John Deere tractor

Field prep area

Steve Hardin3 Comments

I was unable to get out and work on the farm on Friday as I ended up covering at work but I had high hopes for Saturday! The bull corral is usable, so in Steve speak this means I am about 90% complete and have moved onto a new project. I still need to put up four rails, attach about 8 upright sandwich boards to get the woven wire locked into place on the wooden boards and I need to put away a few more tools. I also need to move all the lumber out of weather and into the barn. That moving job is going to be a bigger deal. I may end up moving most of the lumber to the old chicken coop, so functionally done.

I need to get the two upper fields ready for alfalfa which means knocking down weeds again. I have the new disc set I just needed tot get it working. I figured this would be an easy endeavor on a Saturday morning. It took me almost two hours to get the discs working correctly. There is no instruction manual and the seller was in and out in under 10 minutes after he delivered them. There is a handle missing that controls a release arm to let tension off of the locking mechanism to get the back set of discs to swing out. I tried pushing on the discs. I tried backing up and jerking them forward to get them loose. I had to use an old dog leash to hold the arm locking mechanism open. I figured that part out early. After hooking onto the back set of discs with a chain and pulling and jerking from various angles I gave it some more attention and started to figure out every single little mechanism and discovered the locking arm was missing its handle but I could turn the pipe manually. Once I had that disengaged I got the arm to pop loose with WD40 and more tractor manipulation. Then I had to drag it around in circles to figure out how to adjust it and where it needed to be to get me maximum effect without bogging down the tractor. I also had to gas up the tractor and blow out the radiator so dirt and weeds didn’t cause me to overheat her.

So two hours later I was able to start discing the upper prime field. This is very monotonous. Around and around and around you go. It is a must that you wear your seatbelt as tight as you can get it across your thighs. The tractor is constantly jumping around due to ruts and bumps and dirt clots and it starts to wear on your back and shoulders. After 8 hours with a seatbelt my back was starting to holler at me for doing it so long.

I refused to come in for lunch and just kept after it. There are deer absolutely every where in the upper fields and harvested wheat field. There must be at least 50 living on the property now. The amazing part is even with no rain and 100+ degree temperatures I was able to find dark brown moist soil in several areas of the field. This is very good news for our dryland alfalfa experiment we are doing next year.

My chickens hate the heat and are only laying 3-4 eggs a day now. The babies have not started to lay yet with any consistency.

My practice area below, I am going to toss out some dryland grass seed and hope it takes in the spring. The big win was I managed to even out the small area. It had a bunch of different holes and has been needing some attention.

We have killed one badger so far and no coyotes.

More of the same

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Sunday I was back at the field. This time it only took 30 minutes to get the tractor ready and get up to the field. We are getting ready to love us some high speed fiberoptic transmitted internet! Here you see the fiberoptic cable coiled up and ready to go to our house. Annmarie tells me that in one week we will have it up and running in our house! It could have been sooner but we opted to have them bury the cable in our yard and install two routers inside our house with direct hard wire to the fiberoptic line. It will be amazing. We have even heard rumors that some of our neighbors are inquiring about having it added to their house now. I spent another 8 hours on the tractor again. It would have been a straight shot but a couple of hours into it Zeke showed up to the upper field. He loves eating voles but its not safe for the dogs to be up there currently. So I walked him back to the house and discovered that he had pushed on the panel going into the ram pasture. The bungee had broke and he figured it out causing an opening to near the top. I closed it and tied it shut. But no Mouse or Gizmo anywhere in the yard. I figured they had used the same hole but when I walked up to the front fence I discovered that Annmarie had not latched the gate into the corral and Mouse had pushed on the gate and opened it up. The other two dogs used that opportunity to sneak down to Grandma’s house and ate cat food. I pulled weeds on the front hillside and hollered for the dogs occasionally. Mouse came back first and Gizmo showed up about ten minutes later. Once everyone was back in the yard I went back out and started to go around in circles. I managed to get one field completed and started in the next one. There was an old hay elevator parked up there that I grabbed with the tractor and pulled back to the house. The two flat tires were no match for my mistress! The elevator is an old pto belt driven thing probably from the 1950’s. I need Annmarie to tell me scrap or front yard decoration. There is still some 4 inch mainline irrigation pipe buried alongside the fence in the upper 7 acre field. It will have to be dug out by hand. It is resting nicely where it is for now.

We have been feeding the sheep for about 2 weeks now and they have all put on weight. The pasture we were keeping them on had no nutrition. We have not let them out on the back hillside because of the coyotes. Losing three of them has made us cautious of just letting them roam free. If we do that then we still have to bring them in every night. So for now we are having to feed hay. This is cutting into our winter feed stockpile and I am going to have to buy another four tons of hay to get us through the winter.

