farm life

Summer catch up

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Hay season always puts things on hold. I have not worked on the bathroom for two weeks now in an attempt to get all of the hay done. I have finally had to resort to doing my own mechanical work. I am capable but it is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly, as soon as you tear into something you find two more things that need to be repaired. I still refuse to do any serious work on the tractors. I take them in and have the dealer do all of the real work on them. The hay equipment is from Italy, so there is no one to work on it so by default I have to do it.

I did manage to actually mow the lawn with the actual lawn mower today. I really need to get the rock wall and metal fence up before I let the sheep back into the yard.

Annmarie got rid of all of her old dirty alpaca fiber. She posted it on Facebook for free and she had someone call her within fifteen minutes and that person was out to the house 30 minutes later to pick it up. She went through it all and found one that had moths in it, we tossed it, and ended up loading up eight bags into her vehicle and driving off with all of it. It was from all over the farm, Mr Rainman and I went to three different locations to find it all. Now she is only keeping the saddle portion of the alpaca that are being sheared before the organic matter and dust is embedded into the alpaca. It think if I can find a time to do it in April it will be in the best shape. She has a new setup to wash it while standing up and then she lets it dry in a netted herb bag with five shelves and a zipper that totally encloses it. This way the fiber can air dry and no matter how much wind we get no fiber disappears. Once it is all cleaned then she has to do two more processes on it before it can be spun into yarn. She has used or given away all that she had made into yarn.

I bought some sun chokes this year to see if we can grow them. Supposedly, they will grow anywhere and can become so prolific that they are problematic. I just put them into the ground in the place we are going to add a third row of raspberries. I am unsure if they are going to survive or not but it will not be for lack of water.

We had two different sets of friends come out Friday evening and Saturday morning to feed Frank/Francine. They both have young children and wanted to see and feed him. We were showing them around the house and spotted a break in the watering system in the lavender. This was causing our strawberries to not get enough water. Hopefully, we caught it in time as the strawberries are just putting on berries now. I am going to go find some netting so we can cover the strawberries so we actually get some this year. Last year the robins ate every single red berry, so all of the strawberries and raspberries. We are hoping to get some for ourselves and freeze them for use in the wintertime.

Haying season is here

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As in all wise things one should probably look both ways before opening your mouth. I had finished putting together the baler, unfortunately, I missed a lower sprocket that drives the entire front end of the baler. It took an hour to extend the chain and fish it through the correct route. The route I had actually marked with arrows on the machine. Now we were ready to do until I tried to open the dump back and the hydraulic line blew a hole in it! It was the weekend so I had to wait until Tuesday to get the part built in Pendleton, it was Memorial Day weekend. I ordered the correct part first thing Tuesday morning from the Midwest and found a place in Pendleton that actually had metric fittings. Unfortunately, the new hose is bigger and it has a more robust end that means it’s more rigid. We had to put it on three times to find a way to feed it to the correct spot where it did not get pinched when the dump was raised and were it actually fit through the gaps. I had purchased a wrap to go around the outside. We had to remove that over a portion of the hose to get it to fit. We also had to stabilize it with some zip ties as it would not feed through the small opening the original tubing did. It works and it works like a champ! It sounds so much better and I only had to dig it out twice while making 300 bales (6 ton).

We have loaded 112 bales into the barn already, 100 bales went to Sarah and Gingerman for their horses. We have about another 150 bales that need to be picked up and put into the barn. We were pretty picky this year. The cheat grass is bad this year. So we only cut the good stuff. The Rejuvra is working, field one had some bare spots where no cheat grass grew this year. The orchard grass will slowly keep filling in. We are going to spray field 2, all around the machine shed and down by the school house with Rejuvra in the fall.

I think we are going to have to actually plow under the cheat grass. We could burn it but the risk is so high of it taking off that we will just turn it under, disc it then smooth it out.

