fencing

Day 13, I was not much help

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I really wanted to help, as completing the kitchen is the new goal, but I was not very good help today. Mr Experience was not coming out till the afternoon so I had plans to fix the front fence in the slim hope that it would contain Zeke and to drag the barn lot and horse area for poop. I was waiting for it to dry out for just a few days to make this task easier.

Last night it started to poor down rain and did not let up today. So I ended up putting on all my water resistant, as there is no true water proof clothing and proceeded to head out and fix that front fence. Annmarie doesn’t want me adding any boards to impede our view so I ended up install some upright eye bolts in some of the posts and got another strand of wire six inches higher than it was. I hope this is high enough to deter the dog. I also installed inline tighteners and made that wire tight! It is so tight when I came by later this afternoon I heard the wire singing in the wind.

Mr Experience got done early so I took a break and went and picked him up. I finished the front fence and drug the horse poop out of the barn lot with the tractor. It is so messy and muddy. After the poop was gone I dumped some more 3/4 minus gravel to keep the water away from their feet. We dig out their hooves nightly.

It was past lunch time so I went inside to eat and as I am zapping leftovers in the microwave I notice the back creek running! Now this is a bad thing as it means I must go out immediately and move the fence off of the creek crossings. We have had so much rain that the ground simply cannot absorb any more. So I sit down to eat lunch and notice the wet spot on the floor in the living room by the freestanding propane heat stove. I was informed there is a leak in the ceiling! I popped ceiling tiles out until we figured it was leaking around the vent pipe. So now I need to get access to the stove pipe without falling off the roof. I still finished my lunch and went up to the master bedroom. The roof vent is reachable from our window I just need to pop the screen out and lean out the window a few feet. I got some 100% clear silicone caulk and a couple of rags and some tools and Mr Experience. After the porch incident I was not hanging out the window without someone to catch me or hold onto my feet. Turns out I didn’t need any help but I made sure he was right there just in case. I am still dressing my left shin every day and the front of my neck feels like someone throat punched me several times. My back and shoulders don’t even bother me any more. We lit the stove to heat up the caulk in an attempt to get it to dry faster. I will keep the stove going all night.

I went outside finally and started lifting panels off the creek bottom. I hang them in the air. At two crossings I had to dig out the pile of tumbleweeds as they cause dams. I picked up some trash along the creek and down near four corners I found a small old shelter that someone built out of a cardboard box and some remants for a cat. Who does this on someone else’s property? Please don’t throw away your unwanted animals, be they cats, dogs, raccoons, possums, or skunks. We don’t want them either and depending on how they interact with the livestock or chickens they may not live long. I will need another teenager to troll the creek banks and do some cleanup this spring and summer.

On the way back to the house I stopped by the machine shed to drop off two large containers when I heard a noise. I thought it was Bob, our adopted cat we started in the shop. Nope, it was the barn owl!! It was up in the rafters above the hay flitting from one end to the other. It didn’t want to go out in the rain. I left it alone after dropping off the buckets, it was too dark for a picture.

I went through three pair of gloves today trying to keep my hands dry. It didn’t work, they kept getting soaked. I am definitely going to have to dig out the irrigation ditch again soon and install both of the culverts. That needs to happen if it doesn’t freeze in the next two weeks.

I felt so guilty about not helping Mr Experience today that I spent an hour tonight scraping up the floor and prepping it for wonderboard tomorrow. It should not take us long before we start laying board. We will need to move the safe out first! That will be a challenge. Annmarie and I emptied the rain gauge tonight and dumped out 1.9 inches of rain out and it is raining again.

Come on people!

