fencing

If only it were easy

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I really want to get the bull enclosure finished but it is turning out to not be an easy project. My choice of locations is making it difficult. There is a hidden solid rock bluff just under the dirt on this hillside. This is good as the soil never really grows anything but bad when you talk about actually trying to drill a hole in the ground. Sarah came out to help me and she proved valuable. Its funny, I am not sure if I will ever outgrow riding my child verbally to work faster and hit harder even though she is an adult. I did the same thing when she was a child. It went well and she kept calling dibs on moving the tractor so I was hoofing it around the barn lot. I am trying to reuse some of the old cedar posts that have been on the farm 50+ years. I don’t want to put a railroad tie into every hole as there are over 50 holes and a railroad tie is $20/each nowadays. We are not certain the bull wont push over the posts so it is a guessing game. I am going to create solid corners and then anchor the two posts next to the corner on either side together with an overhead wooden support. This should keep the bull from tearing up the corners. I have put in one rock crib on every stretch and may have to put in two to keep him from pushing the fence outwards. We will see how it goes as we actually start building the fence. We are still just drilling holes and have managed to get 9 posts set in gravel and 6 more dropped in holes. I set all my wooden posts in gravel now. They stiffen up much nicer and I am hoping that they last longer, time will tell.

This corner arrangement will have a triangle shaped rock crib between these posts. The posts are 8 feet apart and my lovely wife tells me that is 32 Sqft. It will be four feet high so I am betting it will take about four hours just to fill this single corner up with rocks. I have five cribs so far that will take at least 16 hours just to collect rocks off the hillside and fill them up. On the plus side it does help cut down on the rocks on the hillside but since we are pretty sure rocks grow there it is an ongoing battle.

I had better luck digging some of the holes by hand. I could manipulate the smaller hand tool to get through the clay faster. I may even need to take a metal file to the teeth of the auger on my tractor. I can knock off the burrs and sharpen the auger teeth, the problem is if I do this it will dig faster but every time I hit a rock I will cringe even more than I do now and I hit a lot of rocks when digging holes!

This week I was looking out the kitchen window and realized that it just looked weird. The light was very dull and the ground was a very unnatural color. I ran out the front door with my cell phone and took the above purple blue tinged picture from the front porch. I wanted one without the power lines so I walked across the bridge and stood on my trailer. This took maybe a minute, what a difference that minute made in the view. Five minutes later this was all gone. It was an amazingly beautiful sight and one of my favorite pictures from the farm.

Holes and more holes

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Its fathers day today so i did what any father would do and worked all day on the farm. I wanted to see if I could get all the holes for the bull enclosure done today. It was a solid attempt but it did not happen. I have about 20 holes completed and another 10 about 2/3 done and only about three just started. I have one corner that I just cannot get to drill. I very well may have to form a rock crib between the three posts near the corner. I already think I will have to do this on two other corners also. This means I am up to five rock cribs already. That is a lot of rock to have to carry in the tractor. I hate carrrying rock, it is inherently heavy! I realize that this may seem obvious, but until you have done it for five plus hours it is not obvious. I dug holes until Sarah called me into the house for my Father’s Day presents. I ate lunch while we planned out the rest of the week. She is going to come out and help me put posts into the ground starting tomorrow. I have been looking around at what to use for posts. I only have about 15 railroad ties on the farm, but I have a whole pile of old heavy duty cedar posts left over from the farm. I am going to use those not on the corners and high stress points on the fence. I think I will be able to get all the posts into the ground without having to buy any new ones. I have all the 2×6 boards and just need to get some cow panels and woven fencing. I even think I have about 12-15 cow panels over in the pile so I may have enough of those to cover the metal panels. It is all starting to come together. Getting those posts in the ground and set is the single biggest hurdle I need to overcome. After that things will start to just fall into place.

