Well, no holiday would be complete at the Hardin house without having a water issue. Every December holiday since we have been here we have had a water leak. This year was no different. The only outside faucet to not have a hydrant style dispenser is in the back yard. It doesn’t have one because it is 18 inches away from a maple tree. I did not want to dig down to get to this water connection. It will mean an axe, shovel and a pickaxe. Guaranteed to be a miserable time. The day before Christmas the brass faucet froze and cracked, spraying water every where. My solution is an entire roll of 2 inch black electrical tape. The problem with this is as soon as you start wrapping the leak water starts spraying all over the place. I was drenched before I finally sealed the leak. One more spring project that was not on the list.
Farm
Utility closet upgrade
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| Animal food containers before |
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| Barn coats |
Annmarie was looking at a catalog yesterday that had pet food plastic containers. We would like to get all three types of food into its own container but still be able to close the closet doors. She called but the containers were too big. This led me to the conclusion that I could probably just build our own custom wooden boxes and line them with plastic. So today I cut up a whole sheet of plywood and some supports and screwed them all together making three wooden boxes. It took me a few hours but I got it all done. I even built the boxes 1/4 inch shorter so the doors could shut. This was not enough. I had to take the lower door support (3/4 inch thick) off and put on a 1/4 inch piece of plywood so the doors would shut. After that I was sure the doors would shut, no luck. I had to sand off about 1/16 inch off the top of the left hand door. Finally, the doors shut. I raised the coat hooks and added five more hat hooks. It actually all works.
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| Raised hooks and hat racks |
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| wooden bins lined with heavy duty trash can liners. |
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| New super thin bottom supports. I will stain in the future. |
lamb issues
Well, after we went out and checked on the new baby and reunited it with its mother we learned that it was not well bonded. The first baby ran out and joined the herd while the mother was still giving birth to the second twin in the lean to. Unfortunately, I did not know until today that if a baby is not well bonded you can rub the afterbirth on the first baby and the mother will some times bond with the baby. We considered giving the lamb away but it seems to be keeping up its energy. Us going out and pinning the ewe up against the feeder three times a day so it can get its fill of milk is helping.
Catching a ewe by your self is not an easy task. They are quick little buggers and even at 100# they are hard to stop unless you have some leverage. The second time I grabbed on to her I was off balance and ended up in the straw. Eventually I caught her. Annmarie and I had to add some holes to the halter we had already purchased last year. It is a little big, causing straps to hang down under her chin. These straps make it easier to catch her. I think she is starting to be resigned to her mistreatment. As far as the little baby is concerned we are the cats meow! The little lamb starts wagging its tail when we come into the barn because it knows it gets to eat its fill instead of sneaking a drink non stop all day.
I keep hoping that all the other ewes will have their babies so the little bummer can just go around stealing milk from every one. I got to use my bill cap light tonight. I felt like I was in a horror film. It projects a round light six feet in diameter roughly eight feet in front of your feet. A monster could be creeping up on you at any time. It made it very easy to walk around and not trip over any thing. Good thing there aren’t any monsters. So the cap light is out for night stalking maneuvers.
I bought a sheet of plywood today to build some pet food storage bin in our utility room closet. It was raining when we got home so I had to bring it in and put it on the old house porch. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing around 20-30 mph. As soon as I got the piece out of the back of the pickup and upright between my two arms the wind found my sheet of plywood (now known as a very large kite!). I was blown 10 feet sideways before managing to stop myself. For every two steps forward I made I slid back another foot. I was not sure I was going to make it the 200 feet to the porch. I had to stop 20 feet from my goal and take a breather so I could push through. I did it and tomorrow I am going to make those bins.
New Lambs
I was sitting in the living room this afternoon nursing the cold that the progeny has shared with both Steve & I, watching the sheep in the pasture, when I noticed that there was one extra lamb out there. I counted again, just to make sure, and sure enough, there were three lambs out there. The newest one was acting kind of odd: running from sheep-to-sheep looking for someone to nurse from, and was not really being tended by any ewe. That was not good, so I called to Steve, who was nursing his cold upstairs while “supervising” the cleaning of the daughter’s room. After some discussion, he agreed with me that we needed to get the sheep in the barn and figure out who the lamb belonged to so we could isolate them overnight and hopefully get the lamb bonded to the ewe. When we went in the barn, our jobs got a whole lot easier, since there was a ewe delivering the afterbirth in the corner. The second twin was hovering nearby, trying to get in to get his first meal. Apparently the one I had seen in the pasture was the first-born and was strong enough to follow the rest of the sheep out. Unfortunately, she wasn’t smart enough to stay with her mama after she got her first drink. All three are now settled in a jug (a small pen specifically intended to keep lambs in close proximity to the ewe to facilitate bonding). Oh, the second lamb is a boy. The count for this batch so far is 3 girls and 1 boy. For the record, the mother is ewe #13.
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| The one laying down is tired from her adventures in the pasture |
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| This is the best shot I could get of the little boy – he was too busy nursing to pose. |
Coyote kibble
The puppy held out till 0530 this morning before whining to let us know it was time to be let out of his crate so he could go potty outside. So Annmarie got out of bed and let all three dogs outside. I came down 10 minutes later to let them inside. Bailey (adult chocolate lab) and Zeke (border collie puppy) were right outside the door ready to come in, Sprout (Brussels Griffin) was no where to be seen. Sprout only weighs 11 pounds, therefore negating the effects of having a fence. He can just crawl between the cattle panel squares. Annmarie stuck her head out a little later to call him in and heard him barking up past the chicken coop. She thought he had something cornered and needed a human to bail him out. So we went out with guns and flashlights (I wore my new ball cap light, very cool!). We ended up walking past the old hen house, the spring and all the outbuildings. No Sprout any where. Annmarie went to let the animals out while I took the dogs and arsenal back to the house. Within a few minutes Annmarie’s mother calls to say that Sprout is down at her house. It turns out that she had seen him on the back hillside. He was chasing coyotes off the property! He was over a 1/4 mile away from the house and in the opposite direction of the out buildings. The sound of his barking was bouncing off the out buildings making Annmarie think that is where he was located. Sprout needs to learn that at a whopping 11 pounds multiple coyotes are going to make mince meat out of him. He just does not get that concept. He came home happy as can be and still in one piece.
