Farm

Catch up

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It has been a long ten days! I had plans on blogging over the weekend but I was tired and busy and it just didn’t get done. I find that it is surprisingly hard to keep after it some times. I have a goal, 8 posts/month and I do my best to make that happen. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don’t but I have learned to just get back up to the desk and write. My single biggest motivating factor is I like to occasionally go back and remind myself that stuff is actually getting done and jobs are really not multiplying, they are merely setting us up for success in the future.

Mr Professional got the tractor back up and running. It of course started to rain because we had cut hay. We only managed to get about 1 ton baled before the rain came. We have turned the hay twice and attempted to bale again three days ago. Mr Professional hit a clump of wet sodden grass and jammed the roller baler. He spent a couple of days digging it out off and on till he got tired of messing with it. He had the thing torn apart when I came home this evening. Within ten minutes we had it up and going and then he had to put all the pieces back on. He went out and turned the hay one more time and we will start baling again tomorrow and cutting again. I have about another 6 acres that needs cut and baled then we are going to move across the road and start cutting and baling. We will be at this for the next 3-4 weeks. It’s going to be a long month.

We have had two more calves. I was able to get pictures of one right after it was born, a few hours. Mom did not like me driving the tractor close but I told her she had to calm down. The babies are doing well. We have five calves now and one cow left to give birth. We need to be done calving so the bull can get turned loose with the mommas.

Doom and I went and picked up a wrought iron fence that Annmarie found on the digital classifieds. You never know what you are getting but it was indeed handmade, only about three feet tall but well worth the $300. It just needs to be cleaned up and then the posts cemented into the ground. We are going to use it on the side of the house. I am pretty sure that Zeke will be able to leap it no matter what we do but he has to slow down at some time as he is already over ten years old. Mouse won’t go over it and the fence will get a covering of small gage wire to stop Gizmo. It was well worth the trip, even if Doom drinks passion fruit tea instead of coffee at Dutch Bros. A person with the name Doom should drink coffee black and strong not passion fruit tea. Doom went home today and stated that he will be back sooner than later. It’s always good to see friends from far away, they come, they go, good friends.

The weather has been miserable. It just keeps raining. There is so much rain that our back dry hillside is greening up again! It only does that after about a week of steady rain and warm weather. Every year the rain comes no matter how late I wait to cut hay. Hence the reason I only cut some of it. I knew that the bad luck fairy was going to visit again. I did make a decision on the tractor. I am going to get a Kubota. I thought the change would be good, this one has a front snow blade that can be turned, it has a 3 point large bale spear, pallet forks, a bucket and a rear sickle mower. When I add that to what I have already I think I have most of the bases covered. I am even going to have some ballast put in the rear tires. I am hopeful this takes some of the tipping tendencies out.

The tractor is broken again

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This morning the plan was to get Mr I Need a Belt Bad to finish the lawn and kill some more weeds in the garden. While he was doing that I was going to get some more field work done. I got him started in on the lawn and took the side by side up to spray East side of field #2. I have what I believe to be a type of hairy vetch that is proving hard to kill. Mostly because it does respond to the spray but it grows so fast that it keeps snapping back from getting sprayed! I sprayed out another 50 gallons. The grass is pretty tall in places but has not headed out yet so I think I can wait another 1-2 weeks before I cut it. Once the spray was done, I opted to grab the tractor and cut the West side of #2 for hay. I had about two acres cut and was almost done when the tractor refused to steer. I jumped down and looked at the steering mechanism. The picture shows that a cast iron piece is broken! This is a new broken piece and on the left side this time. They just fixed the right side wheel bearing last week. So the plan to turn the hay I cut yesterday is on hold. I need the tractor to work! After a brief consult with the wife where she tells me its okay to buy a new tractor. I wanted to hold out for two more years, tomorrow I will be getting quotes on a new tractor and get the broken piece overnighted so we can continue to put up hay. The real question will be can they get me a new tractor in under two weeks?

Mr I Need a Belt Bad dug thistles out of the garden then Mr Professional got him hooked up with the five gallon back sprayer and he walked along the driveway and sprayed the stray grass stalks. He did this a couple of times. Annmarie had him help her plant some new flower ground cover under the old metal harrow rake. Next week he will get to finish weeding the garden, spraying the grass in the planter garden and start weeding the flower rock garden. He is going to whip our yard into shape this summer. We got some more clover seed for him to plant on the front hillside also.

It always seems like something breaks and stops us from haying! Here is to hoping we can get it fixed quickly and not lose any hay.

Haying season has begun!

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I brought the tractor home this week from its repairs. It has the back hydraulic takeoff connectors repaired, a hydraulic leak under the tractor and the front wheel bearing seal all fixed. It is no longer pouring out oil from multiple locations on the tractor! They even power washed all the grease off of it. I wanted to drive the tractor home via the back roads and not use the trailer, it would have taken about 90 minutes to get home. Annmarie told me to just take the trailer! I would have needed a ride to drop me off and had to make a special trip to town instead of just driving the pickup to work. I used the trailer.

