Farm

Alpaca addition

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We had a thought a couple of weeks ago about adding some more alpaca to our herd. This does require us to be a little selective as we only want males and preferably only unneutered males. This is not because we like or need stud animals, they must merely have the hormones necessary to survive and maintain a spot in the all male testosterone laden fight club. On the plus side they are cheap to buy as they tend to cause problems. So our fiscal requirements match our survival needs and everyone wins. I had reached out to an alpaca farm and gotten a reply and unbeknownst to me, Annmarie had reached out. I got sick last week and gave up on my lead, Annmarie kept after hers as she was going to Salem on Friday already for an event so figured she would be in the area. She found two young alpaca, 3 & 5 years old two hours south of Salem. I merely needed to go with her, drive the pickup, pull the four horse trailer and then drive four hours first thing Saturday morning to go pickup the alpaca in question.

This is where things get a little complicated. What she did not know was that the pickup is dirty, its a farm rig, I had recently taken all of the trash out and emptied it out mostly, but it is not very clean. It is still has straw in the cab from last years haying season. I have had a few issues with the pickup and had been hinting that it may need some work on it. My hints meant that the ABS light is on all of the time now. I am pretty sure its activated all of the time also, one must be careful when using the brakes. The turn signals keep blowing a fuse. The fuse problem seems to only be an issue when a trailer is plugged into the pickup. There is something going on with the transmission. It slips randomly when shifting gears. Luckily, it doesn’t slip once the gear has been engaged but it can take several tries to get it in gear. As an added bonus it is very easy to calculate how many miles to the gallon the pickup gets, its 10 MPG, no matter what, loaded,unloaded, or pulling a trailer it is always 10 MPG. Now this is a bonus as the fuel gage doesn’t work properly. You cannot tell when the last 1/4 tank is getting used up. To further complicate things the positive battery terminal connection keeps getting corroded. This is causing the pickup to not want to start, it feels like the vehicle will not start. The act of turning the key is accompanied by a small prayer and some constant verbal encouragement to get the vehicle to start. The trailer has non working lights, non working brakes and the spare tire has a flat. All in all, pretty standard farm equipment.

I decided that I should try and moderate some of the issues so I cleaned out the passenger side of pickup and back seat. I filled the pickup fuel tank before we left. I had the spare tire on the trailer repaired, stem valve had a leak, and I purchased that metallic reflector tape and placed it all over the horse trailer, on the back and both sides. I also made sure to buy a tire iron as I forgot one when I left the house. I also made sure that I had the new battery terminal part and two crescent wrenches and a standard screwdriver in case I had to tear it apart and replace it because the pickup would not start. I had enough time to fix it in the parking lot while I was waiting for Annmarie to finish teaching but I was unsure what would happen if I disconnected power to everything. I knew what the problems going into the trip were so I did not want to add in any unknowns, this sounded like a totally logical statement at the time.

Once we headed out and got on the freeway it occurred to me that I should have put 2/3 yard of gravel in the pickup bed. Since it gets 10 MPG no matter what the gravel would have helped stabilize the back end of the pickup. The trailer does pull well but hitting rough patches of road is not super fun. I kept it around 65 MPH the entire trip. I also used the cruise control sparingly. I didn’t like the way it towed when I did not have my foot on the gas. Besides, the cruise control failed to set 30 miles from Pendleton when I finally tried to use it on the way home. This is a new thing so I am unsure why this is occurring and it could have just been a one off problem because some times the cruise control buttons can be very finicky.

After the first stop for fuel and the strained sound of a starter barely getting enough juice to turn over I tried very hard not to shut the engine off until we made it to the hotel in Salem. Luckily, they had a very nice large parking area in the rear of the hotel for large vehicles. Now mind you I had to take everything out of the pickup that I did not want stolen as the key does not fit the locks. If the doors get locked I cannot get into the pickup. I overcome this small obstacle by leaving the rear sliding windows unlatched so if needed I can pry them apart with a knife and crawl inside and unlock the doors. Oh and the passenger window can only be lowered and raised by the controls on the passenger door. The ones on the driver door no longer work to control the passenger side. I left some food and water in the pickup in case any homeless explored the vehicle at night. Nothing was taken or removed during our stay in the hotel. I dropped off Annmarie at her event and headed two hours south to get the new alpaca. At the rest stop I barely got the pickup started. So when I had to stop for fuel I bought two bottles of Coke. The pickup battery and I split one. I popped the hood and started to pour small amounts of Coke on the battery terminals in the hope that I could eat up some of the corrosion and the connection would improve. I am unsure if this is the reason that the ”GEN” light kept popping up intermittently as I was driving down the highway. I did this twice on the drive back to pickup Annmarie and when we stopped for fuel in Salem before heading home the pickup started up like there had never been any problem. Thank you Coca Cola!

