Farm

Come on people!

Steve Hardin3 Comments

It never ceases to amaze me how little control we have over life. I know that a large majority of us have the illusion of control and we do pick and choose to some extent, but do we really control our lives? Or do we adapt better than others and handle life’s curveballs with perseverance? Sometimes I truly feel that just gritting your teeth and getting through the day with your head up is a great accomplishment. The farm is a constant reminder that no matter how much we think we have done and how far ahead we have planned that there will always be something unknown lurking around the corner. This week has been a great example of this. We had two more bummer lambs! This is five lambs we have given away this season. This is the most we have bummered out in years. On a positive note, we have not had a single lamb fatality. This is also unusual. We usually have 1-2 deaths that we never know the cause. We attribute them to still births most of the time. Our ram needs to go, he is now picking on the lambs, the problem with this is time. To sort, kill, skin, clean, debone, cut and wrap will take me around 6 hours start to finish by the time I have cleaned up all my tools and put everything away and prepped the materials. Where do I carve out that six hours with Christmas and Annmarie’s birthday coming up in the next four days? I don’t as I still have one more Christmas present to fix (measure twice, cut once for all you woodworkers). This takes precedence as I have been planning this for months.

The real problem is Annmarie is so mad at him that if I put a bullet in his head and drug him up to the boneyard she would be satisfied. He is painful and not safe to be around. He is now ramming the door if she is hiding behind it in an attempt to try and get her. I had to have a slap fest the other day to keep him away from me. I just don’t want to waste the meat but safety is starting to be compromised. I spent two hours before work helping Annmarie sort sheep and getting the ram out of the barn so we could snag the two bummers. The plan is to lay out a day after Christmas and just do it! I said the same thing about a mean rooster we had a few years ago only to come home and realize that it had foolishly decided to attack the woman of the house. He ended up on the bone pile before I got home, problem solved.

Zeke, our older border collie, has suddenly decided that he must get out of the yard again. He is jumping the front fence again. I worked all last night and came home to him greeting me in the driveway. I spent 30 minutes and restrung some electric fence wire that we had used to top our front fence. This was supposed to keep him from leaping up and launching over the top railing. An hour later I am in the pickup driving around trying to find him. I just wanted to go to bed but Annmarie said we needed to find the dog, I was tired and mumbled that “we had two dogs and the smarter one is still home”. Next thing I know I am in the pickup driving all around the outside of the property calling for the dog. I spent an hour looking for him to no effect. It could have been shorter but I forgot my cell phone at home and missed the call where Annmarie told me she had spotted him on the back hillside and had to walk out to get him. Somehow he was unable to “hear” her until he realized she could see him. I did eventually manage to go to bed for a few hours, I was only awake for 20 hours.

We have not had snow yet this year, it is late for us but supposedly we will have a white Christmas. I keep counting the hay bales every time I feed hoping it will be enough. It is going to be super close. I need to buy a little more next year or really I am becoming one of those paranoid farmer types that worry about everything.

I would love to go burn the rest of the upper prime squared field neighbor. I still need a name for the new fields. The far end field will always be known as the “7 acres”, that just leaves the two upper bottom fields. I want to use the name “upper prime squared” for the new pasture on the hillside that still needs to be fenced in. Annmarie only wants the fence for the ram pasture completed and the downstairs floor done. She wants results not talk! LOL. I can talk for hours about the changes I would like to make. Occasionally, I go back several years and read the blog myself just to see what I was thinking and to see the changes. Every once in a while I need to remind myself that we really are making progress. I laugh about some of the plans that I said I was going to complete in the next 1-2 years and five years later I still have not done them.

I have an alarm set in the morning to call the tile place and order the custom grout for the floor tile. It takes two weeks to get here. Unfortunately, I did not put the phone number in my phone and the business has changed locations. I don’t know the location and cannot remember the name of the place. So I have to call the trim place and ask for a referral again. This time I will put the number in my cell phone. I add notes to my contacts, like “does wood trim”, “contractor”, “plumber”, “heating guy”, “wooden fence stays”, “hay” so that when I inevitably forget their name I can do a search in my phone and find out who I need to call. I always recognize the name once I see a list but can never seem to pull it out of thin air.

Still at it

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Slow but steady wins the fencing race. I ended up fencing in the rain on Thursday. I have these fancy all rubber overalls I picked up this summer at a yard sale and my rubber boots and waterproof coat. It went great except I had leather gloves and it didn’t take them long to get wet and slimy. I spent a couple of hours nailing in wooden stays. Some would say wooden stays are archaic. But I had noticed that all my fence done with wooden stays survived the elk last year. My neighbors had a bunch of fence torn up by the same elk. I was told by someone who is licensed to harass the elk that they see the wooden stays and will leap the fence, on other fences they just run right through it. Plus the horses and cows cannot push the top wire down when you use wooden stays. I still have about 40 more feet and the first 60% of the fence will be completed. Although Annmarie has told me I need to go back and wire both woven fences together between each wooden stays so the sheep cannot slip through. I did this down in the corner I know they bunch up in but she wants it the entire length of the fence. As soon as I don’t do this then the sheep will learn to slip through and then I will still have to do it after tightening the fence again.

