Farm

No Shave November Failure

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I am a failure. I had big plans for November, one could even say bushy plans and they have been thwarted by Mother Nature. It is No Shave November and I had no intention of shaving my beard. I had to make a few small concessions, I have to trim the mustache as I don’t like to eat it. It pulls on my upper lip when I try and eat. I also had to continue to shave my lower neck. I do have to appear somewhat presentable at work. But I was going for the full beard!!

My task for the day was to burn the upper prime squared field. I knew there was not very much propane in the old burn tank. So I dropped the new burner into the bucket on its side and took it out to some close weeds. I got it lit but there was very little flame and no torch mechanism at all. I stuck it on the weeds and it did nothing. So I took that full tank of propane back to the machine shed and chained the old one into the bucket. I did throw in a shovel and pick axe also so if I needed to put out a fire I could. The weather was perfect, no wind what so ever. I started by digging a weed free fire stop at the top end of the upper prime squared field. I have yet to name the next field. I didn’t want to fire up all 17 acres at once. This gives me about 5 acres to deal with at this time. Once I had that done I fired up the torch, mine has a turbo handle that causes the flame to shoot out 4-5 feet! I squeezed that handle with the torch on my right side and drove around the field clockwise catching the entire perimeter on fire first. This made for a pretty good show but the fire kept going out in weird places. I ran out of propane about 300 degrees around the outside of the acreage. I let the fire burn itself out and then drove back. I loaded the old tank into the pickup and drove to Pilot Rock to get it refilled. Nope, there is a metal collar around the valve so if the tank falls over it won’t break the valve off, the refill apparatus needs to be about 1/2 inch longer to refill our tank.

You can see the tank strapped into the bucket of the tractor in the above picture. I saw my nephew early in the morning as he was going bird hunting. He was not impressed with my desire to burn the ideal pheasant habitat. I never saw a single pheasant run or fly out of the field when I lit it on fire.

After being unable to fill the old tank I went back to the new tank we picked up this summer. It had some weird pressure regulator and safety device attached to the tank. This did not allow me to attach the TORCH to the tank. So I took all that off and used the same connector we use on the other tank. It fired right up, the only problem is I had to switch to the pickup and strap the tank in place. The tank was almost full when we bought it at a clearance sell (thanks Penny).

I drove out and started torching the little groups of weeds. I would walk along the pickup then lay out the burn hose, burn then move it onward 30 feet, drive the pickup 50 feet and do it again. This caused me to get pretty close to the flames. I did this until 1600 when I was hot, tired, covered in ash and smelled like a chimney. I decided this was good enough. I believe I could run the discs out through here now. I had to put the pickup in four wheel drive as I was sinking into the soil it is so moist. There was no running water in the spring but I managed to burn the weeds away from the channel. This way I can go up with the tractor and dig it out. I also need to dig a section of the channel in the front run off ditch. A part of this ditch is all filled in now and it needs to be dug back out. Maybe this will keep a large section of this field from turning into a swamp. I would like to dig in two small ponds.

The neighbors came and got their cows today. I knew this cause at quitting time when I went back to the barn to feed and do night chores the bull was in our corral! I knew I didn’t do it and no one else knew anything about it. He got out of our field and got in with the neighbors cows who visited overnight. I am unsure how he got out so I will need to grab some tools, throw them in the tractor and drive the fence line looking for the hole. If I don’t find it the bull will be causing us problems.

I came inside to shower and the travesty was fully revealed. I had managed to burn off half my eyebrows, half my eyelashes (I wear glasses so not sure how that happened) and scorched my beard! The worst part was I had burned a divot out of the right side of my beard. So I had to break out the trimmers after my shower. No Shave November was NO MORE.

