cows

Farm 3 Predators 0

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well now that I am back to work I only have time to blog occasionally again. My goal is still 6-8 posts/month and I have done pretty good this year keeping to it. I was driving to work early Tuesday and spotted a coyote in our driveway. I knew we had one on the property as a friend had called and told me they had spotted it in the stubble field. A coyote hanging around the place is bad for the sheep. One of our nephews shot the coyote this week! So the sheep are safe and I don’t have to spend time hunting it down. Tonight, Annmarie spotted a porcupine on our back hillside. Luckily we dispatched it before the dogs discovered it or we would be going to the vet with three dogs. Annmarie is pretty sure the dogs tangled with a raccoon in the dark early one morning this week. Winter is coming, the predators are starting to come in to the buildings and head towards the chicken coop. The vet bill to sedate three dogs, remove quills and come in on an emergency basis, around $800-1000 for enquiring minds. Our oldest border collie has a torn up ear from wrestling with something in the yard this week. The dogs are valuable team members with a very specific job and they need to do that as we are going to have to start moving animals for selling and feeding in the barn.

We took our first two cows in to be butchered. Thursday evening Annmarie took both border collies into the upper fields and pushed the cows down into the corral. Mr Professional and I showed up after she had the cows in the corral. We sorted off two cows for slaughter. It helps that most of the bunch were on the menu but we just snagged a couple of the bigger ones and sorted them off into the third pen. We then pushed everyone else out and gave them water overnight. I backed the horse trailer up to the chute so I could just open the chute up and push the cows into the trailer first thing in the morning. We had to be there by 0730. The cows are all pretty skittish as they have not seen a human for about two months. Friday morning I just opened up some gates and pushed the cows into the trailer and off we went, took 10 minutes and we were on the road. We are going to have to drop off the cows two at a time and the sheep in batches of five. So we will be doing this every week. We were going to kill one of our original three cows but she is pregnant! She is so mean we had wanted to make her into hamburger. She is going to get another one year reprieve. Our bull only had access to her for about one week after she gave birth but it was enough to get her impregnated.

Today we started out the day with homemade cinnamon roles that raised overnight in the refrigerator along with some Kansas City bacon! It was so good we are having a repeat tomorrow morning. I am going to drown my cinnamon role in butter tomorrow though. It kept raining off and on throughout the morning so when I went outside I had my rain coat on. I had to run to town for diesel before getting a start. It was raining again after I got the disc hooked up to the tractor. If it gets too wet I cannot pull the disc. I remembered that a cheat for this is to weight the front of the tractor down, I found and put 350# of tractor weight into the front bucket to give the tractor more traction. I headed up to the upper pasture to disc with the rain coming down hard. I managed to get a few times around before going into field #2 and working out some of the water ruts in one area. I was cold as I only had a neck gator on and a long sleeve shirt under the thin raincoat. I need better clothes for this, I need to use my chest waders, a warm vest and some waterproof gloves! By the time I made it back to the house 3.5 hours later I was freezing cold and spent 45 minutes in the shower getting warm. We got 0.12” of rain by 1700 today and have gotten 15.49” of rain this year so far.

I like the rain as it softens up the ground but too much and I cannot work the fields. Such a gamble, I had no idea how much luck was involved in farming. Our Morris chair hinges came today. Some old geezer makes them, so now I will be buying a couple of pieces of oak so I can take apart the chair back, make a new rail and reglue the entire back.

Forever Friday 45/45, on to Monday

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s that time, time to go back to work, vacation is over! By work, I mean the paying job, the stuff done around the farm was for rest and relaxation. I spent the day before we left for the coast discing the field down by my in-law’s house. I want to plant it in grass this fall but I need it ready for seed. It is still too dry to plant but if we don’t get rain soon, I will have to put the seed in the ground anyways. Mr Professional came out over the weekend and changed the oil in the tractor. It is all ready for winter. The tractor now has just barely over 1200 hours on it.

