Gingerman

Predators 6, Farm 8

Steve Hardin1 Comment

The sheep are still giving birth one at a time on the occasional day. The one a day trickle is very annoying. We are only two weeks into this birthing process. The rams only had eight weeks with the herd so we should only have about 8 weeks left as we should take into account any late births.

Newborn about two hours old

I lost more chickens again to the raccoons. The weird part is they did not kill them at night. They came up the dry creek bottom and killed them in the morning, three chickens gone. Mr Rainman managed to shoot at one as they were running away. They have not returned but since there was no body we don’t get to count them on the predator dispatch count. Otherwise, it would be artificially inflated! The predators are coming in closer to the barn and house. I had two lamb corpses to go up to the boneyard that I had placed over the fence. Mr Rainman went to take them up to the boneyard the next day and the coyotes had come down to the gate and taken them. There were no bodies. We use woven fence to keep the sheep in but it also helps keep the coyotes out. They usually have to dig under the fence to get past it. This is why it is recommended that you run a single strand of barb wire at the ground level on a sheep pasture fence. I don’t do this but it is the recommendation. I usually just fill in the hole but after losing so many sheep last year I put a snare in the crossing now.

Last night when the progeny was returning home after dark she spotted a possum leaving the mother-in-law’s back yard. The Gingerman jumped out and dispatched the possum. I had been noticing a steady decline in eggs recently and figured there was a possum around. They will sneak into the coop during the day and eat the eggs. They rarely kill the chickens but they love the eggs! They are super hard to get rid of because we are gone during the day usually or out and about on the farm.

It is dove season now so we are starting to thin out the doves. There are over a 100 now on the place and they are competing with the quail. We like the quail over all other birds and have worked for the last 20 years to protect and grow them. There are several coveys on the farm but we won’t know how many are on the place until it starts getting cold and they all come down to the houses to winter over. They know where the easy food is located. Hopefully, the population is over a 200. It waxes and wanes pretty significantly. We have had as few as 30 and over 200 over the years. The last few years we have managed to keep over 100 at any time on the place. But this is the most doves we have ever had on the place. Only about 25% of them are the ring neck version. These are invasive and quite a bit larger than the native doves.

We are now seeing bunny rabbits on a regular basis but still only seeing one at a time and only in a couple of places on the farm. They are the dwarf bunnies native to Oregon. I think the owls and hawks love rabbit and they just cannot reproduce fast enough to get ahead of the depredation. They are maintaining a small population.

Cow hay now on the farm

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It never fails, when I need to do anything with the hay it always rains. Labor Day was no different, just as I was finishing up transporting the last load to the farm it started to rain! This is great timing as it is going to sit out for a week until it can be loaded into the machine shed.

I have been trying to get last years big bale discards from a source all summer long. It was going to be discounted and I wanted enough that I was hoping to have it delivered. This did not work out at all. Annmarie has been “reminding” me all summer that the cows need hay for the winter and I am being a cheapskate. There is nothing wrong with being a cheapskate when possible but she was right it was getting late in the season to be buying hay. The real problem with buying hay is I only have a 7500# 16’ bumper pull trailer. So I can only fit four large bales at a time on it which causes problems when you want to pickup 60 bales of hay.

Normally, I purchase all of my hay from Bluview Farms. I always wait until September to purchase it. So I went with this option again as it fits the bill nicely. They are only four miles from where we live so I can take an entire day and just run back and forth with four large bales at a time. Unfortunately, they are selling their farm and moving which is going to cause me issues next year. I really need two semi truck loads delivered. The second problem is that I do not have a tractor large enough to unload the hay and restack it. I am not buying a third tractor to use once a year. The third problem is our old pickup may not be able to haul a large gooseneck trailer if I have to pickup the hay myself.

So that being said Mr Gingerman is coming over today to stack all of the large bales into the machine shed. I think we can get 50 bales, stacked four high in the hay storage area. I can toss a chain around them and pull them down with the little tractor. Once they are down my new Kubota 3301 can lift a bale about 4-6” off the ground and I can drive it anywhere on the property fairly easily. This is much better than pushing it along the ground which is only what the little John Deere 2520 can accomplish. Mind you, I have fed the cows large bales almost exclusively but I keep hoping to make it easier.

What does this mean? I need to find a source of hay that can deliver it by the semi load and unload and stack it into the machine shed or I need to purchase a larger pickup and trailer so that I can haul 10-14 bales at a time. Fortunately, I was able to pickup a F350 Diesel this week for a steal. Again, the Dodge 10 cylinder is a beast but it is starting to show its years and it has 180k miles on it. I just purchased tires for it at the beginning of summer but they are the same size as the new Ford so I will get them swapped out. The Dodge is rough on the exterior and rough on the interior, a true farm vehicle. Once I get the tires swapped I will be offering it up for sale, cheap!

