Father’s day activity



This is why I prefer to fence in the spring, three snakes later no rattler found.

I had to work late last night so I decided to sleep in this morning.  After a long talk with Annmarie on the phone I was contemplating going back to sleep.  It was later in the morning but I had only had 6 hours of sleep so it was still an option.  The phone rang and Donna was calling me to say that one of the neighbors had called her and stated our sheep were out on the road.  The neighbors all know we have the weird animals and always call when someone gets out.  It is very nice of them to give us a heads up. I have learned that no matter how often you fix a length of fence the animals eventually figure out how to get through it.  This happens 1-2 times a year.  I got dressed, grabbed coffee, both dogs and loaded them into the truck.  Zeke was bouncing all over, he loves riding in the back of the truck.  I had to trick Mouse just to get a hold of him to throw him in the cab with me.  He hates any vehicle!!  He tries to crawl in your lap and drools all over everything.  We pushed the sheep up the road and back into the pasture.  Donna made sure no one barreled over the top of the hill at a high speed.  This is when I discovered that the sheep have been bedding down inside the old school house during the heat of the day.  It is a concrete enclosure and much cooler inside.  There is a bunch of old wood debris on the floor that needs to be moved.  I will get that cleaned out soon. 

I walked the fence line and found multiple loose wires and wooden stays.  I blamed the Bull initially but after starting my repairs I realized that the deer are making paths up to the fence and washing the rocks down onto the fence in certain places.  It took me a couple of hours to get all the fence secured and back into place.  I drove four new posts, and the 12 hours of rain we just had did not soften the soil at all!  I had to move several loose rocks that had piled onto the lower wire of the fence.  This reminded me why I like to do this task in the spring.  I found three separate snakes while moving rocks.  I let them be, they eat mice and mice are bad.  No rattlesnakes that I recognized.

 

I fed the bull some extra food tonight.  He looks lonely, I need to move him next weekend.  I am going to try and let Zeke roam the yard tomorrow.  I have installed another section of woven wire tonight in the yard fence.  I hope I have all the holes covered now.  The only true test is to let him run around and see if he is out of the yard by the time I come home.  I did not see the cows today.  It is time to lay some eyes on them so we know where they are hanging out at. 

Old school house basement.  The sheep have been hanging out as it is much cooler in here.



Good looking fence now sheep proof, again.

Bull doesn’t know this is old straw from the barn floor, he thinks its food.

Sarah’s old bedroom, soon to be office

Chicken chili

I came home on Thursday and attempted to move the straw bedding pile from the barn out to the barn lot.  My nephew is almost done cleaning out the barn and I wanted to shrink the pile leaning next to the barn.  Our bull thought I was going to feed him.  I did feed him later.  I use the tractor and drive over food and drop it over the fence for him.  He really wants to get out of the corral. 
I will have to chase the alpaca into the orchard, lock them in and then run the bull down to the schoolhouse area.  I am thinking that needs to happen this weekend. 
Sarah got all moved out of the house.  I had told Annmarie that we had one room 100% complete in our house and then after Sarah moved out it was discovered that there is no wall molding on the floor.  Oops, so I will be putting in a call to get some finished and I can cut and install it myself.  The other thing to install is some Ethernet cable from the living room downstairs, up into the attic and down into this room.  We want the computer hard wired in up here for speed and to add a second wireless transmitter upstairs.  The wireless internet is slow, there is a lot of interference in the house.  We cannot get a satellite signal for the internet or TV, again too much interference from landscape and trees. 
I am a bachelor, for a short while as Annmarie is off getting more school in Berkley so I made chicken chili over rice for dinner.  I have been eating it for four days now!  I still have two more meals left.  I am going to have to alter my cooking habits with just Annmarie and I at home. 

Last of the lambs.  Only 10 left alone.

