Farm

Fencing proceeding.

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The fencing has progressed on the “upper prime pasture”.  I always forget how much work there is in building new fence and fixing the existing fence.  It has not eaten up a ton of hours yet, only about 40 hours and probably only needs another 8 hours to finish but it is time.  The tractor was amazing, again.  The holes got drilled in a single day, every hole I thought I would need.  Yes, I had to go back and drill two more holes later.  I used 8 inch wooden posts except where the gates were going to be hung and on that H brace I used two railroad ties.  Unfortunately, I learned a hard lesson about the wooden poles, they are round.  Round poles don’t sound like an issue do they?  It is a huge problem.  I was stringing up woven wire that happened to be four feet tall and it is super heavy.  I spent 30 minutes with four fence tighteners trying to get it tight and could barely get it to lift off the ground.  

The solution? Bring in the beast, the tractor.  I hooked a fence clamp up to the fence and chained it to the hook on the bucket and started backing up till the fence stood upright.  Not easy, I had to use four wheel drive and positrack and the fence still stopped the tractor.  I only tore the fence in half, twice with this method.  I was getting ready to attach it when I noticed the far end wooden post had moved.  Yeah, it had moved alright, it was sticking out to the side almost 18 inches, it had twisted in the hole and then bent outward with the weight of the fence.  I had to fix it and ended up pushing it back in place with the tractor.  The hole was right next to the front pasture creek so the soil was pretty wet and had not set up well.  
Gannon helped me a few days.  We have woven wire up on both new sides and now need to string smooth wire.  Both gates need to be hung also.  I had one small area that needed two rock cribs as the fence came up 8-12 inches off the ground.  I tried something different, I wired woven wire to the bottom of the fence, filled that with rocks and wrapped the woven wire over the rocks.  It is basically a rock tube kinda like a door draft tube.  I figure if the door draft tube works to keep the cold air out of your house then my rock tube will serve to keep the sheep from crawling under the fence.  

Once we get the new fence up, the old fence bordering the wheat fields needs to be tightened and metal T-posts pounded in between the old wooden posts.  There is enough woven wire left over that I think once the fence is retightened we will add in the 100 yards of missing woven wire, the rest is already in place.  
Once that fence is completed we can move the 8 month old cows over to that pasture with the horses.  Then we will move down to the lower pasture to create another subdivided section for the momma cows.  By next month I need to be getting at the barn roof so it is imperative to get the fencing done this month.  I need to spray weeds in the next week also.  It truly does never end.    


Chickens layeth!

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We are getting eggs in droves!  Finally, they are laying  I think its a survival instinct, as in if they don’t hurry up and lay they are not going to survive.  A bunch of freeloaders for the last 8 weeks.  I still have not fixed the automatic chicken door.  I know, I was going to do it but then fencing took priority after the bull incident and with working a full time plus job my time is limited.  I pretty much work in crisis mode most of the time, fixing the immediate problems and squeezing in the projects when I can.  

I have not lost any chickens to predators yet so it is not a crisis!  We have a nice menagerie of egg colors again.  We are getting almost equal numbers of white, brown, and green eggs.  The white eggs are multiple shades of white to pink almost and the brown run the same way.  Some of the green eggs are almost blue or grayish green.  Quite the spread on color.  Our Blue Andalusion rooster is very pretty.  One of the better looking roosters we have had.  I did find some eggs in the barn in the sheep jugs but that hen seems to have given it up and is laying in the nesting boxes hopefully.  We are getting 14-16 eggs/day from 26 hens.  I am back to selling eggs faster than the chickens can lay.  Everyone at the flight company base is getting used to farm raised eggs and don’t want to eat the store bought ones any more.  I have not raised the prices yet.  I am having a hard time with deciding whether to go with $3.50/doz knowing most people won’t have change and I will have to start carrying it or just jumping to $4/doz.  Tough call, so in true fashion, I am just not making a decision.  Next time I am in the grocery store I will check out the prices again.  I am leaning toward $4/doz.  It makes every thing easier.  
Plus, I am going to have to dig out the coop after the spring rain is gone.  One more thing to add to the list..,

Grainary take down.

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The grainary walls continue to fall down slowly.  Jason was going to come salvage the building but with winter arriving it was too difficult.  I contacted him so we could get the building down.  He came out a few days and started emptying the building.  He made two piles, keep and burn.  He wants to salvage as much as possible and was very interested in saving all the main structure of the building.  I went out and was working on the upper prime pasture fence and decided to call it a day.  Jason was taking the building apart a single section at a time.  I stopped and told him at this rate it would take him another two weeks to take the building down.  A plan was hatched with my input to assist the take down of the building with a chain and the tractor.  Being an astute soul, Jason verified that Annmarie was not home!