Annmarie had told me she thought the chicken killer raccoon had moved out to the barn under the old milking barn section. So we opted to quit feeding the cats at night as we don’t want to feed the raccoon. I took a good look at the area today and yes i do believe the raccoon dug under the barn but for a different reason. I have had a raccoon leg trap out their for almost three weeks baited with peanut butter. The trap is chained with metal chain to the wall so that it cannot be drug off by a raccoon. The trap can only be triggered by putting a paw down into the tube and then pulling up on the actuator. There is no way a cat or dog can trigger the trap. It has been sitting there doing nothing for so long I had forgotten about it. It looks like the raccoon finally decided to try his hand out. We go out to the barn every morning and every evening so it must have managed to get loose before morning. There was some loose hair stuck in the trap. We think this is a “Townie” raccoon as it is avoiding traps. It was most likely trapped and dumped off out at four corners. We have discovered this is more common than we believed. This of course just forces me to deal with the problem in a lethal method. This is very hard to do when you never see the offending critter. We have a ninja raccoon!

We had company come out on Saturday to see the baby lambs. We have been sorting only and had a passel of babies that needed to be tagged and banded. They had four children age 10 to age 4. They had a great time! There is no one that doesn’t love baby lambs! I did all the tagging and banding while Annmarie did the catching and then we just had everyone line up like an assembly line to hand me sheep. There were the inevitable questions about why I put different colored tags in their ears? We have a pink based color for the girls and all the boys get the same blue color. I alter the girl color every 50-75 babies to give us a rough approximation of the ewes age. It does actually work. They wanted to know why I kept playing with the little boys testicles? I said I had to make sure to get both testes when I banded or they would still be a ram. Next was did it hurt them when I put two small rubber bands on the boys scrotum? Yes for about five minutes then it hurts no more as there is no more blood flow. Did we need to shear the sheep? No, they are hair sheep and we just use them for meat. They then got to hand feed the horses, go inside the chicken coop and gather eggs, then walk out and watch Annmarie hand feed the bull and one of the heifers some apple slices. Mouse was in heaven as the children kept throwing the ball repeatedly and tirelessly while they were here. He was very tired after they left. We fed them all lamb bits for dinner. It was delicious. I put mine over a baked potato like a topping and it is amazing. Zeke said “peace out”” and went and hid in the laundry room to get away from the children. Gizmo is starting to get more social and finally quit barking at them after the first 20 minutes.

I had real high hopes that we could get through this lambing period with our ram and he could then impregnate everyone and then we could kill him for stew meat. It’s not looking like that is going to be possible. He is now pushing and head butting the ewes in an effort to bully them. He is humping pregnant ewes who are almost ready to give birth. He used to just drink their pee to tell if they were in estrus and then mount them. No more he is on a total dominance kick. But the real reason he has to go is that he has head butted a gate twice in the last week that Annmarie was standing on the other side, totally not cool. I am so pissed off when I get in the barn with a stick that I just yell and swear at him to take his best shot because if he knocks me down I am going for my knife and only one of us is getting up. He seems to understand and has been staying away from me. But I cannot have him hurting Annmarie. So I have arranged some help and right after Christmas he will meet his demise. I am still hoping I can get a shot behind his ear. Last time I shot a ram between the eyes it just knocked him out for a couple of minutes. The bullet could not get through the front of the skull! This animal is designed to crack heads at full speed with another ram for dominance. We have a gal who wants to use his bones and hide and parts to practice her budding taxidermy skills on. It’s a great use of resources. We will just bone him out right away and cut up the meat into stew sized pieces.

I have been looking at our skinning pole arch and I think I need to dig out an area around it about 1 foot down and then fill it all in with 2 inch gravel with a 3 inch layer of 3/4 minus over the top for drainage and dryness of the ground. I like this idea and am going to do it next year.

Gizmo got involved in my selfie! He is a whopping 6.5 lbs now and 11 months old. He is not as social as Sprout but he is finally starting to figure out that people are not evil. He loves Annmarie and I. He will finally go to Sarah now.

We also have another plumbing issue. Our hot water relief valve off of the gas tankless water heater is leaking very slightly. I would have never noticed except it got below freezing and I noticed the huge icicle hanging from the outside vent tubing. I will need to call the plumber and see what can be done. I tried to finish painting the hallway and am of course about a quart short on brown paint. I will have to go back and buy an entire gallon just to get the one quart I need. I am also going to try and get a new white color for the hallway and entryway. We don’t want super bright white.

