blackberries

Winter duties completed as spring arrives

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Mr Rainman came out last weekend to help out and on Sunday I decided that the we should actually finish the last of the winter duties since spring is here. We tore the bird netting off of the raspberries and tame blackberries. The berries had thoroughly integrated themselves into the netting, it just had to be cut away and rolled off the top. The berries needed to be trimmed anyways. So we hacked out everything in between the rows then started to trim them back. Removing the dead out first always makes it easier. A few of the raspberries have migrated over into the blackberry row. We cut some out but others just got left.

The netting did its job and kept the birds out so we could actually collect a crop. It’s the raspberries that the robins love. As soon as they start to turn colors the birds eat them without the netting we get none. It was not fun to remove but the year before we did not get any berries so it is worth the hassle. I learned to cut the raspberries short and tie them to a central wire. It helps control them and makes it easier to pick. After talking to Mr Rainman everyone treats their raspberries differently. I had no idea, I learned from my father so that is what I do. I do use sisal or cotton cord so it can just rot on the ground afterwards. It makes cleaning up easier.

Annmarie went out and checked on the bees again. They survived the winter! We have one hive only right now. We are buying another nuc the first of May. We had some moisture get into the hive over the winter and this is a bad thing. I am going to install a gutter on the back of the bee enclosure to keep the wind from blowing water from roof into it. I am also going to cover the back. We have been talking about a tarp but I am afraid the wind may tear it up. I am still thinking about what to use. I have some old tin that with four support boards I could just install along the back wall. I am also trying to be a cheapskate and use stuff we already have on the farm. I am hopeful we will get some honey this year. She did not get stung and the bees got sprinkled with freshly made powdered sugar and another chemical treatment for mites. The sugar helps the bees shed the mites which fall through the mesh bottom then the chemical knocks down the rest. It is an eternal battle.

Our bulbs are starting to come out of the ground and are now blooming. If we don’t get rain soon I am going to have to hand water the flowers to make sure they get enough water. Also we now have six of the big bushy roses planted alongside the side fence. In three years they should totally obscure the fence.

I want blueberries next and someone in Pendleton is offering 10+year old plants for $120/each. The price of a pack of blueberries in the grocery store is $8/ea. It will not take long to save money on owning our own plants. I have four 3 foot metal troughs set up in the orchard on the other side of the berries. I drilled holes in the bottom so they can drain and have filled the bottom with four inches of gravel. I am hopeful that I can get the plants next week and get them into the troughs. We really like container gardening. Not having to get on your knees and bending over all the time is wonderful and as we age it is even more wonderful!

The strawberries are trying to take over their container. I just started grabbing dead leaves and pulling. I figured as prolific as they grew last year they would have no trouble filling in again this year. The bamboo poles are where our asparagus plants are located in the bed. I bought a few more metal troughs at an auction last year and am going to create an asparagus only bin. We read that you could overgrow the asparagus with strawberries but the type we were given (free) are super aggressive and just grew like weeds. It was hard to find the asparagus. This should be our first year that we can harvest asparagus if it grows. Hence the reason for asparagus only bin, it will be obvious and we can fill it up with plants to get a nice crop from. I have a 12 foot circular bin! I cut the bottom of the bin off, it was rusted through, so the plants can go down further into the soil if they want. They have to be planted 18” deep to begin with so I figured growing down another 18” would be easy for them.

The horseradish that was given to me last year survived the winter. I planted it in the ground, away from the sheep and it is just now starting to peek out of the ground. I will dig some up in the fall and see how it tastes. I am told that fresh horseradish is amazing.

Barn is now ready for the winter

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The Apprentice came out for a couple of partial days early in the week and got the frost free faucet holes filled in. She stated that she is constantly hurting all of the time due to the laborious nature of the work she is doing on the farm. I stated that it was merely training for her apprenticeship at the end of September. Plus, she keeps returning and working every time I ask. This is a win/win situation for both of us.

I have some extra time off of work so I am playing catch up before winter starts. I have several projects that are on hold, the old house freezer room, the back bridge, bee hive storage room and moving the old lamb shed over near the machine shed. Instead I am working on the barn. It needed to be set back up so we can use it. So on Thursday I cleaned up the house some, then picked two more gallons of thornless blackberries and then the Apprentice came out to do some more work.

We gathered some tools and drug them out to the barn. We needed to install more hooks for the buckets. It’s so much nicer to be able to find a bucket when you need it, so we installed another ten hooks. We installed bungee cords on all of the doors so they auto close now so the sheep cannot get into any area that we forget to use the latch on. We installed the sorting chute and even put some hinge joints into the chute so when we start using the chute panels to block off portions of the barn it will be easier to move the panels. I think we need another six metal pins as there are only two left unused. The door into the momma/baby is always out of commission early as it get stuck open due to the level of the bedding rising quickly. So we raised it another three inches. It cannot go any higher or the lambs will fall under it when they lay next to it. They all lay next to something that will potentially allow them to fall under it. The extra bungees were all placed in the bungee hanging spot and all of the bucket straps were placed on the wall in their appropriate storage spot. We added three more rails in the momma/baby area to hang feeders from. We added two more eyelets for the creep gate so the area under the stairs can be converted to a baby feed fattening area.

The big thing was to put metal support hangers under all of the cross braces holding up the bedding. One of the boards had split and another was cracking. We had to force the broken one back together and install the hanger. Now that they all have a hanger we don’t have to worry about the space above the feeders crashing down onto the unsuspecting sheep dining below. We just need to toss out some straw bales but literally you just toss them down and the sheep will tear them up and spread them around themselves.

