border collie

Farm update, spring is coming

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The progeny badgered me this week to get back in the groove and update the blog. It has been crazy around here and during Lent, Annmarie is super busy so I pick up farm work. We have both gotten sick. Luckily, we are super careful to keep quarantine protocols in place so if one of us starts getting sick we make sure to not be sick at the same time. I did get a bunch of little things knocked out. I had purchased a carved wooden chest several years ago and I took five hours to scrub at it with Murphy wood soap, blue non scratch pad, two different stiff small brushes, sponge and lots of towels. I just drenched sections of the carving in soapy water and started scrubbing away at it to get the dirt and grime off. I probably need another five hours to really get it clean but the time I spent got all of the obvious stuff and brought out a lot of details. I also soaked it in lemon oil. I had so much oil on it that I had to go back in an hour and dry it off again. It is fairly painstaking work but it did turn out nice.

Annmarie has the alpaca literally eating out of her hand now. She keeps treats in her trunk and feeds the alpaca randomly when she comes home. They all know not to bug her when she goes out to her car as they never get fed then. Since it’s random she is able to call them and they come running for treats! She has the three young siblings tamed down the most. The little brown one just lets her pet it all over. I can pet it’s neck and cheeks only. The plan is to shear the alpaca sooner than later. Which reminds me, I need to send off the blades to be sharpened! I will do that this week.

I started looking at Craigslist again. I had a friend who used to watch it all the time for me and let me know when something popped up that I may want. He is no more and I have not done much with it since. It’s a good way to see what people are asking for their livestock and to see if there are any deals that I may be interested in. I happened to spot someone selling Tamarack 50” wooden fence stays and was able to go out the next day and pick up 300. Between the great used fence and these stays I managed to pick up this winter I am almost set for fence building. I have seen an add for used metal T posts but I cannot use my tractor to drive in the used posts. They bend about 50% of the time so I have to waste too much to make it worth it. I simply do not want to drive 500 T posts into the ground by hand. I am too old for that. Plus, I don’t want to spend a week driving posts in the ground, as if my body would tolerate that!

I had purchased these plastic stackable bins for Annmarie’s office to hold her laser wooden sheets but they turned out to be too narrow to hold very much wood. Annmarie had talked to me about building something or else using a bunch of table tops and short legs from IKEA to make it. I didn’t do either one but after time I realized she was right. I also realized that I was stacking up extra plywood as the mud room build continued. So Mr Rainman and I spent a few hours and made her a shelf that was specific to her needs and could store boards flat. It is fairly heavy as it is made out of plywood and real wood. I don’t think it would have been fun to move if we had added another 4-5 shelves. Luckily, she needs a spot for the printer and laminator.

The sheep are making us crazy. We have three more ewes that need to give birth. We have one set of twins in a jug now that are only three days old. The damn chickens are laying eggs in the barn in random spots. I have two raccoons that are making rounds through the barn at night. I had a late Wednesday and didn’t go out to the barn until after 2000. I spotted two huge raccoons and instantly turned around to get a pistol, by the time I got back there was only one and it was fast! They are sneaking in and eating the cat food. The weather should be warming up soon and I can cut back on feeding all of the animals as the grass will start growing. It rained 3/100 today and 1/100 yesterday. My hope is we can get warmer temperatures and some constant rainfall in low doses. I don’t like it when we get more than 1/4” at a time. It doesn’t all get absorbed into the ground. The puppy is finally out of the cone of shame. We had to go through three cones and 3/4 roll of duct tape to keep them on her. Her foot finally healed once she quit licking it all of the time.

We will be sorting cows and sheep next week and fertilizing fields. Spring is soon to be here.

It’s kinda warm

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well it has been a long week. Since the tractor cannot be started I have been feeding the cows by hand. After pitchforking 400# of hay into the back of the pickup and then out again for the cows and after working ten hours and getting up at 0345 to go out first thing in the morning to take care of the sheep and lambs; I gave up.

I had a space heater going under the tractor with a canvas tarp over it. I put hotshot in the fuel tank and in the fuel filter and still cannot get the tractor to stay running. I have been trying every day, sometimes twice a day with no success. I went out one dark cold evening late this week in an ice storm and opened the gate to the hay pile. I went out threw pallets out of the way and cut away the tarp covering the front of the pile. It was weighed down with so much snow I could not pull it away. I cut the strings on two large bales and just let the cows have free range on the hay. I do realize this is not the ideal answer but it is my answer. It means the cows get to eat in this bitter cold and deep snow without me killing myself to feed them. I also have time to do other things.

