farm life

Sheep sorted

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Mr Rainman came out on Saturday to help me out. He is only coming a few days a month now. So I had some things planned out so we could get as much done as possible. He brought a new helper out a young man who was excited to come out to the farm but has never really been exposed to farm life. He will be forever known as the Rambler. Great kid but is prone to large amounts of nonstop prose. We pulled the cracked grain 55 gallon drums out of the barn and took them around to the chicken coop. The Rambler had to move them a bucket at a time into the back of the chicken coop. The plan is to get about 2000# of cracked grain done up for the winter. We now have three 55 gallon drums and three metal trash cans out in the back of the chicken coop. I think I can fit at least two more 55 gallon drums, maybe three. That should get us at least six months, probably eight months.

The plan was to have the Rambler crack grain all day. I had to buy a new grain cracker for $200 as I could not just buy the mill half of the contraption. We have saved over $2k in feed so $200 is a great investment. I have sorted the rocks out of four drums worth of grain so the Rambler was going to be able to go nonstop for hours just grinding grain. Unfortunately, someone in Pilot Rock hit a telephone pole and knocked out the power. Before we figured that out I had brutalized the outlet in the machine shed and played with the feeder breakers. When the power came back on the outlet did not work. We will move the cracker and grain over to the chicken coop area so the Rambler can just crack it all in place.

So instead of doing that we went out and picked our rose plum tree. The thing was loaded and sagging down. It only broke one branch but I had about 8 2×4 branch supports in place to keep them from breaking. We picked about 150# of sweet tart plums. They are pretty good, but the tree next to it had these huge round blush plums but there were only about 20 on the entire tree, they were there last week and there were none this week. The yellow jackets have been eating them once they sugar up.

The tree growing in with the apricot tree that I thought was an apricot tree is a plum tree. I think they grafted the apricot tree onto the plum roots and the suckers that came up are actually plums. We were able to pick two plums from that tree and they were very good. This late fall we are going to butcher a lot of the trees to shape them and top them. We ran out of boxes and had to start using paper bags. We finally gave up and left about 15# to the yellow jackets. They were too hard to get to and we already had more than was needed by a long shot.

It is time to put the rams back in with the ewes so we can have lambs the end of December. But first, we had to rearrange the barn so we could sort in it and then we had to get the sheep up into the barn. This ended up causing us to use the dog to get them back into the ram pasture. She did great then we got them behind the barn and needed to push them inside. The dog was not a lot of help. She got too excited and did not listen, we had to put her back in the yard.

The Rambler had never worked animals and was surprised when we grabbed the sheep by the neck to sort them while inside the chute. He thought we were being mean. There was a long calm discussion about how this is how you sort them. He finally got it and ran the second chute gate while we sorted. We made two herds, keepers (ewes that need bred, 29 total) in one. The second one carried the cull ewes (16 total) and all the lambs (62 total, some will end up as replacements when we sort for market) They will hang out on the lower portion of the farm while the ewes hang out in the top portion. This will give the rams time to do their job. We found one chicken out in the barn with one little black chick. We found her nest in the barn and it looked like she had hatched out 10 chicks and only one was left. The chick was only 2-5 days old. We left her out with the chick. It was a 50% chance it would be a rooster so I just left it with her to see if she could keep it alive.

New sprayer boom

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I keep working on getting the star thistle sprayed in the CRP. It had not been controlled for a decade so it made some inroads. The wind and heat has been dictating when I can spray so it has been hit and miss to get it done but I managed to get in a solid three days last week. I can usually get 3-4 tanks done before the wind or the heat picks up enough that I can no longer spray. There are a lot of old coyote dens out in the CRP! It makes driving around on the tractor surprising. You can get lulled into a back and forth rhythm then WHAM, you hit a huge hole and the front tire has fallen in. It takes four wheel drive and going backwards to get out.

The miniature bunnies are all along the fence line. They are living in every single rock crib. This little furry creature thought that if it just held still I would not see it. I guess in its mind it worked as I just snapped a picture and kept on driving. Nothing harassed it so it was successful. We have one down along the driveway also. Annmarie and I were just commenting that we never see babies and we only ever see one at a time yet they keep multiplying.

When I got down to the house I tried to back into the machine shed. Unfortunately, the boom on the left had flopped down and I ran it right into the upright wooden pillar. This caused a bend on the back rigid bar. It was bent too much, when I let the boom down it was pointed forward at a 45 degree angle, no good. In typical farmer fashion I figured I could just straighten it out by hooking it on the same post but pulling with the tractor to straighten it out. Surprisingly, this took quite a bit of effort on the tractor’s part and all it did was break the hokey fix I had done a couple of years ago in the middle. So now I had two issues.