I have the new truck, now I may need a new trailer, gooseneck. I do not want anything fancy. I want it very functional and capable of hauling a lot of weight. I can even rewire the lights and brakes if necessary. So if you know of anything “cheap” let me know I would appreciate it.

Little Dumper to the shop

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It is happening, the second to last item that is needed before Little Dumper can be used on the farm is one step closer to getting completed. Mr Gingerman got the new radiator installed last weekend so it could now be driven into town to the brake place. Unfortunately, the back brakes have a huge leak so the brake line for the back brakes had to be capped off and the pickup only had sorta functioning front brakes. This was doable as I had planned on taking all of the back roads to town and only anticipated having to stop 3-4 times on the entire trip. So I set aside Friday as the day to move it into town.

I put my last two gallons of fuel I had on the farm into the fuel tank. I keep a five gallon can full of high octane ethanol free regular on the farm for small equipment. I had to pop the hood and turn on the battery. We installed a manual battery shut off switch under the hood. This way we don’t have to worry about an infrequent ground wire. The battery will be ready to go at all times. Due to the infrequent use the Little Dumper will have this seemed like a good plan. Plus, I already had the switch for an old tractor we sold and it was brand new. This meant I had to get the hood up. After five minutes cussing and repeated attempts I kept getting the hood loose but could not get it lifted. There was some latch trick I was missing. I called Mr Gingerman, yep I needed to jiggle the latch continuously until I found the sweet spot to get the second half released. Once I knew that it only took a couple of tries.

I had only cleaned out the passenger side earlier due to the driver door not working. Mr Gingerman had adjusted the front fender so the door can be opened. I had to get a large box and scoop all of the trash, dirt, broken floor mats out into a box to toss it all away. I was able to get the beast started fairly easily. It sounds amazing! Like really amazing since it had not been run for 25 years. I attempted to put it into reverse, but there are no marks on the shifter. I had it in the wrong gear and felt it as I let the clutch out slowly. It turns our reverse is all the way towards your knee and down to the seat.

It has been 25 years since I have driven anything this old. This was evidenced by me taking off in first gear. That gear is low and slow, it is designed to start off with a full load of wheat in the back in the middle of a field. I hit second gear immediately then tried to slow down with the brakes. NOPE! There were brakes but stopping was a 30-50 foot process. On the plus side as soon as I let off the gas the drivetrain started slowing the vehicle down without the brakes. I then tried to shift into first gear while the vehicle was still moving. NOPE! There are no synchros in the transmission. Again, I knew this but 25 years…

I took a picture as I was going down our driveway. The blurry picture is due to dirt and the original window. My goal was to keep the speed down so that brakes were really unnecessary. As soon as I got on top of our hill I got it up to fourth gear and was whizzing along. I am unsure how fast that was because the speedometer does not work. It was fast enough that when I wanted to veer to the left at the Y intersection I panicked a little. There was a vehicle coming from the other direction and it hit the intersection before me. I almost had to keep going straight as I could not slow down very fast. They managed to get through the intersection in time for me to turn left thankfully. I slowed down to third gear.

The old pickup is a one ton vehicle with no rear shocks. It has this huge stack of leaf springs to absorb the weight and distribute it equally. This does nothing to make the ride smooth. Instead when we hit a couple of bad washboard spots in the gravel road I felt the back end kick loose. It had way more air time than ground contact.

I only had to waive two vehicles past me. Otherwise there was no one on the roads. Now I was able to roll the driver’s side window down and use hand signals to notify everyone else on the road of my intent. For the most part everyone gave me a pretty wide birth as I was concentrating on driving and steering fairly intently. I think they sensed a certain amount of trepidation on my part about me being able to keep the vehicle moving down the road in a predictable manner.

I got to the shop without any incidents and they are going to do a complete brake overhaul. We decided that it was not a rush job but I did not want them to take as long as it did to get the tires for the truck earlier this spring.

I looked up our total amount into getting the truck up and running again and so far we are into it for $4446.05. That does not include the gasket kit for the rebuilt master cylinder or the brake work by the shop. Hard to believe we have literally just done the basics to get it up and running. That won’t even make it street legal. We will need to fix the lights, turn signals and brake lights and speedometer to get that. I believe there is a seat belt waiver due to the age of the vehicle but I don’t know. Another thing I would have to look up. Luckily, that was never our intent. We want a mini dump truck on the place to move soil, compost and rocks. That is what we need and we are closer than ever to our goal.