Guests are coming

Steve Hardin1 Comment

It has been one of those weeks, long and stressful. Luckily, the farm has not been cooperating either so it helps break up the daily stress. We have been feeding the kenneled cats out in the barn but it appears that something is eating their food through the bars of their cages. We suspect a raccoon but don’t have any proof. I am going to have to set up the game cam to see if we can capture something. The cats really don’t care for humans, the single one today hissed and growled at me as I gave it water and food. I am hoping it will beat up on whatever is damaging our barn kitty. He is back to hobbling around on three legs and it looks like something bit his front left paw.

Annmarie printed a knob for our gate latch last week and I got it epoxied onto the handle. Now you don’t have to reach over the gate to unlatch the gate. Yes, I know I need to take the chisel and make my chewed up area look neat, but I have not done that and its too cold to put stain on the fence now. I also figured I could adjust the gate just by tightening and loosening the gate tension wire. Its super easy and fast, not sure why I didn’t do it before.

Wednesday I went out and did morning chores. Now this is not a normal occurrence, our new deal is I don’t leave for work until I have showered, pottied the dogs and fed them breakfast. I do all this so that Annmarie can do her Yoga in the morning. Every morning Gizmo comes down and does stretches next to Annmarie while she does Yoga, it is very cute. I keep trying to figure out how to get a picture that will be allowed to be posted on the blog. But so far I have not managed to capture one for public consumption. But we just had Hughes Net install satellite internet on Monday afternoon and Annmarie was on the phone with the help desk trying to get it to work right. She has spent about 4 hours this week on the phone getting it programmed right so that it actually works. So anyways, I volunteered to do the morning chores before heading to work. It had rained the previous night and I didn’t bother with mud boots. I just planned on giving the horses some food and letting the sheep out of the barn. I ended up having to feed and water the cats after feeding the horses. I was just about ready to go around and open the door to the barn for the sheep when I heard that sound, the bleet of a baby sheep! I scanned the barn and found a set of newborn twins. So I slowly walked into the barn, hoping the ram would not take offense, and pushed the sheep toward the door without upsetting momma enough to cause her to leave also. Luckily, I was able to single her and the babies out. I figured I might as well feed for that night since I was already out there working. Annmarie finally came out I was taking so long! The babies are solid black. We don’t have any solid black ewes yet and today we checked and they are both girls. My shoes were covered in sheep and mud leavings. I had to go change my shoes before heading to work.

Here is a picture of our safe. We do not know the combination and we want to be able to get into the safe with a combination. It is a four tumbler design with a wheel that goes to 99 so basically 10,000 possibilities. I am offering $100 for the person that gets it. I am sure I will have droves of offers. No damaging the safe during entry, straight combination only.

Today we went to town to get Thanksgiving groceries. We are having prime rib and fixings. The first store only had boneless prime rib. This deprives you of a whole second meal! It can be barbecued ribs or an amazing soup but it is always better the second time around. So we went to Safeway and had them cut us a 10# bone in prime rib, for the seven of us eating. I think it will be just enough meat. We do a salt casket bake and I will start doing a dry rub on the meat starting tomorrow until D-Day.

I spent the morning putting a new kitchen table together. I hate assembly furniture but we wanted to try out a new arrangement and we like it. Its a two person table with storage. I now need to make a custom table based off of this design and we will buy a solid piece of granite for the top. Annmarie will be able to bake and roll out dough very easily on a solid piece of granite.

So when we got home Annmarie ran out to run the momma into the barn in her area then the sheep into the main barn. As I was unloading groceries in the house Annmarie came in to tell me that there were cows in the wheat field. This sucks, but the good news was they were not ours! So we had to go try and put them into the upper prime pasture until we could figure out who owned them. They would not cooperate. Annmarie was way out in the wheat field attempting to yell directions to me. Now this would work better if she had her cell phone, nope, or if the person she was talking to was not a little hard of hearing. To top it all off, I had the dogs and kept yelling directions to them and it was cold so I had a big warm fuzzy hat with ear flaps on covering up my ears. It was very hard to hear her. She wanted me to get in the pickup and drive around and she did not want the dogs. So I did this and then spotted her head lamp from the road and walked out into the wheat field. She hollered at me to stay put and she would walk out to me. When she arrived she stated the cows had gone into the upper weed patch and she had shut the gate. There was some animals scratching at a bush along the fence line and she didn’t want to walk past it with no dog and no weapon. I really need to burn off the upper weed patch. Hopefully, the cows will still be there in the morning. The fence is not intact all the way around that field. This chewed up about 90 minutes of our time. We had some leftovers while sitting at our new breakfast nook and I was working on the blog when Sarah called.