We discussed the option of buying a new pickup on the drive home. Honestly, I am not real enthusiastic at the proposal. I want to take our current pickup in and get a quote on fixing the ABS, GEN, transmission issue and then seeing if I can get another 60k miles out of it. We only have 161K miles on it and got it around 90K. I am putting less than 10K miles on it annually. We are going to see what the final repair quote is going to be before we make a final determination.

We made it home with out a ticket or a breakdown! Go Farm truck!

The two new alpaca are named Padre and Mad Max. Mad Max is the light colored one and every time you touch him he makes disparaging noises at you. It sounds like he is grumbling nonstop. The Padre is very relaxed and easy going. We let them loose in the orchard field so that they would have a fence separating them from the other alpaca. This morning when we looked out everyone was gathered at the fence line talking to each other. We figure we will let them stay in the pen for a week with just the two of them then we will introduce 2-3 of our old herd and then let them all stay together for another week then we will let them all hang out. The previous owners gave us a book on alpaca’s that Annmarie skimmed on the drive home. Live and let live is our motto and high plains desert living is what they are used to and what they are going to get at our house. They are super soft compared to our animals so we are excited to see what the fiber will be like.

February catchup

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I got behind again on the blog. This is so easy to do if you do not just sit down and write every week. It can get away from you quickly. Kind of like the weather at the end of February. We got snowed on and it persisted. The alpaca were getting used to green grass then there was snow all over the ground and it was cold! It dropped down to -1 F! This of course caused much consternation as I have half a barn full of straw, not really hay. There are not enough nutrients in it to keep the animals going but I have a lot of it! There is so much I am unsure where I am going to store it all to make room for this year’s perfect and awesome hay that is going to be baled and stored in the barn for next winter.

Mr Professional and I went and bought another three ton of alfalfa from the rancher we had just purchased some from 6 weeks earlier. Both times we went over scales and paid per ton. The bales lost 6% of their weight in those six weeks. They went from 100# bales to 94# bales. I have never looked up how much weight is lost over a year when you talk about bales and dry out over a year even if stored inside. We have enough hay now to make it until spring to not have any leftover.

I had two of the new chickens die. One stayed outside and got eaten by something. I am not sure what as it tore its head off, tore both wings off and only ate a little of the body. It was pretty weird. But we did see a bald eagle flying around the property but I doubt it was a large predator bird as I would have expected one of them to just remove the chicken from the premises.

A week after the cold spell the snow just up and vanished. Our back runoff creek did not go up at all. This is very good news as it means that moisture dropped into the ground and soaked in. Now our front ditch which is fed by a spring has gone up quite a bit. The springs on our place are putting out a lot of groundwater. The fields all look really good!

Mr Professional also found a great deal on some cow scratchers and a pto driven seeder/fertilizer. All of it together was very reasonable. We just need to get them mounted, one on the upper property and one down on the lower property so the cows can use them both. We are going to hang fly powder directly above them so when they scratch the fly powder will fall down at the same time.

Tree killers

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There is supposed to be another winter storm coming in the next 24-36 hours. The temperature is supposed to drop to 10F and we are supposed to get 8-18” of snow in the mountains which will again cut off all traffic through the area. So I spent the last two days doing projects as the weather is going to limit my choices again. I got the fuel pump all assembled and working! I just need to pump out the five gallons of diesel and treatment I dumped into each side of the tank then I can get signed up for diesel fuel to be delivered on a quarterly basis. It will be nice to not have to go and fill up five gallon cans every week during the summer. I used some more gravel to widen the driveway. I want to eventually use up all of the gravel so I can move the entire pile to behind the grain bins. Yes, I did go with a hand fuel pump, we don’t use so much that hand pumping 5-8 gallons really is not onerous.

Mr Professional came out today and we worked on cutting down the maple tree in the backyard. The tree is shedding leaves everywhere, shading our garden, and once we cut it down it was rotten to the core! It had a 8” patch in the middle of the tree that was dry rot. I was saving the trunk to get it cut for lumber but once we found the rot in the middle of the tree it was only good enough to throw on the burn pile. We removed about 60% of the upper branches and then tossed the rest over the fence so I could retrieve them and use them to build up our ”burn pile/quail cover”. The quail love the pile of wood so we are hoping that by building it back up they will choose to stay longer or even roost in it overnight.

We leveled off the area with the tractors, unfortunately the temporary fence that is no longer dog proof had to be torn down. So now Mouse will be able to freely just run back and wolf down all the cat food without anything slowing him down. I will be buying some fencing materials so we can fix this fence in a couple of weeks after the weather warms up again. Of course the faucet back there is leaking and will need to be repaired in the spring. The spring projects are starting to pile up! I am taking some time off work next month to come home and relax. I will be spending that relaxing time stripping and staining doors. Annmarie would like an upstairs bathroom door. Currently there is no door whatsoever.