The answer at this point is to just take it apart and rebuild it. But this means relying on my welding skills. They are improving, but that first weld two years ago was so bad I had to screw two holes into the patch and put screws in them. I am getting much better and that was one of my very first repairs. It also held for two years! I went to Irish Iron (Packy’s) and got some square tubing, a small piece of square tubing to go inside both pieces to hold them in alignment when I welded them. I also picked up some channel iron for the gun rack on the Kubota tractor. I was there so I figured I would just get it all.

I had to take it all apart, busted one of the bolts in the process and then had to cut the swing safety ends off. They need to be welded onto the new piece. Since I was having to rebuild the thing anyways I decided to do some improvements to its design. I have a boom and a wand attached but the valve to switch is under the tank currently and it is a standard yard hose Y splitter. So I purchased two valves to weld onto the top of the bar to switch between the wand and boom. I also moved the boom left/right valves to an upright direction so I now have four valves mounted on the spray bar. It was surprisingly not bad once I got the wire feed speed adjusted. I had to slow it down from the Gingerman’s settings. I cannot weld at 200, I did fine at 175 speed. I have no clue what the value for the setting is, I just know the bigger the number the faster the wire comes out.

I go it all welded together and broke the ancient handle off of one of the old valves. I tried to weld it on, it took two attempts before I realized the valve stem is bronze. I will have to eventually replace that valve but for now it will work fine. I have learned to just grab some color of spray paint and cover up the bare metal when I am done. It helps control the rust. I was putting all of the tubing on with hose clamps and of course on the very last clamp the standard screwdriver slipped and dug a gouge out of my thumb. It would not stop bleeding so I whipped out the little first aid kit I have on the tractor. The requisite blood sacrifice for a farm project was given.

The fires have already started to burn all around us. It is a little early for fire season but our lack of rain is starting to show. It does make for a fantastic sunset!

Predators 2/Farm 5

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well it has been a long two weeks and we are starting to make some progress on the predators. I continue to take time 2-4 times a week to drive around the entire property looking for coyotes. I had to take Snoop up to the boneyard. He up and died on us last week. He spent the last couple of days just lounging around. It was hot so he decided to just sit under the sprinkler to stay cool. He was by far the alpaca with the most personality. We are not really sad, he lived two years longer than we thought he would and he was ancient.

I was driving Snoop up to his eternal resting spot, the boneyard, when I spotted a couple of coyotes. I stopped, kept the tractor RPMs up high and proceeded to dispatch two coyotes with two shots. The not being able to hit them at a dead run thing is rough on your confidence level. I only have 12 rounds of 243 left out of the ones my father loaded by hand almost 20 years ago. I will need to get some more loaded as I am going to run out of them before the summer is out. I was out spraying the CRP for star thistle and spotted a coyote on my way back to the house to get another load of spray. The coyote never slowed down and once it ran for the fence it just kept running. I was going to give it time to settle down and stop but it did not do that. So I just started throwing lead at it, I managed to get off four shots before it got out of range.

It is painful to just hold onto a rifle for hours on end while bouncing around on a tractor. I need some form of rifle holder on the tractor. I am going to put it on the Kubota. We mow and spray with that tractor so it has more time on it throughout the year. I am going to weld a holder onto the lift arms, an upside down U and then bolt a set of rifle holders with bungee straps to hold the rifle in place. I just need to make the U tall enough that when I lower the bucket the U doesn’t hit the hood on the tractor. I have a bent support that I replaced I am thinking about just cutting it in half to use as the uprights. It is already painted bright orange so I would just need to grind the paint off near the weld. I am becoming a lot more comfortable with the wire feed welder. I had to slow down the feed speed from 200 to 175 so that I could make a molten pool and push it along. Once the rifle holder is in place I will then need to work on a new varmint rifle. I need one with a synthetic stock so it can take the bouncing around and beating it is going to be subjected to every time we hop on the tractor. I am thinking about the sights as it will take a beating.

Milo, the wonder dog, helped me cap a couple of raccoons in the last week, so the farm is currently ahead of the predators this year. Our cows are calving but so far we only have three calves out of six cows. We don’t think one of them is pregnant. The cows do not seem to have any issues with the coyotes. I think the momma cows are just too mean and protective when a dog shaped animal is near the calves.

Border Terrier logic

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We have a 16 month old border terrier. Annmarie has been working with him and takes him to the hospital to become a therapy dog. He loves everyone and will let anyone pet him. He does not get ruffled, riding elevator, around walkers, canes, wheelchairs, noisy IV pumps, emotional families, emotional patients. He is pretty much a loving rock.

