fencing

Fencing again

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The weekend was another one of those catch up ones. We ended up doing the things that had been put off but still needed to be done for various reasons. These weekends don’t feel as productive to me but they have to be done.

The Apprentice came out early Saturday and we prepped for fencing. This meant greasing the John Deere. This was a job I thought she might know how to do. The Apprentice assured me she had driven a large tractor before, a huge tractor. Yes, she had driven it but had not ever greased the fittings before. We ended up with grease on some things that were not fittings, but together we managed to get it done. We ended up laying out T posts and wooden stays all round field #1. We ran out of wooden stays! So I ended up splitting some of our own from the old cedar posts I had kept on the farm. I was able to get three stays from every post. I ended up breaking two shingle hammers doing it. I need to use the hand axe instead to get a weightier hit when splitting the post. I think I have enough posts left to split at least another 100 stays. After that I will have to buy some more. I always forget that the prep work for the fence is about half the install time. It takes a lot of time to measure and toss out all of the needed items. Doing this makes the fence go up a lot faster when the actual build begins. We even drove in some T posts by hand. This was not a job that the Apprentice does well. But she killed it when it came time to digging out the barn. Different muscles were used in each action. The post pounding muscles need a lot more work.

We spent most of Sunday out in the orchard. We had to pick the nectarines but they were not quite ripe. There was a huge storm coming into California and was supposed to bring potential flood levels of rain. The branches were already breaking on the nectarine tree so I figured it would be prudent to pick them now before the rain and storm ruined them. We tossed all of the tiny ones and any that had been eaten by earwigs over the fence for the cows and sheep to eat. We tossed out a lot of fruit and still ended up taking about 60# into the house and spreading it all over the dining room table to ripen over the next 1-2 weeks. I filled the entire table and was glad we fed the marginal stuff to the animals.

I even ended up going over to our Italian plum tree and tossing about 20# of fruit from the lower part of the tree over to the animals also. The branches were bending under the weight of all of the fruit. The pastures are getting pretty dry, we are a desert climate so I opened up the orchard for the cows and sheep after the Apprentice and I moved T posts and fencing wrap around all of the trees and raised it up back to it’s original high level. The cows still came in and reached up and ate all of the leaves, fruit and small branches they could reach. This has raised the branch level up significantly on all of the trees. There are still more Italian plums than we can safely eat left on the tree. This does not include the little yellow plums up in field #4 that should be ripe around the same time. The Asian pears are still not ripe yet and the fruit is very small this year. I will probably need to thin them harder next year to get a bigger pear.

The last half of Sunday was spent pounding posts into the ground. We even hooked up the post hole auger and switched out the 12” auger for the 6” auger. It was supposed to rain and I figured if I could get the 6” hole completed then the 12” auger should just follow the hole and tear it up. It just sits on the top of the dirt when it is super dry so following a hole should make it easy. We also put on the Texas T-post driving tool and filled the tractor bucket with gravel and 150# of steel tractor weights. We did manage to get some of the T-posts pounded in with the tractor. We also bent several of the posts in an attempt to use the tractor to pound them in. The heavier T posts make using the tractor doable.

Barn dig out happening

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I happened to have Tuesday off this week so I spent it fencing! I need to dig some fence post holes but the dead of summer is the wrong time for this to happen. I pulled on the broken railroad tie and fenced over the gate opening. I drove in T posts on either side of the railroad tie and wired it to them. Then I was able to drive in three T posts over the opening. I stretched out fence and tightened it all down. I am now about half way down the fence alongside the wheat field. I am going to continue the fence repair along the road next. This means I will only need to install one new section of fence along the creek side. I need the animals to get into field #1 to eat, half the field is still green due to subterranean water. I need about three days with a helper to get this done. Alone takes about 125% more time. Some things just take longer alone.

Thursday, Mr Flow came out for a couple of hours and dug out the chicken coop. I went and bought more wood pellets to put in there. I use the deep litter method and only dig it out once a year. The wood pellets work great to absorb moisture and keep the smell down. I get the cheapest kind they have, made here in Reith.

The plan on Friday was for him to come out and help me shear the last three alpaca. Nope, he got sick and called off around starting time. I cannot shear the alpaca alone, it takes at least two people and when they are not cooperating that is a hard two. I decided that I might as well start in on digging out the barn as it needed to be done also. It took a couple of hours to tear apart all of the panels and drag them outside. I have to leave one section as it is permanently attached to the wall. The sheep kept jumping over two gates so I created permanent panels to stop that and they cannot be removed.

I managed to get the manure forks installed on the John Deere tractor bucket and started digging out the barn. The tractor is small enough to get in and out of the barn. After two days of digging it out I am about 60% completed and I have only been at it about 7 hours so far. Yesterday, the tractor overtemp light came on. I ended up having to blow down the entire tractor, clean out the radiator and I even took out the air filter and cleaned it out. The tractor has two air filters, one inside the other and the inner was clean. Once I had it all cleaned out and filled with fuel I was able to go right back to digging out the barn. I have it dug out far enough I have to use the pitchfork and shovel out the edges and near the feeders. I just toss it into the middle and scoop it up with the tractor. For some reason I did not use a hat, just a do rag on my head and by that evening I had a lot of sun on my face! The horse has been bugging me while I am doing this so I took the time to give her a total brush down and brushed out her mane and tail. She just stands there and lets me do it.

