farm life

Fencing/metal shed

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I know I was supposed to be finishing up the winterizing projects. Finish installing parts on the bailer and finish emptying wood out of the old house. We are getting my future craft area all cleaned out so that we can use that as a staging space for the bathroom remodel in February. It already has a sink, toilet, shower head out there currently.

But honestly, I did not want my future fencing tools/supplies and metal storage area to blow away. This building was originally a chicken coop then did duty as a lamb shed. When we had the terrible windstorm that ripped part of the barn roof off it rolled this building about 100 yards. It is odd to see a building rolling across the ground. Even weirder when I was able to move it and it was still intact! Since that time it has tipped over once and spun ninety degrees in place from the wind. I have been wanting to get all of my fencing supplies and tools out of the machine shed. They take up four pallets worth of space and I wanted to be able to put metal scraps and pieces under cover so when I need pieces for weld repairs they are all in one place and not spread out over 100 feet and buried under other crap.

It does not hurt that it is the allure of a new project enticing me to do something. Mr Rainman and I got the last railroad tie installed under the building then filled the one foot gap with an old 2×8” board. We had to chase out one cat before we could get started. I don’t want any kind of animal living under the shed or for that matter in the shed. The door on the building is made out of chicken wire and if I just add a six inch piece on the bottom it will keep out all four legged creatures. We will need to add hardware cloth to keep the little birds from flying in and building nests in the rafters. I ordered twelve inch long deck anchors so that I can attach the building to the railroad ties. They were incredibly expensive at $3.60/each. I only ordered a dozen from the entire building. The additional weight should help keep the building from blowing away, plus putting it next to the machine shed helps break up the wind at least from one direction.

Once we tore off the bottom board on once side and started to clean out the building we realized that if you shake the walls the entire building was moving. This meant we had to look at the bones of the building. There was a roof joist that was not touching the sill plate and one of the sides it had split. It needed two new boards cut and then attached to the old joist. We even squeezed the split joist together and put a few screws in it before attaching the new joist to it. For all the purists out there this is a shed. It has lasted 70-80 years already so I just need it to last another 50 years. We found another roof joist that looks like it broke in half but it was still perfectly aligned. We just slapped another 2×4 up next to it and screwed it in. I had five new 2×4 but we used about 20 to fill in all of the upper and lower sections of the wall. Doing this really stiffed up the old building. We had one soft corner where we installed three new upright 2×4. By this I mean we just toed in another one next to the soft spots. We also put some supports in near the top of the roof to stiffen the roof. I am going to have to climb up on the roof and install a metal roof and I don’t want it breaking. I have some old used metal tin that did not get used up when I roofed the barn. It is old and aged and will go perfectly with the building. I will even reuse the roof cap it currently has as those are hard to find.

My Mother-in-law wanted the building to maintain its old look. To do this we are going to use a bunch of eight inch by eight foot boards that have been laying outside for the last ten years. I bought a unit at a charity auction and have had various projects that I thought I would use them on and never did. The unit had gotten spread out all over the ground and needed to be restacked. It was the perfect time to get boards because they were all weathered. We will line the inside of the walls with the new boards and put the weathered color outside. There are a ton of knot holes in the wood. They had covered the knot holes with cedar roofing shakes from the inside. We tore all those out to get a better fit for the inside boards.

Once we tore off the scraps of 80# asphalt paper, another reason the building probably held together well, we pounded in all of the nails on the outside walls. Surprisingly, the cupping on a lot of the boards was pulled out by hammering in the nails. We will use black screws from the outside to attach the boards to the frame and to attach the inner boards against the gaps and knot holes.

We are going to cover up the windows. I have an old window from the old house but honestly, it’s a shed and I have already ordered a solar, motion sensitive light for the interior. No power required! I had hopes that we would be able to finish it up on Sunday but the rain is pouring down so it is going to have to wait. I love using the tractor as a working platform when cutting a lot of boards. I can adjust the fork height to the perfect working height.

Annmarie spent the day canning spaghetti sauce, we had been freezing the tomatoes and she was able to make three gallons of spaghetti sauce! So now we can have spaghetti every month.