On my way back to the machine shed I encountered one of our sheep having a seizure or had just gotten hit in the head. I watched it for a couple of minutes but it seemed to be coming out of it. By the time we had the animals fed and let them all into the barn he was inside wandering around the barn. So he was able to walk over with the rest of the herd all on his own. I will be checking on him in the morning. All 100 quail were in the driveway when I came home. They just cannot decide were to run and hide. It is a hoot to watch!

I am still messing around with the night time picture taking.

It’s the little stuff

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Annmarie had a discussion with me about her loom. Now mind you I had to move the loom to paint the entire ceiling after doing the small repair in the craft room. What I did not know was that before you move a loom that is warped up you should relax the warp. Otherwise, you can throw off the tension and alignment, not that I did that. Annmarie was able to fix it because not only did I have to move it out to paint, I had moved it back in place afterwards! She is back to working on our woolen woven hallway old ice fridge cover. She has about 24 ” done and it needs to be 54” long, so almost halfway. Basically the takeaway is ”Don’t touch the loom”.

Since the weather was so nice and Annmarie wants me to catch up on all the little things we spent Saturday fixing the new round planter in our back garden. It needed to be filled with gravel, then soil, Mr Professional filled it with a lot of gravel, some sheep manure compost then we topped it with some good planting mix soil. We topped off all the other bins with extra soil also. It does seem odd to be doing garden stuff in mid February.

The old ram bolted through the gate when we were hauling gravel around, he promptly ran for the main herd of sheep and started sniffing tails. This caused some consternation from Casper, the new ram, so much so that after we got the old ram out of the herd Casper had to mount a couple of ewes just to establish his rank. This is a good thing, as we have seen some breeding activity but not as much as we would like to see. I personally would like to see him lose 10-15% of his body mass due to an unrelenting focus on getting everyone bred as quickly as possible.

I spent an hour grooming Gizmo. It has been a long time since I have taken the time to totally strip all of the loose hairs off of him. He looks great! I should probably do it more often but he doesn’t particularly love this endeavor and I feel like I am picking on him when I do it. Which would be why he does not get stripped very often.


On Sunday I spent an hour and sanded down a piece of maple for Annmarie to practice the laser farm pictures on. We are going to laser engrave all of the turn of the century farm photos we have onto wood and mount them on the dormer in the kitchen. We are hoping to do around 20-25 pictures. So I have a lot more wood to sand!

Tractor purchases are now complete

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Friday was spent playing catchup. The weather is 50F and sunny which is not normal for February. It’s more like late March early April weather, which is so screwy. I had a friend who had offered me an old dead black walnut tree so Mr Professional and I loaded the Kubota onto the trailer and went over attempted to load the pieces. We had to cut them down to 9’ sections and the last one was so big we could not lift it. We tossed down the ramps and then tossed a piece of OSB flooring down and then used the tractor to roll the log onto the back 1/3 of the trailer. Once it was rolled on we just strapped it all into place so nothing moved and then headed home. We took all the back roads and only had to go about four miles so Mr Professional just drove the tractor back home as the trailer was now full. We took the wood down to the custom cut place and he will call me when its time to cut it. I need the strapping tool to come in the mail so after its cut we can stack it in the chicken coop and strap it all down then ignore it for another couple of years. I think I want to use a small piece to finish the upstairs bathroom countertop next to the toilet. I was thinking about using a live edge piece there.

I went in and picked up the last two parts from our new tractor purchase, the snow blade and the three point bale spear. Unfortunately, the snow blade was not paid for but the bale spear was cheaper than originally quoted so I paid off the snow blade and we brought it home. Now that I have a snow blade I am certain that it will not snow again until next winter. The only things I need for the new tractor now are a quick hitch attachment (under $300) and I want a ballast box ($350). I will have every piece of equipment I need except for a fertilizer thrower. It has taken a while to get here. I also ordered the broken part for the hay baler and more bale netting, they are both on there way. They had the broken sprocket in stock! No waiting for the part to come over from Italy!

Annmarie came up with an idea for bridge lights using some of my old Mason glass jars. I think she saw it on Pinterest. She got $1.20 solar lights then 3D printed an insert that would drop onto the top of the mason jar and allow the light to drop into it. I then used silicone to caulk the two parts together so the rain cannot get down into the mason jar. I spray painted the hose clamps and jar rings and then we mounted them on each end of the bridge. Since the picture I have torn off all other solar lights from the bridge to make it neater. The bridge rails sag outward a little so Mr Professional suggested we build a gazebo like covering to hold the rails together. There are five sections so we could just replace the center section (4 posts) and not have to replace every cedar post (14). I mentioned the idea to Annmarie and she liked it only she wants all 14 posts replaced. I think we need to see how it looks before we do the entire bridge. Luckily, this is not on the list for this year.

I also dry fitted the fuel pump parts and filter together to make sure it would work. I need some teflon tape to complete the assembly but the first store I went to did not have it. I will need to go to the auto parts store to get it. I have a small cheap plastic siphon coming so I can rinse out the tanks with diesel before I get them filled.