fencing

Population boom

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It has started again, the sheep are lambing. Of course Annmarie is out of town, but luckily all of the sheep but one were in the orchard. When I let the dogs out this morning I was pretty sure I heard a newborn lamb. I say this because they make a very distinct sound that only lasts a few days, after that their voice changes. It is odd but honestly you can hear newborn babies. I looked up on the hillside at the lone sheep who had snuck out of the orchard and she had at least one lamb, turns out she had twins. Hoss and I pushed her back into the orchard with another loner who made it out. They are crawling through the ditch. When it flooded this spring it lifted it out of the water. I will need to fix it tomorrow but I am going to have to put on my waders as my normal knee high boots are not going to keep me dry. Hoss and I also turned on water in the orchard and started to water the grass. We have not watered it at all this year. We then went out to finish digging all the post holes.

Hoss has been working on getting T-posts pounded into the ground and trying to finish the holes I started. It is too late in the season to be attempting new post holes in our ground. He has been filling the holes with water and digging out 2-4 inches every day. Today we tore it up and got every hole drilled that we needed. Some just required time, some needed finesse and some we had to dig out by hand. The tractor auger will sit on top of the clay but if you dig it by hand it will be much faster. We had to dig out five by hand. We have 24 done and ready for posts now. On Sunday we will fill the pickup with gravel and set as many posts as we can. I set all wooden posts with gravel now. They stay in place better and it cuts down on the weeds growing around them. Which makes it less likely for me to burn up the wooden post.

Hoss stated that yesterday he got stung 4-5 times by the yellow jackets in one particular place. The blackberry bushes were right up next to the fence location. He gave up. Today I took the tractor in there and shoved the bushes back five feet and knocked down the weeds. I did not get stung a single time. I think he was exuding fear.

We came back to the house to look at the hay mower. It needs more than a couple of bolts. I need to tear apart the cylinder, find the correct bolts, remove the broken bolts from the welded in place nuts straighten the blade arms and put it all back together. This is going to take a couple of days. I will need more tools.

Once I realized it was going to take more than a couple of hours we moved onto the next project. I decided to finally move the panels in the bull enclosure so that any animal can take itself to water. We had a trough initially and it worked for the horses but the sheep we had to water separately in buckets. So we moved a panel out into the channel and added two more. They were very hard to get unpinned and moved. The fence is incredibly strong. I will need to add in a gravel pathway so the animals do not sink into mud when getting a drink. I had 20 more yards of gravel delivered last week. I knew we would need it for the fence posts and the skinning pole. I will need at least five yards just to fill in under the skinning pole. I am looking forward to not having to work in the mud when skinning an animal.

We moved the horse trough down to chicken coop. I want to level a spot under the eaves of the old house so that the rain helps keep it filled and then I want to get goldfish! I think they can survive the winter. They are cheap and I miss having fish.

Zeke, our herding border collie, keeps getting out of the front yard. I was certain that he was jumping over one of our gates. He got out again today and ran into the upper fields to harass the wildlife. So I added new slats to the gate to make it too tall for him to leap. I then ran to the store for a quick errand knowing he was secure. When I got home he was outside the fence again. I have no clue how he is doing it. I am going to have to install our game camera up onto the trash can to watch the front fence and see where he is getting out. I suspect he is going over it I am just not sure where. Take my advice, do not teach your herding dog to get over, under, through every fence when herding because you are just creating a containment nightmare for yourself. Until we figure it out he goes on the overhead run now whenever we are not home.

We also installed some metal equipment rims in the old oak tree spot down at my Mother-in-laws today. I am not sure how it will be received so I am holding off on pictures until later.

After a solid 8 hours it was time to call it a day. I sat out in the rocking chair, drank some water and ate Sorbet! It was very good and incredible after a hot day. It was 90 degrees today. Our back creek is still running which is amazing. I suspect it to end by August.

