Farm

Summer activities

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Phil came over the next day to finish fencing with me. It had just dawned on me early that morning that Phil had my tools out by the horse stalls. The one place I never thought to look. We now have enough fencing tools for three people!  I even got another fancy belt so all your tools are handy and there is a space for staples and clips. I had already spent a few hours on the horse wall during the week, moving rocks around and stiffening the area around the wooden posts.  It didn’t really look like I had done much. We worked on the barn lot fence using the old tools and the new tools for a day and it didn’t really seem like we had gotten any where. 
No young person knows how to use a hammer. I have probably taught ten youngsters how to drive a nail or staple correctly: Hit that thing!  Quit choking up so much on the handle!  Take a big swing!  Hit it straight on! Grab the hammer at the end of the handle!  You are choking up again!  Big swings! 

So Phil and I are out restretching the fence, this can also be called fence tightening. Which I think is an oxymoron because you practically have to dissemble the fence first before you can tighten it again. This takes a lot of time. We got the west side of the barn lot done. Then we tightened the south side. On this one we had to install wooden fence stays as I had never done that before. My plan was just to alternate with Phil as we walked down the fence line. The problem with this is No One Knows How To Hammer!  For every one Phil got hammered in place I did three!  I razzed him but we had been at it 8 hours in 98F weather and we were tired. Every time I leaned over to bend down and get the bottom staple I got light headed and dizzy. I know it was hot but I had drank 1.5 gallons of water that day!  I wanted to get that fence section completed but called it quits with three stays left. I was afraid I would pass out and there was no sense in paying Phil any longer for the day. He was hurting also but was unwilling to give up as I was still plugging along and am half his age. 

We had a friend offer up some apricots. All we could pick!  So on Thursday we went to their house and picked a large box. A single box only. I put them on the kitchen table and the next day we picked up four packs of pectin. We had never made apricot freezer jam before. So I fished them out of the box and put them into the sink bath. AnnMarie puréed them in the food processor. It only takes 3 cups of purée for every box of pectin. We doubled the recipe and made two batches. So we used 12 cups and then froze 30 cups of apricot purée do later use!  It was amazing stuff as I had to keep taste testing to ensure adequate quality standards were met. 

Fencing for cows

Steve HardinLeave a comment
I am not even sure where to begin. July has been a whirlwind month for us. We spent two weeks in Tiawan visiting our foreign exchange student Monica and her family. It was amazing!  They told us two weeks was not long enough and next time we needed to come for a month. 
We did manage to find a house sitter. A young man who used to help me out a few years ago. He watched the place during the week and a nephew watched it on weekends. Phil also worked on the horse rock enclosure while we were gone. He made good progress but was unable to finish. 
The cows got out four times while we were gone. This is excessive even for them. The morning after we got back AnnMarie said we needed to sort cows again as they were mixed up again.  AnnMarie got them into the ram pasture and just behind the house when I decided to help with the dogs. Zeke pushed them through the fence corner and one cow got stuck straddling the smooth wire fence. Now mind you the fence has needed some TLC the last three years but has not been getting it. I had to cut the fence wire to get the cow out. So now the fence really does need repaired. We sorted and put the bull in the corral. He had a slight limp and a crack in one of his front hooves. We figured the rest and relaxation with some hose cleanup of his wound would fix him right up. He has been getting out and is usually the instigator in these little escapades. We put the cows in on the upper prime pasture as it had been closed off while we were away. I was ready for a nap and AnnMarie was headed to town 30 minutes later when she called me. The cows were out and up in the neighbors alfalfa. No nap. We loaded the dogs into the pickup and I rode in back with mouse. He hates vehicles and won’t stay in the back yet alone. Zeke loved it and doesn’t jump out without a command. We pushed the cows toward the upper prime pasture. They found the open gate that leads out into the wheat field!  I had to get ahead of them and open another gate. We both ended up with sunburns and I forgot a hat and burnt my head. Damn cows, the upper prime field has holes all over. It’s time to get my fencing on!!