At home he has decided that the yard is his space. We have barn cats that sneak down to eat the porch kitty food and he tends to harass them at bedtime because they are not supposed to be there. Last week we let the dogs outside at bedtime and told them it was bedtime potties. Milo ran around the yard and next thing we know he is barking up a storm. I knocked on the side window to get him to quit barking, it did nothing. I went and opened the small window in the laundry room and hollered at him, no response or let up on the noise. Then he starts doing this weird baying sound and is fighting with something outside the back door.

I grab the spotlight and my pistol and just step out the back door looking for the cat. Milo has a full size raccoon trapped on the cat food ledge and every time it tries to get off the ledge on the front side, Milo drives it back. I call him off and he comes right to me. The raccoon is promptly dispatched. I have friends who say I should live trap and move them. The problem is that everyone else in town live traps them and turns them loose at the edge of our property so there is an endless supply of raccoons (i.e “chicken killers”). I figured out that since we have moved back home I have had over 300 chickens killed by raccoons. A chicken won’t even lay an egg until it’s over 6 months old. That is a time and money commitment. I don’t have any sympathy for the raccoons anymore.

This week our heat pump went out on Sunday night so we ended up sleeping downstairs. It was 2 degrees cooler downstairs than upstairs. Annmarie let Milo outside around Midnight because he woke her up. Normally he sleeps through the entire night upstairs with us. Around 0130 he starts raising a ruckus. I wake up to Annmarie hollering my name and hollering at our big dog to get inside. The border collie keeps trying to run upstairs because she knows if I am running outside in the middle of the night I am armed. I grabbed the spotlight and my pistol and run out onto the front porch. Milo is hollering, growling and some other creature is hollering. I get to the front porch and I can tell that they are down in the water in the ditch under the crossing board. I think Milo has another raccoon pinned into the corner and he is just waiting for me to show up. I get across the hillside and Milo has another raccoon by the throat in the water and mud and is not letting go. I call him off and he just lets go and moves six feet away. The raccoon is dispatched but when I went to take Milo inside the house he is absolutely filthy. In his need to dominate he failed to take into account his surroundings, he was covered in mud and water. He had to sleep on the back porch and then get a shower the next day before he could go back to work.

We are pretty sure no one at work believes us. He is the calmest gentlest dog when he is there. Now every night when we let him out for his bedtime routine he runs the entire length of the fence patrolling to make sure that no raccoon has encroached.

It’s Hot

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We came home earlier in the week and were greeted by the big truck sitting in the road. The Gingerman has been working on the truck, has it running and the brakes working on it. He has a few more things to do before we convert it to a fire fighting apparatus for the farm. We are going to put a couple of large totes for water, a pump and a hose reel on it so we can have some fire suppression if we decide to burn. On the off chance we have a fire nearby we can go out and meet it. It would have been handy when I caught the railroad ties on fire. Peeing on them to put out the fire takes a lot of effort.

The truck was blocked it just rolled down into the road, no one is sure how it did it. I could not get it started then the Gingerman told me that the battery was unhooked. I dropped the positive terminal on and smashed it a couple of times with a wrench. It still would not start. I took positive terminal wire off and then told Annmarie we would just need to drive around it for a week. The Gingerman stopped by a few days later and actually installed and tightened the battery post cable and it started up just fine! It is now blocked with some heavy duty tire chocks.

The back creek, Stewart Creek, is no longer running. There are a few spots of water behind our house but they will most likely be dry by the end of the week. The frogs will all move into our garden and tall grass. They can make quite the cacophony. We are so used to it that it is just drift off to sleep noise. The roosters crowing, the frogs serenading, the alpaca fighting , the sheep and lambs hollering, the cows bellowing and the occasional horse whinny it is mostly relaxing.

I picked the garlic today, we turned off the water about three weeks ago. I will let the dirt dry out and tomorrow I will cut off the tops and put it all in a paper sack for storage. I have about four of the largest heads picked out to use as seed for the fall. I also collected a whole bunch of chive seeds. I want to toss random flower seeds into the front flower beds and just see what grows. I am now going out to the apricot tree about every three days and picking up the ripe fruit off the ground. I keep about 75% of it and the rest I toss over the fence to the sheep. Our old ancient apple tree is shedding apples so I spent about thirty minutes cleaning them off the ground and tossing them over to the sheep. They love it. I was only able to pick about four apricots off the tree that were actually ripe. I like to wait until the fruit is full of sugar before picking it. When it is your tree you can wait until the very last minute. Annmarie and I cut and pitted about 12 cups for the freezer. We freeze them in one cup batches so she can use them for her breakfast smoothie. It takes a lot of frozen fruit to make it 365 days! We are going to be able to fill an entire upright freezer full of frozen fruit this year.