Everyone in the ram pasture today.  The sheep had been roaming.

I was supposed to finish the horse enclosure today.  Sarah picked up all our outside water hoses and placed them in the wood shed.  Annmarie and I had talked last night about how to get the horses to cross the creek in the barn lot.  We came up with a culvert covered in dirt.  The front creek crosses through one out in the orchard (size to be measured as we could not agree either 2 or 3 foot diameter).  Great idea, but I don’t have any spare culvert and am still trying to pay for hay so this was not going to happen any time soon.  So, I decided to build one out of materials we already owned.  I threw down two cut pieces of railroad tie in the creek next to the bank and then dropped five railroad ties across the creek.  All of these were dragged behind the barn with the tractor.  Unfortunately, the tractor left them about 30 feet from where they needed to be.  I had to drag them in place by hand.  I saved the smallest one for last and it turned out to be the heaviest (just my luck).  After those were in place I used some old discarded one inch plywood (from my parents concrete stairway) across all five beams and screwed them all in place.  I then used the sawsall to cut the edges.  Very nice, very stout bridge.  Annmarie tried to get the horses to cross later, no go.  They stopped at the bridge edge and she was on the bridge tugging.  The horse wins every time in this contest. 

New bridge and path.  My soon to be burnt pile on the right.

I suggested Annmarie just throw some dirt over the bridge to fool horses.

 I then went up to the horse enclosure and started cutting out the last two beams.  I had to add some supports and then go at it with the sawsall.  The beam was huge I could not get through it.  I had to retry three times and then beat on it repeatedly.  No wonder, they were so clever a long time ago.  They had built in a drainage ditch in the back 1/3 of the milking barn so all waste could be shoveled into the ditch and sluiced out daily to keep the milk barn clean.  I had no idea this was here. 

Old wooden sluice in milk barn, below floor level.

I threw the beams over the wire and into the sheep area.  I want to store them in the barn for future use.  All but one were reusable.   It took me almost two hours to dig out the area with the tractor.  About half way into it I realized that the roll bar on the tractor was bumping into the door opening and had to be lowered.  I thought there was just a little dirt to be moved.  Not at all.  I moved almost three feet deep dirt across the whole area.  it was good practice for the tractor.  I did have to used four wheel drive, as the area was pretty wet from the rain last night.  I just dumped all the dirt and crap over the hillside in a low spot.  I did end up having to do about an hour of hand digging near the edges.  I just could not maneuver the tractor in to all areas.  I would have needed a backhoe.  I don’t have a backhoe.  So I got to dig for an hour by hand.  I did remember to park the tractor under cover.  I have less than 8 hours of run time on the tractor so far. 

I need about another hour with a shovel.  Hence the wheelbarrow…

Dirt and sheep dung from the horse enclosure.  It needs to be raked by hand.

Saturday was supposed to be the big day to get the hay.  I had a few other things planned but this was the #1 goal.  As in all things that I do the first time, this went about as smoothly as normal.  Annmarie gave me a ride down to the truck (parked at the residence of the guy supplying us with hay).  I remembered to take the rope (I had just purchased it for this reason) so I could tie the hay down.  First problem, there are no hooks on the outside of the truck with which to tie a rope.  I ended up crawling underneath the truck and finding a gap on the cross beams that I could fish the rope through.  Plenty strong enough but very hard to pull real tight.  I definitely need to talk to someone about getting some hooks welded to the bed.  I am pretty sure the other truck (broken) has hooks welded around it.  I got it all tied down and went to start it.

I had just turned the key and the truck was trying to start when I noticed that the overdrive button was in high.  I mashed it down real quick and killed the engine.  Every time I tried to start it a small red light that said “override” came on and the truck would not even turn over.  I then read the directions near the floorboard on shifting into low.  I am supposed to do it with the truck moving after I have shifted the transmission.  Not first.  So I started walking home.  It is about a 2 mile hike.  Halfway home the hay guy shows up and agrees to give me a tow to see if we can get the truck going.  It didn’t start.  So now I need to get the pickup battery replaced so I can drive the pickup over to the truck, check the fuses, and attempt to jump start the truck.  This is Monday’s priority task.