Only a little Gimpy

Steve HardinLeave a comment

On Tuesday I did a walk around the house with the contractor. He wanted to return the overhead lift so he spent a couple of days finishing up the caulking on the upper part of the house. It is looking good. They just have to fix a corner of the front gutters, replace a screen in a window and finish caulking the lower part of the house. They got the yard all cleaned up and we are going to start putting some water on it to cut down on all of the dry weeds the dogs keep bringing into the house.

Mr Rainman came out to mow the fields and has missed coyotes two mornings in a row. Gingerman and I went out Thursday evening and Friday morning and did not see a single coyote. So maybe he managed to scare it off, no body, no credit.

On Wednesday, we had another big event, the dreaded lightning strike fire. We had a storm pass over Pilot Rock and lightning started four fires in a very short amount of time. A couple of the fires got controlled fairly quickly but the wind picked up and started to really spread the flames. The lightning continued to start more fires as it moved. Our area ended up with several big fires. Four days later and there is a state disaster team, agencies and assets from all over the state fighting fires around us. Highway 395 is closed down 39 miles outside of town and we are surrounded by smoke. The fires are continuing to grow. Luckily for us the fire never jumped the highway before town so we were safe and the wheat crop next to the houses is intact and ready to be harvested, not everyone was as lucky. I spent a couple of hours driving around looking for our Border Collie, Chance. She got out of the yard during the storm. She came back to the house as I was headed down the driveway. Annmarie called me to let me know she just showed up at the front gate ready to be let inside the yard. Milo is doing great, he is going to the vet to get neutered next week. He doesn’t know it yet.

Well I am officially out of the boot and able to bear weight on my healing foot as long as I wear a stiff soled shoe. I heard this on Monday so I started walking around with the boot as I did not have any shoes for the right broken foot. It hurt, pins and needles and stinging when I bore weight on it. After only six weeks no weight bearing I expected to just jump right back into the hard manual labor and, per the wife, I did not listen again. I didn’t want to listen, I don’t want to rehab, I don’t want to take it easy! But after having to sleep 10-12 hours each night after bearing weight I would say it is a lot harder than I expected. First thing in the morning when I put my foot down the whole thing has pins and needles. I am walking with a slight limp that progresses if I push it too much. So I am trying to take it easy for me.

Mr Rainman came out on Saturday and we went out and wormed the sheep. Most of the sheep look great but some of the ewes are pretty skinny so we worm when that happens especially since they are out and about on the farm. I was able to use the drencher device and it is so much faster than filling syringes. It still took us a couple of hours to go through the herd. He jumped in with the sheep in the chute and held them so I could dose them. You always get your feet stepped on when you are in the chute and I do not need that yet. One ewe had an abscess on her chin that I lanced. They get them from the cheat grass. We have been mowing and spraying the cheat grass but this year it is winning. We are planning on spraying Rejuvra on the fields this fall to help us control the cheat grass. This time in the barn pointed out that we still need to dig out the barn and the chicken coop. They are on the list. Mr Rainman wants to put the heavy panels in the hay room so he doesn’t have to carry them as far. Normally we take them outside the barn. This is a valid strategy he employed today to get the barn opened up today so he is ready to start digging it out with the manure forks on the John Deere 2520 tractor. The smaller tractor is the only one that will fit into the barn.

The plan was to hook up the small sickle bar mower to the John Deere tractor but Mr Rainman had to move equipment around in the machine shed first. I put away my auction winnings that the progeny, Gingerman and I picked up on Friday. The tools were brand new and looked unused, I should have bid on more tools. I did not win the large toolbox I wanted. I am looking to create a metric toolbox and a standard so that I can easily find the correct tool. I am filling up the big tool box and cannot fit any more open end wrenches or sockets in it. We wrestled the mower onto the tractor then spent an hour getting it greased up and the teeth oiled. I needed to mow the orchard and for it to be feasible we needed the smaller tractor and the smaller sickle bar. This was not the offending sickle bar that I broke my foot on. Except we were not sure that this sickle bar was in working condition. After doing everything possible to make it work I cut the orchard with it. It was brutal as the grass was too high. I also managed to hit one of the metal horse panels encircling a tree. Luckily, the mower belts started to slip and I quickly turned off the pto, usually I pop off a bar tooth when this happens. I was able to pry it off and get back to cutting. The plan was to just pick up the downed grass and toss it over the fence for the animals. The sheep and eater cows can get to it.

