Farm

It’s kinda warm

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well it has been a long week. Since the tractor cannot be started I have been feeding the cows by hand. After pitchforking 400# of hay into the back of the pickup and then out again for the cows and after working ten hours and getting up at 0345 to go out first thing in the morning to take care of the sheep and lambs; I gave up.

I had a space heater going under the tractor with a canvas tarp over it. I put hotshot in the fuel tank and in the fuel filter and still cannot get the tractor to stay running. I have been trying every day, sometimes twice a day with no success. I went out one dark cold evening late this week in an ice storm and opened the gate to the hay pile. I went out threw pallets out of the way and cut away the tarp covering the front of the pile. It was weighed down with so much snow I could not pull it away. I cut the strings on two large bales and just let the cows have free range on the hay. I do realize this is not the ideal answer but it is my answer. It means the cows get to eat in this bitter cold and deep snow without me killing myself to feed them. I also have time to do other things.

We have a lot of cold, ice, snow and general hard to get around or get anything delivered weather going on now. I got my car stuck in the snow near my mother’s house in Pilot Rock. One of our nephews came and pulled me up a slight incline that allowed me to basically run my car into the deep snow in her driveway until it got stuck. My mother was worried because I did not lock the car up. I told her there was no way they could steal the car, it was stuck in the snow and until I get new tires it was not going anywhere. Annmarie had told me to invest in some new tires a few months ago, I failed to listen and will now be driving the pickup. Except the pickup defroster is kinda wimpy so if its an ice storm I am just stuck at home. I have a brand new snow plow for the tractor that should be in use but since the tractor is down it is still just sitting there! I will definitely remember to treat the diesel in the fall so this never happens again.

The puppy is trying to wear me down. She punctured a hole in her ankle above her paw. We tried to get it healed on our own then had to take her to the vet. The course of antibiotics has helped drastically. The vet told us the cone of shame was needed at all times. Well when it is 2 F outside the puppy uses the cone to beat and thrash on any hard object within reach. I have resorted to duct taping the cone back together. So far I have almost a half a roll of duct tape used to keep it together. She has managed to split it in half twice already. I have 1.5 rolls of duct tape left, I will win.

The chickens don’t really like the cold. But more importantly the starlings really don’t like the snow. We have about 50 starlings in the chicken coop now. It’s a mess, they are eating and pooping everywhere. Now I have holes in the screens and one wall paneling is coming down and I believe there is one hole to the outside eave that is also letting them in and out. We have had subzero temperature for over a week so every night I have to shoulder open the door then chip the pile of frozen bird poop away from behind the door. If I do not do this every day I cannot get into the coop. It took me over 10 minutes one evening and I almost broke the door down. I am focusing on the mud room and the starlings are getting a pass for one more week.

Mr Rainman came out today and we worked on getting the mud room walls up and the pressure treated boards down. Unfortunately, none of the walls are square so each individual upright had to be cut a different length. Over a distance of seven feet the height changed by over an inch on both sides! We are building around the two steel upright pipes that hold the roof up. Those are not even welded straight, so it has caused some interesting adjustments to be made. I have no clue when the door will be in, they are supposed to contact me and said it could take 4-6 weeks and since no shipping company has hardly moved anything in the last week we can just add some more time to the arrival date. The hope is we can get the mud room sheeted and the window installed tomorrow. We will see if the weather cooperates. It was not horrible working in 20 F weather, not great but still doable.

Winter came late but it did come

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Well it is officially winter and to top off the snow we have had subzero (F) weather. That does mean that to go to the barn now requires insulated coveralls, boots, knit cap, neck warmer, heavy coat and insulated gloves before going outside. This is doable as we keep all of that out in the laundry room for just this occasion but I forget how brisk the weather can be until my runny nose/breathe causes ice to form in my mustache and beard. It adds a whole new dimension to getting “thawed out” once you are inside the warm house. I had great plans for working on the mud room walls despite the cold. No way, once the cold hit I realized that I did not want to be outside working on a stem wall.