Sarah had hit a deer. Sarah is 21 years old. Sarah has totaled 4 vehicles now. In her defense this time a driver going the opposite direction hit a deer and threw it into her lane and she ran over it. The radiator is caved in about 6 inches, the timing belt is off and the frame is bent on the front. There is deer hair stuck under the vehicle the entire length of the undercarriage. We had tossed a chain into the back of the pickup and Annmarie towed the car while I drove it back to our house. I am very unsure if it is repairable. I will need to look at it in the daylight hours. It leaked all the radiator fluid out onto the road.

Babying the horses again

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Every once in a while we have to count the cows. I fed them a new bale on Friday. There are 13 cows in the picture. One is hiding behind the feeder and one is a baby hiding behind the bull. The cows think me starting the tractor up means meal time every time they hear it. This leads to a lot of disappointment. We will have two cows for sale in the spring if anyone wants to finish them off. We should have another 4 babies this winter, maybe 5.

The director from PAWS called us today. They had some reject cats for us. The only reason they are rejects are they don’t like people. This makes them very hard to adopt out to homes. We use two dog kennels and we feed and water the cats for a couple of weeks. Once they recognize us and that food and water come from us then we will let them out. We feed the cats every day when we feed the other animals so they can just live in the barn. There are lots of places to hide and to stay warm. The cats are all neutered so we don’t get kittens and the cats get to live life on their own terms. An added bonus is the cats control the mice in the barn so the hay does not get destroyed. Everyone comes out a winner, the cats, us and PAWS. We got three adult cats today. If you look closer at the picture you will see our other PAWS kitten on the steps, three cats in the kennels and look up at the barn door opening and you will see Mouse standing on the hay looking out!

The side barn area was muddy again. We have put gutters on the end of the barn, I have put in a drain line from the down spout to the front spring. I dug a small drain line over by the horse enclosure to catch the rain coming off the barn that was forming a mud puddle. That seems to be helping. What we really need is a long 80 foot trench running down the center of the back alleyway. This idea did not excite me but Annmarie had a hard time getting to the cats in her not mud boots. I started digging the trench today with a Polanski and a shovel. I was about 10 feet into it, down to my long sleeve shirt only, even had to remove my hat, it was too hot when I realized this decision was going to take me two days of back breaking labor. This concept tore at my soul and lower back. Suddenly, it dawned on me that this summer I had purchased a trenching device for my tractor! I had not had a chance to use it. I promptly gave up the shovel and jumped onto the tractor. Once I got the box blade off the back of the tractor I realized I needed three pins. I had to dig around the machine shop and came up with two and reused one from the box blade. I got the trencher on without too much difficulty. I just lined up over the area I wanted and drug that thing up and down the path. It doesn’t like to go through solid rock. There is a rock bluff just under the surface of the dirt about 6 inches down near the back of the barn for about four feet. I am sure this is why they built the barn here, a nice rock base. I still had to shovel the dirt clear but I had the whole thing done and filled with gravel in under three hours! Now to see if it works.

Gizmo has this perverse habit of watching anyone who is in the shower. I think he is afraid you might drown and he needs to save you. Who knows? He got a bath last weekend and the water was brown, he is a dirty dog. He has been sneaking out to the barn to play with the kitten, Soot (Annmarie named it this week).