The stupid sheep got out today. Remember I let them out onto the back hillside yesterday? Well I did not go up and drop the fence panels over the back creek as there is no more running water. They climbed out through the creek. I took the border collies out and Mouse wanted to chase the sheep and Zeke ran off to the right after I told him to circle around and had to pee on three bushes. I almost lost my voice again before I had the sheep back in. I might complain about them but I had the sheep back in the correct field in under ten minutes with me having to holler at both dogs. Mouse just wants to work, Zeke wants to screw off and chase rodents. I want to leave the sheep on the back hillside until they have it eaten down. I will need to check for water in the upper prime pasture tomorrow. We have a few cows locked in there and eventually that water supply will disappear.

I tried to get my disc set put and going and the second set broke off. I need to get a new plate welded onto it. I had to break two bolts to get it apart and managed to get one set up to the field. I threw on a few hundred pounds of weight to get it to dig into the ground. I am hoping Mr Consumer can drag it around the field tomorrow. This is a stupid problem and one that my welding class is going to fix this fall, but that does not help me currently.

Drilling for oil

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I wasn’t done mowing but I had the highlights done and that bull enclosure is not building itself. Saturday Mr Consumer came out to help me. I had not gotten the tractor from out of the field yet so I had him mow the yard while I went to get the tractor. This worked out well as he managed to mow the entire lawn while I got the tractor and got it refueled. We hooked on the auger. I keep tying to teach him how to hook the pto drive on and off but he is not getting it. He hasn’t managed to successfully get it on or off yet. I started to drill holes and had him go get the post hole digger and a shovel. He came back with two T post drivers and a shovel… I gave more descriptive instructions as to what a post hole digger looked like. He came back with one the second time. I had him dig out the holes and then fill them with water from the front creek. The ground is too hard and I could not dig the holes down to as far as needed. I was hoping that after the water soaked in I would be able to get down the three feet. If not then I will have to build more rock cribs and I really don’t want to do that.

At 1130 Mr Consumer tells me he has to go. He actually had to tap my leg as I had closed my eyes and was resting while digging a hole. The tractor movement is like an adult bouncy chair. It will lull you right into a calm sleepy state. It was taking 20 minutes to get one hole into the ground. I continued to drill holes. I marked out the entire area with paint and attempted to get every hole started. I had about 10 holes left to start when I was done. I filled all the incomplete holes, all but the five I actually managed to finish, with water. My hope was on Sunday I could finish.

Gizmo has a hole in the yard. I am unsure where it is currently as I have plugged three already this weekend. He keeps coming out into the barn lot and hanging out with me. He wanders around then just lays down and watches me. At this rate I may be able to teach him how to herd sheep. The barn lot is pretty much dead and no grass left. The horses are not happy. I had to let the sheep out onto the back hillside but the horses are stuck to the barn lot. I am feeding them hay again.

Playing catch up

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Friday was catch up day for me. I keep trying to get outside after work during the week but it never seems to get me any where. I really need to work on the bull enclosure but our weeds are getting out of control.

So I spent the day mowing. I mowed the small field down by my mother-in-laws house then went around the property out on the road and up past the school house. We have a gate into the property at the top of the hill. I broke the tightener handle and had a heck of a time getting the gate shut. Sooner than later I am going to need to install a metal gate at that entrance. I have been thinking about gates. I have several small ones and multiple odd sizes laying around. I think I am going to start hanging two gates of various sizes across openings so that I don’t have to go buy new gates. Recycle and reuse is my motto when it comes to fencing.

I still need to put in both those culverts in the lower field. I can barely get across the ditch with the mower on the tractor. It’s a whole lot of boring. Just sitting on the tractor going around and around. I made it till 1630 when the engine light came on signaling it was too hot. I had cleaned off the intake once already. When you get into the dry grass and cheatgrass it clogs up things fast. So I took the engine key and propped up the hood to let things cool off. It was a sign of quitting time!