One of our cows had another calf so 4/6 have now had calves. Unfortunately they are taking their time. So next weekend we are going to herd them all up to the barn and sort them so the four babies can be tagged and banded. We will have to get the other two later. I don’t want to have to tag and band a 8 week old calf. Mr I Need a Belt Bad was excited to hear that we would be working cows next week, we will see how excited he is after he has to help catch and hold them down.

Mr Professional came out yesterday and got the sickle bar mower attached to the tractor. I had to work all week so no weeds got sprayed. I am on a new drug regimen for my post covid pericarditis. It is back to tearing up my gut and the constant chest pressure is starting to wear me down again. I have been instructed by multiple parties that I am to take it easy. So I have added napping to my schedule and only get to do a few light things in the morning on the days I am not working. I hate it. But I am tired and I want to get better and limiting my activities will help.

Today Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out and we set him on the yard first thing. Our front hillside has sprouted with cheat grass and it needed to be mowed. We have some clover coming in and have vowed to not use any herbicide on it in an effort to get it established. So we had him mow and bag all the cheat grass with the mower on the low setting. It did not disturb the clover and it decimated the cheat grass. He had one instruction when I set him up with the mower, do not hit the black hose connecting the sprinklers! That is actually two directives as he was instructed to mow the hillside and not hit the black pipe. I had to use a wire wheel to clean off the sickle bar mower goop so the grass slid over it and was using the grinder when he came over to tell me that he had hit the black pipe!! He had one job! I grumbled and told him to finish mowing and we would fix the pipe later. He was back five minutes later showing me a four foot chunk of pipe he hit that was not connected to anything. I had removed it a couple of weeks ago as it was not needed and had just tossed it to the side. So even though he violated the rule, no hitting of the black pipe he maintained the intent which was to not interrupt our watering capability.

He then got set up with the weed eater, a new experience for him, and yes he had goggles and hearing protection. He did not like the weed eater as much, it is heavy, you have to use a chest harness and it does wear on your arms. He ended up mowing about half the front yard and will finish the rest tomorrow. He should even have some time to work on the garden also. Mr Professional came out and pulled the hay rake out, sickle cut the orchard and worked on weeds. He is also working on getting the chain saw put back together. We need to do some creative repair to the plastic handle. I am picking up a couple of packages of JB weld to create a fix.

I mowed the hay today with the sickle mower. I got about four acres cut. I have maybe another two in one field but it can wait a week and the #1 field can wait at least another two weeks. We are going to try and spread out the cutting so we can get it baled in between and it won’t get too dry like it did last year. I suspect we will be cutting the neighbor’s field mid to late week and starting in on it also. The goal is to get 35-40 ton in the barn, shed, buildings. I still have about 12-14 large bales left over from last year. I use two per week when it is bare and no feed available. We will have to hook up the trailer to the tractor to feed out the small bales. I love the way the grass lays down when you cut it and the smell. It is very relaxing.

Boring is necessary

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I had lots of help on Saturday, Mr I Need a Belt Bad and Mr Professional came out. Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I helped Annmarie sort sheep first thing in the morning. We had the sheep in the barn first then set up the gates. It’s easier if we do the gates first but the simple fact is using the gates and sorting chute is one of the best decisions we have made when it comes to raising sheep. It doesn’t take up much space and we can sort them whenever we need. We never want to sort the sheep, its always a need. We needed to sort off more lambs that were over 90 days old. We got 18 more pulled off and even managed to mark three of the little girls as savers and future breeders for us, they are incredibly calm. We proceeded to push them through the front hillside and over into the orchard pasture. This would have gone smoother if Mouse had not decided that he knew how to herd sheep better than Annmarie’s directions and just as they neared the gate he broke and rushed in. There was some chasing of a particular sheep and yelling and some creative word play. On the next attempt the dogs listened and the sheep went through the gate. This all leads to the necessity of a woven fence on top of our rock wall to keep the sheep out of the yard. We also want to keep the dogs out of our yard so we can get a no hole yard. This whole process only took one hour. It used to take around 2-3 hours before the chute and then you had to chase the sheep around the barn and dive on them or catch them mid air when they tried to leap away. It was entertaining but a lot more work and we are not getting any younger. Our ram is starting to lose weight and it looks like some of our ewes are pregnant. We hope so as he only has one job.

Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I then stayed in the barn and proceeded to get it ready for hay. We did this by putting all of the netting and hay string into empty 50# feed bags and tossing them into the back of the pickup. The dumpster is still on the property and got emptied Friday so it needs to be filled again. I was hoping that I could be done with one more week but after emptying two hay rooms and picking up all of the netting and more buried twine we filled the entire dumpster with the addition of all of the feed bags from the chicken coop. I still have a lot of items in the old house that need to be round filed so the dumpster will have to stay for one more week to get filled for the last time, a total of 6 yards of trash will have been removed from the farm. I sure am glad we have weekly trash service. Once we had all of the trash corralled we went into the barn and reorganized some wood. I had built a loft over the sheep feeding area and had been storing wood on it. We reorganized the room over the tack room and then moved and restacked all of the lumber except the 1×12 boards into that room. I used the 1×12 boards to toss down and cover some of the holes in the decking. We are going to start haying soon and we have a couple acres of cheat grass. The flood ruined a couple of the fields and now there is a lot of cheat grass. I just about had it under control in a couple of fields and it is back. So we are going to hay it and use it for bedding. The bales will be stored up on the walkway and you will be able to just cut them open and dump them off the walkway. The sheep will break them up and spread them out. It’s a great use for them and stops me from having to buy straw. It also lets me work out any kinks in the baling process before I get to the good grass. Practice is essential as we have only used it for one year. When it comes time to clean out the barn I need to open up all of the doors and use the leaf blower to blow the dust off of everything. I will need goggles and an N95 mask for that as it will be very dirty and dusty.

