the sidewalk, bridge and our front porch in the morning before our Easter guests come for brunch. This takes care of mowing and fertilizing all at once. The only problem is we have to watch the dogs go potty for a week or two as they love to rub sheep poop all over themselves. I thought about this today as Annmarie kept hollering from the back porch to get my opinion on Iher attire for tonight. I enjoy doing this stuff, its hard to explain to people why I have a full time job that pays so I can have a full time job taking care of the farm. The farm is always there and forces you to constantly change and adapt. When you think you have it figured out, someone or something changes to prove that you do not. It keeps you moving, there is no time to sit around and be lazy. I get to work with animals and fix stuff. I love doing the 90% on projects and most farm projects are complete at 85%! Not the ones inside the house, I know dear. I love to reuse and cobble things together. The farm keeps me healthy and whole.