farm life

Lambing final tally

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This weekend some time had to be devoted to the sheep. It was time to worm everyone. We have to wait until the lambs are old enough to do it and no one else is going to give birth. So we ran them all into the barn and proceeded to run them out through the chute system. Mr Rainman did the snagging and holding while I used the oral drenching kit to just pump some wormer down into the back of their throat. This thing works so much better than drawing up syringes. We also knocked V shapes into the ewes we are going to cull after the lambs are weaned. We marked nine ewes for culling. When we go to pull those nine off of the herd in July we will cull anyone else who is not fat. They will have had access to all you can eat green grass and their bodies should have been able to put the weight back on by then. We already have some ewes getting fat on the green grass. We want to cull hard this year so lambing next January will be easy on everyone.

Mr. Rainman found a two week lamb that was weak and being ignored. We ended up taking care of it for 24 hours as our normal go to person was out of town. We managed to keep it alive despite it not really wanting to eat. It is now with it’s forever home and if it is gonna make it will be there.

The barn got put together, we tore down all the jugs and hung the panels on the walls, put up all of the buckets and feeders. When we go to clean out the barn we will just need to take the feeders out.

We also got the alpaca shearing area all cleaned up and ready to shear. Hopefully, we can shear the alpaca in the next week. They just need to be dry, it rained off and on all day today. We got 1/3” of rain and it was needed. The garden and grass fields needed it. The parts I ordered for the new pump are still not here. I am afraid the tariffs and shipping issues may have delayed its arrival. Hopefully, it gets here in the next two weeks.

  • Date of update- May 11, 2025
  • # of Lambs born – 73
  • # of ewes who have delivered babies – 42
  • # of ewes still pregnant – should be ZERO, but I saw one today that was so fat already. It would have to be an immaculate conception or a through the fence encounter.
  • # of single lamb births – 13
  • # of twin lamb births – 27
  • # of triplet lamb births – 2
  • # tagged male (weathers-neutered) lambs-35
  • # tagged female lambs-30
  • # of bummer lambs – 3
  • # of lambs who died in first two weeks – 6
  • Total # of lambs on farm -63
  • % birthing rate- 174%
  • % production rate -150%
  • % survival rate at birth – 100%
  • % survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count as death as they need help and leave the farm) – 86%

Bathroom Day 44

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Well it is week 14 of the bathroom remodel. I spent most of Friday working on it. I was able to get the leg adjusters installed on the vanity and spent about an hour getting it level. Every time I scooted the vanity right or left I had to readjust the entire vanity. I was able to get it level finally.

I managed able to carry in the granite top myself. I did have to set it down three times on the way from the old house. It was not very light, the real reason I was able to do it alone was the sink hole gave me a great place to hold onto that would not slip. I glued the top onto the vanity and then placed the sink onto it. It fits perfectly! I did not seal the sink in place yet as I wanted to get the faucet hooked up first then I can battle the sink and drain. I then set the faucet and then tried to hook it up to the wall valves. Nope! The pipe coming from the faucet is 3/8” Pex with 3/8” compression fitting for the supply valve. The only problem is they did not put the nut on first on one of the supply lines! So I cannot hook it up. On top of that the valves I installed are for 1/2” line. I can swap those out for another $25 to 3/8” but that one supply line is not going to work. I went to multiple stores in Pendleton and could not find 1/4” Pex let alone with a compression fittings. I tried to order it online and finally I have given up. On Monday I will be calling the Delta parts hotline number and figuring out what to do. Needless to say this has put me behind another week, or should I say it’s just par for the course on this project.

I was able to drill bigger holes in the door and reinstall the hold open latch. There was enough overlap to hide the previous holes so the only one that knows they are there is me. Latching the door open after a shower is making a huge difference in the amount of moisture the room retains.

I have the vanity drawers pulled out and am definitely going to have to alter three drawers once I get the drain plumbed. There is no way around it.

Annmarie pointed out that the vanity is fairly tall and with the elevated sink the bathroom is definitely not for short people. The Gingerman and myself are going to love it. I really do want to get the sink functional so I can do my morning grooming downstairs. Once I get the sink functional then I will move onto building the custom cabinet. Once that is done then I will work on the inside trim around the door and doing the dreaded sheet rock on the hallway side.

