farm life

Predators 16/Farm5

Steve Hardin3 Comments

Well Winter has decided to sit in the wings and wait to pounce, this has been nice. The entire farm has greened up and we have gotten to hold off on feeding the animals. Mr Rainman came out on Friday and cleaned up the old house. There was quite the pile of dirt under the freezers. We had not ever moved them. I want to get a little more stuff moved out of that room then I can move the three other large items from my “room”. This will let me start wiring and ripping into the wall to reframe a doorway. I have all the wires pulled but I cannot get to the outlet boxes with all of the “stuff” in the way. I would like to be able to work on it intermittently through the winter. It’s inside so it won’t matter what the weather is like. Especially, if I can get that inside door installed, a small electric heater will keep the room at a temperature that is comfortably workable, pretty much anything over 45F. Mr Rainman also went into Alcatraz and burned out the sticker bushes (thistles). Our new bull was raised by a young man as a 4H animal and is very curious. You can scratch his head but he will toss it in annoyance that you are touching him. He won’t leave though. One of our rams is very tame also and it is disturbing when a 180# sheep sneaks up on you and you turn around and he is one foot from you and wants a scratch. He will then proceed to follow you around wherever you go. It’s unnerving. I keep thinking he is going to decide that I need a head butt and I have seen how him and the other ram go at it and frankly I don’t want to end up on the ground. So far he has been a total gentleman. Which is good cause otherwise he will make it into the freezer.

I was fairly flighty yesterday. I went into the freezer room and added a second window to the inside so I can have a “double panel” window setup! It’s really just two windows in the same hole but the second window can have foam stripping applied so there is no airflow into the room. This will help the room stay warmer in the winter so when I am in the man cave I won’t have to heat that room as much. It will also help with the insects. I had to dig around and find the right hinges and short screws so I could screw over the plywood covering the first pocket window opening. I knew I had something that would work, I just had to find it. The window frame wood is so hard I had to predrill the holes to get wood screws inserted. I still need to insert the weatherstripping. I don’t use it so there is none laying around.

I need to start putting out mouse bait or setup traps to clean out the mice. I found a mouse accidentally yesterday, it had fallen into an empty five gallon bucket I had up on a shelf. I don’t want them to get into the wife’s office and chew anything up.

I am pretty tired of the predators. There have been no raccoon tracks outside the chicken coop after I dispatched the raccoon last week. Someone reached out to me this week about needing to offload some chickens so hopefully I can replace the ones lost this summer. The three stooges came out this week and only saw two coyotes but they saw them in the CRP and its too tall to get a clean shot. So they will be concentrating on the lower portion where visibility is better and wait for them to come out of the CRP. The neighbor told me his has a friend with a thermal scope coming out to his place also. He also stated that a nearby neighbor lost a calf to the coyotes and since the deer population is fairly low the coyote meal train is leaning towards domestic tastes. Mr Rainman found a fresh carcass that was nearly stripped on Friday just across the creek in field 5. All dead animals are now going to the bone pile. It’s going to cause the coyotes to have to come out on the back hillside or cross the wheat field where I can see them. I was given an infrared scope that amplifies light I just need a new rifle now! There is some discussion around this at the house but it seems my motivation to get out of bed at night is being weighed in on the purchase. I do know that I will not be getting a thermal scope any time soon. Honestly, this is a stupid problem, but I am unwilling to spend $2k/year to fix it with a guard dog yet.

The sheep got out and in and around the vehicles. A gate got left open but since it is only pregnant ewes they are pretty easy to direct. It only took about five minutes to get them back into the correct space. Despite all of this we are very fortunate to live here. There are times I just walk out and realize that not everyone has the luxury of living in beauty and dealing with the natural process. It’s the best place in the world to live.

Predators 15/Farm 5

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Mr Rainman came out early in the week and did a bunch of cleanup on the farm. It seems like we are always doing a lot of cleanup in the fall. This is probably directly related to how many projects I try and finish in the summer and just move on to the next thing without completing the first project. He went down into the root cellar and cleaned it up. I had made quite the mess when I wired the old house. I have a tendency to just throw my trash down on the ground. Especially if I am up in the air and have to climb up on a ladder or platform to work. There is no light down in the root cellar. I need to wire in an outlet and switch. I may be able to buy a light with a wireless controller, if I can then I only need to wire in an outlet. A light would be a great help when I am down here digging around for something. I really need to dump out all the canned food from the last 50 years. Honestly, I am afraid that there may actually be some botulism in one of these jars. Which means I will need to wear rubber gloves and bury the food when its emptied and then dip the jars into bleach water. This is a not priority kinda thing which is why there are a couple of hundred jars on shelves full of various foodstuffs still in the root cellar.