New fencing storage area

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman came out today to help me with projects. For some unknown reason there is a very polite Oregon State Police Officer who is now patrolling our region. I have been pulled over twice and gotten warnings but was told next time is a ticket. Mr Rainman found him this morning on his way to the farm. I have actually started to stop at all stop signs, even four corners as he comes out of nowhere all the times I have been caught. We both had checked the County website to see if today was a burn day but it was not. We need to burn three separate piles and have been saving up all of our cardboard for the last three weeks. I also installed an off/on remote for the lights in the Gazebo. We hooked up the trailer and drove the Kubota over to a friend’s house. She had a power pole she wanted gone. We were able to get three ten foot posts out of the pole and we took all her scrap she had piled up. It was not very much and she was having a hard time getting someone to pick it up. We just tossed it onto our metal scrap pile. Eventually, I will get a bin delivered and will load up all the scrap metal.

I went to town to pick up our beef, #34 is ready to eat! We got five boxes of beef from a 370# carcass. Mr Rainman and I emptied the entire small deep freezer and managed to get all of the beef into it. This way we can concentrate on eating the beef from the two standup freezers before we start digging into the new beef. There is enough room to fit the lamb we have coming in January. Annmarie is going to can spaghetti sauce tomorrow so I was able to remove a lot of frozen tomatoes and get them thawing for tomorrow. This way the peels just come right off and you don’t have to blanch them. I also discovered some more frozen fruit for breakfast smoothies that had gotten buried.

The old lamb shed/chicken coop needed to get moved so I can start storing all of the fencing tools and all of the scrap metal that is still usable for projects and repairs. The building is 12’x12’. It’s old and the bottom boards are rotted out in places so Mr Rainman was skeptical that we could do it without tearing it up. We bet a coffee on it before getting started. The plan was to use the Kubota to lift up one side and insert round chunks of fence posts under the building and use them as rollers. We had checked and the Kubota could lift one side of the building up off the ground about six inches. This was all untested and after looking at the travel path we decided that we were going to have to go up a four foot hill and make a ninety degree turn with the entire building before going up the hill. It was slow going but we were able to get the building moved in under a couple of hours. Mr Rainman had spent the time leveling the future spot next to the machine shop while I was getting lucky #34 from the butcher. We did not break anything and once in place we were able to get three railroad ties under the building edges. The fourth one is at the other end of the alley and will get installed tomorrow. I will be getting a free cup of coffee!

Mr Rainman says there are four teenager kittens living in the hay side of the machine shop. I have not seen any of them yet. The ties are ten feet long so we are ending up with a one foot gap that allows access under the old building so tomorrow we will be filling the gap so that no animal other than mice can get under it. We found a lot of cat poop and a dead flat cat under the building when we were moving it. Once it is resided I think I will screw ground anchors around the building and chain it to down to the ground from an eyelet in the railroad tie. This building has been blown over and around several times. I can anchor the building to the railroad ties via anchors through the floor. Maybe we can just get enough scrap metal in the building so it cannot be blown over. I will get the floor anchors coming and then work on getting the building ready for storage. Somewhere in here I realized that the gas cap was missing from the tractor and after searching neither of us can find it. A replacement was ordered and it should be here by Tuesday.

Now that I had the building moved I had to hold up the other end of the bargain and get the Little Dinky tractor moved to my mother-in-law’s house. The tractor is buried in the ground from never moving. We tried to pull it out with the Kubota but the front tires were trying to bend. We lifted the front of the tractor up and used old roofing panels under the front tires to keep them from sinking and letting them slide on something. We centered the pulling chain on the center of the tractor and tried to pull as straight as we could. We had already had to unbury the sickle bar mower and chain it in the upright position. Surprisingly, once we did all of that the tractor came out! It was fairly slow going as all four tires were flat and had flat spots on top of that. Mr Rainman rode the tractor and steered as I pulled it to its final destination. It looks good and in the spring it can get a good cleaning and it will look even better.

Winter feeding, a trial experience

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Annmarie has a friend that offered to let us put our sheep on about five acres of grass. The grass is over a foot high but the ground gets pretty wet in the late fall and he wants the grass knocked down so he will have a good crop of hay in the spring but he doesn’t want cows in there tearing up the ground. We went and looked at it last week and it has woven wire all around the outside and just needed a trough and some wooden stays to pull up the woven wire where his cows pushed it down trying to eat outside the fence last year.

