Farm

Phil’s last fencing day

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I have been saving broken off T posts for some occasion. I was unsure of what exactly that occasion would be but I figured I would find a use eventually. Here is the use, I pounded in three posts to keep the barn wall from sliding off the rock again. 

The bull managed to push through the fence in the corner. He ripped out the panel and pushed out a board. I had only held the panel in place with staples. This time we lowered the board and screwed it in with long Fastenal anchors. We added a second board across the top and wrapped wire around the ends of the panel so it cannot be lifted or pulled away again. 

Phil came out to help on Saturday. The goal was to get the rest of the upper prime pasture enclosed and secured so we can let animals loose. The goal is everyone staying in place. We worked for nine hours and got all the outer fence secured. AnnMarie had told me there was another hole in the far corner. I was not convinced but we drove the whole fence to be sure. Guess who was right?  Yep the wife scores again. The cows had done the same thing for a third time!  Picked a corner and pushed out a panel. I again had only bent nails over to hold the panel in place. I used 3 inch staples on both sides and we wired the panels to the posts so they cannot be lifted even if the staples get popped out. We had to tighten one more back section of fence. I had added T posts and I the back section a couple of years ago but it looks like I need to add more. The main pasture is ready. We just need to sort the cows again. 

Damn bull!

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Well Friday was spent fixing stuff!  The bull was tired of being in a pen. He started throwing a fit and managed to knock the corner of the milkshed off its rock corner. Now in his defense gravity was the only thing keeping that corner on said rock. AnnMarie let him out of the pen so she could load the sheep up on Thursday. He promptly ran out into the barn lot and magically got out to be with the female cows. There is now another hole in the fence that will need help I be repaired.  I used the little tractor and tried to lift the corner up. No go it is over the 800# weight limit so I piled two pallets into the bucket and then tipped the bucket once it wouldn’t lift any more. The tilt hydraulics don’t have a governor so they will move regardless of weight!  This allowed me to lift it a couple of inches so I could get the wall back on the rock. I will need to pound in some stakes to prevent this from happening again. I had been meaning to put in stakes anyways. 

Since the bull was out this necessitated me repairing all the lower fence as quick as possible. So I loaded up the tractor with supplies and tooled on down toward the school house. I found a hole in the fence I did not know about. 
The cows had decided to make their own decisions about where to eat and my wishes were being ignored. I ended up adding a new wire and restretching and attaching the fence to the rock crib again. I tried to add a T post but I kept hitting rocks so I added another wooden stay. There was a roll of barn wire there so I used it. I remembered why I only use smooth wire. The stuff is horrible to handle and the animals don’t seem to care if it’s smooth or barn wire they treat it the same. It was very hot outside. 

The cow hole is now repaired but I had been told there was an opening down by the schoolhouse and this one was just an added bonus. 

Down by the schoolhouse there was a 20 foot section I had only stretched woven wire across. I thought the animals could not get to it due to the hillside. I was wrong. So I stretched three more strands and added some wooden stays. This should hold them I hope. All this took me six hours to repair. 

Million dollar man fences

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Sunday afternoon AnnMarie and I went to pickup a bunch of used fencing and animal supplies. We won’t use it all up immediately but there are several gates and a bunch of cow panels that will get used eventually. I like using them as rock cribs. The only real problem is they have to be entirely filled to the brim with rocks. It’s a lot of rocks!!  It was hot again. When we got home I unloaded the trailer. I inadvertently committed the trailer to be used in a parade next month. Which means I need to get the lights fixed, the license plate holder mounted, the fenders stiffened and the ramp holder lock replaced. So today after fencing I dropped it off at the welding shop so the repairs can be done. I will have enough time to hit it with a can of black spray paint to make it look fairly pretty. There is nothing I can do to make the pickup look pretty. 
The pickup does need some brake work and a new muffler. So this week I will work on getting the pickup repaired. 

The million dollar man came out to help me fence today. He would say he is only a $100k man but what are a few zeros between friends?  
We spent five hours fencing today. I taught him how to attach wire clips to woven wire. We spent the entire five hours clipping wire up to preinstalled T posts. There is another 16-20 hours of fence clipping necessary. I am working on enclosing a new section of ground so the animals will have a new grazing area. 

On the way back to the house I noticed that one of the trees/large bushes was covered in little round yellow things. I thought it might be apples. None of the trees in the upper prime pasture had ever produced fruit. Turns out it is a type of blonde plum and it’s not ripe yet!  It needs another 1-2 weeks. The tree is absolutely loaded with plums. I will be watching it closely so we can pick some when they are dead ripe. I want to make a few containers of freezer jam out of them. Plus, I want to eat them until I get sick. I suspect all the rain this year allowed the tree to flourish. 