I finished baling field two yesterday. I wanted to get started on cutting field 1 but I had no sooner gotten into the field when I hit a hidden piece of metal. This caused the blade to bind up as two teeth had popped off and lodged in place crooked to seize the blade in place. I had to go back to the shop, pull out the tooth bar and loosen up all of the clamps. I had the new teeth but the wrong size rivet. I was hoping that D & B carried the correct rivet as I knew that they had some over in fastener section. I found the rivets, they were longer than necessary but I was going to grind them down anyways so it didn’t matter. They had five different sizes of teeth for the mower and none of them will work, they are all too short. Luckily, I only needed the rivets.

I have never had to install teeth onto the bar before. I know you just pound out the rivet, set the new one, put it on a firm surface and bang on it with a big hammer, once flat then just grind it smooth on both sides. Sounds easy. We had an extra bar that got replaced last year so I went ahead and repaired them both. I had to use a 2.5” crescent wrench as a lever attached to a 22mm end wrench on bar guide nuts. They were incredibly stuck and would not come loose. I of course do not have a socket in metric bigger than 20mm. I managed to get the bar in place without cutting my fingers or gloves and it sounded great.

I managed to get once around the field before a different blade popped off and bound up the blade. I drove back, took it apart and was back in the field in under 45 minutes! Not bad, when you figure it takes me almost 8 minutes to drive out to the field. I managed to continue cutting all of field one until 2300. Half of the field is thin and the other half is very thick.

The mower has a guide on the end that is supposed to push the cut hay back into the middle but it was not working and my weld job lasted about ten minutes the first time. I struggled with it the entire time I was cutting field one. So this morning, Gingerman helped me out, I took it off, he welded the bolt in place from the other side and I straightened the piece out with a vice and 3# hammer. Then cut a support and bent it to fit. He welded the crack in the guide then welded the patch in place. He also welded the bolt hole smaller. I drilled the hole back out and put it all together again. It looks like it did originally and it appears that it will work accordingly. We just use any color of spray paint after any welding or repair job, it just so happens that there are a few cans of black out in the shop.

Mr Rainman should be able to get all of field one baled this week. A couple of the fields look good enough that we may be able to get a second cutting on them if we can get a little rain soon. Preferably after Thursday of this week.

Alpaca sheared!

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It is that time of year again and I am getting behind on the blog. Last weekend Mr Rainman and I took Saturday to shear the alpaca. Ideally we would have done it a month ago but it was not a true priority yet. We have learned that they must be sheared before the cheatgrass comes to a head or else their fiber just gets loaded with organic matter and it is very hard to shear them when they are filthy.

They will find a dirt patch and just roll around trying to get as dirty as possible. We used to do it midsummer and it did not work out well so we have slowly been making it earlier and earlier every year. I think April is probably the perfect month but it has to be dry enough that they have not been rained on for a few days.

It went pretty smooth this year. There are only eight now, not 12 and that made it a reasonable day. Doing 12 takes a lot of time and effort. We decided early on that we would do the three siblings early as it is only their second year getting sheared. They are still smaller than most of the other alpaca and they were a lot crazy last year when we strapped them down to the shearing table. They all three did amazing! There was no standing on the table and panicking off and on throughout the shearing process. They have wonderful fiber and we have been separating out the fleeces, one to a burlap bag, so that Annmarie can clean them as a single animal, store them and spin them all from a single alpaca. We used to put their names in the bag also but we are over that. She can tell who it is now just by the fiber quality and color.

The babies are changing colors! They were all white and all brown when we got them but now they are turning into a multicolored blend. When we were shearing we noticed the color change happening. Neither one of us got spit on directly. We had one unsatisfied customer who kept drooling stomach contents onto the table and complaining throughout the entire process. The babies need a lot more work on their toenails than anyone else and we had to ground down teeth on three of the alpaca. Next year we are going to have to cut off a few fighting teeth.

I did cut two fairly badly this year, it just happened. The cuts were about 3 cm. Any bigger and I was going to have to suture the skin closed. Luckily, we just slapped some of the blue wound cleaner on it and let them go. Some years it just happens and yes I had sharpened blades. As we worked toward the last alpaca Mr Rainman and I decided that 6 is the ideal number of alpaca. Snoop looked great this year and even being old as dirt I suspect he has another year in him. He is at least 15-16 years old already possibly 18 years old. There is a brown one that is all skin and bones, I suspect he won’t last the year. So the realistic goal is 6-8 alpaca. Usually when we find them for sale there is a buddy for sale at the same time as they don’t do well alone.