Punched his ticket

Ann Marie Hardin1 Comment

Well, the ram has punched his ticket.  I went out Friday morning to open the barn door and let the sheep out.  Part of this ritual is a walk through the sheep to see if any lambs have arrived over night.  None have as of yet, but that doesn’t negate the importance of the process.  The ram has been giving me the evil eye and thinking about challenging me, so I always have my handy dissuader (an axe handle we found at Grandma Lane’s house that we think was Grandpa’s interruder deterrent) with me.  Prior to Friday, simply taking a ready stance and reminding the ram that I was prepared had been sufficient.  Friday, he decided to test me.  Here’s the problem.    My bluff is exactly that – a bluff.  If hitting him with an axe handle broadside across his nose, ears and head is insufficient to deter him, he will win.  He won.

No, I didn’t go down, and he only solidly connected once, but this was only because he insisted on backing up half the length of the barn to get a good solid running start at me.  This gave me time to make sure my swing was ready and accurate, and also gave me time to keep backing up.  Yes, experts will say I should have stood my ground and humiliated him into submission, but really, when he is just coming right through good solidly connecting full force whacks to the head with an axe handle, I don’t have a prayer of actually winning.  My main goal was to minimize bodily damage, keep my feet, and get the heck out of there.  I succeeded in all three, emerging with only a very impressive knot and accompanying bruise on my left thigh and some muscle soreness, probably from adrenaline.  Yes, I was shaking all over by the time I got through the door.

So, the ram has punched his ticket.  This will be his last season on the farm.  We are planning to keep a ram lamb from one of our gentle friendly Kahtadin cross ewes.  They have consistently mellow temperaments.  As soon as that ram lamb is about 9 months old, this ram is going to go in the freezer.  He’ll make very nice sausage.  In the meantime, I don’t go out to the barn without the dogs.  He’s still afraid of the dogs.

Benevolent dictatorship

Steve Hardin3 Comments

Today was the day to pick up straw for the barn. We usually use 25-30 bales a year for the sheep and horses. I like to buy 60 bales at a time and just store them in the barn. The nice thing about straw is it just gets drier! Therefore it works better at absorbing moisture.

Unfortunately the new toy, hay elevator, is in the way. So I will need to move the old alfalfa out of the way, the grass hay to the other side of the room and then pile the straw into the previously occupied corner. A whole 60 bales equaling 2.5 tons of straw costing $150. I of course used my fancy 7500lb capacity trailer. It only had 5000lbs on it and it looks like it is crying every time I load it. I had to beat out the tire fender on the left side again. I keep hitting stuff with the trailer, maybe. I never feel the trailer hit anything. I think something is attacking my trailer with a hammer. I think its gremlins. I noticed a second new dent while the trailer was being loaded. I am seriously considering airbags or an extra spring leaf to stiffen the trailer. It’s on the list to do something about. Annmarie reminded me that I need to advertise the enclosed trailer so we will have the cash necessary for a used stock trailer. We want a decent one 10 feet long. I would like a stock trailer as they are sturdier than a horse trailer. The dogs and I had a discussion about our ruling style while we were feeding last night. I started out with the democratic process and told them we were going to the barn to work. They seemed super excited and came running. Then they did not want to stay in the hay area while I fed the horses. So we switched to a benevolent dictatorship model. This appeared to work until they got bored then they tried to sneak away. I finally put them in the sheep area to hold off the sheep so I could feed. I have not had to have a clubbing match with the ram yet this fall and am attempting to hold it off for the entire winter. The dogs are my solution to him wanting to be macho man all the time. I was in the hay room, the dogs were in the sheep area and the sheep started to come in. I cannot see anything but I hear much commotion and start hollering automatically at the dogs to stay still. When I came around the corner both dogs were laying down but Mouse had advanced another 10 feet closer to the sheep. We had to switch to a strict dictator model and I gave them both a severe lecture about the politics involved and why it was necessary. Usually, we operate on the benevolent dictator model and the dogs do fine.