Day 2 hay stacking.

Well day 2 is completed. Not only can my entire body now talk back to me, I have more blisters to prove it.  I started the morning of day two with two blisters and two bandaids covering those blisters.  The cloth bandaids worked wonders and those blisters were protected.  Now the other three I acquired on my right hand were not protected.  The one on the inside of my finger where the hay hook rubbed tore open.  I will now need five bandaids on Monday to pick up hay.  My helper for the day was a young man who needed some money.  He had never picked up or moved hay before.  He got the hang of it pretty quick, but I don’t think he realized how hard it was going to be.  On the plus side, it didn’t scare him away and he is willing to come back out again at the end of the week.  All my help is off for almost two weeks so I have just been taking the help whenever I can.  I really need to get a hay elevator.  Unloading the hay into the barn is the worst part.  We have it stacked over 17 feet high in the barn and you have to drag the bales up a bale ladder to get to the top.  My thighs and hips can tell you that it is not an easy thing.  We brought in 128 bales yesterday and approximately 80 the day before.  It was much cooler on day 2 and we started at 0600.  The early start made all the difference.  By the fourth load we were wearing out.  It took twice as long to unload it. 
Zeke was slaying voles left and right!  We got to where we would call him over before turning the bale over and then he would jump on the voles and bite them to death.  Not exactly pleasant for the voles.  He would spit them out onto the ground and wait for the next bale to be turned over.  After a couple of trips back and forth he must of decided he needed a protein pack.  He ate the last five!  In his defense, dinner was going to be another eight hours away.  At the rate we are filling up the barn I think we will need to use both hay rooms.  I will have to clean the boards out of the other one.  I also need to clean out the hay side of the machine shop so we can store the alfalfa. 

Today, I opted to not move hay.  Instead I sprayed weeds.  We had an infestation of goat heads and various other creeping weeds.  They should be crying by now, I finished spraying an hour ago. 

Right side of field needing picked up.

Left side of field.

Well today was the day we started picking hay up off the ground.  It is going to take a while.  We have to get all those little bales off the ground and into the barn.  Cam came out to the farm today to help me with the hay.  He brought his dog, a 3.5 month old puppy with him.  The puppy just was not sure how to deal with that much dust and heat.  By the end he did not want to come out from under the trailer.  Meanwhile, Zeke is running around the field terrorizing the animals till he got hot and tired.  We had to clean out the hay room first and restack the leftover hay from last year near the front.  Once, we got to the bottom of the stack we started to see mice so I called Zeke into the hay room.  He killed three mice.  The weirdest part is he does not eat them.  He just bites them till they are dead then bites them a couple more times and spits them out.  Cam stepped on a vole tail in the field and Zeke finished it off.  He loves killing small rodents.  Not as much as he likes chasing sheep though, nothing trumps sheep in his book.  Not even chasing cats.  He works the cows for me but only because I want him to, if he had his way I don’t think he would do it.  We did two loads, around 3 ton of barley/oat hay.  The storage room is already starting to stack up.  I am definitely going to have to empty and rearrange the other side to get all the hay into the barn.  Tomorrow, another eager teenager is coming out to the farm to help me with the hay.  I don’t think he has ever done it before. 

First trailer load for the barn.

Riggs, 3.5 month old puppy.  He was not too excited about helping.  Brand new experience for him.

Rob came to see us again today.  It is always a pleasure to have him come visit us.  The free food for labor plan we have is always available to any one willing for a little adventure.  The sheep have been having babies in droves and last time we banded and tagged was last time Rob was visiting.  So we did it again today.  Zeke came out and we tried to round up the baby sheep and mommas.  I always forget how painful it is to try and herd a bunch of new mothers and babies.  The Barbados in them causes the mothers to get all protective and they just don’t want to comply with the dog pushing them around.  We had to go into the old lambing barn to make sure it was empty of sheep.  Nope, there was a month old lamb with its head stuck between the tire and frame of the mule.  Luckily, it was still alive.  We usually go a week or two before checking the building.  It got lucky.  So now, I need to get the tractor and move the mule.  The sheep and horses love the old lambing building.  Rob did good snagging sheep.  He was able to catch each set of twins at the same time.  We had nine more sheep to tag and band.  We made the sheep run out of the barn through the chute.  They are starting to get used to it. 

Next on the agenda was the cows.  We had one baby that was born last month that had not even been gender checked yet.  We walked down and only saw 5 cows not 6.  So we walked down the pasture to the school house looking for a dead cow.  We didn’t find a cow carcass but boy did we see some game birds!  We scared up a big rooster pheasant, several covey of baby pheasants, a covey of quail, a covey of Hungarian partridges, some mourning doves and some fan tail doves.  We also saw a set of twin deer laying next to the old school house.  Once we hoofed it back to the apple tree where the five deer where located the 6th heifer showed up.  A couple of attempts occurred before we got the cows out of the field an on there way to the corral.  The corral was amazing!  It will be even better when we get the two custom gates installed in the actual chute. 

