Escape artists

I had a plan today, it was going to be hay day. Well honestly, that was my second plan, my first plan was supposed to be cow day. Instead it turned into Fence day as my third plan. My first plan was good but when I woke up this morning there was going to be change because I could not do cows. I was way too sore to be working the cows. So since I was not going to be doing cows then my second plan was going into effect, Hay day. I need to move the old bales out of the machine shed and store them over by the grain bins. But to keep the alpaca off of them I need to move the round horse corral out to use as a fence. Then I need to clean out the hay area and move some plywood out of the way. But just as I was leaving the house Mr Rainman tells me that a calf is out again. We had one get out earlier in the week and I found a large hole in the fence down by four corners. So knowing there is a problem and believing that it has repeated itself we went to the third plan which was Fencing day.

Mr Professional was going to come out later and work on the porch railing a little later. Mr Rainman loaded up the bucket on the new tractor, “Companion” with fencing tools. He spotted the bunny! We had not seen it in over a week. We went down to four corners and proceeded to fix the hole in the fence. We ended up cutting all of the willow trees back and then I crossed the fence and cut them back about 6 feet back from the fence. We tightened the entire fence and then went in and hammered in new staples into the wooden stays and added the broken T-clips back onto the fence. It looked like a brand new fence. Mr Rainman was mistaken, the calf was not out of the outer fence enclosure, he just was not inside the fence with his momma. He was going to have to walk down to the open gate to get past the fence.

We then drove up to the top of the hill and then went down to the schoolhouse field to patch the woven fence that the cow jumped through last year. We ended up retightening the entire thing and pulling the top two wires together to remove several inches of slack from the fence. I decided that the only way to stop this from happening again was to add in T posts. I think this was the plan two years ago but I thought the all wooden fence would be aesthetically pleasing and the cows would respect it for this reason, I was wrong. We unloaded all the tools there since we were going to be coming back. We stopped at the ditch and reopened the ditch to flood irrigate the schoolhouse pasture. I was able to dig down and get it running. We then went back to the house, small stop to fill the tractor bucket with large rocks as we were going to come off of the rocky hillside to get T-posts anyways. We did not want to move an empty tractor. The rocks were moved to the front yard for the rock wall that needs to be completed. We grabbed more supplies and went back, installed the T-posts and then had to install the clips onto the posts. This seems like an easy job. If you have never applied fencing clips before you would think its easy and you would be wrong. Mr Rainman was given a tutorial and cut loose. In the time it took him to complete four posts I had 17 posts done! He ended up getting terminated from that task and went back to load up the tractor with tools. We got all of the obvious fence corrected. The top CRP fence really needs to be repaired and rebuilt.

Forever Friday 37/45

I opted to move no rocks as I did not sleep well, my shoulders are constantly aching and all of my muscles are twitching so bad they are keeping me awake. I ended up in the spare room so I did not keep Annmarie awake also. I vowed no rock picking on Saturday and I am going to stick with it. I do realize that a large portion of this this is my own fault by not doing some more baseline exercise. I need to think about that and consider the fact that I am not getting younger! I do believe there is an inherent amount of wisdom gained by getting older, mine comes mostly from past mistakes.

I ended up using the arena groomer to smooth out the area around the machine shed and grain bins. I want to replant them in grass again. We need to get on top of the weeds and this is helping. I then switched over to the box blade so I could go up and look at the flood damage in the 7 acre field (#1). The field is incredibly rough from all the water rivulets that were created from the flooding. I want to focus on the old irrigation ditch. All of the fields used to be flood irrigated. I am looking at cleaning out the ditches and setting them up again used for this purpose. I started at the near end and worked for four hours. I was able to get about 20% completed. My goal is to get this completed this week, we will see if I have the time.

I got to see a kestrel hawk come in and fly about 20 feet away. The wind was perfect and the hawk was just suspended in air and just twitching its wings to stay in one spot. I am thinking about using more of those 16’ posts in the ground for the predator birds to use as perches around the outside of our fields. More mice and voles getting eaten is a good thing. On the way home I stopped at this buried piece of metal and attempted to dig it out. I thought it was a piece of equipment. It looks like it was five anchors for something. The ground is so hard I cannot get it out with my tractor and will have to wait until spring and tackle it again. Hidden things in the weedS are bad for the farm equipment, especially the mower. My coffee cup does not appreciate getting covered in dirt, but I tell it that as long as it contains the elixir of life I will always love it.

As we were settling down to dinner I let the dogs inside. Mouse starting talking because he wanted dinner. He talks at us when its food time, it is not a bark, more like a whine/controlled vocalization. We told him no as we had dinner on the table and he was going to have to wait. He kept pacing so Annmarie told him to lay down in the hall. He came into the kitchen, flopped down on his side and then voiced his protest at not getting dinner! We made him wait until our dinner was over then all the dogs got to eat. He definitely had an opinion and was able to express it quite eloquently.