Steve Hardin3 Comments

It never ceases to amaze me how little control we have over life. I know that a large majority of us have the illusion of control and we do pick and choose to some extent, but do we really control our lives? Or do we adapt better than others and handle life’s curveballs with perseverance? Sometimes I truly feel that just gritting your teeth and getting through the day with your head up is a great accomplishment. The farm is a constant reminder that no matter how much we think we have done and how far ahead we have planned that there will always be something unknown lurking around the corner. This week has been a great example of this. We had two more bummer lambs! This is five lambs we have given away this season. This is the most we have bummered out in years. On a positive note, we have not had a single lamb fatality. This is also unusual. We usually have 1-2 deaths that we never know the cause. We attribute them to still births most of the time. Our ram needs to go, he is now picking on the lambs, the problem with this is time. To sort, kill, skin, clean, debone, cut and wrap will take me around 6 hours start to finish by the time I have cleaned up all my tools and put everything away and prepped the materials. Where do I carve out that six hours with Christmas and Annmarie’s birthday coming up in the next four days? I don’t as I still have one more Christmas present to fix (measure twice, cut once for all you woodworkers). This takes precedence as I have been planning this for months.

The real problem is Annmarie is so mad at him that if I put a bullet in his head and drug him up to the boneyard she would be satisfied. He is painful and not safe to be around. He is now ramming the door if she is hiding behind it in an attempt to try and get her. I had to have a slap fest the other day to keep him away from me. I just don’t want to waste the meat but safety is starting to be compromised. I spent two hours before work helping Annmarie sort sheep and getting the ram out of the barn so we could snag the two bummers. The plan is to lay out a day after Christmas and just do it! I said the same thing about a mean rooster we had a few years ago only to come home and realize that it had foolishly decided to attack the woman of the house. He ended up on the bone pile before I got home, problem solved.

Zeke, our older border collie, has suddenly decided that he must get out of the yard again. He is jumping the front fence again. I worked all last night and came home to him greeting me in the driveway. I spent 30 minutes and restrung some electric fence wire that we had used to top our front fence. This was supposed to keep him from leaping up and launching over the top railing. An hour later I am in the pickup driving around trying to find him. I just wanted to go to bed but Annmarie said we needed to find the dog, I was tired and mumbled that “we had two dogs and the smarter one is still home”. Next thing I know I am in the pickup driving all around the outside of the property calling for the dog. I spent an hour looking for him to no effect. It could have been shorter but I forgot my cell phone at home and missed the call where Annmarie told me she had spotted him on the back hillside and had to walk out to get him. Somehow he was unable to “hear” her until he realized she could see him. I did eventually manage to go to bed for a few hours, I was only awake for 20 hours.

We have not had snow yet this year, it is late for us but supposedly we will have a white Christmas. I keep counting the hay bales every time I feed hoping it will be enough. It is going to be super close. I need to buy a little more next year or really I am becoming one of those paranoid farmer types that worry about everything.

I would love to go burn the rest of the upper prime squared field neighbor. I still need a name for the new fields. The far end field will always be known as the “7 acres”, that just leaves the two upper bottom fields. I want to use the name “upper prime squared” for the new pasture on the hillside that still needs to be fenced in. Annmarie only wants the fence for the ram pasture completed and the downstairs floor done. She wants results not talk! LOL. I can talk for hours about the changes I would like to make. Occasionally, I go back several years and read the blog myself just to see what I was thinking and to see the changes. Every once in a while I need to remind myself that we really are making progress. I laugh about some of the plans that I said I was going to complete in the next 1-2 years and five years later I still have not done them.

I have an alarm set in the morning to call the tile place and order the custom grout for the floor tile. It takes two weeks to get here. Unfortunately, I did not put the phone number in my phone and the business has changed locations. I don’t know the location and cannot remember the name of the place. So I have to call the trim place and ask for a referral again. This time I will put the number in my cell phone. I add notes to my contacts, like “does wood trim”, “contractor”, “plumber”, “heating guy”, “wooden fence stays”, “hay” so that when I inevitably forget their name I can do a search in my phone and find out who I need to call. I always recognize the name once I see a list but can never seem to pull it out of thin air.