The following weekend I managed to get Mr. Manners out to help with fencing, we started at 0500. My alarm went off at 0410 and I promptly turned it off and rolled over. We had only been back 4 days and our sleep schedules were not normalized yet. AnnMarie woke me up to tell me Mr Manners was due at 0500. I was exhausted!  I drug myself out of bed, went downstairs and made coffee. I then proceeded to put away the clean dishes and cooked some Kansas City bacon. Mr. Manners showed up perfectly on time. I suspected this had more to do with dad being the chauffeur. He had not eaten breakfast and for a teenage boy this is a significant event. I fed him two bacon and egg sandwiches then we went outside to fence. It took about 30 minutes to fill the back of the pickup with T posts and fencing stays and wire. I could not find any tools!!?  I looked everywhere to no avail. So we started on the simple stuff that needed no tools. We laid out T posts in the barn lot and started pounding them in. July is a lousy month to fence. It’s even worse when you start pounding posts into the ground by hand. By the 8th post Mr. Manners was telling me how he had hurt his back playing a sport. I am three times his age plus some change and I did my half of the posts. I would have let him drive them all if he had been capable. We then strung out smooth wire in the upper prime pasture. It had some holes that needed an extra row of wire to narrow the gap so the cows would quit working an opening into the fence. After that we went and got several rolls of woven wire to lay out in the upper prime squared field. 
There is a significant amount of discussion surrounding my naming scheme of fields. It’s a fluid situation and may be subject to change in the future. I am getting ready to fence in the hillside and want to call it “square root of prime”. But for now this is the field we pounded in T posts last year and never strung out the wire. We laid out woven wire along all the fence lines.  
I taught Mr. Manners how to drive the tractor and asked him to move a large pile of feces away from the front of the barn. He was on it when I left for town to get tools. I made it to the checkout stand with all my tools before I discovered I had no wallet or money. The drive home was uneventful, I hollered at Mr. Manners to level the tractor bucket with the ground so he could take a bigger scoop of poop. This time I returned with tools. He was doing much better on the tractor. We ate lunch then just did a couple of things before the chauffeur arrived. His dad, the chauffeur, got out to thank me for allowing his son the opportunity to work. It was nice. I am sure he went home and took a nap. 

Cows are done now also

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Friday was cow day. We had a few things that had to get done before our vacation and shearing the alpaca and sorting the cows were the last two things. We had just discovered a new calf a few days before sorting. Now mind you the calf was not three days old, more like 2-4 weeks old. The cows have an amazing ability to hide the babies after they are born. Mr. President’s older brother came out to help us sort cows and get the lowdown on house sitting for us while we are gone. 
We ran them into the corral and then sorted them in the chute. Everyone got an initial dose of fly powder and I will fill the fly bag before we leave. We had to tag the baby, a little girl and our number ten heifer!  We only want to run ten heifers and our bull. From now on we will be getting rid of all the calves. The screwy part is that means we will have to run two herds and about 20-30 cows total at any one point due to the age difference and one calf being born every 12 months.  To tell which cows we are getting rid of we will be tagging the keepers in the left ear and all the cull cows in the right ear. We just have to have a plan. We have one eating calf in the pipeline for next year but he will be ours. He was the undescended testicle man, a little bull. We ate the last little bull and he was very tasty. So any calves born this year will be for sale in 6 months if you want to finish them off or 18 months after birth if you want to eat them. 
The corral system worked like a dream again. It can be done with two people but three is ideal. It lets everyone manipulate a gate or two and the animals get moved faster. We have a total of 13 cows now. 

Our necklace system did not survive the winter. The plastic necklaces and tags hung low enough that the cows kept catching them on the feeders and tearing them off. We opted to shorten the necklaces and remove the tags. We only really need to know the identities of our original three cows. They are the ones we can keep new heifers from for our herd management. I used a bent wire to reach under their heads in the chute. This prevented a random horn from impaling me. This was AnnMarie’s idea. In typical guy fashion I was just going to play “who can move faster” with the horned cows. This is not exactly a wise decision, especially with our one crazy cow. You can also tell the original three by their horns. They have a narrow span and very forward pointing horns. 

Phil is going to work on watering the orchard, ram pasture and our yard. His big project is going to be to build rock metal cages for the horse area. This will let us create a drainage field and level out the horse area. It will also prevent horse poop from rolling down the hill. We worked on the first cage so Phil knew what to do and he only has to build four more. I am loving the idea of this project being completed while we are gone. 

