flooding

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.

 

 

 

 

Lucky ones

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Annmarie goes out in the mornings to do the chores and she is a much better kitty whisperer than am I.  This is a picture of our “barn kitty”.  We have 2-3 barn kitties but this one is the most elusive.  It is very hard to spot and runs at the sight of people.  It will now come out when she feeds it and lets her see it!  The fat orange barn kitty lets her pet it and I can even touch it now.  It looks like Garfield and kind of behaves that way also.

We have switched to feeding out of the other side of the barn.  The hay is of a better quality and we are using the lousy hay for bedding and filler.  We are using around 10 bales a day now.  I hope we can compost most of the lousy hay this spring and kill the weed seed that way.

I ordered a new battery for the side by side (buggy) and next week will be installing the new battery and trickle charger so the buggy will be ready for weed spraying this spring.   I may have to steal one of the barn portable lights so I can see to work on wiring the machine shed after my paying job is over in the evenings.  If I spend 1.5 hours a night I should be done in a week.

We are still lambing.  It has been ten days since I posted the last updated birth statistics.  Since that time we have had 8 more ewes deliver, for 14 more lambs of which 13 are still alive and 12 of those babies are sets of twins.

Umatilla County has had record setting runoff in the Umatilla River causing water levels to be the highest ever recorded in history.  Large chunks of towns are under water and at least 6 bridges have been damaged and closed.  We have it better than last year.  None of our fields have flooded and our back runoff creek is already lower than usual for this time of year after we had the flash runoff on Wednesday.  I wish those people luck and the perseverance to hang on and build back up.  This is really going to strain the ability of our county to get projects completed due to the sudden demand for contractors to fix all of this water damage.

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  • Total lambs born (dead or alive):  42
  • # of singles:  7
  • # of twins:  13
  • # of triplets:  3
  • Stillborn lambs:  1
  • # died without a tag:  5
  • # bummered:  3
  • # ewes delivered:  23
  • # lambs alive on property:  33
  • Birth rate (alive & dead included):  183% (goal>150%)
  • Ewe productivity after 1 week (live lambs on farm):  143% (goal >125%)
  • Lamb success (live lambs on farm after 1 week):  79% (max 100%)

We have had 23 ewes deliver their babies but it looks like at least 10 more need to have babies.  We really need to to run everyone through our chutes and do an individual count of all involved parties so we know exactly how many animals there are out in the barn.

Our three cow carcass weights were 386#, 338#, 325#, we shoot for 330# so they were right there.  We are going to hold our price to $2.50 lb/hanging weight for all of 2020 again.

The chickens are making me crazy, we have 32 now and the babies keep trying to decide whether to lay or not.  We were getting 7 eggs a day and are now down to 2/day.  I keep hoping that as soon as the weather warms up the chicks will take off laying and we will be buried in eggs.

 

 

 

I need a break

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Annmarie spotted another random newborn lamb yesterday evening. This morning Tex and I went out into the ram pasture and Tex snagged the newborn. I could of done it but it ran to his side of the field! We took it to the barn so I could tag and band it. I even remembered to enter it into the Airtable spreadsheet so we could track it.

Afterwards we went to install the culvert in the orchard. We had to dig out the bottom of the channel by hand and had to put it in a couple of times to fit test it prior to back filling it in. I was able to use the old dirt and then drag down the edges. We even rocked in the inlet side of the culvert. I can now get the tractor over to the other side of the ditch.

We were able to move the pipe trailer out of the field and snagged all the loose pipe laying about. We moved the pipe trailer out of the fields over near the wheat field then proceeded to clean up the scrap metal piles. We tossed the metal over the fence so the scrap metal guy can pick it up on his next visit.

I had to go to town to get more diesel for the tractor. We were running on fumes. I had Tex go use the chainsaw on the downed trees at the spring head. I also wanted him to trim the tree touching the old chicken coop. After lunch, we took the now filled tractor over to drag out the downed trees. Between the chain saw and the tractor we got all the dead massive limbs piled up into a large burn pile. Hopefully, next week we can light it on fire. Annmarie ran the horses in the round pen yesterday but I had put it on the soft dirt. The horses tore it up something fierce. So I will need to move it next week. We have plenty of spots for it.