I went out today and used the arena groomer to knock down all the big dirt clots and drag all the extra dead grass out of the field. It took about three hours to get it smoothed out and ready for seed. I even picked up any scrap metal, rocks and loose old hay strings. Once that was done I swapped out the arena groomer for the box blade. I have a real hankering to get the field number 2 cleaned up and move some of the dirt out of the damp area so I can get a usable grass field planted. I moved the dirt out out of the middle of the area and am using it to fill in all the washboard flooding damage in the field. I got about 25% done today in four hours. I think I can get the rest of it done in about 12-15 more hours with my mistress on the job. If I have some leftover time on the backhoe I need to rent at the end of the month I could get it done faster. The backhoe is needed to finishing fixing the berm and creating a new one in the middle of the field. If it does flood I only want it to wash out into small portions of the fields, not the entire thing!

I saw several rooster pheasants today and two large covey of quail. The quail are incredibly passive, they fly off just enough to get away from you but still within 40 feet of you. The sheep are looking mighty fat and this week we start hauling the cows in for slaughter. We are only doing a couple at a time so we will be spacing them out and letting the customers know when their cow is ready. I will probably be helping Scott with his two sheep next month after it cools off a little. I did not get a deer tag this year so I will not be hunting for venison on the place, our nephew is coming out to see if he can shoot one of the two bucks we have on the property. So far I don’t think he has been successful. I still need to finish the barn lot fence…

I am no longer in running shape

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last weekend we needed to work the cows again.  It seems like a never ending need but we had two more calves sneak out unexpectedly and they needed to be tagged and banded.  Mr Professional and I were going to show Annmarie and go out and just get the cows in and then she would not have to walk the entire length of the farm several times.  I opened the lower gate behind the house but did not go to the top of the fence and open the upper gate.  I didn’t think I would need to…

We walked down and pushed the cows towards our house.  They wanted to go into the orchard but we had the sheep in there so I did not want to run them through the sheep and alpaca.  We would have to sort species after that which would cause more drama, best to be avoided.  We had the cows almost to the fence and one female cow decided she was not going and bolted straight up the hill.  I had to sprint up the entire length of the hill to cut her off.  We left the dogs at the house also.  I sprinted up the hill a second time and cut her off.  The cows wanted to go in the closed upper gate.  The third time she bolted for the top again I started to sprint and just said “piss on it” and quit.  My foot had a blister and I was tired and this was obviously not working.  Annmarie came out and opened the upper gate, I went and got the dogs and we pushed them over into the field behind the house.  We again had a horrible time getting them down near the back creek.  I will need to fix the gate opening and put the new opening in the corner of the field so we can easily push the animals through.  We did get them into the barn lot and tagged a little girl and tag and banded a little boy.  The calves were small enough they were easy to handle.  Unfortunately we had a 5 month old girl that the bull kept paying too much attention.  So we had to sort her off and who we thought was momma.  7E97FB6A-EDE9-40A3-963A-B0801C0E070A
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The three cows above got sorted off and sent into the upper pastures with the other isolated cows.  No bull up there.  Annmarie pointed out another problem after we sorted them off.  The old green tag cow that she wanted to make into hamburger and we sorted off early to prevent her from getting pregnant is very pregnant.  So now she is going to have another calf and avoid the dinner table for another year.

We had the dogs out chasing cows with us and since this entire process took four hours they were “dog tired” afterwards.  Kittens were spotted down in the blackberry bushes hanging out.

This week after work we set up the storage shelves and made a spot for a very large toolbox and the welding job box.  The welding tables also got moved around to the front of the machine shop.  Once all the tools get put away the drawers will get labeled and I will bring out a grinding wheel/wire brush combo and bolt it down to the table.  We should be able to manufacture about 80% of our needed things.  It’s just that I hate getting organized.  I ended up getting bins and each piece of equipment is going to have a bin of new parts.  This is necessary when all of your hay equipment is made in Italy.