We have a lot of cold, ice, snow and general hard to get around or get anything delivered weather going on now. I got my car stuck in the snow near my mother’s house in Pilot Rock. One of our nephews came and pulled me up a slight incline that allowed me to basically run my car into the deep snow in her driveway until it got stuck. My mother was worried because I did not lock the car up. I told her there was no way they could steal the car, it was stuck in the snow and until I get new tires it was not going anywhere. Annmarie had told me to invest in some new tires a few months ago, I failed to listen and will now be driving the pickup. Except the pickup defroster is kinda wimpy so if its an ice storm I am just stuck at home. I have a brand new snow plow for the tractor that should be in use but since the tractor is down it is still just sitting there! I will definitely remember to treat the diesel in the fall so this never happens again.

The puppy is trying to wear me down. She punctured a hole in her ankle above her paw. We tried to get it healed on our own then had to take her to the vet. The course of antibiotics has helped drastically. The vet told us the cone of shame was needed at all times. Well when it is 2 F outside the puppy uses the cone to beat and thrash on any hard object within reach. I have resorted to duct taping the cone back together. So far I have almost a half a roll of duct tape used to keep it together. She has managed to split it in half twice already. I have 1.5 rolls of duct tape left, I will win.

The chickens don’t really like the cold. But more importantly the starlings really don’t like the snow. We have about 50 starlings in the chicken coop now. It’s a mess, they are eating and pooping everywhere. Now I have holes in the screens and one wall paneling is coming down and I believe there is one hole to the outside eave that is also letting them in and out. We have had subzero temperature for over a week so every night I have to shoulder open the door then chip the pile of frozen bird poop away from behind the door. If I do not do this every day I cannot get into the coop. It took me over 10 minutes one evening and I almost broke the door down. I am focusing on the mud room and the starlings are getting a pass for one more week.

Mr Rainman came out today and we worked on getting the mud room walls up and the pressure treated boards down. Unfortunately, none of the walls are square so each individual upright had to be cut a different length. Over a distance of seven feet the height changed by over an inch on both sides! We are building around the two steel upright pipes that hold the roof up. Those are not even welded straight, so it has caused some interesting adjustments to be made. I have no clue when the door will be in, they are supposed to contact me and said it could take 4-6 weeks and since no shipping company has hardly moved anything in the last week we can just add some more time to the arrival date. The hope is we can get the mud room sheeted and the window installed tomorrow. We will see if the weather cooperates. It was not horrible working in 20 F weather, not great but still doable.

Winter is coming

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well Winter is definitely coming, we had our first freeze this fall. It dropped down into the low 20’s F and there is snow visible on the mountains and low foothills. We got rain instead of snow but Winter is coming. This spurred the decision to finally go and pickup the big bales of alfalfa that I had purchased this spring. My supplier holds them for me as I almost always pick them up late! I am a reliable customer so it works for both of us. I had been selling off the old small round bales from the machine shed and I managed to get the last of them unloaded and sold the day I went and picked up the large bales. I could store most of the years alfalfa in the machine shed if I had a tractor that could lift 1400# bales 14 feet into the air. But since I do not, I put 15 bales in the machine shed and they are the very last bales that I feed in the late winter/early spring. The rest go out onto the hillside in field 4b. The animals all get locked out of that field and I usually buy a big tarp and toss a lot of pallets on it to hold it in place. After buying the vinyl sign to use as a tarp and seeing how thick it is I bought two 12’x40’ signs/tarps and will lay those across the top of the large bales. I think they may even survive the winter. They should be here by the end of the week. Mr Rainman/me bent the loader support on the Kubota. It is for removing the loader and helping it be freestanding. The pull pin got displaced and the arm popped down while a big bale was getting jostled in place and it bent. The main pin had to be cut in three places to get it to let go! A 2# hammer and punch could not drive it out. The pin has spring clips so it will have to be a special order item. We were able to keep moving hay and that was the important part.

One of the things observed when we got the machine shed cleaned out was that there is a pretty damp back corner of the hay storage side. I had put down pallets last time and that worked really well to keep the hay from rotting. Years ago I had dug a trench on the backside of the machine shed and filled it with gravel to increase the drainage removal from the roof runoff. This did help quite a bit but it looks like it needs more help. Next year the gravel needs to be dug out and some French drain hose installed and then replace the gravel. I will also run the end of the drain farther away from the building. This should help quite a bit. The front ditch works wonders but I made a big sink hole for all of the water to go into and I did not do that with the back section.

Sunday we went out first thing to sort the cows. It was cold again so I put on a long sleeve shirt, knit hat, knit neck warmer, insulated carharts, large bulky quilted long sleeve over shirt and insulated gloves. I had a heavy vest ready to go but decided that I was dressing for -20F instead of 22F. I put the puppy, Chance, on a lead rope and we opened up gates to get the cows to the corral so that the bull could be sorted off. Once the bull is in Alcatraz we can put all of the cows into one herd. We can run one herd of cows until January when this years calves need to be weaned off. We will sort off the market cows and the calves and put those 11 cows down by the houses and keep the other above the house, there will be three fences and 100 yards minimum between the two herds. In reality there are a bunch of buildings and earthworks that prevent a line of sight from happening. They can still talk to each other and will especially right after we separate them. It is about 3-5 days of lots of hollering and voiced displeasure from both parties.