The sheep are popping babies out everywhere. We had three sets of twins and at least one single born today. I called Annmarie and she said it was time. I thought they were all due in August. This means next week we have to get the barn functional so we can sort off the market animals and the new babies. The babies will need to be tagged and banded. We also need to track their mother and birth date! Since I could not get close today I will take out the binoculars tomorrow and I should be able to get tag numbers and quantities born. I will even use our new tracking software!

Supposed to get something done

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It was a holiday weekend so I had an extra day off. I had all these plans on accomplishing tons of things, this did not happen. I did get some stuff done but not as much as I envisioned. I also ended up with a couple of surprises. Sometimes the surprises are not pleasant and this weekend was no exception to that rule. I spent Thursday and Friday finishing digging out the barn. Hoss went to play in the mountains for the holiday so I finished digging out the barn the first day and then spent the next day moving piles of straw and sheep manure onto our compost pile. We have two piles and the old pile is almost ready to be distributed as soil. It takes 2-3 years to break down the straw and manure into a usable substance.

Meathead came out and sheared the dogs. Annmarie asked her to use a longer blade and she did not want to shear their tails. She is opposed to them having rat tales. It is easier to keep the cheat grass out of their hides with a shorter coat.

We went out and covered one of the plum trees on Saturday. It is loaded and the bats are out at night and Annmarie is hoping this will keep the bird and bats away from the fruit. We looked at the other trees but they do not have very much fruit on them. I will need to shape the trees this winter and we are going to shorten the tree skirting. We are talking about putting the two bully alpacas out with the three sold eating cows. This way we only have to skirt the trees for the sheep and not alpacas or horses.

We have a lot of thistles in the orchard so I am going to push the entire sheep herd into the orchard for a few days to eat the entire field down, then I will work on killing thistles again.

I got the post hole auger installed on the tractor Saturday and had plans to dig all the post holes on Sunday. Unfortunately I decided that I needed to weed eat the front driveway as the cheat grass and weeds were getting out of control. I moved the pickup back out of the driveway as it was covering weeds. I left my car in place and Annmarie was at church. On one of my trips to the pickup for weed eater fuel I noticed that my car window was busted out! Now mind you I had goggles and hearing protection on but the rocks getting kicked up from the weed eater were pelting me and they hurt. It did not occur to me that I would blow out a window on my car while trying to make the driveway neater. This sucks and now I have to get it replaced.

I did finally get on the tractor and go out and start trying to drill holes in the ground. The first five holes I only managed to get about 2-4 inches down. I did not have a bucket but will bring one up and start filling the holes with water. I will need to do that for a few days to soften up the dirt. Once I got down into the bottom fields the soil was actually muddy once I got six inches below the surface. This would explain the weed jungle that I have in the upper field. It is so bad I cannot even mow it. I have the tractor bucket fully raised at 8 feet and the weeds are still taller. The plan is to get the fence up around this field and to push the sheep up in the morning and bring them in at night. Our hope is the sheep can tear it up and thin it out so I can get the mower through it. There is still a muddy area in the middle of the field that I cannot drive the tractor through. Our hope is the sheep will knock it down enough I can get the tractor in to see the wet areas and dig a few ditches to let it drain better. I got 9 holes completed and five started, only 12 more to go.

On the way back to the house I noticed our three feeder cows out of their fence. The gate had not been latched correctly and they got out. I had to move gates around and get them pushed back into their pasture. The gate is latched correctly now.

My hope is that Hoss and I can get some fencing done this week, time will tell.

Weed patch fence started

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Hoss came out yesterday and we started to distribute fencing supplies throughout the upper two pastures. The first trip was spent spreading out the newly purchased wooden posts and panels. I had a total of 42 posts and crossbeam and we used up every one. I should have purchased 10 more. I don’t like to finish a project without having leftover supplies. It never fails that I need more and now I will not have it.

The second trip we loaded up 4 gates and 200 T-posts and all the wooden stays I had left onto the trailer. I managed to slide a T-post onto Hoss’s foot when I was standing on the large pile tossing them to the edge so he could load them onto the trailer. I did apologize, but I suspect it will leave a mark. We started dropping off posts and marking out T-post and wooden stay locations. I like to put T-posts every 8′ and a wooden stay between them at 4′ it makes for a very tight fence. We staked out some string and painted marks on the dirt while measuring with a tape. I ended up having to go get the tractor to knock down some more weeds along the bank. We had a small pile of supplies left but we still had a small section of fence to lay out so I just said to leave it and we will use it later.