It’s hot and late July is perfect fencing weather

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Yesterday, Phil came out to hit it hard and get that horse area finished. I had managed to get in a good six hours of rock picking in on Friday and we still had more to go. I did get the furthest run from the house completed. This is where the metal hanging gate was going to be attached. I had a brand new green gate and an old painted blue one. The green one is for the machine shed but I opted to use it instead of the blue one. The blue one has peeling paint and needs another coat of paint. Not anything I am going to do soon. Since it is visible from the house I opted to go with the pretty one for asthetical reasons. The blue one will go some where far from the house where no one will car that it has peeling paint. I hung the gate and blocked off the small gap between the gate and the barn with a couple of vertical 2×6 boards. Once hung I had to cut a woven panel to wire to the gate. I don’t buy the straight small animal gates as they are more money. Besides for $25 I can add panels to any gate. The price savings is worth it. 

Phil had to collect around 12 loads of rocks. One trip he asked me if I had heard him screaming I said no. Apparently he had overturned a rock with a hornets nest under it and they took offense. He said he had ten of them hanging on his shirt when he took it off he managed to not get stung! We kept filling in rocks. It was like a black hole of rocks, just when you thought it was full more rocks would fit. 
Next up I needed to drive four T posts into the ground. Oh boy, I managed to get three pounded in and my failure we moved I’ve a foot and Phil managed to get it pounded in. It rotated almost 90 degrees due to some rocks. It was good enough. We stretched out some old woven wire and the three pieces of old barn wire that were there before. Next up was a short stretch on top of the rocks on the up hill side. I opted to use the old version oven wire section we had just removed. It is about 8 inches shorter than the woven wire I used everywhere else. This height difference caused me some decorative issues later. When we ran the woven wire across the horse area and over to the gate I noticed that the wooden upright posts were still a little loose. So I decided to use some 2×6 boards across the top. I still have some left over from the unit of wood I purchased two years ago. Once we saw how much that reinforced the fence we put it everywhere!!  I put it six inches above the woven wire. Hence the problem, one measly section was shorter which caused an asthetic disalignment for practical reasons. I was informed that this discord would need to be corrected when the foreman went out to look at our progress. 
We spent ten hours out in the heat and got everything done but the asthetically pleasing additions necessary to complete the job. My big mistake was in not moving the new kitchen table into the house after lunch. I was so tired and sore it felt like I had been caned everywhere from the waist up and we had to carry 175# table set into the house from our driveway. Not a small feat and one that threw me over into perpetual agony for the night. 
I will get the fence fixed in the morning. 

Sheep are sorted

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I had visions of another solid day of fencing. I knew that I needed to make the asthetic changes dictated by the wife first. I had a friend come out to help today. We will henceforth know him as “TJ Hooker”. The first thing we did was add the two boards dictated by fashion. Once those were in I decided to continue the slanted board down to the water crossing. This ties the whole fence together and prevents the fence from skewing sideways. We were able to find a bowed board that fit nicely as the uprights are not aligned.  This did manage to pass muster in the afternoon. We may have to fill in the triangle section with paneling if Zeke starts to leap out this hole. We are going to hold off and wait for this event to occur before we fill in the opening. 
My arms were killing me after this little bit of overhead work. Luckily, fencing was not on the agenda for the day. 
Last night our sheep buyer called and said he is ready to pick up lambs. Unfortunately, we don’t know how many are ready to sale. So TJ and I finished cleaning out the barn. Then we moved all the alpaca hair to the tack room. I need to make a skirting table so we can get the dirt and loose particles removed from the fleece. This needs to happen this year so we can get the hair to a small processing mill. 
We then lined up the feeders on the opposite side of the sorting chute to make an alley way to push the sheep to the back of the barn. We sorted off 41 lambs. After this the buyer will need to wait until December before he can come back.  This will help us dramatically with our hay consumption. We currently have 40 ewes that can have babies and five babies that were too small to sale. We had to look up how many ewes a single ram can service. The answer is no more than 50 for him to impregnate them in the same 34 day estrus cycle. He can do more it’s just that the babies will come over two months instead of one. He was very well behaved today in the barn. Also the ewes are getting used to the frequent sorting. They ran down the chute with very little prompting. 
I am going to have to fix the gate latch on the corral. When we installed the new fence we moved that railroad tie a little bit and now the latch is off 1/4 of an inch and won’t engage. I need to drill a new set of holes in a 2×6 board and attach it to the railroad tie. This will fix all the latching problems. We also tightened up a couple of hanging gates. 

Well the sheep for sale have been hanging out in the barn lot all day and a momma managed to get into the ram pasture. So the babies have started to test the fence, unfortunately it’s not very good!  So after quitting early so I didn’t feel horrible after working all day in the hot sun I ended up back out in the heat fixing the fence. I tightened it and then added a whole layer of woven wire on the upper half of the fence. I rolled it out and was 1.5 feet short. So I just filled it with smooth wire patches. The other little section will have to wait till tomorrow I am beat and tired.