barn

Three musketeers

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I have the plague and this is hindering the hay pickup issue. I got Slim and Tex lined up to come out Tuesday morning at 0600 and start picking up hay. I was approached by a friend to see if I needed more help out on the farm on Monday and I decided Monday evening to call them and have them come out Tuesday also. This way I could have Slim drive the tractor and Tex and Hoss could load from each side. While they unloaded hay into the first bay I would have Slim clean out the milking area of the barn and the second hay room as I was sure they would fill the first hay room. I had a plan.

Everyone arrived at 0600 and we spent the first 20 minutes cleaning out the pickup! It was not horrible but it did require some effort and I found a coat and hat I had misplaced in the process. I also think I found a handful of tools that I had misplaced. We tossed out all the trash and even emptied out the bed of the pickup.

I then spent 7 minutes teaching Slim how to drive the tractor, the most important part being always wear your seat belt. I figured she had never pulled a trailer before but going slow and her brother, Tex could give her pointers. Tex and Hoss jumped on the trailer, I went to work and hopefully the hay gets put into the barn magically.

I had to come home early due to the plague, it had gotten hot so they had quit. The first hay room was full and Tex wanted to know how to stack it in the second one. I told him and he said he would come out and finish in the late evening as he was leaving for California tomorrow! I told Tex I would pay him when he finished. He was confident there was only a little over one load left.

Hoss was still here and I walked him around the farm and we discussed him digging out the barn and helping me with some fence for the next couple of months. He was agreeable to this. This was very fortuitous for us.

Tex came out that evening and unloaded two more loads into the barn and said there were at least another 2 loads in the field. He was a tad optimistic.

Till the sun goes down

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been a long week. Tex got the plague! No man is immune from a good virus, I blame his mother for giving it to him. He was out on the two days needed to ride the baler and put some hay out! So I was going to work, coming straight home, changing clothes, grabbing a quick bite to eat, some water and hitting the fields until dark. It was not all fun and games, there is a definite learning curve to using new equipment and especially when you have never put up hay before. I jammed the thing full a few times and had to dig it out by hand. I backed into a completed bale and caught the string and sucked it up and wrapped it around the guts of the baler. This took a while to get undone. I only sheared one more shear bolt the rest of the week. I would come inside at dark, cleanup and go to bed to wake up and do it again.

Since there are no microbalers in our area, I bought normal haying twine, but it will not fit inside the compartment designed to hold it. So we just set it between the baler and the quick hitch. It didn’t even need strapped down, it would just ride there and pull itself out. We went through ten rolls of baling twine.

One night was spectacular! I had jammed the baler for the third time and just called it quits. I was getting ready to head inside when I noticed the view, it does set things into perspective. It was a good way to end a frustrating day.

Tex finally healed himself and came out to the house on Thursday. We were only about 50 bales from completion and would need a spot to put the bales so we worked on lining one side of the barn with 2×6 boards so that the round bales would not touch the outer walls. I had plans on buying some pretty boards but at the rate we are burning through cash I opted to use some boards that we already had on hand. We used boards left over from building the bull enclosure. Probably a much better deal all around for everyone. We got ten feet into the air and decided to wait on installing the higher boards until we had stacked the hay up to the top board. This would then allow us to just stand on the hay pile and install them without trying to use them as ladders, hold on and then screw them in place. This does require some balance and dexterity and muscles which could be better utilized in stacking hay. Tex jumped onto the tractor and finished out the last of the hay while I ran to town . Slim had come out the day before and knocked down 90% of the grass in our front yard. This was a needed task and at the rate we keep Tex busy neither one of us were going to get to it.

I had Tex hook the hay mower back up and Thursday evening I opted to drive down and start haying down by the school house. Two passes and I heard some loud whine from the drum mower. Now I had just hit a hidden 2” pipe with the mower on the last pass. I discovered that I had ripped off all the blades from one of the drums. All of the bolts were missing! I even managed to find one of the blades. So now I am going to have to order new bolts and blades for the loaner mower. I also had to disconnect the PTO shaft from the mower and dig out all the loose grass that had wrapped around the head and was smoking from the friction. I did mention this is a loaner? I called the place this morning first thing and was told this is their busy season and to be patient they would get back to me. Well they did not get back to me today and I cannot cut any more fields for hay until I get the mower fixed. So tomorrow I will try and order the parts I need and we will see how long it takes them to get to me.

We ended up with 1050 bales that weigh about 45# each, so about 23.5 ton in 8 acres. I have about another 6 acres down by the school house to cut still. We will buy some alfalfa this year and plant two more fields this fall. I am pretty sure we are going to plant 7 acres of Sainfoin and then more grass fields. Our big push now is to pick up all those bales by hand!