Barn Dig out completed

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Last week went fast and slow at the same time. The Apprentice stated that she wanted to work. The barn needs dug out and I have to go to the paying job. This seemed like a match made in heaven, to me. I attempted to teach The Apprentice how to drive the little tractor in and out of the barn. It is a tight fit and you have to watch the rear tires and the front bucket simultaneously so you don’t smash either one into the barn or knock out a roof support. After 20 minutes I realized that the time to just get in and out of the barn was going to be too long. So I had the Apprentice start shoveling the barn in areas the tractor would not go. I used the tractor to break up stuff it could reach and had the Apprentice make a long pile of poop in the center of the barn. She kept digging every day and I had to come home, eat dinner and then go out on the tractor and spend a couple of hours digging out the piles that were made in the center of the barn. She had that entire thing done in four days!

The barn floor is now drying out before we lay down some new bedding. I have to repair three boards that I managed to tear up with the tractor. This is only the second time I have torn up some boards when I was digging out the floor with the tractor. I just have to screw down three 4 foot long boards. It will take the impact driver to get the screws into the ancient wood I reused as the subfloor.

I had the Apprentice attempt to clean up the ground outside the barn with the tractor. The wind was blowing and after she ate about a half a pound of dust and poop she called it a day. I will have to come back later to scrape the ground clean. The Apprentice wanted to keep working but we were headed out of town on Friday so the apprentice agreed to come out early on Saturday and we would start in on the fence around field #1. I need to get that field fence up so the cows and sheep can get in there and eat it down. I have also been spending some time in the evenings picking blackberries. Annmarie uses them in her breakfast smoothies and we freeze them in individual serving portions. I have been picking wild blackberries and our domesticated thornless ones. The domesticated ones are huge in comparison to the wild, but the wild ones are much sweeter. The domesticated ones also have NO thorns, it is so pleasant to pick them. My hands look like I have been dragging them through rose bushes after picking wild berries for a couple of days. I was able to swing a deal with a friend for jam. I pick the blackberries and they make the jam! This way we both get some. They don’t like the hornets. I have not been stung a single time by hornets this year. I have managed to “pick” a couple off the blackberry bushes that I thought were fruit. It’s always a surprise when you go to put it in the bucket. I wash it, measure it and freeze it in known quantities so we can use it for jam and pies later in the year. I need to pick about four more gallons.

12 cups of wild blackberries

Predators 8/ Farm 1

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Friday I went up to field #3 first thing in the morning to attempt to call the coyote in. I am using the new electronic call I got this week. I hung out for about an hour and did not see a single coyote. The quail did not see me as I was hiding behind the cattle feeder. The sheep ran by without seeing me either, yet no coyote showed up. I went down and picked wild blackberries for a little over an hour. I filled all my containers I had brought. I only picked two patches and skipped another three. It was starting to warm up and the hornets like the berries when it gets warm. I went inside and washed them all off and then repacked them into individual bags and froze them. I ended up with 25 snack size bags full. Annmarie uses a single frozen bag every morning in her breakfast smoothie. I try and collect them for her and I will need to collect more in 2 and 4 cup quantities so we can make pie and cobbler throughout the year.

I got all the tools together to go up and work on the fence surrounding field #1. It is a green seven acre field that the sheep and cows need to get into so they can eat for a few more weeks. I had the tractor bucket full of tools and wire and stays to drive up there. Of course I did not take a rifle, there is no place to put it on the tractor, I would have to hold it the entire time. Of course I saw two coyotes running out of field #3 and a dead lamb in the field. They had just killed it and it was almost noon! I dumped off the supplies and went back to the house to get the rifle and call. I spent another three hours trying to call them back and had no luck. We have now decided to lock the sheep into the barn lot and feed them last years hay from the machine shed.

This is honestly a stupid problem. This weekend alone I have spent about 6 hours trying to spot coyotes. Each sheep lost is $100 down the drain. I will keep going out every day until I can kill them. The next evening when I walked up to the find the carcass and hopefully catch someone snacking I had to walk around looking for the carcass. The only thing left after 24 hours was a hide and a spine with a few ribs attached. Nothing else! I of course did not see a coyote.

Sunday I went out to get Annmarie some blackberries for her breakfast, as I froze all the others I had picked. I went out and checked on our thornless berries in the garden. I had to come back inside three times to get more containers. The berries are huge compared to the wild ones. I left some fresh ones for Annmarie and froze another 16 bags. I will need to pick berries again in about four days. I had plans to go up and look for coyotes again but ended up cleaning house instead. Sarah said she would help me shear alpaca after she got done at church. My helpers are gone again for a couple of weeks. So we need to get the alpaca done.

When she got home we rounded up the alpaca and ended up shearing four more in about three hours. The only ones left are the three babies. One of them had crawled down into the ditch and was covered in water so he would not have been easy to shear. We are planning on shearing the rest on Tuesday or Thursday this week to get them all done. Annmarie has been washing the alpaca and is on her second saddle. It is amazingly cleaner when she is done.

My priority now is the fence around field #1, coyotes and finishing the freezer room. I want to store the cleaned and ready to be cleaned alpaca fiber in the freezer room. This will get it out of the house and into one spot. I just have one piece of OSB to install on the wall and it will be ready. Okay, I need to wire five outlets also but that will only take an hour. I can wire the light later. I am pretty sure I stole power from the next room for the overhead light. Basically, I need to get some more stuff done on the old house but it will have to wait until this winter.

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.