fencing

Week in review

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It’s been a long week, I have kept notes so I could keep track of all the things that have happened.  Monday evening after dinner I went out and turned all the hay.  It just keeps raining.  The hay is not very good after all the rain and flooding.  I need to get it up into bales so the grass underneath can come up and I can get a good second cutting.  I worked until dark and got it all turned and in neat rows.  Mr Professional came out during the day and worked on setting wooden posts in our field closest to the barn lot, I would like to get the sheep and horses off of the hay pasture.  They keep eating the barley sprouts.

Tuesday after work I went out to the field and got the baler to work.  It’s a learning curve and I had to get my memory back up to speed after last year.  It is not quite the same critter as the string non-hydraulic one I had last year. I got it to make about 20 bales up in the triticale before it got dark.  I was happy but I have learned there are some things that are not easy to do in the dark and baling is one of them, seeding is the other.

Wednesday after work I went out to check on Mr Professional.  He was hot!  He had broken 9 shear bolts already and the hay was too thick.  It was a constant battle.  I went out after dinner and threw the hay back out.  No rows, the tractor carriage is too low and the underside hits the hay pile.  I really need a side pull but I did not think of this.  I may be able to accommodate this at a future time.  The real answer is just don’t row it.  Just throw it around and pick it up with the tractor.  The little baler does better if it is not plowing through super thick material.  It can grab a bunch and pull it in and shear the safety bolt before you know it.

Thursday I had off and Mr Professional and I had to go to town to find a bolt as one had broken on the arm for dumping the bales.  The arm got bent in shipping and I did not think it was a big deal.  It is turning out to be a problem.  I will need to order a replacement soon.  I forgot about it when I placed the big order last week.  We may have found the right size shear bolt at hardware store but we did not have any to compare.  We left them at home.  When we got home I found the dozen spares I knew I had ordered last year, they were not with the others.  It took us 2 hours to clean off the baler, replace the shear bolts and grease and oil it so it was ready to go.  I baled about 100 bales and only broke two shear pins, one low and one high.  I hit some wet grass and sheared the lower pin.  After spending 30 minutes digging it out I just gave up.  It was dinner time and I was beat, I took it all back to the shop, we can get it ready tomorrow morning.  Mr professional and the kid worked on the fence.  My manure clamp on hooks for the tractor bucket arrived!  I used them to move mud and hay away from the fence, they are great!  I am thinking that cleaning out the barn this year may be a lot easier than normal.   The tractor can push the spikes into a pile of mud and hay where I never could have gotten it into the bucket before.  The only thing is it makes the tractor pretty front heavy, I need to attach the box blade on the back for counterweight.

 

 

 

 

 

House cannot be neglected either

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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It’s time to get the hay done, the flood damage fixed and the bathroom done, the only question is what order will it happen in and how long will it take?  I am making a valiant effort to get it all done but that is not leaving me any time for the blog.  I have been working until 2100-2200 every night and after my shower I am ready for bed not the blog!  In an effort to maintain some continuity I have been making notes on paper so that I do not forget what happened on that day.  So I am now going to play catch up on all the activities that have occurred in the last six days.  Friday of last week Mr Professional came out with two kids to do some manual labor.  They got the unit of lumber unloaded into the bull enclosure, Alcatraz.  It goes across the old granary foundation so it stays fairly straight and not on the ground.  I let the weather “age” it.  They then kinda mowed the front lawn with the broken mower and a weed eater.  It looked much better than before they started.  They also weeded the back garden area as it was starting to look like a jungle.  I took a pole saw out and cut all the low branches on both the maple trees by the house.  You could not see under them and they were too low.  The kids piled the branches across the creek in a pile to be burned later.

I took the trailer and pickup into Pendleton to pick up fencing supplies.  I got 12 of the last 15 railroad ties at the store and they were all rejects.  I paid $12/each but they were rough looking.  They will work fine for what I want but they will not win any beauty contests.  I also picked up some cable, clips, eyebolts, clamps and utility panels to make the breakaway fence sections.  We then drove around the farm and deposited all the supplies at various locations to be utilized when we get to that section of fencing.

After unloading I noticed a 3’ deep pond at the base of the culvert from the water washing all our rocks and concrete chunks away.  So I climbed down and started tossing rocks and chunks into the hole and spreading out the rocks to slow the erosion.  I got the pond down to under 1’.  Mr Professional had to call it quits as one of the young men was dying of heat exhaustion.  It was hot and he was not used to hard manual labor.  He could not keep up with the 50+ and 40 year old men.

After they left, I had dinner with the beautiful wife and then went back out to row up the triticale that Mr Professional had cut 1.5 days ago.  It was very thin and I had to make several passes to get a row built up.  I was almost done when I noticed the tractor was making a funny noise and had developed a vibration.  I did notice it but it was dark and I was almost done so I kept going until the front left wheel fell off!  All the lug bolts had fallen out.  I hoofed it home and called it a night.  The tractor place is open on Saturday from 0730-1200, I will get it in the morning.