Trickle lambs

Steve Hardin1 Comment

It looks like a lamb but it is just one of the barn cats! I had to really look when I went to feed and water our “wide as long” ewe. The new barn cat has been hanging out with this ewe for the last couple of weeks. Annmarie spotted the ewe chasing her off a couple of days ago. We are hoping that means she will have her babies soon! They get super protective before and after delivering.

The barn is definitely chaos now when you walking through trying to feed. I shuffle my feet so I can just scoot the lambs out of the way as I head to the feeders. I love this part of having sheep. It is pure chaos and cacophony in the barn. After feeding I usually walk through and snag various lambs to pickup and pet on. The ewes get so tame that you can just walk through and touch everyone. During the summer we will only be able to touch 3-5 as they get very wild running around and free ranging.

Every morning and night we go out expecting babies and are disappointed. I did the night chores on Wednesday at night and checked, no babies. I went out, in the daylight, first thing in the morning Thursday and found a set of twins under the overturned wheelbarrow! The little buggers had hid from me the previous night. I chased the mommas out and noticed that their momma went right to them. She had to have bonded well and fed them well for them to survive outside in 26 F weather. I chased the pregnant mommas back into their area and opened up the area under the stairs. I put food and water in there and chased the momma inside. I had to snag both babies and they tried to run away which is a great sign of their strength. I locked them up and left them. I had noticed that they had nursed already so I was hopeful they would get their sea legs back. Last night they looked great!! We are going to write down the ear tag numbers if either twin is a girl because that is one good momma! The ewe is pretty jumpy, but it is her first set of babies but coming back and owning them after they spent 12 hours outside is amazing. No more babies this morning. The twins looked great, but they are small and I will paste them tonight. I didn’t want to upset the mother. I am going to have to increase the height of one wall under the stairway. the gate on one end is low and I need to raise it. We like this area as a crèche. Normally, it was just sitting unused but this is the second year we have used it and its handy.

The two DeWalt battery work lights are amazing! We now have them at each end of the barn and if you turn them both on the entire barn is lit. We are seriously considering two more, one for each hay room and calling it good. We were talking about installing solar and a 12 V storage system with LED lights throughout the entire barn. That was gonna cost about $2k without labor. For $480 and 4 hours of labor to install mounting spots we can have better than daylight light levels inside the barn.

We are talking about a water storage tank for watering in the winter. The water could come from the roof and a gutter system. This is purely in the discovery phase. I would love to find a 500-1000 gallon water storage tank for fairly inexpensive. I also still need a manure spreader! So keep your eyes out for one, looking for an older one that needs a new floor. I want it to work, but it does not have to be pretty.

Our current numbers are as follows:

1 death

4 bummers

13 singles (39%)

17 twins (52%)

3 triplets (9%)

33 ewes birthed

5 pregnant ewes pending birth

46 lambs dosed, tagged and banded

5 babies dosed only

2 babies undosed

Production rate:

Birthed 185%

On our farm and alive 161%. 150% is great, 125% is bare minimum. We are winning!!

It’s the small things that count

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Annmarie has been learning how to make the laser cutter do cool things. She made some cool wooden signs for the church and I found some old screws in the shop to attach them to walls and doors. They turned out very nice.

I spent the weekend catching up on little things. I clear coated the wooden signs and in the process I was looking for screws afterwards and I found our missing closet door!

The door has been missing for months. I was certain I had put it in a very safe location inside the house but we could not find it. Annmarie even admitted to seeing it once but forgot where in the house she spotted it. I had searched multiple times to no avail. It doesn’t do any good to put my slippers on the shelf when the dog can just reach in and grab them. I did manage to lose the screws for the door. I went to the hardware store and got new ones. I never did find the box of wood screws I know are somewhere on the property.

I mounted a couple of battery lights in our under the stairs closet. This is my fourth attempt at a light that will keep working in the closet. I like the motion detector ones but they are cheap and they break fairly quickly. There is power on wall in the adjoining craft room and I am going to drill a hole and install an outlet in the closet so I can install some under cabinet lighting in the closet. This will take a little planning but I believe I have all the stuff to install the outlet out in the old house.

I sanded the door stop Annmarie made on the 3D printer and sprayed it with black paint. She has blotted brown over it to age it and I will shoot it with clear coat and install it upstairs in the hallway to prevent the breeze porch door handle from hitting the wall.