We have never tried this before and did not know how many animals would fit into the 16’ stock trailer as the field is about 40 miles away. In all reality, we didn’t know how many sheep we actually had. But I figured we would count them before moving them so all was good. A month on good green grass is wonderful, when they get back we will sort them, keep our 13 lambs that are pre-sold and then take the rest of the lambs to the auction. They will be 10-11 months old and at their heaviest weight all with just grass feed.

So Mr Rainman and I cleaned up the farm on Thursday and got wooden stays and tools together to fix the fence and move sheep on Friday. I needed to buy another box of staples for the DeWalt fence stapler. I love this thing, it’s awkward and heavy but it slams out fencing nails like it is nothing. I was able to finish wiring up the power to the Gazebo and he got the lights strung up. We need a remote control to turn the lights on and off, it is already ordered and coming. The shelf supports also lean a little too much so I will need to add some spacers to make the countertop/sitting/shelf only tilt a little towards the outside. This way the water will run off outside the Gazebo. My customer from Tricities came over and bought a cow/calf pair that afternoon. We found the calmest pair possible out of the herd that were not polled and that is who we sent with him. They loaded fairly easy and he messaged me back saying they are doing great. He has them in with his small herd of goats. He brought out the heads of the two steers that we had taken to the butcher the previous week. Their heads will go on the old plow to just sit and let Mother Nature remove all of the skin and hide from them.

Friday morning we ran all of the sheep into the barn. There were a lot of sheep! I counted them as they came out the end of the chute to get into the barn and there were 93 sheep! This included the ten baby lambs that we got this summer. There was way too many to go in one trip. So we only tried to load 1/2 the herd into the trailer. Well, not all of the sheep thought that was a great idea and after they got 2/3 of the way down the chute they decided to turn and try and crawl over the backs of everyone still coming. All this did was create a logjam and Mr Rainman had to wade into the chute and grab them individually and toss them the other direction before pushing them into the trailer. This meant it took us about 20 minutes to get them loaded instead of five if they had cooperated. There was still some room, but not more than enough to fit another ten sheep, so dividing the herd was the right way to move them.

Off we went! Did I mention that when I started hauling the cows the trailer spare tire was flat so I had taken it to the shop to get repaired? I had not yet picked it up. We got to the outside edge of Pendleton and one of the stock trailer’s tires blew apart. I knew what it was the instant it happened so I pulled over and we called the tire store. I reminded them that my tire was already there so they put together another tire and brought them both out for us, we only waited 45 minutes. It was less than five minutes once they got there and we now had a spare tire. Of course we did not have a jack or tire speed wrench so I am not sure how much good that would have done us but that is not their fault. I will be buying a scissor lift and tire wrench to be mounted inside the trailer for just this reason. I am pretty sure both sides have the ability to mount a spare tire, and having a spare spare is a really good thing.

We had looked at the weather the previous day and it said rain most of the day so we packed rain gear just in case. It rained the entire time we were building fence. The DeWalt stapler does not like the rain. About 3/4 of the way through the job it started acting up and not wanting to staple. We fussed with it to keep it going but it was starting to slow us down. We ended up losing one of the lambs on the first trip, it got suffocated. I think it was when we blew the tire out the sheep ended up laying down for an extra 45 minutes and just laid on the lamb. We had to make a second trip to get the last of the sheep and they traveled without any problems but there were only two lambs in the second load and mostly larger sheep. Our rams are in with the sheep and Wil put his eight sheep in with ours also. He turned his ram loose into the herd so we are both hoping rams cross groups. By the time we showed up with the second trailer load of sheep both of the herds had finally started to co-mingle. Initially, they were staying separated.

I had Mr Rainman drop me off at the tire store so I could pickup “Little Dumper”, 1957 one ton truck. They had finally finished the brake job and some wheel bearings. The trouble is it would not start, so the owner and I tried for about five minutes before someone finally told him it was out of gas. They took me down to get two gallons and it started right up! I drove down to the gas station and put 16 gallons of non ethanol premium fuel in it for the drive home. It was starting to get dark and I don’t think the headlights work. I had just gotten to the edge of town when it started to act up. Like it was not getting enough fuel or getting too much. I kept milking it and slowing down then speeding up. I was driving the back gravel roads and waving everyone by me. I had called a friend whose house was on the way and asked her if I could just park it there until I could tow it home, she said yes. The problem was as I was coming down the hill towards her house it was running great! So I just took a risk and kept on going! It died within sight of her driveway and I could not get it started again.