He did give me a ride back to the house, but had to leave and go do some other things.  I decided that the priority for the day was to pick up all the old aluminum sprinkler pipe.  I would need to use the tractor to do this, but I still had the box scraper on the tractor and I had promised Annmarie a new path in the barn in an attempt to make the creek crossing easier for the horses.  So I made the path first.  It was pretty cool to just drag dirt and make a gradual path.  It only took me about an hour to make the whole thing.  Then I went off to get sprinkler pipe.

The pipe was on a large handmade trailer at the far end of the property near the road.  My mother-in-law had already had two people come to the house and offer to buy the pipe.  We were concerned that the pipe might just disappear in the night some time soon.  I went down and hooked on to the trailer after straightening out the load.  Couldn’t go anywhere, used positrack, no where, had to put it in four wheel drive to get the trailer started and to pull it back around next to the grain bins.  It is a slow process, on the way I found another pipe sticking up near an irrigation ditch.  So I stopped and tried to pull it out by hand.  About half way down its length (40 feet) it gets buried about one foot under ground.  I did not have a shovel with me so it will have to wait until later.  I pulled up alongside the fence and sorted it into four piles.  The first pile is pipe that needs repaired but I can do myself (needs a new sprinkler riser or sprinkler), second pile is useable pipe (bent included), third pile is totally trashed and good for parts and scrap or could be welded back together (needs repair by professional) and the fourth pile is pipe that was used as mainline and has the sprinkler hole plugged with a cap (this pile had the straightest pipe).  Now that the trailer was empty I drug it out onto the road and back into the CRP field so I could get the pipe stacked up against the fence.  I ended up dragging the pipe out of the weeds and hanging one end on the fence so I could snag it from the other side later.

There are a few secrets to moving pipe.  Find the center of balance quickly it makes moving the pipe easier.  Pipe full of mud weighs a lot, a whole lot.  When pulling on pipe violently upwards to remove it from the grass and blackberry bush make sure you are not straddling the end with the sprinkler riser or else you may gag and hit the ground.  I reiterate, do not do this it is bad.  When fishing broken pipe out of the irrigation ditch make sure pipe is not full of yellow jackets.  They really don’t like being disturbed.  When pulling on pipe that is kinda stacked together make sure that jerking on said pipe doesn’t cause its neighbor to jam you in the ribs (large abrasion/bruise).   I ended up filling the whole trailer again and parking it behind the machine shop.  It needs to be unloaded before I can grab another 12-15 pieces behind the machine shop.  I stopped because it was dinner time and because I could no longer lift my arms above my head.  Anyone that pays for P90X can come to the farm and do work for free.  I guarantee you would be fit in 90 days! (after working 4-6 hours a day for 90 days).

On Friday we went to Sarah’s Great Grandmother’s house to make Sauerkraut.  I wanted to do it in a five gallon bucket but Ruby (grandmother) wanted to use crocks.  She had made it in the past and they always used crocks.  We forgot to measure the crocks but they are 1 or 2 gallon (much discussion/arguing about size).  When we can the sauerkraut the size issue will be resolved.  A lot of cabbage goes a short way.  We managed to get 14 pounds of sliced cabbage into the two 1 gallon ( my size choice) crocks.  We used our cabbage slicer that was purchased at an auction this summer.  Ruby used her recipe from a canning book written in 1943, I went onto you tube and watched about 40 minutes to video from various people.

You slice the cabbage very thin and then add 3 Tbsp of salt to every 5# of cabbage.  Mix the salt and cabbage together by hand and then pound the cabbage until it waters up and the water is at the top of the cabbage.  Then do it again until the crock/bucket is a few inches from the top.  Wipe off the top rim and sides, add a layer of whole cabbage leaves to the top and spread an unopened trash bag over the top.  Tuck the bag in and down along all the sides so it is sitting on top of the cabbage.  Take another water tight bag and fill it up with water while the bag is sitting on top of the cabbage.  This water bag acts like a weight and a seal.  Now wait 10 days to six months depending on who you listen to.  We are going to check it at 14 days.  We used up most of the cabbage from the garden doing this.  A five gallon bucket would take around 50# of cabbage (if I am right other wise it will only take 35#). 