There is always one thing I forget (well maybe more) but it does come back to bite me. I did not add diesel fuel oil treatment to the diesel storage tank this fall. I have not needed it even when the temperature got down to 10F. The tractors have always started. The tractors will not start at below 0F. I had to go to town on Saturday and buy treatment for the storage tank and special “hot shot” treatment for a diesel that is already gelled up. You remove the fuel filter and fill hallway with this stuff and pour a bunch in the fuel tank. I then tented the Kubota in a canvas tarp and put a oil heater under the tractor to try and heat up the entire engine. I also had to purchase a Lithium external jumpstart battery as the cold has really stressed the tractor battery. Not enough cranking power for any extended starting effort. I left all of that overnight and today tried to start the tractor. I got it turned over and going no problem. I had it on low idle as every time I tried to give it a lot of power the engine started to sputter out. My plan was to just let it run and heat up on low idle. Nope, that did not work. The tractor kept shutting down until finally I could not start it again.

So instead I backed the pickup up to a large alfalfa bale in the machine shed that had popped open and hand forked about 1/4 into the back of the pickup. I had dropped off two large bales just before the storm came. I was planning ahead. I should have planned better and put out three large bales! I may have to feed the cows every day by hand until the weather warms up enough to let me fire up the tractor. Not exactly ideal but another lesson learned. Now hopefully I can remember it. I think I will just keep treating all of the fuel that goes through the large storage tank so this is not an issue. I only used about 300 gallons last year. This is just too painful to want to repeat on a regular basis.

My external chicken yard auto door is frozen shut. Luckily, the chickens hate the snow and only come out far enough to eat the snow. They will not get down and run around in the snow. So its not a big deal currently, we will see what happens when the weather warms up. I sure hope the door works after that as it is brand new.

The back porch cats have been moved but we put their food on a ledge next to the root cellar entrance and built a roof to keep the rain off the food. The food is not getting wet but it is getting covered in snow. I am going to have to make a food box enclosed on all sides but the front so the food dish can stay dry. This will have to be added to the project list.

Last minute project before the new siding

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We have finally been able to get some contractors to return our phone calls. It has been incredibly hard to find someone who has the time to side our house. We have gone around a few times on what we want and have finally settled on a LP plank siding that has a baked on paint coating called Diamond Kote, it has a 30 year guarantee. I will most likely be dead and Annmarie won’t care that the house may need a coat of paint by then so we are happy with our choice. We need the old vinyl siding removed then the new siding installed along with three windows that have to be replaced from the storm damage that tore up the siding. Here is hoping that we have that process rolling by the end of the month.

Since we had started talking about the siding Annmarie came up with an amazing idea to just create a mud room. Our back door porch has a roof, there is one outside outlet already in the space and a porch light. We just need to add three walls, one with a door and one with a small window in it and then we would be done. When the house gets sided they could just enclose in the mud room and no one would know we had just thought it up. The room just needs to hold coats, boots, our food dehydrator and our barn clothes. This way we could keep all of the mud out of the house. The room does not need any heat as there is no plumbing out there at all. As an added bonus it would enclose our outside power panel so it would now be better protected.

Mr Rainman has come over a few days this year and we went to town clearing off the porch and then ripping down the siding. I had forgotten the house was yellow. When we moved here the house was covered with white shingles before they put the vinyl siding up. Mr Rainman got the pressure treated sill boards cut we just need to modify them to fit around the steel corner posts. Our plan was to hammer out the sill and at least two walls this weekend but it is supposed to be below zero F this weekend and that might not be possible when my face is trying to freeze off. I had to special order an outside door that has a left hand hinge and opens outward. Not a lot of outside doors open outward. It is amazing how expensive building materials are now. Material to build three 2×6 walls with plywood outer sheeting, house wrap, one window and one door costs $3000. That does not include any insulation or inner wall material. I will probably just use smooth one sided plywood for now and then decide later if I want to add something else, it is the mud room.