Fencing will never end

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Here we are again doing that thing that never ends, fencing. Annmarie called me this morning to tell me that two more lambs were getting rejected and I missed a ewe when I put the sheep in last night. I did put them in during the day time and I did look around the barn lot and did not see any strays. She would like to put the sheep into the ram pasture but I have not fixed the upper fence since I cut it this summer to let the cows out. Annmarie thought I would get to it, I never did and now we need it. It sounds like a broken record concept that I seem to never catch onto. One would think that eventually it would occur to me to stay ahead of it. But there always seems to be some other pressing emergency that takes up my time. At least that’s my perception, I suspect my other half might differ on this view!So I came home early and spent four hours outside working on the fence. I had to make a few crucial decisions to speed up the process. I really needed to add four strands of smooth wire but running all that out is going to take a while to do alone. I have not gotten my hitch mounted wire dispenser yet. Its a $100 I have just not spent. I have researched it and know where I can obtain one via the mail as no one sells it locally. This does not currently help me today. So I opted to install woven wire across the top. This solves multiple problems as I only have to tighten the one woven wire and I can roll it out. I threw out 38 wooden stays and rolled out four rolls of wire. I had to cut a little fence out of the way but managed to only get the uphill side tightened and wooden stays in place. I am hopeful that two more four hour sessions will see me get the fence up and tightened. The real time drag is nailing all the wooden stays up and in place. I am just going to wire in the gate in an attempt to get the fence up and in place. I need to replace one of the wooden posts in the spring as I cannot get the hole dug.

Annmarie ended up with two more bummer lambs. They got to come inside, get warm and get a belly full of formula. Tisha came and picked them up this afternoon. We have moved panels around inside the barn to make more room for the mommas but still leave a passage for the rest of the sheep.

I started painting the upper stairway wall to match the lower half. It is really bringing the whole thing together. I still have one more coat to put on the wall. I have a 12 foot roller extension which lets me paint from the ground. It is so much faster than getting up on a ladder.

This year we are going light on Christmas decorations so that we can move right into the floor remodel this January. I am getting excited about getting the hallway, living room and dining room tiled.

I wanted to paint

Steve HardinLeave a comment

This morning as we consumed breakfast, me fried potatoes, onions, Italian sausage covered in cheese with hot sauce over it all while Annmarie ate a homemade smoothie with Greek yogurt, frozen and fresh berries (consistency trick), and a raw farm egg with a single slice of toasted bread, Annmarie mentioned that I should go outside and fence. She specifically wants me to fix the lower fence on our back hillside so we can use the ram pasture. I had only had one cup of coffee and the prospect of going out and battling fence did not sound fun. I used the fact that the fence repair would take me about 25 hours and the weather was most likely going to change before I could get it finished. I instead voted on painting the stairwell. I still need to get the upper stairwell painted the chocolate brown. I continued to nurse my coffee while Annmarie went out to feed the horses, cats and check on the sheep and let them out of the barn. Before I knew it she was back inside telling me I needed to come help as we had new babies and she could not get the mother and babies separated from the herd.

This problem could be fixed if we would just finish off the ram and make summer sausage out of him. He is not safe, Annmarie cannot get in the same area with him as he tries to run her over. So I went out and we moved the sheep around and managed to start letting a few out of the gate at a time. This resulted in the ram being on the same side of the fence as me and nearby. One time he thought about ramming me but decided not to, I kept turning my back on him and Annmarie kept an eye on him while I kept an eye on the momma ewe so we did not accidentally let her out. So as we are sorting the sheep all run down to the creek. There is a dead end that ends in a “V” shape. The sheep were literally squirting under and through the fence. It looked more like a strainer than a fence. Just prior to this Annmarie was grabbing loose strands of wire from the same fence and telling me it needed to be fixed. I blamed the horses as they are the ones who push down the top wire. After we got the momma and twins sorted off (little twin boys, very cute) I capitulated to the fencing needs and told Annmarie I would fix it.