 

Too much of a good thing is not always great.

Steve Hardin1 Comment

It’s been a long week, even longer than normal.  Wednesday morning before going to work Annmarie asked me to go out and lift the fence crossing I had lowered over the back creek.  We had already gotten 1.5” of rain in the last 24 hours and she figured Stewart Creek would start rising as it had turned muddy and was up about 8”.  So I went out and did that before going to work.  By noon it was coming out of its bank and by 1400  it was so high it was just running across a 1/4 mile section of the road above our property.  All of this water was then going into the front spring runoff area and we had a rushing stream going through the barn lot that was 5-6’ high.  Needless to say that the spring flow is normally measured in inches.  All of my pictures are the next day after the flooding occurred.

Annmarie kept sending me pictures while I was at work.  It was painful to watch.  The best part was we lost no animals, no humans, no damage to our house and absolutely no damage to our front walking bridge.  This is almost a best case scenario for any flooding. The back creek did not jump out of its channel due to erosion, it literally just got so high that it just flowed over the banks in multiple locations.

Another plus is the front spring bed is now all gravel, it is a couple feet lower in places and there are a couple of waterfalls. On the negative side we are missing a foot bridge that was in place to allow the propane guy to walk across the spring and fill our tank.  This will need to be fixed in the next two months.  It will require two concrete footings on each side and then I have to give the span to Annmarie and she will find an arched truss bridge made out of 2×6 boards that I will build.  

The barn lot was all finished last year, I had made two separate flower garden areas and an animal drinking area, those do not exist.  Nor does the the 5’ wide railroad tie bridge that I used to drive the tractor across.  The bridge has vanished.  I have not found it yet.  The only reason the fences in the one flower area survived is I installed huge rock cribs and tied them all together.  They were more than the water could handle.  One is lifted up by about 8” but it is still staying in place.  I will be moving the location I was going to put bee hives on another 6’ higher.  I don’t want them to get washed away.  I had two brand new 16’ panels leaning up against the fence, they have disappeared, again I am unsure where they ended up.

 

The mamma/baby area is missing a little 2’ spring crossing and all of the fence near the water.  The barn lot cow panels have been mangled and piled up along the bank.  I think the damage would have been less severe if I had not cut hay a week ago and the field had not flooded and carried all the loose hay into the waterway effectively damming it up in places.  This was not good for the fence crossings.

The culvert crossing in the middle of the barn lot is washed out.  It needs to be replaced and this time the culvert needs to be 4’ instead of 2’.  The water moved the Alcatraz water fencing but did not manage to rip it down.  Thankfully, the bull was contained.  I am going to let him and his compatriots out of Alcatraz tomorrow after I chain three gates closed top and bottom so he has two fences between him and the heifers in the lower pastures.

The three upper cross fences have all been laid over by the water pressure.  The cut loose hay just created dams when it hit the fence, I have maybe 1-2 acres of hay I can save if I am lucky but a lot of it is ruined with mud.

The far upper field triticale is ready to be cut, it is a horrible threadbare crop but I cannot harvest it as the entire field was under water.  I may get 3-5 tons off of it.  The upper middle field did not follow the ditch I had started to dig.  I did not carry the ditch far enough up the field.  This needs to happen this spring.  I had two culverts up there but had not installed them yet, the water knocked one into its spot, the other one is too small and I will need to get a bigger one.

On the plus side my little 1 acre spot of peas may come through and I may get to harvest it!

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Bottom line is I have a lot to do, I have had several people offer to come out and help.  I am going to take those offers up so I can get a leg up on all that needs to be done.  I cannot get out in the fields so I am planning and staging already.  I have 100 2x6x16’ tamarack boards ready to be picked up on Tuesday, I have 300 4” Fastenal anchor bolts purchased, I have purchased clamp on manure forks for the tractor bucket so I can move rocks and loose hay easier.  The manure forks should be here next week.  I still need to buy about 150 cinder blocks, 100’ of cable, a bunch of metal clips, some gates, metal panels and about 1200’ of woven wire, 30-6” posts (I may have enough from my spring used post purchase if I can cut them in half, even better if I can cut them in thirds.  I will need to bring over a bunch of rocks and I will need about 10 more cow panels.  Annmarie has said I can use tires to hang from the creek crossings that are in the upper pasture as the bull won’t be able to move them but the water will be able to push them.  I will also need some plywood, probably 8 sheets and some 2x4s and about 50 bags of Sackrete to pour the four footings.    It sounds like a lot of work, that does not include replanting both garden areas.  The plan is to just fix it all and take into account the problems that Mother Nature threw at us and see if we cannot work around them so they don’t get us next time.