I had called Annmarie when it started acting up and asked her to drive the back way in case I got stopped somewhere. She had heat and lights in her car. I had two people stop before she got there asking me if I needed any help. This is so nice in a rural area. I told them I was fine and help was on the way. We called my nephew again and he went to the farm and grabbed my heavy duty tow strap, purchased to pull the tractor out of the mud, and brought it out. He towed me back to the farm and I messaged Gingerman. He will tear out the carburetor and do a clean and rebuild. He said one of the floats kept sticking when he was getting it started the first time. The brakes work great and since they are 100% manual, no power was required to operate them on the tow home.

Finishing up winter prep

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Well I got the cows to the butcher and we will be eating #34, his carcass weight was 370#. I will smile every time we have beef for the next year.

On Saturday we were going to make apple butter. My mother had given us about 25 gallons of apples so I wanted to make a big batch. Annmarie had to go to work so I was left alone. I just kept filling up the huge pot we had on the stove. Once Annmarie was back and added my requested “triple normal spice amount” and we tasted the concoction it was decided that another 16# of apples were needed. By the time we taste tested the mixture to perfection the poor pot only had a couple of inches of empty space at the top. We ended up canning almost three gallons in half pints and still had two gallons leftover. Out came the large yogurt containers and we ended up filling eight of those. In about fifteen minutes of texting I had them all given away. With the beef coming we did not want more stuff in our freezer and we have plenty canned!

Sunday I worked on the corral. I dug out the dirt and weeds around the loose railroad ties, then mounded gravel around them. I used a seven foot breaker bar to drive the gravel in around the posts. I was able to tighten up all but two. The post on the end by the gate that took the most abuse would only tighten up so much. In an effort to rectify this issue I realized that we had an unused circular pen gate that I thought would fit perfectly in the opening. I brought it over with the tractor and it does indeed fit in the opening with zero modifications. I ordered some all-thread, nuts and washers so that I could weld a piece of 1/2” pipe on the end of the all-thread. I will then drill a hole all the way through the railroad tie and install one above and below the attachment points on the gate. I am then going to drop a piece of half inch rebar down the entire side and duplicate this on both sides of the gate. This will tie the entire gate and pen together at its weakest point. I am too old to be working that breaker bar for an hour. I had to rest between posts.

We have combined all of the sheep. The ewes that were fat and we thought pregnant have not given birth and are way past when they should have had babies. So all the sheep and the rams are mixed together. Annmarie and I went over last week to look at a place in Hermiston that someone wants grazed down. This weekend I am taking the sheep over and with a few hours of fence repair they should be good for at least a month. The field is all green grass about a foot height. The field is pretty wet so anything heavier than sheep would cause divots in the field. This will help us both out. I will definitely have to count sheep before we go as I am not even sure how many we have!

I have been working on the Gazebo after work. I have managed to get a cable up near the top of the pillars shaped like a hexagon. We are going to string lights from the cable. I would have got that done today but I realized I did not have any small zip ties. I also need a short extension cord. It is going to look pretty cool at night with the lights in it.

We are also now starting to plan our downstairs bathroom remodel. We needed some more tile and are going to go with one that looks like linen wall paper. I measured the bathroom and Annmarie drew it up in a CAD program so we could see the layout. We can get all of the Schluter parts to create a waterproof base to lay all of the tile on in Hermiston from the same store as the tile. We want to get a custom granite top cut for the vanity like we did upstairs. The vanity was a wash station from Annmarie’s grandmother. I will have to modify the top drawer to accommodate the plumbing. Once we get the sheep moved I will be able to load up the vanity into pickup and go to the Tricities to find someone who can create the top.

