barn

Lambing has begun!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Slowly but surely we continue to get little things done but nothing holds back Mother Nature. Yesterday one of the ewes gave birth to our first lambs this birthing cycle, a set of twins! Of course the sheep were on the back hillside about halfway down to the schoolhouse. Annmarie happened to spot them from the driveway when she was returning home. I walked out and tried to catch both lambs but could only get a hold of the little brown one. Both lambs were still wet and the mother had not passed a placenta yet. The little black one ran with mom all the way back to the barn. Annmarie caught it as it was trying to get into the barn. She used the lamb lure to get the mother to run into the momma/baby area. The barn lights are amazing! You can clearly see in the needed areas but you have to plan ahead as you can only use two light strings at a time. It is a huge improvement, I should have done it two years ago when I saw the conversion on YouTube. We will keep the momma and babies separated. We have the momma/baby barn lot run locked off so the grass is about eight inches tall in that area. The ewe will be happy. In three days we will let her out with the twins and they can start to get in and out of the barn by themselves. I believe there are 38-39 ewes and not all of them are pregnant. We will count as we go. I will start the statistics after we get a few more lambs. There were no new babies this morning. I will be doing morning duties so when I wake up at 0400 I will now be going to the barn to check for babies first thing and feed and water any new mommas and let everyone out of the barn.

Mr Rainman came out midweek and got the large hay bales covered. The grass in field 4b is very tall. I may end up putting up a fence around the hay with a large removable wire gate for the front. I would need to put it far enough away from the bales that the cows and sheep could not reach through it to get the hay. The old road sign tarps are very heavy duty! We will see if they can last through the winter and wind over the next four months.

The new chicken door came and Mr Rainman installed it. The door closes just after it gets dark. It has a built in solar panel so the AA batteries will keep charged. It has a flashing red light that starts up and means the door will close in 30 minutes. I know this as I have been looking every evening to see if the door actually shuts. I am doubtful that the chickens will learn that they have 30 minutes once the red light starts flashing. It has been pretty dark and the door is still open. The door does cycle and the chickens really are that stupid. Some know to get into the coop before dark but others want to be out late and miss the curfew. Those chickens have to wait outside until the next day. My hope is with the new run door they will be protected despite their tendencies to stay out late partying. The last step will be to put in some overhead 2×4 rafters and run chicken wire over the top of the run so that the chickens are truly protected from all predators.

I got a new outlet wired in the root cellar stairs so when the new LED lights come I can install them quickly in the ceiling of the root cellar. I had left a empty wire conduit for just this purpose on the side of the box. What I failed to realize was how much harder it is to add things after the fact. I did actually have to turn off power in the box so I could get it all wired up. I also cleaned up the last of the barn wiring supplies so the barn is ready for the lambs. I have been doing a lot of little tasks. They all need to get done but I get frustrated, it feels like I am working the last 10% of a project; I am but it is still annoying.

Fall is definitely here and since the ewes cannot go on the back hillside anymore I am using them to clean up our front hillside and make the leaves in the yard disappear. The dogs do not particularly like staying in the house all day, especially the puppy. She wants to be outside digging, I filled in four huge holes in the yard yesterday. But after she learned to jump the low fence from the garden area she cannot stay outside. I don’t want to install that side fence permanently until after we manage to get the siding replaced. We are still looking for a contractor! It is very hard to find someone reliable and good.

Weekend update

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Mr Rainman came out on Saturday so we could pour some more concrete. I ran into town and got another pallet (56) bags of Sackcrete and three bags of sand only Sackcrete so I could do the brick power enclosure near the front bridge if there was time. Mr Rainman got the mixer in place and the last two supports on each side of the form installed. We carried around 30 bags over to our work area then started mixing and pouring. It was a lot easier, there was more room to work and we were higher than the mixer so you did not have to try and muscle the bag up while dumping it out. This time I managed to mix almost half the bags before trading spots. We only needed 40 bags to get the other bridge footing poured. Once it was poured we covered it all up with a tarp. It is getting down into the 40F range at night so I wanted to try and trap some of the heat into the form and concrete.

We then went to the other bridge and I installed a 36 brick rectangle with a power outlet built into the side of it. I am not a very good brick layer. It took some trial and error. Time will tell if I did it right. I have a hollow rectangle now. I am going to find a concrete block that I can just use as a topper. That way I can have access to the inside for wiring in the outdoor kitchen light power (after its built!).