The puppy, Chance, has finally started to settle down and listen to us. I decided to see if she would still ride around on my shoulders like she would a year ago. Annmarie said Chance did not like it but she did wag her tail the whole time. She also grabbed onto my shoulder and chest so she did not fall off.

I had 22 chickens at the beginning of the week. I know this as I had just counted them for my chicken tracker. I try and count them at the beginning of the month so I have an accurate number. Last night I was sleeping downstairs when Annmarie came running down hollering that there was a chicken dying outside. I did not prep for this and coming out of dead sleep there are several things that have to happen, grab eyeglasses, footwear needs to be donned (slippers), pistol needs to be grabbed, spare clip of ammo (slip that into the top of underwear), large 300k candle floodlight (found in top of closet), then cycle action to load pistol, turn on laser and get outside! This time I knew to go right towards the chicken coop and when I shined the light alongside the coop there was a raccoon on the backside of the coop running sideways. I was only able to get off two shots before it went behind the chicken coop. I ran around the front of the coop, passed a dead black feathered Turken chicken on the ground, opened the gate and ran out into the ram pasture looking for a raccoon. I could not find it! I shined the light into the tree, up the dry creek bed, over by the barn and got nothing. I was pretty sure I did not hit anything, the raccoon was a long ways away, 80-100 feet. I need to start practicing those long shots. I say this to myself in the middle of the night but during the day I always find things to do other than practice with the pistol. I put the two other alive chickens into the coop, they were hanging outside the auto chicken door. I headed back to the house and the dead chicken was gone!

I was certain that the raccoon had circled around behind me and came back to steal the chicken carcass. I was less than happy but at the same time impressed with my adversary. After some choice directional language toward the creek bed I headed back to the house and stumbled on the dead chicken, it was alive! It had gotten up and walked away from its deathbed. I spent five minutes trying to catch the thing and it would not let me grab it. I was starting to get cold since I was only in my underwear. I told the chicken it was going to make excellent raccoon bait and went back into the house. I laid the pistol and light on the washing machine and set my slippers by the back door. On further pondering I should have worn my new rubber boots out into the mud, not my slippers.

I went back to bed with the wife and two hours later she was shaking me and hollering that a chicken was dying. This time I was ready! I shot out of bed, ran right to the laundry room and grabbed the arsenal and tools while running for the chicken coop. The raccoon was in the chicken yard and there is only one exit so I knew where it was going to come out. I started banging away as soon as it came out the yard entrance and had it down by the time it got to the hillside. After ensuring that it was dead I looked for the wounded chicken and could only find feathers.

During the day I kept looking for the black turken chicken, I have two of them and could only spot one. Tonight I went out to get eggs after dark and counted the chickens. I had both turkeys, so the raccoon bait lived! Unfortunately, the raccoon had managed to kill and remove two other chickens that did not have the lung capacity or brains to holler for help. I will now be enclosing the top of the chicken yard enclosure so that no predator can climb up the fence and down into the yard and I am going to add a second solar powered chicken door to the yard that has a light sensor that faces West, the auto chicken door on the coop faces North. My hope is the even if the coop door closes the chickens will be inside the yard by the time the yard door closes so the raccoons cannot pick them off. I lose the most chickens on the entrance to the coop as they are just slow and don’t make it in before the door shuts and I never check to ensure they all made it inside. Chickens take 8 months before they start laying eggs, I cannot keep feeding the raccoons. We just started getting 8-10 eggs a day on now 20 pullets. The new door will be here in ten days, here’s hoping I can keep the chickens alive that long.

