auction

Auction wins

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Blame Gingerman, he sent me a link to a local farm auction out of Hermiston and I needed a lot of stuff they had. It turns out that I did not need it as bad as other local people because I went from spending almost $6500 to only $1500 in the last thirty minutes of the auction! He had told me that everyone waits until the last minute to bid and he was not wrong. I really had my heart set on a mini-excavator! It was brand new with only 0.3 hours on it. Knew it would cost about $6k, I quit bidding after $3k and it sold for $3.5k. If I had kept bidding I suspect the price would have kept increasing.

I ended up with two, eight foot tall orchard ladders, two old round water troughs that cannot hold water, one new small tall water trough, a couple of hundred feet of brand new lay flat hose with irrigation fittings already on them and two self contained gates. The hose was the most expensive thing in the pile. We are going to cut the bottom out of the two large round troughs and use them in the garden area. The larger one is going to be solely for the growing of asparagus! We want the bottom cut out so the plants can dig down into the ground if they want. I am not sure what we are putting in the other one. The small one will go in with our backyard garden collection. It will get something edible planted in it. The two gates were necessary to get the barn lot set up correctly. The cows and sheep always go down to the spring area and hole up and refuse to come out. It is painful to get them through the gate. We have talked about a fence across the mouth of that area for years. So I installed two gates, both six feet on either end of the opening and made a large removable wire gate. So the entire middle of the fence can be moved for vehicle access. We can also just put the horse over there when we are sorting and she won’t be able to “help”. I spent Saturday morning getting the fence installed and the gates adjusted. The Gingerman helped me put a temporary repair on the back hillside gate so that it is a solid fence. This way the alpaca cannot get out and the sheep can wander around on the lower part of the hill and not sneak out. They would have found the hole, guaranteed.

We then had to drive over to Hermiston and take down the temporary fence we have to install on the decorative fence so the sheep will actually stay in the pasture. It’s Redbrand woven four foot fencing and a full roll weighs about 220#. It is hard to load safely in the back of the pickup alone, at least for me. It took us about 20 minutes and we will save the two precut sections for next year again. We attach it with zip ties so they can just be cut to remove it.

I had to feed the sheep as they had eaten everything in the barn and they are still a little jumpy. So I spent about 20 minutes sitting on a bale of hay talking to them. We always talk to them when we are out in the barn. It helps get them accustomed to humans and more specifically to us. In a month they will only associate us with food and all will be right. They get so pushy that we have to push them out of the barn, shut the door, feed then open the door so they can rush in and beat their neighbor to the good stuff. By Christmas we will be locking them up every night which means someone has to go out first thing in the morning and check for lambs and let them out of the barn.

We ate our Sunchokes for the first time this weekend. It is easy to see why they are a potato substitute. I added them to a stew with meat, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, yellow potatoes and sunchokes. It tasted very good. We will try a different version next time we eat them.

Sheep roundup

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I had every intention of waiting to go get the sheep until this weekend when the Gingerman could help me but I got an offer I could not refuse on Sunday. The gentleman who had arranged for us to take our sheep over to Hermiston offered to come help me load up the sheep on Monday and then we could load up all of the animals going to the auction in his trailer and he would take them to the auction the very next day. They could spend the night at his house in a pen before going to auction. I had so many sheep for sale with all of the cull ewes that I was going to have to make two trips because they would not all fit into my trailer.

I went into work very early so I could leave, drive home, change clothes, load up all of the aluminum panels into the back of the old pickup and hitch up the stock trailer to drive to Hermiston. I beat him there and was able to gather the lambs and cull ewes into the main field from the neighbors. I got there just after noon. This is important because the sun goes down around 1630. The plan was simple to begin with, just put the panels together to create a wide chute and as the sheep go into it just pull the panel side around them into a circle so that they can be forced into the large stock trailer. It took about 2.5 hours to get those 77 sheep into the trailer! It was so painful. We bent two panels and tore the hinges off of one of those two. I need to look at the slatted steel short panels. The sheep just push when there are almost 80 and they can create a lot of force.

