grading road

Mowing completed

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Well it is definitely winter time as we ended up killing four stinging assholes in under 24 hours. They were fairly sluggish due to the cooler temperatures but they still would have stung us if we had stepped on them. Since this weekend we have not seen a single one, so weird. They were all wasps. We are down to 12 chickens, two roosters and ten hens. Now that we have the double chicken doors the raccoons should not be able to kill them as easily. So if you know anyone who is getting rid of chickens let me know we need more!

I fueled the tractor up and mowed for two solid days over the weekend. I was tired of going around in circles up in field one so I drove down to the schoolhouse for a change in scenery. I did not hay the area around the schoolhouse this year so it was very tall and I had a patch out in the field that needed to be mowed. Somehow I managed to hit an absolutely huge rock with the old mower/new blades setup and the noise that had worked itself out earlier came back. I think I hurt the blade some but it was still cutting grass so I ignored it. I figured it would fix itself or scream “uncle” and it fixed itself. I noticed that the fence needs to be moved to accommodate me running the mower alongside the top of the creek bank. The floods caused one of the curves to eat into the bank more than normal and now I cannot get a five foot wide tractor between the fence and the drop off into the creek. The real problem is the drop off is about 12 feet and I really don’t want to drop the tractor down a 12 foot embankment. I know that seems fairly cautious for me but occasionally I do see the wisdom of some safety choices. If I move the fence over I can drive by safely and I won’t be losing any hay ground as the hillside is too steep in that section to mow and hay anyways. I am not sure why that did not occur to me when I was installing the fence the first time.

After I got the bottom all mowed I started working on knocking down the sagebrush on the hillside. About every five years I go up on the hillside and knock down the sagebrush. It lets the grass grow back and stunts the sagebrush for a few years. It was easy to spot the parts of the hillside I had worked on clearing the loose rocks. It was super easy to mow but as I climbed up the hillside and got closer to the gate I started hitting a lot of rocks. I finally had to just randomly drive around and miss all of the rocks and hope I made a dent in the sagebrush. I really need to spend about a day picking rocks on the hillside to finish getting the area cleaned up. All little projects are just 1-2 days! The trouble is there a ton of them all over the farm.

On Sunday I went up and finished mowing field one. It is all ready to make hay in the spring. I am staring in on a road on the back hillside. I can only drag it after it has rained as the ground is too tough for my tractor at any other time. I have about 50 yards of road finished. My plan is to cut a road so that I can redo the fence down by the runoff stream. The stream-bed is dry currently but in the spring it will have water in it. I would like to be able to move the fence up the hillside. This would allow us to open up this area in mid summer so the animals can tear down the weeds while it is still green. The sheep will be able to go everywhere at that point as the creek will be dry again. This will help with our weed control issues.

Cows everywhere

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Annmarie had a thing this weekend so I was alone in the house for part of Friday and Saturday. Which really meant I stayed up late and watched movies. On Friday afternoon the neighbors texted to say that the cows and sheep were in their field. As I was headed up to get them another neighbor called to tell me her husband had seen them on his way home. He said the cows and goats but we have hair sheep that look very similar to goats if you are not used to them. Whenever I go to retrieve animals I always use the tractor. They are not very afraid of the tractor as they are used to seeing it and it usually brings food so they like it.

The cows and sheep ran onto our property up by the the 90 degree corner and there is no way to get to a gate that way. So I had to drive out there and chase them back to the road and down toward the wheat field. I really need to put a fence down there but the ground is horrible and I need a road a little higher up on the hill so we don’t sink into the mud in the spring. So I started to cut a road since it had just rained on Friday. I figure I can just slowly work on it every time it rains I will be able to go another 10-30 feet and eventually I will get the road in place. I would like to make the road wide enough that I can fence one side and it will be easy to work on .

The cows and sheep went back in and this time I actually shut all the gates necessary to keep them locked up in the pasture. I forgot one last weekend and it took them six days to find the open gate.

So Sunday morning, after I had mowed down by the schoolhouse, Annmarie calls to tell me that the butcher cows are out and on the driveway. I have no idea how they would get out and asked her if they were our cows. She sent a picture. So the Gingerman and I went out and again I fired up the tractor and raced the cows to the end of the driveway as they would not let me pass them in the tractor. The nice thing is since I widened the driveway down by the cattle guard the cows took a detour instead of running and jumping the cattle guard. I pushed them back towards the Gingerman and they ran right into the field. We opened up the gates so they can get to the hay in the orchard at any time. I am still not sure how they got out of the fenced in area. Honestly, I am not!

The Gingerman and I unloaded the compactor and I put it in the gazebo as that is where it will be needed next. We also unloaded the large frame parts for Annmarie’s new loom. I think it is going to take up about 35% of the room. It will be a pretty big loom once set up.

Spring catchup and yard improvements

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We are working on getting everything caught up and ready to go before our vacation. The yard is getting watered and all of the hoses are getting repaired and we are going to try and get the ram pasture back in shape and get some actual grass length on it. The sheep use it as a pass through spot and always eat it down to nothing every year. I am surprised it comes back annually, Mr Rainman has been cleaning up the garden area, he cleaned off the old house porch and burned both slash piles we created over the winter. We still have a bunch of dead branches down by the spring head that need cleaned out and tossed on the slash pile.

He brought a bunch of compost (sheep manure and straw) over to the lavender patch to fill the horse trough. We are going to plant strawberry plants in the trough so they don’t take over the entire patch of ground. All of the hoses got laid out and connected to automatic timers. Annmarie will program the lavender and berry timers. She has been working on the garden every weekend. It is all planted as of this weekend. The elevated beds have vegetables and all of the wine barrel halves have herbs in them. We are also going to plant marigolds in planters between all of the elevated beds. We are hopeful that they will help with the bug issues and keep them away. If nothing else they are more flowers for the honeybees. We also seeded wildflower seed over three spots in an attempt to get more flowers up and going for the bees.

I was able to offload the side by side today. I just need to run the wiring for the machine shed across two more bays so it is out of the way. I will now have room to easily park both tractors under cover. I also cleaned up in front of the machine shed and beside it. I moved a lot of alpaca poop and some piles of dirt. I want to bring the old lamb shed up next to the machine shed. As of right now I could start using it to store all of the scrap metal I use for welding repairs and the fencing tools. I can build some racks and shelves for the metal. This will let me move three more pallets out of the machine shed. My mother-in-law wants me to move the old Dinky tractor, the very first brand new tractor ever purchased for the farm, into that corner spot. It is currently hidden across our driveway in and amongst a lot of other stuff. Everyone would be able to see the tractor when they come over to visit in the new location. It will just depend on how hard it is going to be to move the old lamb shed.

The entrance driveway is over 1/4 mile long and was starting to get pretty rutted. I spent a few hours yesterday with the John Deere tractor and tore up the road with the box blade hooks until I had broken up the surface pretty good then raised the hooks and used the box portion to spread out the gravel evenly. I usually do this right after a rain storm but the little tractor was at my mother’s house last time it rained. The road is very smooth now and won’t need any attention for a few months.