We hooked the tractor to the first support, via a chain, and I pulled outwards straight away from the wall.  It took a couple of jerks to rip it down.  Unfortunately, this technique caused part of the main support board to splinter.  Not leaving it in pristine condition.  So in true man fashion we decided to try again, but this time we would pull in line with the wall.  Well, the supports were better anchored for a inline stressor.  I had to hit the chain several times with the tractor before it came down.  We would go in and take out all the pieces and do it again.  We had three sides off except for one support pillar on one side six feet from the intact wall and the roof was still standing.  We moved back to the intact wall and had 80% of it torn out and the roof was still standing.  It was amazing.  We were able to salvage 90% of the boards, totally unbelievable.  

The roof fell straight down onto the floor with a slight twist.  Jason will be able to salvage the entire roof without ever getting on a ladder.  We made a deal for me to keep all the 2×6 lumber from the roof.  They are all 16 foot long.  I am going to use them to finish the overhead walkway above the jugs in the barn.  I have already talked to Annmarie about filling in the concrete footings with gravel so we can then build another building over it to house the tractor and mule with doors on both ends so you can just drive through the building.  Years from now plan.  
Hopefully, in six weeks the building will be gone.  

Cows wander afar.

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The farm has been busy the last couple of weeks and I keep letting myself get behind on the blog.  I keep saying I will do better about making timely entries but I am usually so tired when darkness arrives that I just sit in the chair and watch some television.  So this is my written vow to do better!  I seem to stick to things better and have come to realize that this blog is a record of our farm life and a window into our lives.  I go back and review it occasionally and am always impressed by the amount of “learning” I have done over the years.  Since I seem to learn best by my mistakes it takes a lot of mistakes to learn that much.  

The bull has been getting out.  He went down to the wire gate behind Donna’s house and pushed through.  Now I had been meaning to tighten the gate as it had started to sag.  The bull beat me to it.  It was a Saturday morning when we noticed he was missing.  Annmarie headed over the upper hill with Zeke following cow tracks.  I jumped into the pickup and started driving around looking for the bull.  I had four separate pleasant conversations with our neighbors but no one had seen the bull.  I picked up  Annmarie and Zeke over the hill at the neighbor’s farm.  Still no bull.  We all drove around looking for the bull.  No bull.  Donna called us and said the bull was down in the one neighbor’s house who we did not go visit.  By the time we got back, Gannon was pushing the bull up the road into our lower pasture.  He ran right to the creek and waded through the water into the lower pasture by Donna’s house.  I had to go lower the panels back over the creek and wire them in place.  The cows don’t mind wading through the creek.  The sheep won’t get their feet wet, kinda like a cat.  
This necessitated the purchase of lots of fencing supplies including new gates, T-posts, smooth wire, cattle panels and wooden posts.  We went to the PGG spring extravaganza sale and bought in bulk for maximum purchasing power.  The nice thing was the new pickup proved why a V10 is a very nice engine.  It may only get 10 MPG but it does that loaded and unloaded.  It didn’t care that the bed was full and the 16ft trailer was full.  

Gannon and I mounted two 16 foot gates in place of the rickety gate and the bull has not gotten out since.  Now he just keeps terrorizing my cow panel in front of the machine shop so he can get to the all you can eat hay buffet.  Yesterday, I had to finally open the gate because he had gotten stuck inside the hay area and could not get out.  He will still come over and take food from our hand but now we have to chase him off occasionally.  He gets upset that there is no treat and starts shaking his head at us waving his horns around.  Annmarie and I have gotten bumped a couple of times.  So we let him come to us and take food from us but if he starts to toss his head around then we chase him off just like we do the horses. He is learning that he has to be polite if he wants to approach us.  

Water come th.

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It is officially spring.  The rain is here and it is starting to warm up.  We went away for two days and were amazed by all the greenery sprouting every where.  Zeke went outside with me yesterday and just got soaking wet.  It was so muddy that when I stepped out of the chicken coop the chicken he was chasing around the coop turned at the corner and Zeke slipped and landed on his side and skidded forward on his side over the mud.  He doesn’t know Mr. Newton personally but he did demonstrate his law quite effectively.  I had to hose him off and dry him before he could go inside.  He doesn’t particularly like that but he is starting to understand it is the price for getting to come out and work the animals in lousy weather.  

This morning, while in bed, we heard this metal scraping out in the back creek.  The water has raised a foot overnight and is raging.  It must have picked up some old metal debris and was dragging it down the creek.  I suspect it will get lodged down at the apple tree dam.  That is going to be interesting to clean out this summer.  I just hope it doesn’t wash out the back creek.  Annmarie tells me that it has in the past.