I found a couple of low spots where the water was coming over the side of the ditch out into the field. I dug out two of those spots to promote these outlets. I really need to take a tarp and some boards down and see if I cannot get the entire ditch to flood out and then just move it a couple of times a week.

The back creek is now dry behind our house. But when you go down by the school house it runs for a few hundred yards above ground before disappearing again.

The baby calf was with his momma and very active. The cows like the tractor as it always brings food so they always come see me when I drive it out into the field.

Sorting sheep

Steve Hardin1 Comment

The sorted ewes waiting for us to be done. Today was sort sheep day and our daughter came out to help. The day started out good, coffee and breakfast with the wife. It went downhill after that. I took the dogs to go out and get the sheep. They had squeezed through the gap in the upper prime pasture and were in with the cows. The trouble with this is even on the way out to the sheep the dogs did not want to listen. It went downhill from there. I had no voice by the time I got the sheep into the barn lot. No one would listen, each dog thought he knew best and chose to just ignore me. We had to choke down the dogs several times as dominance was the issue. It was excruciating to be around, probably the worst day in the last year. Usually when one dog is off its game the other will work but today neither one wanted to step up to the plate and play ball. Annmarie and Sarah got the sheep into the barn and started to sort them. I really felt like a third wheel as there was not really anything for me to do. I did end up catching a boy that got into the girls and a girl that got sorted into the boys.

The boys waiting to go to the orchard. They will be the companions for the new ram we are getting on Saturday. We are going to keep the ram off of the herd for at least a month.

Our chute system is so nice! It was expensive but in all reality it is super efficient with two people but one person could do it. We sorted 101 sheep in an hour using the chute system. We even managed to snag the new baby and it was a girl so I only had to put a tag into its ear. We have had around 400 lambs born on the farm since we have moved here. I just keep ordering higher number tags so we can keep a running tally.

Annmarie took these pictures while they were sorting the sheep and I love how they turned out! I had to add them to the blog. Sarah did a great job helping us today.

After the whethers got moved to the orchard, this involved the two noncompliant dogs and a lot of yelling and swearing. I went out to mow some more grass and weeds.

I had not been to the upper pastures for the last two weeks. The weather and rain has been good for the weeds! Some of the weeds are over 6 feet high and very thick. I tried to mow next to the channel I dug in the upper prime squared pasture but I was just guessing where the channel was. I was doing pretty good until I got to the part where I had dug in a side channel. I tipped the tractor onto its side and had to stop it from rolling with the front bucket, which caused the water to dam up. I had to walk back to the house and get Annmarie and the pickup. I gave directions to her while she drove through the field that she cannot tell where the ditch or fence or anything is located. She did not like this. I chained up to the back of the tractor and ran the chain over the top of the mower so when she pulled my back upper wheel was pulled down into the dirt. This took three tries to let me get the bucket and the mower rearranged after each attempt until she pulled me out. She was a little hesitant to drive out but I assured her that if she went in a straight line back to the gate she would be okay. She made it without any difficulties. I kept mowing for another 3 hours. I have a good 8 hours more of mowing to do to get all the weeds knocked down. After two weeks I will then spray the fields and kill all the weeds and grass that are growing. After that I will hit it with the discs again.

Annmarie texted me that dinner was ready so I started to make my way back to the house. Just along the fence by where we store the fencing and gate supplies the weed were growing well. I thought I would get in there with the tractor and clean it up. Now I was unable to burn this this year as my nephew did not move his trailer and I didn’t want to burn with it that close to the fence so there are still a lot of dead tumbleweeds alongside the fence. I didn’t know I was in trouble until the tractor slid down the embankment and into the fence. The mower is caught behind the wooden fence post and I cannot get out again! I am going to have to go out, disconnect the mower and cut the fence in half so I can just drive the tractor out. I am pushing on the wire almost a foot now I just cannot get it out. So now I will need to fix the fence directly after retrieving the tractor so the alpaca don’t get out. If its any consolation dinner was excellent.