After she got back from church we went out to work on the front hillside and started to set up the water system so we can start growing clover. We were able to reuse some of the aluminum uprights from the main sprinkler system, along with the valves and sprinkler heads. We keep trying to reuse as much stuff as we can. I also got a large piece of Elm for the anvil. I will need to make some custom holders for it. My plan is to get it attached and then use it whenever I need to beat something into submission. I realized that the only thing I don’t really have yet is a portable grinder. So after I get that I will dress up the anvil.

I had Tex fill in gravel in the ditch behind the machine shop. I will need to finish it off this week. The rest of our hay equipment should arrive this week. We will be able to store it in the machine shed now! We did park the tractor in the shop tonight. It is an amazing thing.

I am done! I am so tired that I started losing my grip while working on the sprinkler system. I will be taking it easy next week. I am thinking about working on the bathroom upstairs. More thought than muscle.

Spraying necessary

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Sunday of this week Tex came out and finished fencing on the upper prime pasture. It needed wooden stays and to fix the spring crossing. He worked on that all day while the sheep continued to mow our front lawn.

I spent the day on the tractor trying to spray our upper middle field. It is growing gangbusters but it needs some weeds eradicated. I am only able to spray about a 6 foot swath at a time. I went to a fixed sprayer with no boom but the pump cannot keep the pressure up in the tank so it varies in its spray application rate. Its causing me enough problem that I have started to look back into a boom system. Luckily, I kept the 12 foot boom from the old four wheeler, I tossed it over by the metal scrap pile and never made it go away! I just need to mount it on the 55 gallon spray tank frame. Using that I can change out the size of the nozzles to control flow rates. I will be able to spray about 50% faster than I currently can.

I spent all day on the tractor and simply ran out of time. The middle prime field is done! There is about a half an acre of soggy ground in that field but the grass looks great.

Annmarie and I talked about it and I am going to dig a ditch to collect the water and make it run in a narrower channel. Hopefully, this will prevent it from forming fingers throughout the entire field.

I spent the next three weeknights after work trying to get the upper field sprayed. I found even more wet and muddy spots. There is about 1/3 of the field that I cannot get into due to the mud and soft ground. This is going to cause us some problems.

My hope is Tex and I can crank out the machine shed this upcoming weekend and I can get back to spraying.

I may even have to mow the lawn. Annmarie is getting tired of the dogs rolling in sheep manure and Gizmo keeps making himself sick from eating too many turds. It starts to make the cost more than its worth.

Gonna be buying more hay in the fall

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Annmarie and I took a walk up the pastures yesterday to see how they were doing. The middle prime pasture looks great. It does have some thistles and weeds but the grass is very thick. I am going to have to spray it first. Today I started spraying that pasture. The upper middle pasture is mostly broadleaf weeds. I will be doing it after this one. This means most evenings I will be sitting on the tractor. The grass is almost 18 inches high already. I sent an email to the company that we bought our hay equipment from and asked when it was going to be shipped to us.

Tex and I finished the fence over by the lamb shed. It is all secure, more wooden posts and T-posts to stiffen the fence and two more strands of barb wire. We even cut the metal panel out of the way so the gate will now swing either direction. This took most of the morning. I had to patch the fence in three areas once we got it strung up. There is a downside to reusing old fence.

We went ahead and just cut the leaning fence apart and will work on getting it redone. The water had dammed up behind woven wire. All the sticks and brush made a very nice blockage and the water spread out and got deep. Since Tex was going to fix the fence while I sprayed after lunch I brought over all the supplies he would need and we even dropped the culvert into the ditch.

We had tamales again for lunch! They are very good. I am unsure what to make for lunch tomorrow. I got out some ham for breakfast but lunch is still up in the air. I am thinking chili and Hill’s all beef wieners. I like to brown the hot dogs while the chili is cooking then mix them both together, toss cheese and onions on top and eat! It is very good.

While I went up and put 50 gallons of spray on the field Tex got the fence back together. We piled up rocks at the entrance and exit of the culvert and I will keep adding dirt to it until we have a nice level crossing. I opted to not have both culverts placed here as I will need the other one some where else on the farm.

The panel is clipped into place with little aluminum clips that the water can bend if there is too much pressure on the panel. I still need to do a little work on the waterway as I would like to add some small rocks into the channel to help cut down the erosion. We need to rehang the gate also as the H brace did get pushed upright but Tex didn’t add enough gravel and tightening the fence caused them to be a little crooked. We will move the gate around to the opposite sided H brace so hopefully we can get the gate working again.