Annmarie sent me a link from someone who wants to work before going to college. So far, in two days I have not been able to connect or get a commitment. I am hopeful I can as I would like them to help me with the alpaca. I am hopeful they will reach out on Sunday. She also sent me some information on old equipment for sale, yard ornament type. The exact same manure spreader that I already have two of was for sale! I called and got the third one! I will now have enough parts to get one going for sure. I had to back the trailer up to it, toss down the ramps and come a long it into the back of the trailer. It took about 30 minutes to get it onto the trailer. I will pick it off with the tractor forks. It will be a lot easier that way! She had an old 10’ hay rake but honestly it makes the piles too big for my baler and I am looking at putting less money into the farm not more.

One of the staff at the hospital had asked if her son’s could come out and shoot at the coyotes. I totally agreed to that. They have been out several times in the last week without coyote success. They are working on the pigeon problem. We had none this spring and now have about ten. They multiply rapidly if not kept in check. We are starting to have problems with ring neck doves again also. They are pushing out the native doves. One of the boys, now called Mr Hornet Tamer, has been walking all over the property scouting coyotes. He has found their crossing points and two old dens so far. Unfortunately for him, he also found the hornets living in one of the gates. The gates are metal tubes and the hornets love building nests in them. I usually pay attention and just open the gate quickly. He got popped several times and then called his mom to tell her he was going to the ER. She made him drive back out to me while I was building fence. Nah, he just needed some Benadryl. He slept most of the next day I am told. He did come out later in the week!

Predators 8/ Farm 1

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Friday I went up to field #3 first thing in the morning to attempt to call the coyote in. I am using the new electronic call I got this week. I hung out for about an hour and did not see a single coyote. The quail did not see me as I was hiding behind the cattle feeder. The sheep ran by without seeing me either, yet no coyote showed up. I went down and picked wild blackberries for a little over an hour. I filled all my containers I had brought. I only picked two patches and skipped another three. It was starting to warm up and the hornets like the berries when it gets warm. I went inside and washed them all off and then repacked them into individual bags and froze them. I ended up with 25 snack size bags full. Annmarie uses a single frozen bag every morning in her breakfast smoothie. I try and collect them for her and I will need to collect more in 2 and 4 cup quantities so we can make pie and cobbler throughout the year.

I got all the tools together to go up and work on the fence surrounding field #1. It is a green seven acre field that the sheep and cows need to get into so they can eat for a few more weeks. I had the tractor bucket full of tools and wire and stays to drive up there. Of course I did not take a rifle, there is no place to put it on the tractor, I would have to hold it the entire time. Of course I saw two coyotes running out of field #3 and a dead lamb in the field. They had just killed it and it was almost noon! I dumped off the supplies and went back to the house to get the rifle and call. I spent another three hours trying to call them back and had no luck. We have now decided to lock the sheep into the barn lot and feed them last years hay from the machine shed.

This is honestly a stupid problem. This weekend alone I have spent about 6 hours trying to spot coyotes. Each sheep lost is $100 down the drain. I will keep going out every day until I can kill them. The next evening when I walked up to the find the carcass and hopefully catch someone snacking I had to walk around looking for the carcass. The only thing left after 24 hours was a hide and a spine with a few ribs attached. Nothing else! I of course did not see a coyote.

Sunday I went out to get Annmarie some blackberries for her breakfast, as I froze all the others I had picked. I went out and checked on our thornless berries in the garden. I had to come back inside three times to get more containers. The berries are huge compared to the wild ones. I left some fresh ones for Annmarie and froze another 16 bags. I will need to pick berries again in about four days. I had plans to go up and look for coyotes again but ended up cleaning house instead. Sarah said she would help me shear alpaca after she got done at church. My helpers are gone again for a couple of weeks. So we need to get the alpaca done.

When she got home we rounded up the alpaca and ended up shearing four more in about three hours. The only ones left are the three babies. One of them had crawled down into the ditch and was covered in water so he would not have been easy to shear. We are planning on shearing the rest on Tuesday or Thursday this week to get them all done. Annmarie has been washing the alpaca and is on her second saddle. It is amazingly cleaner when she is done.

My priority now is the fence around field #1, coyotes and finishing the freezer room. I want to store the cleaned and ready to be cleaned alpaca fiber in the freezer room. This will get it out of the house and into one spot. I just have one piece of OSB to install on the wall and it will be ready. Okay, I need to wire five outlets also but that will only take an hour. I can wire the light later. I am pretty sure I stole power from the next room for the overhead light. Basically, I need to get some more stuff done on the old house but it will have to wait until this winter.