Bathroom remodel day 43

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It is starting to get there! We are only on week 13! I did not work on the bathroom Friday other than to move the vanity into the bathroom to see how it fit. Annmarie and I needed time to see it in place and time for our brains to percolate on how it was going to fit.

Today was the big bathroom push, I really wanted to go outside and mow tall grass down with the tractor but it rained off and on most of the day. Nothing really strong as evidenced by our 1/100” on the rain gauge. I do really think we got more rain than that. So going outside was not going to be a great thing so I opted to do the responsible thing and stay inside to work on the bathroom.

I did manage to run around the house, picking up, roasting coffee, cleaning up floor and doing laundry before I got started in on the bathroom. I opted to work on the vanity first. The crown molding is incredibly tedious and I just was not looking forward to it. Annmarie and I played with the vanity until we found the level spot but the vanity was not sitting right. I realized that I knew it only had three supports on the four legs. So I opted to move one of them from the front leg and put it on the missing back leg. Nope, it was a weird all in one piece that was hammered into the bottom of the leg. It was hollow and had a metal cap on it. Once I started prying on it I had to break it all apart. There were holes drilled in the bottom of each foot for these steel sliders. I had to get the drill out and drill out the hollow metal tubing from all of the holes, even the hole that was missing the top. This means I need something to go inside the bottom legs. I found an adjustable set of furniture elevators that will work. I had to special order them, they should be here next week. Now my excuse for not working on the crown molding was gone. I cannot put the granite top on the vanity until the feet are repaired as I had to tip the vanity up onto its side to get to them.

I am definitely going to have to do some reworking on the vanity drawers. The pipes are not in the planned spot. The top drawer is fine but the next two down will need to be reworked. I will just remove the drawers and get the countertop, sink and all plumbing installed then I will worry about fixing the drawers so they will fit.

It took me over three hours to do the other half of the crown molding. I am officially done with the crown molding for now. When I go to put the custom cabinet in, I will have to cut the top of the molding in the corner where the cabinet will slide in. This way I can wrap the crown molding around the top of the cabinet incorporating it into the room seamlessly. I only managed to cut my fingers once today with the tin snips. Working metal is best done with gloves but when doing finish work like this I find myself not wearing any gloves. I cut the pad of my fingers with the nippers! They are appropriately sharp enough.

The decorative hook we had ordered to hold open the bathroom door came on Friday so I decided to try and install it. I will have to remove it and put it back on once the final trim is installed. I had the wall hook installed and was tightening the last screw on the door piece when the screw head twisted off! This is a ridiculous problem, I should not have been able to twist off the screw top. Now there is the bottom half of the screw stuck in the door. I could spend an hour and gouge out a huge hole attempting to get that broken part out of the 115 year old door. I am just going to move the piece over 1/8” and drill out a bigger hole so I can easily insert the two screws. This is a stupid problem.

Spring activities continue

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Despite the need to finish the bathroom other work still has to happen on the farm. Mr Rainman came out on Monday evening to help me sort and load cows. We wanted to sell off our four largest Dexter cows, there were 11 for sale and we don’t have enough meat customers for that many animals. I happened to look into the stock trailer while Mr Rainman was hooking it up and spotted the kittens. I just tossed two pallets over a couple of horizontal telephone poles to make a cubby and then moved the kittens out into that hiding spot. It was only about eight feet from where they were originally. I figured out the momma would hear them and deal with it. She did, Annmarie spotted her moving the kittens an hour later.

We got the four cows separated from the other seven and loaded them into the trailer. Only one refused to go into the trailer. She had gotten turned around and would not back up. We just let her out of the chute and ran her around again. This time we did not let her slow down in the chute so she could not turn around . As always it was a five minute gig to just drop off the cows at the auction. We got the check on Saturday. We had one heifer and three steers. The heifer sold for $2/# and steers $1.75/#. They did very good. I was hoping for $1.50/#.

I was able to get another friend to hatch out a dozen straight run chicks for me. She will replace any roosters with new chicks when I can determine gender. I thought I had eliminated all but two of the roosters from the January batch but yesterday I saw two crow that were not on my list! I only want two roosters so I will be looking a lot closer to determine who is a rooster and who isn’t. I will have to thin out at least three more I think. One of the new chicks died by fratricide. Its fellow baby chicken sat on it after it got behind the feeder. So now there are 11 chicks.