Hoss had to leave by 1500 on Sunday so I packed up the fencing and came back to the house. I had been wanting to get out to our driveway entrance and weed eat and clean up our Steel Wheel fence. I drove the pickup out with the weed eater and cleaned up the entrance then got down on my hands and knees and pulled all the plants away from the fence line. It looks great! I am very happy and enjoy the sight when I am leaving for work and coming home.

I just need to get two colors of wood stain and work on the wooden century sign now. You cannot see the lettering without the contrast. I think I can get a sanding tip for my battery powered multi tool and clean it up in place and stain it in place.

The sheep wanted to go wander this morning when I went out to open the gate. Last night I had not used the dogs to push them into the barn lot so they were very reluctant to go in. I had to walk back and forth and holler at them. I was not able to get them into the barn lot as I had lost patience. Annmarie was sure they would sneak through the fence at the creek crossing last night. The fence is up on a piece of drift wood and they would hardly have to duck to just walk through it but they stayed in place. Which is why I had to go out and open the gate this morning, I didn’t push them down into the ram pasture. They look great! We will be sorting them later this month and keeping four to kill, for three different customers. It is July 1, 2019 and the back creek is still running. It is composed entirely of snow melt from the mountains and tends to be dry about this time normally. If it goes until August 1 that will be the longest we have ever seen it run since we have moved back.

It rained again this evening and dropped another 8/100″. I would like to see it drop another 1/4″ this week but the wheat farmers are not saying that. I did manage to get drawn for another buck tag this year so I will be shooting anything with horns again this year. Hopefully this time it won’t take me three days to figure out that the little deer really does have horns. Annmarie is riding with the Pendleton Round-up mounted band. This meant I had to take care of her cowboy boots. She tells me its been 10 years since I put any kind of treatment on her boots. I must need to give them a quick pass every couple of years. On a weird side note, we looked up mounted bands on the internet. This band is the only one in the country! So bizarre, we had no idea. Most of the people are just regular folks having a good time around horses that don’t care if they play instruments.

Weather not cooperating

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Star, our very distinct Dexter cow (she has a white tail), had her first baby and it’s still alive. I drove up the paved road by the schoolhouse and saw her with her baby. We had not seen the baby for a few days and were wondering if it had made it. It is the first brown spot standing to the left of her in the picture. Honestly, its there. It rained on Wednesday so no haying for me. This was good as I had other things to catch up on. Our front yard is getting hip high. Its the best looking grass field on the place.

Tex came out today, he is officially done with school for the summer so I will be loading him up. I had a hankering for Pasta Carbonara for breakfast today. One of my favorite Medics use to make it when he would float up to our Lifeflight base. He used to say it had all the breakfast food you needed, a meat, eggs, cheese, and a carbohydrate, the perfect one dish meal. So I had it ready to go at 0700 sharp. Tex ate about half and I told him that was great as we would be eating the same thing for lunch! He was not opposed to this concept. At lunch when Annmarie was critiquing my breakfast options I chimed in and said Tex would love it if I served pizza for breakfast. He emphatically cheered that idea as good enough to do one morning.

He worked on getting the slash pile next to the house built up and the pine trees I cut down two years ago cut up. I worked on trying to get a weed eater to work so that our daughter could start in on our jungle of a yard. I finally managed to get one started after 30 minutes and another YouTube video. I then had to swap out the head for one my progeny could use without instructions. She ended up weed eating for 5 hours and only has about 10 left, it builds character. After we got the first slash pile created we went out into the orchard and patched a wash out near the fence that the flooding created. One of the sheep had slipped out and spent five days hollering for its mom. It was old enough to wean so I ignored it. Today while we were working in the orchard the sheep ran out onto the back hillside. They were tired of the confined orchard. We cleaned up and readied a second slash pile in the orchard. We would have torched them today but the wind was blowing pretty hard and I did not want the flames and heat going near the live trees.