I am Batman!!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

As I lay sleeping peacefully last night I was rudely awakened at 0500 by my alarm. Usually, Annmarie jumps out of bed and does yoga while I contemplate the value of getting out of a warm bed. Instead this morning she rolled over turned off her alarm and went back to sleep. I decided that laying in bed and surfing the internet was a valid option to getting out of a warm bed. While I was still waiting for Facebook to load on my phone I heard it, a call to arms! A chicken was keening its death knell. (Batman get to the bat mobile!). I leapt out of bed and ran to the walk in closet. I threw on my cammo cargo pants (commando of course) and a shirt and raced down the steps. I had to run back to the laundry room to get a coat (bat suit) and my fancy high power flashlight. I stopped at the front closet to arm myself (utility belt). I opted to go big or go back to bed and grabbed the pistol grip shotgun. Now was not a time to spare the innocent, now was a time to punish the guilty! (Dark Knight). I snuck to the creek side of the old house and heard an animal under the old house. Of course after my remodel of the skirting it is impossible for me to see under or crawl under the building. There were chickens all over the chicken yard. The dummies had not gone in last night and were huddled all over the chicken yard like little bite size nuggets. You have to ask yourself what would Batman do?

I was unable to spot the offender and ended up chasing chickens around in the dark to throw them back into the coop. I didn’t want to provide dessert to the offender. While I was doing this Annmarie came out to help. She spotted the spot under the skirting where something had dug under the building. It was dug to provide the shortest path to the chicken coop! Its on, there will be blood.

I counted chickens tonight and realized we only have 22 hens left. I have lost 3 already. This is totally unacceptable and must be stopped. I baited the live trap with cheerios tonight. The real problem here is how long can one raccoon eat on three chickens?? I am betting it is several days if not an entire week. If the cheerios don’t work I may have to go to cat food. The problem with that is I catch a lot of cats. If you shake the trap before you let the cat out they only go into the trap once or twice before learning to avoid it. I cannot use any kind of leg trap as I don’t want to hurt the cats or dogs. We need both of those animals to do their respective jobs and they are not easily replaced.

It’s going to be a long winter if I have to battle this fiend all season long!

Back to the bat cave!

Fencing will never end

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Here we are again doing that thing that never ends, fencing. Annmarie called me this morning to tell me that two more lambs were getting rejected and I missed a ewe when I put the sheep in last night. I did put them in during the day time and I did look around the barn lot and did not see any strays. She would like to put the sheep into the ram pasture but I have not fixed the upper fence since I cut it this summer to let the cows out. Annmarie thought I would get to it, I never did and now we need it. It sounds like a broken record concept that I seem to never catch onto. One would think that eventually it would occur to me to stay ahead of it. But there always seems to be some other pressing emergency that takes up my time. At least that’s my perception, I suspect my other half might differ on this view!So I came home early and spent four hours outside working on the fence. I had to make a few crucial decisions to speed up the process. I really needed to add four strands of smooth wire but running all that out is going to take a while to do alone. I have not gotten my hitch mounted wire dispenser yet. Its a $100 I have just not spent. I have researched it and know where I can obtain one via the mail as no one sells it locally. This does not currently help me today. So I opted to install woven wire across the top. This solves multiple problems as I only have to tighten the one woven wire and I can roll it out. I threw out 38 wooden stays and rolled out four rolls of wire. I had to cut a little fence out of the way but managed to only get the uphill side tightened and wooden stays in place. I am hopeful that two more four hour sessions will see me get the fence up and tightened. The real time drag is nailing all the wooden stays up and in place. I am just going to wire in the gate in an attempt to get the fence up and in place. I need to replace one of the wooden posts in the spring as I cannot get the hole dug.

Annmarie ended up with two more bummer lambs. They got to come inside, get warm and get a belly full of formula. Tisha came and picked them up this afternoon. We have moved panels around inside the barn to make more room for the mommas but still leave a passage for the rest of the sheep.

I started painting the upper stairway wall to match the lower half. It is really bringing the whole thing together. I still have one more coat to put on the wall. I have a 12 foot roller extension which lets me paint from the ground. It is so much faster than getting up on a ladder.

This year we are going light on Christmas decorations so that we can move right into the floor remodel this January. I am getting excited about getting the hallway, living room and dining room tiled.