Bathroom almost complete 99%

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It was getting cold outside but its not now. We are getting up to 50F during the day lately with rain. The entire farm is covered in green grass, even the dirt barn lot is green! We have not started feeding the cows or sheep yet. Every few days I go out and feed the rams and bull in Alcatraz. They are keeping the grass pretty low in that area but it is present and still growing. I was going to burn the weeds in Alcatraz but it rained again, poured actually. I would tell you how much came down but our electronic rain gauge was not working the entire day it rained. I just looked over at the weather station and the rain gauge is back! It says we got 3/4” of rain in the last two days, this is totally believable. I managed to go outside yesterday and dig dirt for a couple of hours. I am still trying to fill in behind the concrete bridge footings. The far footing had about two feet and now has about 18 inches left. It is not exactly fast going as you have to throw the dirt about eight feet and uphill over the footing. I did also manage to pile up more large rocks on the other side of the stream bed. There is no water, its dry this time of year. I will need some more big rocks from the upper hillside to finish the footing rock walls. Two hours of digging is fine, I don’t think I could dig all day any more. Just too much, it’s my concession to aging to only dig 2-3 hours at a time and move a few big rocks.

After the digging I went into the old house and worked on sanding the countertop for the upstairs bathroom. The thing is a solid two inch piece of black walnut that was air dried. This means the board had warped about a half an inch and I had to sand out the bow in the board. I have seen the DeWalt battery powered hand planers and keep wondering if they would make leveling these pieces easier? I keep thinking I want to try it but it’s a $200-300 trial and I don’t want to be wrong. So instead I just kept sanding it and using a two foot metal square to see where the high and low spots were so I could sand them out. I spent three more hours working out most of the high spots. The only thing left was to actually cut the piece to fit. Annmarie and I had a discussion on how best to get an accurate representation of the space. There was some disagreement and I ended up doing it the hard way with a few pieces of newspaper and a lot of clear tape. I then used this as a pattern and made several cuts with my skilsaw. I only had to make two more cuts and one sanding intervention before I managed to get it to fit. Three attempts is not bad considering the space is not a bunch of straight lines. There were a couple of rounded spots that had to be taken into account. Once I had it dry fit I went over the entire top again starting with 40 grit sand paper and ending with 220 grit. I finished the top and front with Tried and True finish. I really like the natural compounds and that is what we used on the walls in the bathroom. It fits great and now I just need to glue it down to the plywood underneath, that is next week’s project. Once that is done I will be 100% complete with my part on the upstairs bathroom!

I was in the craft room last night when I noticed the dreaded ceiling paint sags! The only thing that creates these are water accumulations from a leak. This sucks as I just fixed the ceiling a few years ago from a failed condensate pump in the second story closest. So we went up and started emptying the closet. It means cleaning off all of the shelves and then removing them. I was cutting the zip ties off to get the power cord loose so I could remove the condensate pump and accidentally sliced the discharge rubber hose in half. My pocket knife just got sharpened recently and it is sharp! I eventually got the condensate pump out and it was empty. This is bad as the water was on the closet floor. We opened up the heat pump and found some water inside. We just turned the heat pump off and I contacted the heating guy in the morning. I sent him a text and later today he messaged me from the top of some mountain. He was up with his father hunting elk and would contact me when he gets off the mountain. Once the repair is complete we will discuss how to fix this issue.

Predators 13/Farm 4

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Well it is finally happening, someones have managed to actually kill a coyote on the property. I was not sure it was going to ever happen as no one had been having any luck. Everyone could only catch glances and quick peeks of them. I used to work with several people who have perfected the art of coyote hunting so the Three Stooges came out last night at dark to hunt coyotes. Larry, Curly and Moe all came out with custom rifles and thermal scopes. After seeing how amazing the thermal optics are I told the wife I needed one, she says I won’t want to go out in the dark and sit or hunt coyotes in the dark (she is right, I would rather watch TV or do chores). So I will not be getting a fancy setup any time soon. My suppressed pistol for protecting the chickens at night is good enough for me. It also makes it easier to fall back asleep after chasing chicken killers off when your ears are not ringing loudly.

The Three Stooges managed to kill three coyotes in five hours and saw a total of 8-9. They think they have mapped out most of the travel routes and believe that the next couple of times they can thin out the coyotes fairly aggressively. They think there are 10-15 coyotes on our property. This would explain why we lost so many sheep this summer. The best part of this is that they are very happy to come out and provide this service. I would not have guessed that there were 15 coyotes but I sure knew there was more than three.