We got the calf separated from the herd and Rob went to catch it.  I had warned him that it was not the same as catching the baby sheep.  I don’t think he believed me until he actually tried to catch the calf.  Then he could not grab it or hold it down.  It took a few tries and then I could not band it.  we had to reposition the calf.  I was able to band it and tag it.  My mother will be happy, it is a baby boy so in 18 months it will be dinner.  Tomorrow if the weather cooperates, we are going to start bringing in some hay. 

Rob after a single encounter with a 3 week old calf.

Tractor tire flat.

July started out with a bang!  On the first day we got a flat tire on the right rear tire.  My nephew drove over a huge nail.  The next day I had him use a magnet all around the barn to pick up loose nails and metal scraps.  I knew it needed to be done, I was just putting it off.  I had to take the tire in to get it repaired.  I had the candy bar twin stacking rocks over by the new culvert in the barn lot.  I need to raise the dirt level at least four feet and the rocks are to line the sides.  Once I get the rocks and dirt level with both sides of the old bridge foundation I will cover the whole thing with gravel.  It is just one more thing I need to get done this year. 
Unfortunately, this has fallen down on the priority list along with the front fence.  It is still too hot to stain the fence and now we have hay baled and on the ground.  That hay is now a priority and needs to be brought into the barn.  I don’t have the old 9n tractor with hay lift working yet so it is going to be done the old fashioned way, hay hooks and muscle.  The new field is approximately 15 acres and had a bumper crop of hay this year, 5 ton/acre.  That is a lot of hay.  So I have to move approximately 270 small bales into the barn and then make room in the machine shed for at least 10 more ton of large 800 lb bales.  The good thing is we will have plenty of hay this winter.  Next year I will figure out how much we need to sell.
I have been having my teenage helpers dig out the front creek.  It is all done now down to the pump.  I just need to kill the weeds and we should be good for the year. 
Tomorrow a friend is coming and we are going to work the sheep and cows.  I need to tag babies of both varieties.  We don’t know what is the gender of the baby cow.  We have been talking and 3-4 more heifer cows may be in order next year.  Otherwise, it could take us ten years to get to ten heifers.  I still have six baby chickens from my two batches.  They are still alive!  The sheep continue to pop out more babies.  This has been going on for almost three months continuously.  We are so glad we pulled the ram off the herd and are looking forward to having all the babies in a one month period.  This continuous dropping of newborn is painful to keep track of everyone. 

 

New fence, staining in progress.

I tried out the stain on the fence yesterday. I am really liking the color and am excited to get it finished. Of course I cannot finish it for a couple of weeks. The instructions say do not use in direct sunlight and between 50-90 degrees surface temperature. Since the fence sits directly in the sun and temperatures will be over a 100 starting tomorrow the fence is on hold. 

I have been thinking about extending the side fence between the yard and the orchard.  I like the new fence look so much that if I just restretched the woven wire fence then I can just attach the three rails up and make it look the same. I am really liking the concept. 

I think its a grasshopper.

I have been working on spraying the star thistle.  Milestone and 2-4-D in the tractor sprayer.  I went a little heavy on the spray.  Unfortunately, the stuff is like gold.  Every 55 gallons is around $100.  Its painful to spray onto the hillside.  The worst part is the tractor is a lot higher than the mule and it is a lot easier to tip over.  I almost rolled it three times, I was wearing my seat belt but that is not very comforting when you are on three wheels and lowering the bucket is the only thing saving you.  I finally decided that taking Annmarie’s advice was prudent and started going up and down the hill.  In the rough rocky areas I used the hand wand, see I can learn! Another couple of spray tanks and I will be done.  I had to get up at 0400 to beat the heat but with the weather getting into six figures now, I am just holding off on all spraying.  On a positive note the star thistle I did spray was wilting on day 2.  I am adding picking rocks on the back hillside to my to do list.  Its the little six inch rocks that get under the back tire and rock the tractor just enough!.  I actually miss the huge rocks.  

Overhead walkway extended another ten feet.

We have been working on using up the old wood from the granary roof and floor supports.  Unfortunately, all the nails need to be removed from the wood before we can reuse it.  It is a slow painful process.  I want to extend out the walkway over the old jug area.  It will be used as a storage area. Plus I need the space in the hay storage room.  We should be getting more hay this year and I will need the space.  We also ripped out four of the old sheep jugs.  I want to install another feeder against the wall where the jugs used to be.  I just keep adding projects!  Eventually, I will be done with the big projects.  People ask me why I do it.  It is a ton of work, we spend around $15k a year on the farm getting it back into shape and don’t make it back yet.  It seems like a waste from the outside.  I enjoy it, it is my hobby and what keeps me grounded.  There is always something to do and I can see the fruits of my labor.  Compared to what the place looked like when we first moved here it is amazing to see all the changes.  I hope that when we retire the place will be perfect and in great working condition. 

Barn floor contents out behind barn.