Hawk ears

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It happens every year, we have our first bummer. The weird part is it’s almost always caused by humans. When we first started having sheep they would go down near the front spring and have babies and the babies would get wet and cold or drown. Annmarie convinced me to start locking them up at night in the barn by making me get up at 0300 many times in the dead of winter to search for a mewling baby lamb. This is not fun and became good incentive to get the barn redone. Every year the sheep find a way to become bummers that we had not anticipated. Today is a prime example. We had two more sets of twins born in the barn last night. I was sent out to the barn early as Mrs Hawk Ears (aka Annmarie) could hear a new baby that was in distress. Now she heard this through a barely opened bedroom window on the second story of our house through the great big tree and through the walls of the barn which is 60 yards away. Her students wonder how she can hear them whispering in the back of the classroom, the woman has better hearing than anyone I have ever encountered!

When I got to the barn I could hear the baby also and it was in distress, so I did not feed the meowing kitten or the whining horses and instead opted to go right into the barn. Going into the barn is still a risky business as I am not using the dogs. The ram and I have come to a mutual hate agreement. I carry a big stick and he stays away from me. Neither one of us trusts the other to keep his word. So I was searching for the baby and trying to keep the ram in sight. I spotted one momma and one baby but could not see the complainer. I could hear it loud and clear. I moved the sheep away from the newly installed wall feeders and saw four little feet under the feeder. The little bugger must have laid down close to the feeder and rolled under then stood up. Once upright she could not figure out how to get out. The real problem is this normally happens during the birth process so the mother doesn’t bond with the newborn lamb. There was no sorting off the momma and baby with everyone in the barn so I went and opened the outer door to let them out of the barn.

The ram followed me to the door and got within four feet of me but never tried to ram me. I had the pitchfork handle in my hand the whole time. I keep trying to use the old pitchfork heads I find laying around and they fall out of the new handles all the time so now I have a $15 club. I got about 2/3 of the herd out when I decided I had better shut the outer momma pasture gate until I had checked in the barn. I didn’t want the new momma getting out because then I have to go get the dogs and run everyone in again and sort them all over, a process that would add an hour to my outside chores. This endeavor would not disappoint either border collie as they would get to move the sheep.

I headed back into the barn and lo and behold there were two mommas and four babies! The little buggers can really hide amongst the sheep. Normally, we would just keep walking through the herd until we spotted them all but the ram is preventing us from our usual routine. Luckily with no pressure most of the mommas will hang back with their babies. So I shut up the barn and watched them, the little complainer got pushed away by both ewes. This is not a good sign but I figured if I could stick all four babies and both mommas into the smaller momma area maybe the one would change her mind. I went down to the spring and got a large bucket of water as I was going to trap them in the barn instead of allowing them free access to the spring. I had the baby area all ready and had to lure the mommas in by catching the babies and holding them out and walking to the baby area. It works even better when the lambs cry out loud for mom. I even rubbed the twin to the complainer all over the complainer hoping the scent would rub off. No go, Annmarie came out to check on me while I was watching the complainer and we just opted to call it a bummer. So she carried it to the house in her church clothes holding it out away from her body to keep her clean. I finished the morning chores and came inside. Annmarie feeds the babies way better than I do, so she offered to stay home. I sent her on her way and mixed up a bottle. We keep formula mix in the freezer for just this occasion. The lamb hollered loudly and continuously until I fed it. I then went upstairs and got our small dog kennel and turned on the gas stove so the baby could get warm. She fell asleep after the first feeding. One more time she woke up hollering and slurped down another few ounces of formula. She is a good eater, actually head butted my shoulder until she got more milk and had her fill. We have a wonderful lady who comes and takes all of our bummer lambs. We give them to her free of charge so that they can have a good chance. She has about a 50% survival rate over the years. Sometimes they are just too small. Although with this new ram that has not been a problem. His babies are gorgeous and healthy which is only reason we are putting up with him for another 3 months. I want him to impregnate all the ewes so we can have another set of his offspring. Once that is done he will be sausage. It’s just not safe to go out into the barn with him. We also don’t believe in selling our problems to other people. It’s not fair to them and most people won’t believe you when you say he is mean. Because he was tame first he has no fear of humans which makes him even more dangerous than normal as he is not skittish or unpredictable, just mean.

Here is a prime example of his behavior. Today, once I shut the gate and trapped in the last 1/3 of the ewes to check on the baby he hung around the gate waiting for them to come out. I leaned my pole up against the fence right next to the gate. I opened the gate to let the last of the ewes out and our super friendly brown ewe slipped back inside and the ram followed her. I switched sides of the gate I was standing on so I had the gate between us. All the ewes ran out and he saunters over to the gate and spots my handle leaning up against the fence. He stopped and head butted the handle multiple times until he had knocked it down on the ground and then tried to prance through the gate opening. I smacked him a good one with the gate! He is not afraid of me only of the stick. He did run off after getting blindsided by the gate.

He is not safe to be around and we have people who would like to come out and see the babies. So we will have to let them into the baby area from the outside so they can avoid him. Ideally, they would be able to just wander through the herd in the barn as everyone mills around but that won’t happen this winter.