Chance did great once she got settled down. She wanted to sniff the hillside and find coyotes. She does not like other dogs as they are interlopers on her property. She does fine with our other border collie but not any other dog. We have not discouraged this as our coyote problem is immense and we want her to alert us if she spots one. Mr Rainman and I merely walked to the schoolhouse, had to run halfway up the hill once and then casually walk the cows to the hen house pasture. Once there we were able to separate the bull from the rest of the herd, opened the back door to Alcatraz and he went in as directed. We did not even have to use the corral to sort! I took Chance into the front barn lot and we worked the cows in an enclosed space. I let her run around with the lead rope trailing (there is nothing for the rope to catch on) and giving her commands to move the cows. She did great! I can now get her to lay down while she is mid chase on one of the cows. She will stop and drop to the ground. We need more work on her directions, left, right and circle around. The true key though is to be able to turn off the dog no matter what the circumstances, once you can do that training the other commands is easy. Once we let the cows out there were about 18 sheep that had come in still in the area, so I had Mr Rainman call Chance and work the sheep. We want her to respond to multiple people. A one person dog is great when you are the only one working the dog but having one that will listen to other people is handy. She is a true people pleaser so this fits right in with her personality.

I had shed the gloves, hat and neck warmer by the time we got off the hillside and by the time we got to the hen house I had taken off the outer jacket and was just wearing my Carharts and a light long sleeve shirt! I should have known, the rule is to leave the house with enough clothes that you are just a little uncomfortable and want more to stay warm. Work and exercise will give you the needed heat to stay warm and you won’t sweat.

We put in another gate into the alleyway from the hen house pasture. This way the animals can always get to water. The main spring on the farm originates in that pasture. We have had the gate leaning up against the fence since last year when we finished the alleyway. Now the cows will always be able to get to water. I even chained the gate open so it cannot accidentally get closed. There is one more gate still to be installed there and one small section of fence to install so that the cows can get to most of field four but not the area where we store the cow hay.

Some things continue to amaze me. We had a volunteer pumpkin grow at the main burn pile. The alpaca did not eat the plant, flower or pumpkin but the most amazing part was the plant got zero water. This summer we went over two months with no rain at one point. Annmarie made pumpkin purée and froze it today. We will be eating the rest for dinner tonight. I am going to plant several seeds around the pile in the spring! Who knows maybe this is the trick to growing pumpkins. The quail are everywhere, we have very large coveys all over the farm and we have started to keep a quail feed block out front by the old farm equipment pile. We hear quail all of the time now whenever we are outside. Heck, we even have a new pair of barn owls on the place. They have decided to roost in the large trees out front just before sunrise. They talk back and forth and are quite noisy. The coyote hunters have tried two more times without any success. They did see more coyotes but could not safely shoot them. Pretty quick we will be locking the sheep up at night and only letting them go out into the ram pasture as they will have lambs.

Predators 13/Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last week was another kick in the teeth and yet super productive. Mr Rainman came out and spread grass seed on field #1 and the triangle. He then proceeded to mow field #2 then sprayed Rejuvra on field #2, 3, 4A. We are going to try Rejuvra it was designed for CRP and grasslands. It creates a 3/4” deep barrier that kills newly germinated cheatgrass. So as the cheatgrass seeds germinate they are killed. Since the seeds can sit around for years this process is essential to remove the weed seed. This is a fairly new product. Our cheat grass was so bad this year that we are willing to just spray it on and see what happens. We didn’t get to hay or use the fields until after we mowed because the cheat grass was horrible. I need to buy one more quart of it to spray the lower fields. The joy of this is that it lets the preexisting grasses thrive and grow through the chemical barrier. As long as they spread by root propagation they can continue to grow and thicken while the cheatgrass is choked out. This was great and he just kept after it until it was done.

The kick in the teeth came when he went down to the lower schoolhouse field. It needed to be mowed to get ready for the spray. As he was driving the tractor around the field he found two more dead ewes! One had just been killed that day or the day before. It looks like something grabbed it by the throat and it bled out. The other one had obviously died earlier as there was nothing left but a skeleton. There is no question that the coyotes are winning this year. We have had a serious coyote hunter out here all last week. He had in around 24 hours combined for the week and on the last day spotted a coyote running up the creek bottom. He did not get a shot off. I have another hunter who came out today with a call and to get shown around the property. He did wonder if he could come out at night with a thermal scope and hunt coyotes. I of course agreed to this! I have another hunter coming on Sunday to be shown around. I am hoping that between them they can figure out how to kill several coyotes. There is no way we have one coyote killing this many sheep. We have not lost a single cow. My mother-in-law is losing kittens and cats quickly. We think the coyotes are eating the cats also. This is a stupid problem.