I tightened the fence from both ends, I cut out the lousy metal twist on stays that I put in place years ago when I thought they would work. The horses bend them when they lean on the fence, so do the cows. I now only use tamarack wooden stays, they last a long time and the animals cannot bend them or spread the wires apart. I also fixed the little bridge, placed it on some rocks and cleaned out the creek through this section. Since the sheep know there is a weakness in the fence they will keep testing the fence in this spot. It looked great when I was done but I was afraid with continual pressure they would be able to loosen it up again. So I put in a used 16 foot cow panel and wired it in place, now the sheep cannot get through. I also used a five foot chunk of cow panel to close off the last four feet of the “V” shaped dead end. This way the animals cannot pressure their way out of the fence like cheese whiz coming out of a can. I had to replace a large amount of fence clips as they had been knocked loose from the force of animals hitting the fence. All of this took me a measly five hours.

I had also told Annmarie I would clean up the front hillside from the leftover summer fencing mess. She wanted me to remove it totally. I guaranteed it would be picked up and placed in a neat pile so that I could return later and remove it. This still took me another hour to get it all contained and straightened out.

We are having issue with the feet on one of the horses again. Its the same one that had white line disease and we spent 6 months getting better. The farrier says she has it again and the vet is coming out next week. The area behind the barn is very muddy. I put the straw from the barn there in an attempt to create some soil so I can get grass to grow. Today I made a bare patch down to the ground in an attempt to get the horses out of the much when they go down for water. What I really need to do is dig another channel next to the barn a couple of feet deep and fill it all with gravel and make it go to the front creek so the water runoff won’t sit next to the barn. Maybe I can get that done next year. Every year we try and improve the water runoff in the barn lot.

Today while I was working on the fence my fence stay guy called! I had paid for 500 stays early this summer and had only picked up 200, he wanted me to come pick up the rest. I did this as soon as I finished puttering around with the tractor. The bad part about this is I discovered an antifreeze coolant leak in the pickup. I think it is coming off of the radiator but I cannot see the leak only the results. Its not horrible yet but as soon as my car gets out of the body shop. The pickup needs to go to the shop. Tonight just before dinner Annmarie tried to toast some pumpkin seeds in the oven. I had made homemade pumpkin soup last night and cleaned all the seeds so she could roast them. They started popping in the oven! They were splitting open and bouncing all over the oven. We had to keep the door closed as the oven cooled down so we did not end up with seeds every where. Once we tried again after dinner they did just fine, they must of had quite a bit of moisture trapped inside of them. They still taste very good.

Burn day, commonly known as fence fire day

Steve Hardin2 Comments

It was another one of those days, where I thought I was going to move forward all day long. Alas there were a few bumps along the way, there usually are on the farm. I would like to think that after 9 years I would have this down and some things would be routine but that is just not the case. For example, how hard can it be to light some weeds on fire? Seems pretty straightforward but something always comes up. I really wanted to burn the upper field but it keeps raining and with all those weeds and gaps between areas I need it to be tinder dry when I torch it and the rain is just frequent enough to stop this plan. Its not like there is nothing else to do so I opted to burn the weeds alongside the driveway.

Cattle guard, right side

I started at the far end of the driveway near the road. It had some good thick piles and everyone that drives by won’t be disturbed by 10 foot tall flames in the middle of the day. Most of the road traffic is in the early morning and evening as people travel to and fro work.