Mr Professional arrived and started to work on getting the lawn mower running, he had it fired up in no time and started in on the lawn. Mr I Need a Belt Bad went to the back garden to weed for the second time. All of the grass that he missed last week had gotten some rain, sun and some extra room to grow. It had taken off and he was able to knock it down one more time. I will mix a little Roundup now and keep it in a little one gallon hand pump sprayer. I used it every 1-2 weeks to knock down the grass instead of having to pull weeds all the time. Weeding sucks. While they did that I finished spray painting another three metal gates. If I waited much longer the rust was going to become much worse. Mr Professional fired up the weed eater and I knocked down an especially tall spot in the yard then proceeded to weed eat the berry garden. Once we had it down, we went around to each plant and pulled out the weeds by hand to create a weed free zone around each berry bush. I may even plant some blueberries as well as the berry garden is doing. I am going to bring over our large water trough and get it set up for strawberries. This will keep them from spreading all over the place. We do have a mole out there and I am going to have to set a trap. We tried to find the entrance hole but couldn’t find it. So all of the mounds got spread out so I can decide wear to set the trap.

Mr Professional and I set up my Christmas present and I now have two targets mounted on the hillside at 100 yards. Now to see if the sheep will leave them alone. I was able to use the rangefinder to figure out how far objects on the hillside were, 150-200 yards. The side by side had a flat front tire so we took it off and I will get it fixed this week. The tractor is the key piece of equipment that is missing. As soon as it comes the sickle bar mower needs to get attached and fired up to do a job.

Spraying

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Thursday was a perfect day to catch up on our field spraying. The side by side is all ready and as long as I put a quart of oil in every time I add five gallons of fuel it works great. Yes it is burning a lot of oil. I am hopeful there is a treatment I can add to the oil that will extend its working life. Now that we have the big marine battery installed under the driver’s seat it starts right up! It is pretty amazing to just turn the key and have it start.

We are mixing 10 cups of 24D, 3 cups of sticker and 7 ounces of Milestone to 50 gallons of water. This is killing the broadleaf and the thistles are dying. I noticed after looking at the fields we sprayed a month ago that it was time to spray again. New broadleaf weeds were 3-7 inches tall and ready to be murdered. I was able to spray all of field #1, 2 and 1/3 of #3. This was incredible progress, the wind finally started to pick up so I had to call it quits. During this time I realized that our home weather station is broken again. I kept trying to check the wind speed (no spraying over 15mph, I like to stop at 10mph). The trees were moving the wind was blowing and our weather station little round cups were not moving at all. Turns out they have decided to stop going around and around in the wind. So we researched another brand and purchased a new one, this one using sound to measure wind speed, it has no moving parts! Our hope is this will last and not cause us problems. Luckily, the pole I installed on the last replacement can be used for the new one so this will save a lot of time.

I was able to spray all of the fence lines along the fields also with the hand wand. This has caused me to realize that I need to install a hose on a reel for the spraying that is self retracting. This way when I get off the side by side to spray I can move around more than 12 feet. I am going to have to look at what Harbor Freight. I am sure a frame will have to be welded to our current setup to get it to fit and be stable.

I was able to spray all of #4 and another 1/3 of #3 on Friday before the wind made it impossible to continue. The fields look better and I need to cut at least one field as it is all cheatgrass. The sheep don’t like to eat it but after last year we have learned that if I bale it we can use it as bedding for the entire barn. The sheep will spread it around and then pee all over it. If I have enough of it I don’t have to buy any straw to use for the bedding. The best part is the compost pile gets hot enough the next year to kill all weed seeds. Unfortunately, the tractor is in the shop for repairs. The front wheel bearing seal requires too much work and a hydraulic press which I don’t own. When I took it into the shop I found another leak from it sitting on the flatbed trailer. I had them quote me for fixing the wheel bearing seal, for fixing rear hydraulic takeoff connector, the hydraulic leak and the bucket controls are sticking so they are going to fix that also, for the low low price of $1200. Annmarie heard the quote on the answering machine and wants to talk about a new tractor! I do need a new tractor but we are waiting two more years until Meathead is out of school. So for now we will repair the tractor and continue on.

I net wrap I ordered came and a spare hydraulic hose for the sickle bar mower. I really needed the actuator arm for the baler. It is bent and the constant pulling on it is making it worse. I will need to call them on Monday to see where my last two rolls and the actuator are.