Mechanic, I can sing sorta

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Well the correct final parts arrived for my Italian Abbriata baler. I needed a special welded sprocket to drive the pickup forks. I can mechanic, but I do not particularly like it. However, no one around here will work on something that they did not sell, let alone a piece of equipment that has one American dealership and is made in Italy. So I get to be the mechanic. I ended up replacing five gear sprockets, two chains, various bolts, nuts and pins. I have more spare parts but I have learned that the chain can only be tightened once before it is just time to replace it. I purchased a chain from them and it was twice as long as I needed so I already have the replacement chain. I got the baler put back together and greased, it is ready to roll, I think.

Next I put the sickle bar mower on the Kubota. Now this is the mower that I dropped on my foot last year and broke it. I was pretty gun shy around it and this caused me a few problems. I had to repair two items on the mower and one of them the fastest way to correct was to weld it. My weld did not look bad but it broke about an hour into the mower use. I did not have enough juice to penetrate as deep as I needed. I will need to do something else. For now I just tightened the bolt down as far as it will go and am careful. I greased all of the points on the sickle bar then oiled the blades. It worked! There was a lot of discussion on whether I should start cutting now or wait. I am leaving town next week for a week to go visit navy buddies I have not seen in decades.

I ended up cutting the orchard, upper part of field 2 and went and cut Mike’s field. He stopped by and said it was cleared of all hoses and obstacles so I did it also. I am not going to cut anything else yet as it is supposed to rain on Thursday. I am going to turn it tomorrow and hope to be baling by Tuesday. I don’t have a conditioner so it takes longer for the grass to dry out.

We still have a horrible cheat grass problem in field 3. It is bad. We are going to work on killing the cheat grass down by Mother-in-law’s house. This other field will get added to the kill list.

Rock Wall

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Last week I was still waiting on the parts from Delta to fix the bathroom sink so I had a free weekend from the bathroom. The weather was gorgeous and I am ready to get the front yard fence up. We have a decorative metal fence, purchased years ago, that needs to be installed on the front rock wall. The plan is for it to keep the dogs on the hillside during the day and allow us to use the sheep to graze down the hillside. When the sheep get in the yard they eat some stuff I don’t want them to eat. We also want to start planting more flowers for the bees and the sheep will eat those also. Long story short, the rock wall needs to be completed before the fence can be installed. This entails a lot of tractor work and the moving of a lot of heavy rocks.

The ground is dry enough now that I can go up on the hillside and dislodge rocks. You do not want any slick surfaces when you are coming down the hillside and with a bucket full of rocks. As it was a bucket full would still put me onto three tires when I turned downhill. I had to drop the bucket several times and bounce it off the ground to level myself out. I moved rocks and dumped them into the yard for half a day then spent the next two and a half days building the rock wall. The left side was already done, I just had to raise it about a foot and add some more dirt. I am stealing dirt from the area behind the old chicken coop. I am trying to make that area flat so I keep stealing from there. I had been using it for the secondary dike I installed alongside that part of the creek.


The dike is in my field and it is only about 18 inches high. I would have only needed about eight inches during the last flood. By the time it gets that high it is really wide, it just needed a little help to stay in the correct channel. I doubt we will have any more floods as bad as the two we had but I think I have finally gotten all of the areas reinforced and added to so we don’t get widespread flooding.

I remembered why I did not want to do the project about two hours into the hand digging portion. I had to get a pick axe, shovel and breaker bar to move the old rocks out of the way. I ended up digging down to the original footing from the previous rock wall and building back up from there. I made it about half way on the new side. I still need to raise it about another ten inches but I figured I would get the wall up and then work on raising it and adding more dirt. I am only going to go over to the rose bush, end of the upper wooden fence.

As I was driving back and forth collecting rocks I got to study my favorite tree on the farm. I keep thinking I should go up and thin out the dead wood out of this tree but I love the way it looks and the birds use it as a primary stopping point. It is slowly dying and has been for the last 20 years.