I had put a pitchfork in the back of the pickup but to pitchfork it all away from all the fence would take me a couple of weeks. The tumbleweeds are bad this year. So I opted for expediency and just lit the weeds off while they were in the fence. This has caused me some heart ache in the past with burnt up fence posts. It’s always the old frayed railroad ties that catch on fire. They always catch on fire in the middle of the post and it is near impossible to put them out. I was determined to not let this happen this year so I tried to burn around the posts and then tried burning up to the posts in an attempt to keep the heat down near the posts. Several posts caught on fire but then went out in the wind. Cattle guard, left side

There is a long driveway and both sides needed to be burned. It took several hours to get to the end of the driveway. Once I got down near Donna’s house I burned a small stretch of fence line behind her house and continued on down to the corner and around up to the fencing supplies. I decided to stop as the next stretch of fence was piled high with weeds and our nephew’s camp trailer was only about four feet from the fence line. This would not have gone over well with the camp trailer. It would have made for an impressive fire. Driveway towed the houses

The tumbleweeds were bad this year, our driveway fence is starting to lean on both sides. The wind pushes on the weeds and bends the T posts. When the ground firms up I will need to go along and straighten all the posts.

While I was burning my mother-in-law stopped to ensure that I would go feed the cows. We have this discussion on a regular basis as I think they can always go another 1-2 days, especially with this weather we are having. I agreed that I would go feed them that evening. So there was a small fire burning on the hillside when I went to feed the cows. I brought the dogs as the cows really will mug me when I try and get the feeder pulled around the big bale. The cows think that the sound of the tractor means mealtime so they always come running. Mouse is much sneakier than Zeke he likes to lay flat and silent and then leap up and into the cows. So instead of following the tractor I looked over and Mouse had decided the cows were too close to the tractor as we were driving to the far end of the field. He tried to jump on the calf! Why go for a big defensive animal when you can pick on the helpless baby? Momma was coming to its defense even as I was hollering at him to back off. I got the hay all packaged up and surrounded by the feeder and we left the cows to eat. They only had a little hay left in the feeder. They maybe could of gone another day but it was time to feed. Now this is not always the case! If I feed them too early they just waste the hay and try and eat only the choice parts of the alfalfa.

It was just starting to get dark so I decided to just look down the driveway and spotted this column of flames near the road. I tooled on down in my tractor to find one of the old railroad ties next to the cattle guard on fire. This thing had sat dormant for over 2 hours before taking off. I had to go back to the house and get some water as the fire was inside the post. This needs water to take the heat out of the post or the fire will just reignite. I want back home and grabbed my gallon plant water jugs and filled them up with water. While I was doing that my phone rang and the neighbors were being helpful and everyone that drove by was calling my Mother-in-Law to let her know that a post was on fire out by the road. As I started driving down to the fire beacon to put it out I saw Donna drive up to the inferno and spray a cloud of white stuff on the post. The fire went out but by the time she drove off and I arrived it had already started back up. I poured a gallon of water on top of the railroad tie and it all went into the middle of the tie and dribbled throughout the cracks and crevices. After four gallons I managed to get the fire out and most of the heat so it would not reignite. I stank of smoke and was covered in soot so I opted to call it a day and go inside and shower. I was in my pajamas when Sarah called me to tell me that another post was on fire! I put my coat and rubber boots over my pjs and filled up my four gallons of water and head out into the rain to put out another post. It was raining at this time but not hard enough to put out my wooden post fires. This one was in a rock crib right behind Donna’s house and was easy to get out. This would have caused me problems as I would have had to rebuild the entire rock crib.

I have decided that I need a new plan when it comes to burning weeds in the fence lines. I need to pitchfork out and around all railroad ties before burning the weeds. This will be a bunch of extra work but anything that can prevent me from replacing wooden posts every time I burn is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong, I think the cattle guard needed large 8 inch steel pipes next to it to make the fence and cattle guard look good but I could have waited another 1-2 years.

The new chickens appeared to be getting smarter. After having to put 5 of 10 into the coop every night the last two nights they all made it back inside on their own. I was ready to declare victory until I went out tonight. There huddled outside were another five chickens, not even the same five that I had put in previously. To top it all off I have 25 chickens and I am only getting 3-5 eggs/day now. I keep thinking they will start laying but it has not happened yet.