No, I have not given up on the chicken financials.  I just happen to be four months behind.  I have all the data, but after the computer data wipe I cannot find my files.  Annmarie is going to have to find it for me.  It appears the Chicken Butler may be functioning correctly again.  I only found one chicken trapped outside tonight.  I collected eggs (the child is off doing teenager things) tonight and got a whopping 11.  We have been collecting around 7 every night.  No broken eggs tonight. I did do a chicken count tonight.  First time in a month.  I counted 49 chickens.  Three are roosters, 24 are immature and not laying eggs yet.  So my 22 producing chickens laid 11 eggs today.  Not too shabby.  Should be better once the chickens get used to the artificial light (I just got the timer working correctly yesterday).

On the lamb front, I went to the meat cutters today to pay and pick up some meat from our locker.  Oh my goodness, the price of live animals has risen drastically.  Pig, lamb and cattle are all selling at $2/lb live weight at the animal sale.  I am definitely going to have to raise prices.  Thinking the next lamb is going to go for $125 then after that $150.  Final price would be around $1.67/lb.  This would save me from having to transport the animals to sale.  This works as long as the price doesn’t keep increasing.  Looking forward to another $1/lb increase personally… (lol).

Three rocks closet to creek moved to the backside of the fence.

I went out and fixed the sheep leaks today.  Annmarie told me that the rocks needed to be moved by the creek so when the sheep pushed on the fence the rocks would stop it from moving.  I had put the rocks on the inside so I could lift the fence easily for the spring runoff.  The sheep are more of a problem than the spring runoff so I used a six foot steel cheater bar and still had trouble moving one of the rocks, but it eventually rolled into it’s new spot. 

Beams are all that is left, sawzall has done its job.

As you can see the outside wall will need some work to make it stay  in place.

The winter horse shelter is the next big issue.  We are not sure where to put it and if we put it in the orchard then the hay will be a long ways off in the barn.  The original plan was to just let the horses roam in the barn lot and shelter next to the sheep.  Unfortunately, for that plan to work I would have needed to finish the fencing in the barn lot.   Still working on that…  But I liked the plan for the sheep/horse enclosure.  I was picking up scrap wood in the barn lot today and started to really study the broken down part of the lean to and decided that without too much effort and a few supplies I could re-purpose the unusable part into a covering for the horses.  So I started tearing into the floor and throwing the pieces out the door.  I even had time to string out some extension cords and cut into the floor beams.  The nice part is I only need to move two beam supports.  Two of the supports stick out two feet out of line with the other five beams.  Who knows why?  Those two will have to be shored up before I can cut those beams.  I wasn’t able to salvage most of the floor.  It was broken, cracked and rotten.  I did manage to save five 4×6 inch beams about 10 feet long.  I am going to use them for the overhead walkway supports in the main barn.  I was pretty happy with that salvage. 

The foreground pile is going to be burnt this weekend.

I will finish the outer wall and inner low wall from these scraps.

I spent some time fixing the sheep area before I dug into the horse area.  I had to move the metal panel further in to the sheep area to give the horses some more room.  I ended up using pallets to block the holes the sheep were crawling through.  On a side note most pallets are made out of hardwood and hardwood gets harder with age.  I broke four screws and bent three nails trying to connect two panels.  I finally just chained them together!  I didn’t want to go get a drill and predrill a hole.   I drug down another feeder to place on the outside wall.  This gives us more space to feed and creates another barrier so the sheep cannot escape.  I had to make the old door by the hay storage room work, it needed some WD-40 and to cut off the bottom of the door opening so it would not pinch.  I also had to block the barn lot side with more pallets.  That wall is not in very good condition.  This new setup is pretty secure.  

We sold our first lamb on Monday for $100.  He weighed 90# live weight.  I have one more to sell at this price and then I have to do some more research.  It looks like the price has gone up rapidly in the last six months.  I am going to do more snooping around.  No drastic increases, but I may have to raise it some. The sheep should start having babies again next month or December.

Sheep and chickens browsing the ram pasture.