I will say the 300K lumen light I now use when going out at night combined with a green laser and silencer on a 22 pistol is amazing. Unfortunately, this setup is not helping me with the coyotes. If they are howling and just over the hill I remove the silencer and pop off a few rounds into the ground to scare them away. Let me just say that a guard dog would cost us around $1500-2000 annually for seven years. We are not even close to having lost enough sheep to justify that expense. Now that the barn is open the sheep can hole up in the barn every night and we have never ever had a predator kill anything in our barn.

Today I had to take our only cow left and two sheep in for butchering. I got the six feeder cows into the corral and managed to separate off the large one going to slaughter. The cows are crazy! I ended up spending almost an hour and half chasing them all over the fields until I managed to corral them by just shutting every gate the closer we got to the barn lot so there was only one place they could run. I locked the sheep into the little spot in front of the barn. I figured I could just wade in and catch two whethers. Man, I needed way more coffee this morning before engaging with the animals. The steer was crazy! He ran into the stock trailer. But I had to get in the trailer to release the dividing door, he ran at me and I had to scrunch up in the corner while he ran out. I released the door then went and chased him back in and again had to get into the trailer with him. I managed to slam the door closed before he jumped back out again. He raised hell while I went to get the sheep. Nope, they would not go into the barn. I finally had to go get Chance (border collie teenager), put her on the lead and then we walked the sheep right into the barn. I shut the barn door then tried to catch a whether. Nope, they were too fast. So I made a pen with a 2’ entrance, pushed all of the sheep into it then bum rushed the sheep from one end. They form a mob before they try to squirt past me on all sides. That is time to grab your victim and drag them to the back door of the barn. The first one had horns which make great handholds. The second one I had to drag out by its head and it almost got away a couple of times. I ran them into the corral and then down the chute. They jumped right into the trailer, but after the cow fiasco I rushed down the alley to get to the outer door. Nope, dame sheep took a leap at my head trying to get out. I had to toss a 90# sheep back into the trailer twice! I imagine it feels like being a hockey goalie. I managed to get the slider door shut and the animals transported with no other incidents. Once unloaded the cow did try and get at me through their pen. I don’t know if it was saying goodbye or using my name in vain as it tried to get at me, either way the outcome was the same and someone is going to eat good.

When I got back I went to the barn and fixed the lights in the barn and finished that last string. It was not my splicing connection. One of the lights had a bad connector and I had to cut off the first two connectors I had used and after replacing them they worked perfectly. We now have lights in the barn! This is going to be great, I just know it. More to come as it starts getting dark and we have to start feeding.

Bridge footings progressing

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I was drinking coffee this morning and looking out the front window around 0830 and noticed that most of the sheep were down in the ram pasture and there was a small group of about eight that were all bunched up near the driveway. I started over towards the door and the side window to look out when I saw Mouse (older Border Collie) lunge toward the back fence and start barking aggressively. I grabbed the rifle and ran out into the front yard. I looked on the back hillside and did not see anything. Suddenly, there was a huge coyote low on the hillside hiding behind the leaves of the Maple tree. It started to run away but I was slow and only got off one shot. I missed. Smart predators are so annoying. We are usually gone at this time but I am home on a vacation day. Obviously, the coyote did not know I was on vacation, it does probably know our work schedule! The sheep are going to have lambs in a month. This is a really stupid problem.

This is our last chance to pour concrete until next year. I am running out of weather and time. Everyone wants to go to school or go hunting so my helpers are few and far between now. I was able to tear apart some of the the wooden support from the now dry poured concrete form we did two weeks ago. I wanted to reuse all of the boards from the first form but that was not going to be as simple as I had envisioned. After I took all of the screws and support boards off I was only able to pry off the front boards. A lot of dirt and concrete had leaked out the back when we poured concrete the first time. I had to add three emergency boards as there were some gaps. This meant that the concrete leaked around the edges of the boards.

I was going to have to dig out the dirt, rocks and concrete for at least six inches on the entire back side of the concrete. I weighed the time it would take against just using a different piece of scrap wood to make the new form for the other side of the bridge. I went with just piecing the new form together from scraps. So this new wooden forms is even more cobbled together than the last one! All of these were built using wood from an old concrete form to make a ramp. So I don’t feel too bad about recycling them two more times since their original intention. We pour concrete on Sunday when Mr Rainman comes back. I will go in and buy another pallet of concrete on Saturday so we are ready.