I knew I was behind on my posts.  This one is from June 6.  I saved the pictures I thought and tonight when I was looking at my phone I realized that it was telling me to retry the upload.  I had a low light picture of seven bucks but it was too blurry to post.  I was walking down to turn off the irrigation pump and 9 bucks were drinking in our front creek.  I hope they come back during hunting season.  I still don’t know if I got a tag or not.  It would have been a cool picture.  The iphones just do not take decent low light pictures in my opinion.  Pretty quick it will be time to sort off the baby sheep again from the main herd.  They can go hang out with their brethren in the barn lot.
I put an add up on Craigslist for our two baby calves to be sold in mid July.  They will be six months old and can be weaned off of their moms. 

Our babies for sale, only one visible.

It only took two weeks to sell our sheep on Craigslist this time.  That is pretty fast for us.  Last time it took all summer long.  It helps when someone wanted all we had and we had to limit them to 30.  Annmarie and Sarah took care of that while I was off at a funeral. 

Barn floor

I came home last night and spotted a raccoon running up one of front trees!  I could not believe the audacity of the critter.  Mouse treed it and I ran inside to arm myself against the invasion.  There was a brief internal struggle as to what type of weapon should I bring.  Do I go for the shotgun?  I wasn’t sure where in the tree it would be and didn’t want to damage the tree.  Do I just grab the trusty Walther P22?  If it is way up high in the tree this might cause me problems.  I opted for the standard Ruger 10/22 but I have left the bolt action at mom’s house so I had to get the one out of the zip up case, loaded it and then grabbed the Walther P22 because one can never be really sure about which weapon is truly needed.  It took me a while to find it in the tree.  Then all I could see was its face looking out behind a large branch.  So the rifle was a good first choice.  As it came down out of the tree I had to switch to the pistol.  One more chicken killer down. 

We had to take Mouse into the vet for cheat grass removal between his toes.  He got an abscess.  This happened to Zeke as a puppy also.  Puppies are too stupid to clean out their own feet.  Zeke is really good about it now.  So Mouse is on antibiotics and we now have to clean out his feet every day.
 



Barn floor

Heath is cleaning out the barn and making good progress.  I am hoping it gets done by the end of the week.  After the barn the next big thing is to clean out the chicken coop then to move the hay around in the barn to get ready for this years hay. We have to restack the old stuff so it gets used first.  It is so dried out we may just feed 50% old and 50% new till we run out of old. 

Sarah talked me into helping her create a chalkboard for wedding party names for a friend’s wedding.  She supplied all the painting labor and I supplied the cutting and assembly.  She helped me hold during the assembly part.  It came out nice but it took me almost 3 hours in labor without doing any painting.  It does seem like Pinterest was invented as some fancy Man Torture, just saying. 

 

Wedding board finished

Maybe sand will do the trick

I spent Sunday afternoon playing catchup. Our front gate keeps getting loose.  I set the post in gravel but the constant opening and closing causes the post to sag.  Instead of digging all the gravel out and pouring concrete around it I just poured sand over the top and slammed it in with a large breaker bar.  It is pretty stiff now, time will tell if it actually worked.  I may have to dig it out and set it in concrete yet. 

My nephew is digging out the barn and doing a few odd chores around the place.  I started him on the barn and took the tractor out to mow the grass again.  We have had so much rain that the cheat grass needs to be mowed a second time! 

I did walk around and pick up scrap metal all around the machine shop.  I cannot stop myself, its like a compulsion.  I had to use a pickaxe to get some of it out of the ground.  I just keep after it, I doubt I will ever get it all in my lifetime.  I pick a few hundred pounds out of the ground every year. 



Back deck ready for furniture and steps

I needed to spread out more paver sound on the back deck.  I used a whole bag and ended up with a full second bag.  The bad part is it cannot get wet.  I still need to put together both outside chair sets and get them stained. I also need to attach one of the grill wheels, it fell off and needs to be reattached. 

We have had the bull penned up in the corral for the last week. He is not happy about the arrangements.  We need to get the baby calves sold so he can mix with all the other cows.