The needed but dreaded sorting of animals

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It had to come, the animals all needed to be worked and sorted but it is always a painful task.  Making matters worse is the fact that we decided to work the sheep and the cows in the same day and to complicate it even further the barn lot flood damage has not been repaired.  Annmarie went down stream with Mouse to push the cows up to the house.  They were doing great, one of the cows then the herd tried to bolt around and Mouse headed them off and got them turned around.  Five minutes later one of the cows decided she was a greyhound and took off, Mouse was unable to get ahead of her, he was able to catch up to her but ran alongside her and could not get her to turn.  This caused all of the cows to break and Slim and I and Zeke had to go down to the school house to help bring the cows back up.  This event seemed to crush Mouse’s ego and he then became a terror towards the cows and would not listen.  He was determined to get a few licks and bites in before we quit working the cattle.  Despite a couple of warnings he persisted in ignoring us until it was pointed out to him that he was not the boss by me.  He kept ignoring Annmarie, which is unusual as he prefers to work for her and not me.  It took us an hour to get the cows up into the corral.  The bull and boys were just on the other side of the gate.  We needed to pour insecticide over the cows and to tag and band Cupid who is another boy.  The really screwy part is that we thought there were two calves that needed to be addressed.  Nope, one of the calves managed to rip its ear tag out.  I had to grab its ear and find the hole to make sure.  We sorted the cows and took our original green tag cow and three more heifers off of the main herd then let the bull, the steers and our little bull in with the the rest of the cows.  The little bull is only six months old and the cows are in heat so by the time he is ready to breed them they will all be pregnant.  We are going to eat him this winter.  Cupid doesn’t have the true white heart on his forehead like Valentine does.  I took more pictures of Valentine while he was in the corral.

 

I am going to have to work on the corral next year.  When I built it I had talked about installing thread all bars between the railroad ties in the chute.  I decided that it would stop me from walking down the corral on top which I like to do.  The cows have spread the chute far enough apart that my two internal gates are no longer latching and we had to chain the chute exit to stop them from pushing out.  I may just use cable and bolts with an inline tightener and some thread locking compound so it doesn’t come loose easily.  I will shrink the chute back up another three inches.  I won’t lay boards over the chute as it would form a tunnel that would cause the animals some consternation.  The four separated cows will go up onto the Upper Prime field.  They have lots of food and fresh water.  This will get them two fences away from the bull.  The old cow will just become hamburger and stew meat.  Annmarie and Donna have both been victims of this attacking cow and they will be very happy when she is gone.

 

Slim was helping us with the cows and then the sheep.  The sheep were a lot harder.  First, we did not know how many we had, I assumed we had about 105 and Annmarie thought we had 120, in reality we had 112.  Getting to the number 112, that took us sorting the sheep five different times and four people counting.  On the plus side, both Annmarie and I had the count right the first time but Slim and Mr Professional had different numbers so we kept counting until  the numbers stabilized and matched.  It’s hard to sell what you cannot quantify.  I realize this sounds easy but we spent almost two and a half hours sorting sheep.  We thinned the herd again hard this year.  It was time to do another heavy cull, we do this about every 5-7 years.  The first time we sorted off breeding ewes we had 48!  Our ram has a hurt foot and is kinda fat, he needs fewer females so we sorted ewes until we had 34 ewes and 1 ram.  This herd went into the upper prime pasture with the cull heifer cows.  We have 77 sheep to sell, 28 of them are cull ewes and we are keeping 9 lambs for us and for local customers.   We will put them into the orchard after I finish getting the hay put up.  The rest of the cows went down into the lower bottom, winter feed field. It has peas growing in it but the thistles and cheat grass are still present in significant quantity.  It will not be hay this year but the peas are good for the soil and good for the cows so it is a win regardless.

Slim and I then went onto fixing creek crossings to keep the sheep in their allotted space. Mr Professional went to go bale the hay in the orchard while the Future NASCAR driver worked on getting lawn beat down with a weed eater.  It is out of control and our mower needs more work.  The flooding caused some severe erosion in Stewart creek.  The picture on the right shows the ripples in the stream bed, every one of those ripple edges is part of a volcanic solid rock shelf, those were not visible prior to the flooding.  It just tore the earth away until it hit something solid.  We tried to move the stump out of the creek but its too heavy.  We cut branches off and once the creek dries out I will get in there with the chain saw and cut it up.  We needed the branches moved so we could drop the panels back down into the creek.  A new cable was installed across the top of the fence from rock crib to rock crib.