Near lunch time I was giving direction to the child when she reached over and started trying to pet my beard on the right side. She muttered something about my beard being messy but I ignored it. After lunch we went out and started back in on that section of fence we have been at for a month. We had to hand dig three holes and then set three wooden posts. This doesn’t sound horrible except we use a metal breaker bar as a gravel tamper so it gets mighty heavy before the post gets set. Once done that post is solid and not moving. I picked up some near brand new 4′ woven Red Brand wire from the scrap yard. It was perfect and allowed us to use it only and no smooth wire installation was required.

I thought I had the gate opening distance correct but Tex had to keep redoing it. We finally had to start over and add two wooden posts to the outside of the rock crib. It doesn’t make for a very aesthetically pleasing look but its very functional and the gate will now open far enough for me to pull a trailer through. The creek crossing has been removed. It was the hardest to take down in a runoff situation and will make it much safer for me.

We ran the fence over a rock bluff so I ended up having to build an old fashioned rock crib. I have just a few old wooden posts hangin around. They are all cedar and I trimmed or split them to get them to fit the new rock crib. I also pushed a couple of very large rocks over so that the animals cannot push on the bottom of the fence forcing the fence up and sideways.

The lovely hay grass field you see in the foreground of the below picture is really our front lawn. It seriously needs to be mowed. The weather looks not very good so here’s to hoping it does not rain tonight.

When I came in for the night Annmarie started chiding me about taking a shower immediately. Not because I was dirty but because I had a rooster tail in my beard. I held out for another 15 minutes before heading to the bathroom. This was my first visit of the day, as the entire great outdoors was my urinal all day long. Holy smokes! I had this huge sticky out rooster tail on one side only of my beard. I had it all day long. Guess how many times TEX commented on my lack of grooming skills? None, Nada, Nothing all day long!!!

Three more projects

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We got back from California last week and I proceeded to dig back into the farm on Sunday. Tex watched our animals while we were gone and everyone survived. I decided I needed to try and finish up the short stretch of fence we have been at for a month. I finished filling the rock crib on the left and topped off the other one that Tex had filled. I then went up and started to dig a hole for the middle support railroad tie. The ground is pretty much fist sized rocks the entire way down. I managed to get about 1.5 feet down and decided to call it a day as I had enough dealing with rocks. I swapped out the box blade on the tractor and hooked up the mower. I wanted to try and get the property out by the cars mowed down. I also figured I could mow a path for the new fence that needs to go in down by the creek. My grant is approved so now I just need to get cracking on the new fence. The first step is to use string and spray paint to mark out the fence. Once that is done we can start pounding T posts into the ground, after I buy them. The paint will give me an accurate count so i don’t over purchase.

While I was down by the school house I realized I needed to get the irrigation water back into the ditch. It had been flood irrigating the lower bottom but I need to get in there and cut for hay. To do this without sinking the tractor I need the bottoms to dry out some. So I dug out the ditch and got all the water flowing down the ditch again. I should be able to cut hay by the end of the week. Since I managed to forget my hat in California I had to be super careful of the sun. I ended up with a lobster skull for several days and didn’t want to make it worse. So I had lots of protective gear. If I wear all this getup I can spend all day out in the 100F beating down sun and not get burned.

“Star” our white tailed cow, had her baby on Sunday. I know this as the baby was still wet and sitting up when I went by her and mom on the tractor. They looked good. Most likely Star will hide the baby for the next couple of weeks and we won’t spot it. If we don’t see it in another week I will go down and look for it. At that point I will just be trying to confirm it died. Hopefully she is just hiding it from prying eyes.

The cows are no different than the sheep, one adult female becomes the babysitter and is responsible for corralling and entertaining all of the babies. I have yet to figure out how they choose whose turn it is today or this week to watch the babies but it is better to avoid this appointment. There are enough babies now that that appointee has to actually work.

The holiday afforded me the time to get all of my outside mowing completed. I will be haying by the end of the week.