I was going to fence…

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I had big plans today. I had Mr Tex lined up to come out and we were going to install the fence between field #2 & #3. This is one that I did not get fixed last year after the 100 year flood. I have all of the supplies staged already and merely needed to put the auger on the little John Deere and I was ready to go. I was up and out the door by 0700. I had to put fuel in the John Deere but I needed to rotate the nozzle to the second tank, the first one was empty. I also discovered that the fuel gauge is totally done for now, it said 3/4 of a tank and there were mere fumes in the tank, I was not even sure I would make it the 30 feet to the fuel tank it was so low. After that was done I put the post hole auger on, except it had the 6” auger and I needed the 12”. So I changed that out, then I remembered I had new teeth for the 12” auger, so I removed the old and got the new teeth. Nope, they are for a bigger auger, thank you internet. So I rotated the old teeth and reinstalled them. Then I went and put the bucket on the Kubota and the box blade on it. I figured I could go and drag the new fence line and get ready. It was 0830 already and Mr Tex had not responded to my text messages. So I sent him another one.

I then opened the gate for the sheep and cows to run out and go eat on the green grass in field #3 & #2 as I am not going to do a second cutting. I simply do not have time to do it. I had to drive the Kubota through the ditch as my other culvert crossing has not been repaired. Wouldn’t you know that the ditch is too steep and narrow and I got the tractor and box blade wedged in. This caused me to break out the rear tail light cover. This was my first broken thing on the Kubota!! It was bound to happen and I had 465 hours on the tractor before it happened. I had to drop the box blade drive out, chain onto the box blade with the bucket and lift it out. Once I had the box blade reattached I headed up to the new fence area. I stopped at the steep slanted section of the road that caused us trouble last winter and caused us to dump hay off of the trailer due to the downhill slant. It looks much better now.

I got the area for the new fence all cleaned up and ready for holes. So that will be next on the agenda. I had time to kill so I started digging out the ditch as it was starting to get backed up. The last two floods have not been kind to my ditch. I am working on creating a berm on the back half of the ditch so the flood waters will be contained should they ever come again (they are coming). I was able to get about 2/3 of the ditch cleaned out in field #3. I will need to work in cleaning out the rest of the ditches this fall.

I was able to accidentally spot some baby quail today. I had stopped to take a picture of the road I had leveled out. If you look closely you will see a quail standing on a post. He was the lookout for a momma and her 5 babies! So I hope every pair has five! We will know this winter when they all bunch up just how many made it through the summer.

“Gas lighting” fencing

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I had talked to Daughter #2 about helping me fix a couple of fences after work this week so on Wednesday after dinner and dishes we went out to work on ”two” fences. We needed to fix the orchard fence where we had the breakaway panel give way during the flood and we needed to fix the fence from field #3 into field #4A. This seemed fairly simple and I was pretty sure we could do it in an hour, I failed to take into account how a city person from another country would anticipate fixing ”two fences”.

I had gone out to inspect the fence in the orchard the day before and noticed that the deer, specifically a male deer, had torn up several of our fruit trees. They are five years old and I thought the deer could no longer harm them. I was wrong. He tore up the middle of four trees. So now I will need to construct a six foot fence around the entire orchard which means installing seven and a half foot tall T-posts and figuring out how to extend the wooden posts up another four feet. I think I will use smooth wire but may have to use woven, I will need to do more research.

So we head outside, grab the tractor and some tools. Daughter #2 is unsure why we need the tractor. We got over to the panel, after pushing the sheep out, and discovered that the entire panel was covered in mud and grass which made the panel impossible to lift. We failed to bring a chain with us so we just hooked the bucket hooks onto the panel and stood it up with the tractor. Once we had it up we could tear off all of the grass and mud, while fending off the sheep who wanted to come back into the orchard. We managed to pull the top cable tight with a fence tightener and got the cow panel back up and stretched tight. As we were headed to field #4A I noticed that the gate going into our tree orchard was off its hinges and needed to be fixed before we stuck our brand new bull in the pasture the next day! So we diverted and fixed the gate then we went onto field #4A. We had to fix another cow panel in the middle of the fence that was installed to allow us to cut it loose should we have another flood. Since it flooded and we cut it loose we did not lose any of the fence line. This was a very nice win for us. So we reattached it and Daughter #2 was ready to go inside except we still had to fix the spring ditch crossing in the corner of that same fence. So after I announced our fourth repair job needing attention I was accused of ”gaslighting” her on fence repairs. I had to look up gaslighting on the internet because I told her she had to be using it wrong. She told me in the UK they use it for bait and switch situations also. I still think she is confused and I told her that this was normal fence repair stuff! Without fixing both holes in the fence we cannot let the cows into pasture #4A. We fixed it in the dark by tractor light and then went in. On our way out to field 4A we discovered that the sheep had torn into 12 bales of alfalfa hay from last year, that would explain why they are all so fat! The lambs are bouncing all over the place and we continue to have more lambs. There are only about five ewes left to deliver.

Annmarie and both daughters started in on our kitchen cabinets. They are stripping them in place so we can repaint them. The problem is they are built in and have four coats of paint on them. They made great progress and we have a popup shelter and saw horses set out back where they can work on the doors. This means that everything from the cupboards will need to find a temporary home while the kitchen work progresses. Progress is never painless.