After all that I was whooped and needed a shower and some rest. I took a nap!

On Sunday, I cleaned house and moved upstairs back into our bedroom. I have been sleeping downstairs so I did not have to try and maneuver the stairs with a bum foot. So the puppy and I are now back in the master bedroom. Things are starting to get back to normal.

Cows can be painful

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The cows are painful sometimes. The teenagers are by far and away the worst! They jumped the fence on the back hillside on both sides and got out into the unfenced area on the back hillside. They have been there for about 2.5 weeks as they just run roughshod over the fence so it is useless to push them back. They want to hang out near the momma and baby cows so this was working. I say was because when I came home Friday the five cows were out in the wheat field down by our cattle guard. We have no clue how they got there. I think they walked all the way down the length of the farm and got out onto the gravel road then came back into the wheat field and walked down to the barn lot. I opened the gate into our house area in the hopes that they would come into it, nope, they walked past the open gate and headed back down the length of the property.

I discovered that I can indeed drive the Kubota tractor with a broken foot. I can use the hand lever on the left to set the speed and the tractor slows down well enough on its own that I don’t need to use the brakes. So I drove out around the field on the pavement and came in from the top and went back on the road alongside the wheat field. Annmarie came out and opened up more gates so we could get them behind a fence. We got them into the car area then pushed them out into a fenced field down by Mother-in-Law’s house. This meant that Mr Rainman and I were going to have to fix fence on the back hillside even though we have other things to do. Since I can drive the tractor I would do that so we can carry all of the fencing supplies. I can also do the splices in the fence.

Mr Rainman sprayed some Roundup in a few places around our back elevated garden beds. The gravel needs to not be full of weeds. Then we got ready to go fencing. We filled up the area behind the bucket with wooden stays but we can only carry about 15 stays that way. If we need a bunch of stays we will dump off fencing stuff then use the tractor forks to pick up a couple of hundred stays. As we were crossing the back creek we spotted another pile of wooden stays from a previous fencing job (common issue, as fencing extra stuff tends to stay close to an old job). This was noted in case we needed more we would not have to go to the machine shed. Mr Rainman was able to slap on fence tighteners and crank them down, cut the fence and then it was ready for me. I was able to park close to the site, hop off the tractor and put on my peg leg. The peg leg sounds cool, it is cool, as it allows me to use both hands unobstructed but it takes a ton of energy and effort. So I spliced the fence back together and Mr Rainman installed wooden stays and replaced any missing stay staples and T-post clips. The cows had a path through the fence down by the creek so it got extra wooden stays. The outer hillside fence is nice and tight!

We started to drive across the top of the field and realized that I had never installed stays along all of the top fence. So he started installing them when the Gingerman showed up with cold Gatorade and assistance. Him and I went and snagged all of the extra wooden stays from the bottom of the hill. We drove back up the hill and they started to install them into the fence separating out the CRP. They got all the way across the top except we were 8 fence stays short to make it to the gate.

The inner hillside fence was in shambles. They had torn off the top three rows of smooth fence. So Mr Rainman again slapped the tighteners on it and I jumped down and spliced it together. Honestly, fencing takes practice and after all the years on the farm I know how to fence. While I did that they worked on T-post clips and Mr Rainman pulled wire for us to add a higher wire to the upper 2/3 of the fence. It’s the flat section of the fence and the spot where the cows and sheep like to jump over the fence. The fence is over 50” now and very tight so I am hopeful the cows cannot jump it, or it at least appears to be an actual barrier. I ended up walking downhill halfway putting on clips. This was a huge mistake! I had to peg leg it up half the hill and thought I was going to die by the time I got to the tractor. My good leg and hip were killing me and I had to keep stopping to take a rest.

Mr Rainman had been using the DeWalt Fence stapler the whole time. I had expected him to trade off with the Gingerman occasionally but he was not having it. The machine is amazing. They stapled 30 posts in under 30 minutes. It is a definite time saver, but it beats you up! It has a kick, it’s heavy and awkward. He kept using it until his hand cramped up and he could not move his fingers! The Gingerman got to finish up with the stapler.

By the time we got down to the house I parked as close as I could to the gate, got off the tractor, installed the peg leg on and came into the house. I sat down in the kitchen, polished off the chips and dip from the 4th (we only make chips and dip on the major federal holidays and the Super Bowl). I showered and then crawled into bed for an hour and a half nap. I was exhausted. Milo has learned to take naps with me since I have been home so he sacked out with me for that time.