Our asparagus did not die last year! We had four shoots pop up from the strawberries this week. We planted ten plants but it is just now starting to warm up at our house consistently and we think that is why we are behind our neighbors on growth rate. We still only have four shoots buy there is still some life and we thought we had killed it all. We want to get another container going for just asparagus.

We had a lamb that got sick and had to be put down. We have had two more sets of twin lambs and think we are all done lambing. We have put all of the sheep back together into one herd. We are only locking them up into the ram pasture now at night. They can go in and out of the barn freely as they want.

Annmarie is working on getting all of the garden, lavender, herb water going today but as always there is some part we are needing to get the job done. She has a shed full of drip line and 1/2” PVC connectors but there is always one thing. We will keep working on this until it is done.

Bathroom remodel day 41

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The bathroom is chugging along just like the little train that could. I spent all day Friday getting three valves onto the copper pipe sticking out of the wall. The toilet valve was the easiest as I had a long chunk of pipe sticking out that had to be cutoff. The sink side had two short stubs that I needed to heat up and remove the copper caps. I ended crushing one of the tips with a set of pliers and then had to cut it off. I had to use the sawzall to cut it as it was too close to the wall for a pipe cutter. This then made a not even cut which messed up my compression tightening valve.

I had to go to Pendleton for a second time that day to get a new brass compression ring and a 12” hose for the toilet. On the plus side the toilet works and after soldering on an extension pipe the sink valves are in place and they do not leak. I am just not very good at plumbing.

We installed a curtain as a door so the toilet could be used on Friday. I had been working on the door all week. I had a wood insert glued into the end of the door and I purchased a 1” and 3/4” dowel so I could drill out the old door handle and lock holes. Once I had that all dried, cut off and sanded smooth I filled the cracks with an epoxy based filler. After that was sanded down I drilled the new holes for the new handle. It just made it easier to start with an intact door again before trying to make new holes. I am going to brush on a little stain after the door is hung.

Saturday we moved furniture! Sarah and Grant were given a nice set of Spanish style bedroom set. We cleaned out the old room, moved the box bed back into the sewing room and moved out several items from both rooms. We then cleaned up both rooms and all of the furniture. All of this we did in the morning, then I had enough time to install the door handle in the bathroom door. I need the door gone so I can get the corner trims stained then start working on the custom bathroom cabinet. Gingerman went out to their farm and started discing a five acre field that he is prepping for seed. The disc he got last week is working great.

Early afternoon we went and picked up the furniture. It was heavy. We were able to get the horse trailer across our spring by driving through the spring. I had brought in 2-3” rock when we thought the septic truck was going to have to drive around to pump our tank. It still makes a land bridge that the water flows over 1-2” deep. The truck and trailer went over it just fine. We used arm lifts to help move the furniture and they made all the difference. I don’t think I could have gotten the one dresser upstairs without them. As it was I had to place both feet wide on either side of the dresser and lift it up one step at a time. By the time we got to step 16 I thought I was going to die. When we made it to step 19 I told myself there were only two steps left and if I let go Gingerman was still holding up the lower end and could not do that indefinitely. As soon as we had it on the top landing we took a five minute break.

I took the low side on the long dresser and the Gingerman was surprised at the different muscles used on the uphill side. The lower side carries more weight but it is in your legs not your mid back. I told him it was much worse with the heavier piece of furniture. We forgot a piece of the bed frame. Once we tried to install the bed frame we realized there had to be more parts. All the parts fit in the bedroom and the kids have an actual bed to sleep on. I told the Gingerman when we left to go disc until dark that I was done working.

I ended up installing the actual bathroom door. It was a tight fit but I was able to get it in place and adjusted. It looks good. I think I will still hit it with one more coat of conditioner to seal up the wood. I was able to do a little work on the crown molding on Friday after the plumbing and now we have crown molding in the main section of the bathroom. All that is left is the shower enclosure. Now that the door is in place Annmarie is already talking about finish trim! We attempted to put the vanity in place but there is a cross piece that needs to be routed out about 1” to make room for the wall plumbing. I will also need to readjust some of the drawers in the vanity. The plumbing is more to the right of the cabinet than I anticipated.