Day of infamy

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This really wasn’t my day all week. We have had a plugged tub drain since Sunday. I have poured two different treatments of lye down it. I have used the plunger and unknown amount and then used an industrial concentrated size Liquid Plumber. I did manage to get the water to trickle drain after purchasing a $20 rotosnake to try and clean out the drain. I could not make the second ninety degree corner with the snake no matter what I did. So Annmarie and I each took a shower and the water did not drain. On Tuesday, I called for a plumber and was able to get a service time on Thursday afternoon. We both ended up showering at our mother’s houses. I even crawled under the house one evening and looked for a clean out to use the rotosnake in, there are none under the house.

Today is Thursday and the plumber came out early in morning while I was in town. He called and said it was fixed about 20 minutes after saying he was headed out to our house from Pendleton. The reason the water would not drain was because the tub drain lever had gotten moved to the closed position! I have not taken a bath in over 30 years and it simply never occurred to me to check especially since Annmarie was gone all weekend. I am grateful the tub drain works. It does work well as I had to clean it today after the mess I had made in it.

I proceeded to go outside and finish the gate extensions on the corral. The two cows that needed to go to the butcher tomorrow are wild and one is the crazy jumper. My helper is out sick so this was a solo job. I was able to sort the four cows in the ram pasture fairly easily. I left one in the back pen and put the other three out in the horse stall area so they could see each other. I was able to get the rest of the herd into the barn lot pretty easily. I needed to get crazy #34 into the trailer, that cow had jumped out of the corral twice in the last year and avoided getting slaughtered both times. Now that the corral gate and wall extensions were completed I figured it was a done deal. I figured wrong.

I had to call Annmarie to come help me and to bring the border collie. I guarded the area leading to the spring because the temporary panels I normally use are in two separate places doing other jobs. The spring area needs to rebuilt after the flooding and I just have not done it. After five tries the cows went into the back barn area. It still took us several more tries to get number 34 into the corral with eight other cows. The one cow I had already sorted off was too small. There were two huge steers in the corral now so we proceeded to try and sort everyone off. We got it down to just those two and then got them into the chute but one ran into the trailer, turned around and can back into the chute causing a pissing match between two angry steers. They ended up popping the gate into the third offset pen in the corral. I had not extended that small gate as the cows were not supposed to go in there this time.

By the time I got around Annmarie was hollering that the cow was stuck. Yep, #34 had tried to jump the gate and got his front foot jammed down beside the gate on top of the gate hinge. Despite the cow trying to pull down the fence, no amount of pulling was getting that foot loose. I had tried to push the foot up, then got a rope and tried to pull it up over a board. After about three minutes I placed a frantic call to my nephew who lives a couple of miles away. I think the only thing he understood was I needed help ASAP and it involved a cow as the cow was bellowing and shrieking two feet from me. I was able to pull back on the railroad tie while #43 was trying to rip it out of the ground. The cow was beyond all reason.

We ended up putting two ropes over its head, one was perfect and went over the horns but the other went over one horn and the cow’s neck. At this point not getting gored through the corral fence was barely possible. We tied off both ropes to separate railroad ties. I unbolted the gate and attempted to get it off the hinges. Crazy #43 managed to kick it off and then fight the ropes. We had to take a break and get the other cow in the trailer. That crazy cow kept trying to get over the trailer divider the entire time we tried to get #34 into it.

When we went to get #34 in, he got away and managed to get out the downed gate about three feet and now truly raising hell as he could sense freedom. I ended up using the tractor to push him back through the gate and then got one of the ropes stuck under a tire. Annmarie had to cut the rope. Luckily, it was the old rope, not the brand new one she had gotten out of the tack room. We managed to get the rope tightened down and the gate open to the chute. #34 ran down the chute by himself and Annmarie slammed the door shut. There are still two ropes around him that will not be back until after the steers get butchered. The trailer looks like a bouncy house with both steers in it. We put an extra strap across the back and left it backed into the corral.

This is a stupid problem. We are definitely going to be taking every single crazy cow to the auction in the next month. Once the calves are weaned. We need calmer cows. The corral is hard to jump from one area to the next. You have to climb a seven foot wall every time!

While I was moving cows I noticed that the white ram in Alcatraz had some abrasions on his forehead. I fed them then went around to the back of the pen and noticed that the gates were falling down! I did not have time to fix it so a little redneck twine was utilized. It only needs to hold for another day.