They just would not go into the trailer then when they did they clogged up the first eight feet only and then you had to get into the back of the trailer and battle them to get them to scoot forward. My poor hat took a lot of abuse as I was using it as a prompt to get the sheep to move forward. It sort of worked for this but not well. Three time we had to crawl up into the trailer and literally force them forward an inch at a time! It was brutally tiring. We decided early on that the eaters that were going home with me could just be pulled from the trailer after they were loaded! There was no way we were going to get them sorted out in the field.

We now needed to get the ewes from a neighboring field. The plan was to open the gate, in the middle of the fence, and chase them out into the driveway. We would then push them down to the temporary corral we had made, close it up and then drive them into our trailer. This sounds reasonable until or unless you have ever worked hair sheep with a dog. The pregnant sheep are not cooperative, how not, they would charge the dog! They just did not give a shit and would not do it. They got chased around for almost an hour before we finally got them out into the driveway and it was fairly easy to push them down to the corral. The ewes are a lot more likely to load up into the trailer easily. They know it is not necessarily and evil place. Once they were in our trailer we snagged seven eaters from Wil’s trailer and drug them over to ours.

I took the picture after I got home in the dark! I was able to back up to the chute and then open the gates. I expected the sheep to just run out but of course they did not do that. They could not see so they were not going to leave the trailer. I guess I could have just left the trailer backed up to the chute and they would have left eventually. I did not do that, instead I crawled into the stock trailer and started to toss sheep at the ramp to get them to go out into the barn lot. It took my about ten minutes to get them unloaded and all of the gates shut. The barn was ready so all I had to do was get them into the barn lot.

He ended up taking 70 animals to the sale for us on Tuesday. The cull ewes sold for $110/ea, the female lambs $120/ea and the whethers $140/ea. By the time we paid all of the fees we made almost $8k on the auction animals. I will be using some of that money to replace the panels we broke and to explore getting some steel ones to use for sorting purposes. All in all it was well worth the long day!

Less crazy is a good thing

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I came home early on Monday so Mr Rainman and I could sort the cows. We wanted to wean off the babies and move them down with the teenagers, then sort off the bull and put him in Alcatraz, pull six horned cows off the herd and load up into the trailer to go to the sale first thing Tuesday morning, and let the other momma cows go toward the upper pastures. This was all preceded by getting the cows into the corral. Despite three attempts the two of us could not drive the cows toward the corral. We need the arena panels to go across the spring access in the barn lot, the cows just kept breaking around us.

I went into the house and retrieved the border collie Chance so that the cows would move. There were some explicitly worded commands given once she started to ignore me. Eventually, we got the cows into the corral. Mr Rainman had just finished the last of the repairs on the corral on Monday and it worked. We managed to get six of the horned devils into the trailer.

They were dropped off at the auction house and the check for their sale already came to the house! It was pretty much what I expected for cows who are old and just had calves weaned off the day before. The important part is that they are no longer on the farm. The herd was already calmer once we got the crazy out of the group.

We are back to having to do nightly feeding of the sheep in the barn again. They take seven bales spread out amongst the feeders. I set out 10 bales initially and figured out what they could eat in a day from that. There are a couple of bales in the feeders that they don’t particularly like so if they want to nibble on something they are there. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of feeding the sheep at night, chase all the sheep out first and shut the door of the barn before feeding. The first night was total chaos with the sheep running around and jumping on the bales as I attempted to unwrap them to load them into the feeders. A couple of the bales had to stay on the floor as I could not get them away from the sheep. I now follow the cardinal rule when feeding and it is a lot more organized and a lot faster.