I was pretty stoked to get all of that done in a single day. So the next day we were going to get the tractor mower going and Mr Rainman would mow the rest of the fields and I would work on wiring the lights in the barn. I hate playing at being a mechanic. When Mr Rainman went to hook up the new PTO shaft he noticed that the gear box on the mower was loose. You could shake it and move it around about 1/8” in either direction. He showed me so I said lets just tighten it up as I have done nothing in ten years to ensure its tight. I want it to last another ten years. So we lift it up with the rear three point hitch and he crawls under it. After much swearing and two four foot lengths of pipe (cheater bars) I manage to break a large crescent wrench. We tip the mower up on its side and chain it to the other mower bucket for safety. Then we proceeded to try and take it apart. I hate cotter pins. I hate tight spaces. Who has a 1.5” open end wrench laying around? I did find the wrench after I went and raided the last of my father’s machinist tools. I have never needed anything that large before and I am pretty sure the bolt was metric. No go, we could not get it apart. So Mr Rainman went home to get a 1/2” DeWalt impact driver for just this type of problem and I tried to get more parts and a torch.

We tried the impact driver and got no where! Nope, Nada, Nothing, it was not going to budge. I get impatient and just said cut bolt head off. After taking off all of the guards on the grinder and putting on a cutting wheel we were able to hack off the bolt heads. The threads had been worn off due to the rattling and looseness, there was no way it was coming apart or getting any tighter. It took us four hours to do nothing. I finally just gave up, had him grind off the bolts while I went and wired lights. He hooked up the spreader and went and over-seeded field #1 and the triangle. I got all of the light strings wired but one. That last strand I had one light that would not work and the last light on the string that did. I have one more sixteen feet in the air to still wire in. I think the first one has a wiring issue. My splice piece did not want to go on easily and I think it failed. Needless to say the last run is the one that lights up the hay rooms! So there is no light when you are getting hay until I fix it. I did discover that we can only run two strands of light at any one time. The voltage drops too far if you try and run three strands at the same time. Two is just fine and will work perfectly.

Mr Rainman is going to come out the next couple of days to work on the fields.

Let there be light

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is really happening. The weather turned bad, started to rain solid for two days so I decided to get to work on the barn lights. I had torn apart the DeWalt charger, cut slots into it and torn out the guts with a pair of pliers but had not finished unsoldering the pin connectors and soldering on new power supply wires. I turned the Apprentice loose in the barn getting tools together and cutting some boards while I went back into the house and finished converting a DeWalt charger into a DeWalt battery power supply station for a 12V light system I am installing in the barn. I have a five switch box and am hooking the power supply up to it. When the battery dies just plug in a fully charged battery and the lights are back up!

I was able to actually test it out and got power! The regulator I bought will maintain a 6V to 20V output you just have to set it. I was going to set it at 12V but figured with wire resistance I was going to loose voltage the further away from the power source it got. The LED lights will work on a 12-20V range so I just set the output to 20V and hope the battery lasts. Until we start using the system we won’t know how much power a battery will supply. Each light only consumes 10W and each string of lights is only four sets of three lights and one set of four.

The Apprentice and I started running wire to get the five sets done but we ran out of wire. I had only bought 300 feet and really needed about 350 feet. So we did not wire the momma/baby area/tack room as the lights are only about eight feet off the ground. Some of the lights are 16 feet in the air and require some acrobatics to get to let alone run wire along beams and walls. I bought two strand red/black wire so it would be easy to run. I also bought these clamp on connectors that just go directly over the wire. They looked like they would work but I thought they might be an internet scam. I bought them anyways as they looked perfect for what I needed. They worked!! I was thrilled and relieved that I was not going to have to fix everything I had already done. I was able to get one run completed with the lights all wired in and give it a test to see if it would work and it did! I was super stoked as I had just read about the charger hack online and did not know anyone personally that has done it. I had plans for finishing up the barn this weekend but ended up doing some fall cleanup.

The trash guy forgot to pick up our trash this week, by the time I got a hold of him at the end of the week to ask why we got skipped he was very nice and apologized. He brought out an extra can and told me he would pickup any extra trash I had next to the cans on my pickup day. So I spent all of Saturday cleaning house and generating trash. I have two piles of boxes and paperwork and two trash bags full of garbage and one can is so full the lid won’t close. Now we are both happy.

The Apprentice is off to farrier school. I may see her on the occasional weekend while she is at school. She told me she is only two hours away and wants to work. We will see if she can break free or not. I should be able to get the barn lights up and running next week. My wire should be here by Thursday.

Catch all before starting Barn lighting

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The Apprentice came out on Tuesday for her final before school push and we did some work. Well, she did a lot of heavy lifting and I did some other stuff! She worked on moving 120 blocks over to our bridge foundation area. After we get the foundations poured we are going to lay the bricks from the foundation over to the gate and woodshed. But before we can lay those blocks someone has to move each block, weighing 33# each! She got it done!

I was able to get an email reply from the livestock auction house near Hermiston and we pushed our little bull into the trailer. I drove right over, dropped him off and was gone in ten minutes. The check will be in the mail, he needed to go so we could make room for our bull and two rams to go into Alcatraz soon. Once we do that I can make one herd of cows as the young heifers will not get impregnated. They are for eating next year.

I stopped and got some supplies to store more pipe in the overhead of the machine shed. Eventually I will be installing this drain pipe in the barn lot on either side of the barn. I have added some drain pipe already but this should really help with keeping the mud under control in the fall and spring especially. I even remembered to cover up the pipe openings before hoisting it into the air so the birds don’t nest in the pipes. Thank you Mr Rainman for that suggestion.