Alpaca are done

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Thursday was the day the alpaca were finished. The boys came out first thing and we continued the routine. My back ached from the previous seven hours so I made them do all the lifting. I was the “skilled help”. The fact that I managed to cut all three of the alpaca is irrelevant. The boys kept trying to one up each other and Mr. Manners made the sidekick ask for help after he popped off that he could catch and halter an alpaca by himself. He could not and was reduced to having to ask for help twice before it was forthcoming. The boys were slow moving the alpaca to the shearing table or word had been passed down the previous night about the potential for a scalping because the last three laid down on the ground immediately!  The boys had to get on each side and grab hair and lift the alpaca to the shearing table, shove a knee under their belly then lift the shearing table into a horizontal position. I tied the head to the corner of the table. It was a crucial job that required minimal effort. 
Our hoof trimmer blades started to slide apart each time I went to use them. I made them work and even tightened and them loosened them nothing seemed to help. I just kept using them and told myself we were almost done.  I had the same problem with the last shearing blade. I swapped it out and could not get it to cut. I tried metal cutting blade instead of ceramic but that just made it worse. I finally went to an old used blade and a new ceramic blade. This is the real reason I cut the last three alpaca at least that’s what I tell myself. Although in all fairness it does make a huge difference when using a sharpened blade. I am going to buy one more comb blade and only use the ceramic cutters. I will order it all this year when I get these blades sharpened. The alpaca were filthy!  They had rocks and dust at the base of their necks. We have ten large burlap sacks full of saddle hair and ten garbage bags full of seconds from neck and legs.

 We want to get the good stuff woven and the seconds made into hair mats, felted type. The big question now is how much will that cost and how many pounds do we have. We probably have 50 pounds at least at about $35-40/lb to process. So we are going to have to plan that expense. We have to buy 35-40 ton of hay this year so that comes first. 
I will pick up hoof trimmers soon and throw out the others so I will be ready next time. I am learning it is better to get everything you need for next time immediately so you don’t forget anything and when you do it next time everything you need is at hand. I don’t want to store the gunny sacks just because of the mice. 

I made the boys move the shearing table into the barn. The thing is a beast and it was not easy. I had to help Mr. Manners with his end of the table. He needs to do more strengthening exercises. It is now living in a corner of one of the hay rooms. Doing the shearing in the old milking shed area kept the sun off of us. I need to lay out the tarp over the dirt next time. We had one alpaca flop off of the table like a fish and it was still tied up by the feet. The ropes were not tight enough and we had not stretched out the animal. Plus, I might have just cut them with the shaver. The hair cuts got better looking the more practice I got. 

Table works!

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It is official, the shearing table works!  I had Mr. Manners and his sidekick came out early Wednesday morning to help. They had car trouble but called ahead and still made it less than 30 minutes late,  a diligent effort. We grabbed the shears and blades out of the laundry room. They have a little metal briefcase to store them in with all the blades. At this point the blades are approaching the cost of the shearer. I have four sets of blades now and this year I got ceramic cutters which last a lot longer than the steel ones. Unfortunately, they cannot be sharpened. I am going to try all steel next time and see how long they last. I managed to shear three alpaca per set today. We got 7 of the 10 alpaca sheared today. 



AnnMarie got a live action shot of me actually shearing. The boys all think I am crazy for wearing a long sleeve shirt in the summer. After a few hours of dirt and hair flying around my long sleeves started to look good. 
The very first alpaca we sheared screamed the whole time and kept spitting all over the table. I kept making the boys clean it up. They kept trying to pass the buck on that duty. I finally had to tell them to just get it done. They started swapping turns after that. I also did not think to take the harness off and trim up the neck and head so the first animal looks a little worse than the rest. The bald patches were not caused by me. I 

Mr. Manners is sorting the hair. We kept the saddle intact and placed it into gunny sacks and put all the other cuttings into bags to be made into fiber mats. 

The blanket belly strap did not work. It just gets in the way and the dirt piles onto it. Plus the first alpaca got frisky and tore it in half. I just took a knife and cut it off. We just got the alpaca next to the table, two people reach under its belly and grab the table edge then tilt it to a horizontal position.  We tie its head to the eyebolt before tipping the table. It works pretty slick. I then clip its legs to above the knees and then tie its feet together and stretch it out along the main pipe. 



I started to get better with more practice. We also removed the halter so I could clean up their face and neck unimpeded. 

I wanted to get these seven moved into the ram pasture but they would not go. I tried the dogs without any luck. I finally gave a chunk of rope and the halter to the boys and I took a chunk of rope. I got the first one snagged and literally had to drag it kicking and screaming across the bridge. I ended up catching 4 of 7. The sidekick caught the others and Mr Manners caught Zero, Nada, Zip. He will have a chance for redemption on Thursday morning. 
Our farm is the blob in the lower middle of the picture. AnnMarie took this on one of her recent morning walks.