Next month we should start having lambs. The ewes are now coming in every night by themselves. We did more research and are thinking about putting three sets of bells on three sheep. It is supposed to help with the predators and should help alert us. It’s a fairly inexpensive thing to try.

The two rams are currently out in the barn lot with the horse. We will separate out the bull from the cows this next week, then the sheep and bull will go into Alcatraz to spend the winter. The rams will go back into the herd around January hopefully.

Freezers moved, winterizing begins

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This has been a very productive last couple of days. Mr Rainman and the Apprentice came out on Sunday. The Apprentice is coming down with something and slugged through the weekend but it wasn’t easy. She managed to get the dirt shoveled mostly into one end of the new bridge. We think that there was a blacksmith shop right outside the old house next to the creek. There would have been water in the creek then and we are finding layers of coal scraps and a whole lot of iron scraps and horseshoes. They were storing coal in the old woodshed on the right hand side. The space is about 11×4 feet and has a side door on one end so you could really toss in the coal. There is a high hole cut into the wall at the far end to allow you to unload coal into the storage area.

We emptied the big freezer into coolers, unplugged it and hooked up a heater to blow into it while we went out and worked on the coal side of the wood shed. I had “borrowed” the wife’s really good (expensive) hair dryer in case I needed to get the ice out of the freezer, but the heater was the bomb and had it all melted out in a few hours. We kept wringing out towels, finally used a plastic tray to catch the melting ice.

I sprayed foam insulation into the cracks of the walls in the woodshed. Unfortunately, the can top was leaking and spraying foam all over my hands. I refused to quit using it and ended coating both hands with foam. I have only ever done this one other time and it was years ago. Thirty minutes later I realized why I had only ever done it once, its miserable. The only way to get the stuff off your hands once its dry is to peel the skin off your hands. This does not work out well until day 2-3.

We unwrapped the old billboard vinyl sign I purchased and attempted to get it on the walls and floor of the space. We got it about 80% installed before we needed to go get the freezer moved and filled again. The vinyl is 6 mil and was not very expensive, a 14×44’ sign was only $125. The idea is to line the entire inside of the room with vinyl and with the new metal screen over the window opening I think we can get to a fairly bug free storage area for all of the bee hive extras. We are going to use the metal hanging shelve holders as a way to put our frames up on the wall and hanging free. I think Mr Rainman and I can finish the room in one more day and then we can fill it up with all of the supplies.

We were amazed at how easy it was to move the large freezer! It’s the only one we actually emptied prior to moving. We got to the freezer room entrance and could not get the handle portion of the front door through the opening. Nope, we could not just take off the door handle. We had to move it back out and take the entire door off the freezer and then put it back on once the freezer was through the doorway. Hamburger is in the small chest freezer, fruit and vegetables have a couple of shelves in the small upright along with lamb and the tall freezer has beef and a little pork. We have another pig coming soon. One can never have too much bacon as evidenced that there is no bacon left in the freezer.

Mr Rainman and I got the stock trailer hooked up to the pickup and backed right up to the corral. In the morning we needed to sort sheep and load them up so I could drop them off. Afterwards, I spent about an hour shoveling dirt into the low spot by the gate in front of the bridge. It won’t get filled in by itself.

Monday started at 0600 by attempting to chase the sheep into the barn. They were down in the barn lot area and went to the back of the barn easily, but we could not get them to go into the barn. Mr Rainman and I were not effective. I went and got the puppy, Chance , put her on a lead rope and she had them in the barn in about three minutes. She is doing great! Stays when I want, lays down on command. She broke once but went back down within three feet of the original spot. I really think that by next spring we will have the “off” command (down) drilled in well enough that we can stop her even when she cannot stop herself. She is almost there. Mouse pouted as he had to stay in the yard. Mr Rainman took one of the best pictures of a sunrise we have seen on the farm.

It was still dark outside so we did a light check in the barn, our first one when it was actually dark! The lights are amazing and are going to make things very easy this winter. We tried to just push all the sheep to one end of the barn then I wade in and snag all of the boys. I did this four times and we could not find the fifth boy. The stupid rams kept trying to mount the pregnant ewes so we decided to pull them off, it was time anyways. We have two rams and 40 pregnant ewes and four whethers, not five. The coyotes ate our lamb, we had the other four sold. I dropped off the lambs without any difficulties and Mr Rainman spent the day winterizing the watering system and trimmed the lavender.