 

 

 

 

There was to be no new fencing this year…

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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Annmarie told me this year I was not to fence.  I had a lot to do and after spending most of last year doing nothing but fencing I needed to focus on other things this year.  Now I do not disagree with this but we really did need some more fencing…

Barb Morehead took this terrific photo of our little beautiful calf, and kindly shared it us.  He is named Valentine for the heart he wears on his forehead.  We were really hoping he would be a she.  He will still be good eating.

We have been slowly working on getting our berry/lavender grow area ready.  Unfortunately, this necessitated building a fence around the space to keep the herbivores away from our food.  The pine trees got cut down several years ago and I sprayed the area with Roundup a week ago.  This plant attack has done nothing but point out where all the thistles are located.  I have been slowly killing the thistles with a shovel.  I cannot use any other kind of herbicide or I will kill anything I plant in the ground.  I also tried to order ground cloth so we can plant our lavender through it but could not get any online that was not horribly expensive.  I still spent almost $400 on cloth and thought I had gotten a good deal.  I had to drive to the Tricities to pickup our bathroom vanity so I bought all the ground cloth that Home Depot had available.  The only reason they still had it was it was in a box high above and no one had bothered to check there yet.

A Pallet of stained brown tire chips was delivered on Thursday in one single great big bag weighing 1100#.  I need to finish killing the thistles then weed eat everything down to the ground then put the ground cloth down.  I have had a couple of boys working on the fence.  Since they were going to do most of the work I decided that we needed to fence in the orchard also.  Our orchard area is fenced in already but I wanted to just put up an interior fence around the fruit trees so that we can take all the skirts around the tree down.  I want to keep a 2’ tall cow panel ring around the trees only.  This will keep any animals from rubbing on the tree or eating the bark at the base of the tree.  This will also double the number of rings I have available for more trees.  There are seven young fruit trees so we can plant seven more trees.  I picked up two at Home Depot Thursday, Hardy Kiwi trees.  The fruit only gets to the size of a Kumquat but it is supposed to taste like a kiwi and it looks like a kiwi.  I bought two as they are small!  The plants are about 2 inches tall and its a single stick.  We will see in 3-4 weeks if they were alive or not.  We also bought some coconut fiber mats to go around the trees to keep the weeds down.

While we were working on the fence today the alpaca kept trying to sneak in through the gate.  I had to exit the gate to get wooden fence stays and they tried to bum rush the open gate.  They are very curious animals and will seek out new experiences.  One of them stood by the fence and made super weird noises today.  A noise even I had not heard before.  They won’t move if they are laying in the road either.  They will win a game of chicken every time, even into death.  The delivery guys are scared they are going to cream one, I am kinda surprised they have not hit one yet.

Today we got the orchard fence completed.  It looks good and even our border collies cannot get out of it.  I can move the border collies to the orchard and let the sheep into our yard to mow now!  If you try and keep the collies inside the house all day so the sheep can eat the front yard they make you crazy.  Zeke keeps ring the bell  hanging from the front door.  You have to remove the bell or he will just keep randomly ringing it and laying in front of the door waiting for you to let him out.  Mouse will come lick your hand repeatedly until you let him outside.  It is a tossup as to which Border Collie is more annoying in their attempt to get what they want.

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I also found out that we have a red fox living on the property.  It has been spotted twice this week and I am sure I am down at least two more chickens.  I thought it was a raccoon and tonight when I was putting the sheep into the ram pasture I found a dead chicken head on the hillside.  I am told it has a den over by the fencing supplies storage area.  I will have to take a look for myself this weekend.

A little flash flood

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It snowed yesterday and then rained all night.  I of course had not taken the fence out of the creek crossings yet.  I had been talking about it for the last two weeks and just never seemed to get around to it.  This morning while it was still dark I told Annmarie I was going to have to come home early and get those fences out of the back runoff creek.

As I was headed out of work early this afternoon, a coworker texted to remind me I was going to show him around the farm so he could come out and shoot coyotes.  I had of course forgotten this and had told him he would need to send me said reminder but this dovetailed nicely with me needing some help to get the panels out of the back creek.

My Doppelgänger came out and proceeded to help me pull the panels out of the now raging back creek.  It has rained 0.68 inches in the last 24 hours and has rained 5.63 inches since Jan 1, 2020.  We used to get 12” of rain annually.

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We pulled the fence out of multiple crossings and at one point I noticed my Doppelgänger was bleeding all over the fence.  He managed to cut himself on the very first piece of panel we moved.  This did not slow him down and I managed to not fall into the rampaging creek.  I escorted him over the property and showed him where the coyotes were most likely to be hiding and were it was safe to shoot.

Best last minute didn’t know they were gonna help, help I have ever had.  I would have been at it for at least a couple of hours trying to wrestle those panels out of the runoff by myself.  On the way back to the house we stopped off at the barn and Mr Doppelgänger and his girlfriend helped me feed the sheep while they played with the lambs.  Lamb snuggles are worth the wait.

My baby chickens have not been liking the rain and have started to protest and not lay eggs.  They need to just get over it and start laying consistently.