I dug out the light post near our front bridge, the sheep had knocked it over and honestly we don’t need a light there. I poured a concrete footing and will build a bricked outlet box. I also dug and inserted a piece of conduit so eventually (hopefully next year) I can get the 16’ grain bin outdoor kitchen area installed and we can have some outdoor lighting. Hence, the reason for having power available.

We also managed to find two dried black walnut boards from the old chicken coop to use inside the house. One is for the new dried spice shelves I want to add in the laundry room and the other is for the upstairs bathroom. There is one spot next to the toilet that is still plywood and needs a covering. Unfortunately, I need a 21.5” x 26” triangle and my wood piece is only 20” wide. So I am going to cut a 3” square piece and glue it on one side so I can sand it all down at the same time and cut my triangle from this fabulous piece of two inch thick black walnut.

I of course set all this wonderful wood out on a stand in the yard to sand and it started to rain the next day as soon as I got home from work. I had to run out and move the wood in out of the rain. One would think I pay attention to the weather but I don’t, only during hay season.

As it was pouring down rain today The Apprentice and I worked on getting the 12V lighting system installed. We managed to actually draw out a plan and get all of the lights mounted. I started to run wire but there was a disaster at work and I had to go in. So we will hopefully get all of the wire runs completed tomorrow and maybe even get the lights to work! It’s a pretty ambitious goal.

Lambs for sale

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The Apprentice has been incredibly game for whatever comes her way. So on Friday we were ready to sort lambs and I wanted to weigh them. We have never weighed our sheep before. We bought the slings and scale several years ago with the intention of doing it occasionally but in all reality it was not necessary. I had posted an ad for the lambs on Craigslist and someone was interested but they wanted to know how many of the lambs were slaughter weight. Well we are keeping seven of the big lambs for our local customers. We have six sold but due to the current coyote problems we are having I through it prudent to keep an extra on hand.

Due to us keeping seven and me stating they weighed anywhere from 35-85# I figured we better have some weights. We grabbed a short section of chain from the fence (I keep all of the short sections I find all over the farm next to the outhouse trash enclosure). The new scale and slings were in the tack room. The one sling is for newborn lambs and the other for everyone else up to 200#. We hung the scale up in the momma/baby area. This way if the lamb got loose we could easily catch it again. The only bad part of this plan is you have to get the sheep into the harness on the ground then lift them up onto the hooks of the scale. So this means lifting every single lamb after you have already caught them and drug them over to the scale.

We got all 59 lambs into the barn and pushed down to the far end so they can feed into the chute and then we can count and sort them. I manned the sorting gate and chute. The Apprentice was at the end of the chute and had to catch them as I pushed them out and drag them over to the momma/baby area. Keep in mind she weighs 115# and is 5’4” and has never wrangled sheep before. It went pretty well actually.

She determined that horns on sheep are unnecessary. I like to use them as handles but the ones with little nubbins kept managing to head but her or dig their horns into her biceps. She got tossed around a few times and losses control of the lamb. We just pushed them into the momma/baby area and then caught them again. We had one crazy female, who weighed 112# that just head butted right into my left side and tried to knock me down. We finally snagged her and got her into the scale. If she was not already going away that behavior would have earned a ticket to cull city! One time she held on but got tossed all over the barn while managing barely to stay on her feet and keep ahold of the very large lamb. On one occasion while getting the lamb into the harness she got jerked toward the side and I had to catch her to keep her from hitting her head. After that I held the sheep and she put the harness on. We finished with all 59, with 52 weighed. We did not weigh the seven we were keeping. It was getting pretty long as that took us about four hours to do fifty sheep. So about 5 minutes per sheep.

We then let the 52 go out into the upper end fields and moved the keeper seven over to the lower pastures to go into our main herd of ewes and two rams. We only kept whethers so this is possible.

Once that was done we needed to take the pile of discarded and not valuable alpaca fiber that was still in the milking area of the barn over into the lavender patch. We are using the fiber as a weed suppressant, ground cloth. It works pretty good for that but it takes a lot of fiber to do that. Luckily, we have a lot. We drug it through the corral and front yard and then went to toss it over the fence. This is when the Apprentice announced she “cannot move my arms” when we went to lift the fiber over the fence. It was a 12 x10’ tarp full of fiber.

We worked on clearing the front hillside of puncture vine. It’s so hard to get rid of so we are taking it out and bagging it all to go to the dump. We don’t want any of it on the property. Once we had the bag full the apprentice could not lift it so she brought the trash can into the yard and managed to get the bag into it on her own. We called it a day after that.

I am getting too old to go all day, I hurt by the end of the day. Annmarie tells me I should be conditioning my body in the off summer season but I am not sure that will help my joints, my achy knees, elbows and shoulders! So instead I just keep moving and keep doing stuff despite the pain.