Today was the tag and band day for all the sheep. Annmarie was at church so I went out and got ready to do the deed. The funny part was the 10 mommas are in their own area and one was laying down. She is as wide as she is long and I was sure she was in labor so I tried to get the other moms out so I could isolate her into our original momma/baby area. I managed to spook the small group and they went barreling by her and rolled her onto her back. She could not get off her back! It was just like a turtle on its back. She was hollering and waving her feet in the air. I got everyone out then had to go lift her onto her feet. She is now ensconced in her own pen with food and water and hopefully tonight she will have healthy triplets. If she has triplets and is paying attention to them we are going to let her raise them.

I went into the hay area and grabbed a partial bale of straw and made a chair for me on the barn floor. I laid out all the needed tools and started to catch babies one at a time. I had tagged 10 girls and one boy when I started to worry about the imbalance in babies. Mother Nature tends to keep it 50/50 when it comes to gender. I started catching more boys but it goes to the nature of our animals that the girls are calmer and easier to catch than the boys. When I thought I had everyone done I started to catch the babies and drop them over the middle panels so I could count them and make sure everyone had an ear tag. This causes the barn to become a very loud place once the babies and mommas start hollering at each other. I counted 46 babies and I found the one little lamb I had missed earlier. I was pretty sure I had missed one but could not spot it amongst all the babies. I let them rejoin and then had to push everyone back into their own area.

I had a few boys that just do not like the banding part. Some just lay down for a few minutes and call it over and others treat it like you just killed them. This little guy took the drama to a whole new level. He was playing dead.

Annmarie had talked to me about installing a board next to the feeders with two eye bolts so we could attach the gate directly to the feeders. Getting in and out when it is only bungee corded to the feeders does not make for a smooth gate transition. I had to to dig a hole in the straw to make room and then take it to the shop and drill holes and install eyebolts. I had to cut a small piece of wood off the feeder and install the new hinge point. It is much more secure and easier to get open.

Annmarie got our Weather Underground station to work today! It is now on our blog homepage. This is a great addition to our ongoing homepage updates.

Almost 75% done lambing

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We keep thinking we are closing in on being done but the sheep are dragging it out. After tonight we have 11 ewes still to give birth out of 40. Every day we get one more ewe. I had three tonight that look like their sides are going to split open. They are almost as wide as they are long.

Annmarie flipped me a lot of flack over my last post. I did not feel well and she said I failed to capture any humor and kept repeating myself. After sleeping for 14 hours and rereading my post I did notice a prolific amount of repetitive statements. So in the interest of appearing to have an interesting life I am going to attempt to be an engaging author tonight. I am not saying that this is possible every time because in all reality it is not. Sometimes I think my success at the blog as far as sticking with it is because I do refuse to quit. I do just keep after it. Annmarie tells me I can not post or do it later but I know if I don’t keep after it I may stop or just limit my post to the occasional humorous story. Fifty years from now when our relatives are reading this blog and looking at the pictures and the books we have made of each year (which Annmarie has to catch up on) they will know what has happened in our lifetime, our trials and tribulations, the minutia and the cost of running a farm. We were able to save a lot of pictures and knowledge but there are still mysteries we keep discovering. I would like future generations to know what happened while we were stewards of the farm. Three years ago, Annmarie brought home some large used gunny sacks from coffee bean storage to use out in the barn. I had grand plans to make removable frames and stretch them over the frames to keep the barn warmer in the winter. Today I finally just put them over the wire panels I have over the windows. The barn already gets several degrees warmer just from shutting it up the gunny sacks will help. Installing the large window will make the biggest change and I really want to do that next year.

We had another single baby born yesterday during the day. This morning Annmarie discovered another very large single baby and tonight I found another set of twins. The twins were still wet and the ewe had not passed the placenta yet. I watched both lambs nurse before I used the lambs as bait to lure the new momma into her own private area. I did not dose the babies with selenium paste, when they are that new we try not to mess with them a lot until the momma is well bonded. She was very attentive to both lambs.

As I made my way out to the lamb shed to feed the ram I started looking around and my head lamp kept spotting eyes all over the place watching me! I chased two deer away trying to discover if they were coyotes. Three different cats from various buildings or near the creek tried to creep up on me. Its kinda spooky! If we could have two ewes give birth every day by Sunday afternoon we could tag and band and almost be done with the whole lambing season. I will redo the count but again, a disclaimer, until we do the next tag and band session and do a physical count these numbers are mere educated guesses.

Our current numbers are as follows:

1 death

4 bummers

12 singles

14 twins

3 triplets

29 ewes birthed

11pregnant ewes pending birth

30 lambs dosed, tagged and banded

12 babies dosed only

2 babies just born