Just before the beginning of the year I spent a few hours on the tractor and brought in a bunch of dirt for the front hillside. I am making a spot for the gazebo. I figured as much rain as we are getting might as well help me by settling the dirt down into a working platform. Hopefully I will be able to find another day in between rains that lets me smooth out the platform a little better. This will make it a lot easier to compact in the early summer.

Unfortunately, we had a pretty decent windstorm in the last two days and it has ripped the trash can enclosure door off its hinges and spread all of our torn down material from the back porch. There are plastic siding pieces all over the ram pasture. It is quite the mess.

Week 7 lambing update

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Well lambing is going to be better than last years five months long endeavor but we are definitely not getting it done quickly. We are going to have to go through three cycles to get everyone delivered. What happened to the good old days where one had to worry about the ram losing too much weight because he did not even bother to take time out of his busy day to eat! Our new ram is so GenZ. He does a little business, eats, rests, wanders then remembers occasionally he has a job to do. The baby boys all lay around for 20-30 minutes after getting banded looking like they wanna die. You can see that in the picture below!

  • Date of update- Jan 10 2024
  • # of Lambs born – 40
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 26
  • # of ewes still pregnant – 8 in area, I don’t think they are all pregnant
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 12
  • # of triplet lamb births – 1
  • # male (weathers-neutered) lambs-32
  • # tagged female lambs-5
  • # unknown lambs- 3
  • # of bummer lambs – 3
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 5
  • Total # of lambs on farm -32
  • % birthing rate- 154%
  • % production rate -123%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 80%

We had a ewe up and die on us. She was one of our older ewes. She had twins and they are both very healthy. I brought them into the house and spent 1.5 hours getting them to take a bottle. I am not very good at bottle feeding lambs. I usually let Annmarie do that and I take care of the barn animals but she had to go to work and it was my day off. I was going to go into work late to catch up so I had the time to give them both a boost. Once they had a couple of ounces of formula into their tummies they became quite insistent on getting more. I had to keep switching between lambs so no one had to do without for very long.

We are pretty surprised by the 32 boys out of 40 lambs. That is some definite leaning to one side. We have never had a lambing where the numbers are so skewed.

Winter works

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It is officially winter now, despite the record high temperatures. We have had over half an inch of rain in December already. The new mud boots are coming in handy now that the barn lot is a pig pen. The nice thing is it has been so warm that about half the barn lot has sprouted grass and that is really cutting down on the mud. I had plans on getting the barn door fixed but the mud and tractor combination is not very exciting so I am waiting until it gets freezing cold to go work on the door, which is its own special kind of hell. But it’s better than getting stuck in the mud with the tractor.

Mr Rainman was able to get the office slider doors done one rainy day. I had not seen them as I am not in the wife’s office very often. But I did have to go in her office today and the doors look amazing! There is almost nothing left to complete in the office, I still have to fix the trim around the cords going to her router up the wall. It is truly the only thing left, except for building the shallow shelves on her central table arrangement so she can sort her new wood sheets out easier. But after that it will be completed!

We spent one whole day doing nothing but cleaning up the old house and machine shed. The organizing was sorely needed and had not been done in quite a while. We even managed to get the old DeWalt radial arm saw from the 40’s moved out of the old house and into the old chicken coop. That meant we were able to move the toolbox from my future room into the project area. We also moved one upright cabinet. The cabinet has a lot of rust on the bottom half but it is an upper and lower piece so I think we can ditch the lower piece and move the upper piece out into the machine shop. This will open up some more space and allow me to move the last big thing from my future craft area. Once I get that space emptied I can finish getting the electrical outlets wired and the light installed. Once that is done then I can finish insulating the last two walls then put up the inside wood.

After Thanksgiving we decided that more external light was needed over the bridge. We purchased some rope lights and were going to install one on each railing. The wind and cold meant that Mr Rainman and I only managed to get one side installed before calling it quits. After it got dark I was glad we only had one side installed. One was incredibly bright, I cannot imagine how bright two would be. We are going to see if we can use a Wi-Fi controlled electrical plug to control the bridge light. We can program the plug or turn it on/off with our phones when needed. We have not tried it out to see if the Wi-Fi extends that far out into the yard yet.