Auction score

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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So frustrating, my blog company is trying to get me into the 20th century and now wants to upgrade my editor abilities to include “blocks”, which as far as I can tell are snippets of information that are standalone and are inserted into your blog.  It looks cool, but it means everything is independent and instead of 3 choices I now have 30 and they can all be independently modified.  I tried it this morning and just got frustrated, it is looking like my blog time will triple and honestly I don’t have time for that, so I am back to the old archaic version until they force me to use the new, which I am sure they will eventually.  I had a cap on the pictures I could insert this morning so I will be attempting to do the blog more often as there appears to be a cap on how many pictures I can upload. Even with all of this and the changes I have still managed to keep this thing going for over 10 years now, which surprises even me!

On Sunday, we decided to forgo sleep and working on the farm and went to an estate auction.  The weather was cold, windy and very rainy at times.  Despite all of this we managed to buy some new living room furniture for $200 and a jewelry box for Annmarie that almost paid for itself when we took out the liner to oil all of the wood and discovered a little money hidden inside.  I found one of my favorite of all times auction finds an antique clothes drying rack.  These are far and few between and this one is in great shape.  I will get it all cleaned up with some soapy water and that is it as I don’t want oil to get on our clothes.  This thing is great!  I am going to mount it on the wall in the laundry room.  I was told by the lady who sells reproductions, for $40, that I must of really wanted it as she kept trying to outbid me for it but I really did want it.  After we got the furniture unloaded into the house we took a long nap as I had worked part of the previous night.  I was very tired after all of that and carrying the furniture inside and did not want to take the old furniture out as we had no place for it yet.  Now we still have two sets of living room furniture in our living room and dining room and I am on 14 day home/work quarantine, even Roomba can hardly get around.

When I got home on Monday the dogs were throwing a fit by the back corner of the front yard.  I went over to investigate and noticed that they were staring up into the tree, it was a squirrel!  Hopefully it was “the squirrel” that has been down at mother-in-law’s house.  I went inside, grabbed the 22 and dispatched said squirrel.  We cannot let them get established as they are incredibly hard on the power lines and transformers.  They are the number one reason for power outages in cities per the power line worker who I talked to when we lived in a city and lost power due to a squirrel.

On Tuesday we had more rain and Annmarie reiterated the “no carcass, no count” rule in our bid to eradicate the rockchucks.  It is a fair rule but it does make it a lot more challenging.  It does make it very clear cut, no subjective “I got it” interpretations are allowed.  I had held off on cutting hay on Saturday and now that it has rained twice I am glad I did.

On Wednesday, Annmarie called the shipping company to ask about our tire bark.  They have failed to deliver it twice already and have had it for two weeks.  I did feel a little sorry for the person on the other end of the line, but we did get our ground cover!  Five pallets, 5 ton should be enough to get all of the ground cloth covered up and secured in place.  Now we just have to install it all.  I spent part of the day trying to mow the weeds and grass around the place, I ended up overheating the tractor attempting to mow a thistle patch.  I will try it again early in the morning, not at high noon when its the hottest time.

On Thursday I was headed out of the house by 0445 to go to work and Gizmo was just ranting and barking at the front fence.  He would not come back in the house meanwhile the border collies were just running around the yard.  I got him to move a couple of feet and there were raccoons on the other side of the fence!  I ran back into the house and grabbed the 22 rifle.  I considered shooting from the porch but there is the fence, the cars the corral all in the way plus Gizmo is out there terrorizing them so they don’t come in his yard.  So as I ran up the pathway to get to the cars and the raccoons started running for the barn.  I only got two shots off just as they darted across the 16 foot gate opening at the end of the corral.  I missed, we didn’t even need to enact the no carcass, no count rule.  There were five of them!!  My chickens are not going to survive five raccoons.  So war is officially on again!  But the real question is do I get to start counting all the rodents we kill in on the predator kill count?  Is that cheating to just inflate the numbers?  I think it is so I will continue to only count animals that kill my chickens as this was the original definition of a predator.    When I got home Annmarie had me grab the binoculars and we drove up the driveway to look for a new baby calf she had spotted the day before.  Again,  we had given up on the last two cows having calves as it was just not happening so we had turned the bull loose a couple of weeks ago.  Sure enough there was a new baby calf out in the field.

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