We then went down and tore out the panels and fencing from down by the Mother-in-law’s house.  I built a new fence alongside the spring in the orchard so this small fifty foot section was no longer needed.  We took down all the fence and salvaged the panels crossing the spring to use down below at the creek crossing.  The stream widened the bank by at least four feet down by our other crossing so we needed a couple more panels to bridge the gap.  I have also started to install my horse shoe latches at the gates.  Once we had that done it was time to call it quits as it was almost 1700.

Slim beat me to the house as Annmarie, I and Mr Professional were discussing a weed and trying to determine what it was so she called it quitting time and headed out.  She did send me a text but I had her take a picture of the lower creek crossing as my phone was dead.  LOL.  The plan is for her to come out and help shear alpaca next week.  .

 

 

 

Animal sorting gone awry

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well it is that time of year again, and I would love to say that sorting the animals went smoothly but since I am unsure if it has ever gone smoothly this would be counted as the worse.  Again, I would like to thank Coronavirus and my own inability to communicate my feelings and concerns in a manner that the female species understands.  I do realize that this is a failing on my part and grunts and reassurances are not a substitute for honest open conversation, for which I am not particularly good at.  That being said, it was brutal.

The cows needed sorted as we had an interested party in buying two 6 month old weanlings.  Plus we have a brand new calf, only three days old and by far and away the cutest calf we have ever had on the place!  He has a white shaped heart on his forehead.  New calf on the ground means no dogs to move the cows, they went along pretty good until they got to the near end of the orchard and my mostly down fence.  I am going to have to take a weekend and put the tunnel to the gate in so they do not balk near the gate and they don’t get hung up on anything.  We managed to sort the cows fairly easily and Annmarie was able to sort off the baby and catch it by herself!  We hardly ever get to them this early and it was a pleasure to work on something so small.  Luckily, I was able to find both testicles and got him tagged and banded.

We had the one nutter that is now four months old that needed to be banded.  I lined up our fabulous $50 calf table, that has been out in the weather all winter, and we were ready to go.  The calf probably only weighs around 300#, mind you it takes two grown men to take down and hold a 100# calf so it can be tagged and banded.  The calf table failed to perform or it did perform as expected from a $50 wonder, I think this depends on your perspective.  I broke the up/down bar for the neck guard using a cheater bar.  It was an abysmal failure and now we have a one nutter that will need to be pulled off in 2 more months.

Sarah and I tagged the last lamb that needed it and put the two ewes out with the main herd.  We had one lamb get out and after 20 minutes of chasing it around and it refusing to go through the open gate we gave up.  It eventually made it over by the yard and I let it in the yard then let everyone else inside.

Last weekend, the child and I worked on grouting the bathroom backsplash.  It looks amazing and I am very happy with how it turned out.  I will start moving electric outlets and light switches this week so we can install the blue pine tongue and groove boards on the wall.  I need to get the wall behind the toilet and next to the toilet installed before the plumber comes.  I am super excited to see how it turns out.

Annmarie embraced the use of the sheep as a lawnmower this week.  I am personally thrilled by this development and by the end of today they will have mowed down the yard to a very low level and I can ignore the lawn for another two weeks.  The only bad part of this process is the dogs start to smell like sheep all the time.  They also eat a lot of sheep poop, its like candy.

I also did my part of the taxes which is adding up all the expenses and income and collating it so Annmarie can input it into our taxes.  I knew we had to spend more due to the hay shortage last winter from all the heavy snow and then we bought even more hay to get us through the winter plus we purchased all the hay equipment, planting equipment and a side by side.  Wow.  Ouch almost $37k in equipment.  I know we needed to do it as we spend a lot annually for feed but I was surprised.  I should not have been but sitting down at the table and going through every individual receipt really brings it home.  This would be why I have to do it so I pay attention to where the money is going.

Yet despite all the angst, the heartache, the pain and hard work I still love it.  I love that my wife cares enough to try and get me to slow down.  It is days like this that I am reminded of why I do it.  What else would I do with my life?  Why would I do something else?  I ask myself this every once in a while but I never find a better answer.  So in this trying time take care of those you love, do what you can to help others and be cognizant that burning the candle at both ends is hazardous.

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