And it continues

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It is amazing some of the things you learn when you work with old stuff. When we first moved to the farm one of the kids that was helping my father -in-law would collect old railroad tie date nails. I knew he had found a couple out on the farm but I never really paid any attention to it. As we build this Bull enclosure we are ripping down an old fence line and a few random railroad ties. About 50% of the ties are rotted off but the other ties are still good and are getting reused in the new fence. I have found two of the dated nails and managed to pull one out intact. The head popped off the other one. Annmarie looked it up for me when I came back inside. They were used to date the tie as there were several different methods to treat the posts and the railroad company wanted to track which ones worked the best. So this railroad tie is from 1929 and I put it back in the ground! I am hoping to get 100 years out of a railroad tie, truly amazing. A real testament to what living in a desert like climate can do for stuff. I guess that < 12 inches of annual rainfall is good for something.

I decided to do something about the front gate entrance. When you step in through the gate I always have to step to the side and onto some gravel I had piled up. Well that gravel is sliding down hill so I thought that creating a short wall would help the problem. I bought 25 blocks on Friday and got them installed two days ago. I am still not certain it is a good thing. It will keep the gravel from slipping as much but now I have to actually pick up my feet.

Bubba has been out for a few hours the last couple of days and has been filling the rock cribs. This is an essential task as I cannot move forward without them full. I was very clear that I wanted him to get them from the old rock wall to minimize driving on the hill. So yesterday when I was out working on the enclosure I had to finish topping off a couple of the cribs. I ended up crawling on top of the the cribs and moving rocks around by hand to get them to stack better. This made more space therefore requiring me to haul more rocks. I decided I would drive to the top of the hill and get some random rocks that were sticking out of the ground. I would eventually like to pick all of the huge rocks off of the hillside. As I drove past the old rock wall I marveled at how many rocks were still left. We had four rock cribs almost full and it looked barely touched.

Yet as the mistress took me up the hill i noticed what looked like a well beaten path going up to the top of the hillside. I knew i had only been up there a couple of times and could not have made that many tracks . I was right, Bubba decided that the extremely large pile of rocks on top were a lot less work. The rocks are all loose and you can just drive to one spot and load them up. Now this might upset the rock chucks that live in the pile but other than that no harm. If you look at the below picture the old rock fence is at the top of the shadow and the huge pile of rocks is at the skyline. Oh well, the grass truly is greener on the other side!

I went out and worked on the bull enclosure again until dark. This is cutting into my wife time. I need to just get it done so I can move on to the next thing, which is going to have to be the machine shop. All of my evening help was busy so I worked alone, I did three loads of rocks to top off cribs and then hung a gate over but the lamb shed. The gate only opens out toward the bull enclosure, it only went about 25% of the way in the opposite direction. I will need to remove some earth to make it open both ways.

I had to go get some woven wire but I my choices are severally limited as there are only three rolls left on my fencing pile. I managed to find two that will hopefully work. I will have to reuse the woven wire from the fence line I am tearing down to make the entire enclosure.

I managed to get the woven wire stretched over one section and will now just need to install the tamarack railing and it will be done!

Annmarie took these pictures out our kitchen window. We had some water issues and fertilizer issues this year with our boxes and had a hard time with some of our seeds growing. We have lots and lots of onions and potatoes. This is only our third year and we may have gotten it figured out. I still want to do the underground greenhouse next year. I think it would be amazing to grow fresh vegetables year round!

Last of purchased hay

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Saturday was a good day. I had Bubba helping me and we went and picked up the last load of purchased hay first thing. I was a about 30 minutes late picking him up and just told his mother I was on farmer time! This is a real thing! Serious! There are times you just need to get a job done and are sure it will only take another 15 minutes to complete so you tell the wife you are headed in. 90 minutes later, two phone calls and you only give up to come inside because it is getting dark. I would like to say this doesn’t happen very often but that would be a lie. I can easily get sucked into something and just want to get it done! It is immaterial that the project will take three weeks to complete. I have set a goal for work to be completed at this time and must finish.

So Bubba and I hand loaded the last 2.5 tons onto the trailer and came home and unloaded it into the barn. It was a lot easier to put onto the trailer than it was to stack it up on top of the hay pile. The easy portion of unloading is the bottom three levels of bales, after that it is all work. Hay elevator next year! As I was explaining to Bubba how next year we would be storing round bales it occurred to me that I need to put some rails on the inside of the barn so the bales don’t push on the siding and I may even need to put a cable tightener at the top of the barn to keep it from spreading out from the pressure of all that hay. One more thing to do in the Spring of next year. This came to me as an epiphany while waving my hands in the air and talking. This is good, I can plan ahead and have things ready.

After we stacked it all Bubba took a lunch. I drank water and thought about the next task we were going to do. In all reality, I was resting in the shade, but saying you are planning sounds better. You cannot let them sense weakness, teenagers will exploit it.

Before I could show Bubba how to pick up rocks we needed to empty out the rest of the tractor bucket. We set two more posts for the Bull enclosure and then I had him drive the mistress. I walked alongside giving him pointers. Most of the rocks are going to come from the back hillside. I only have about three buckets worth laying around the barn lot. So Bubba needs to know how to safely pick rocks from the hillside. There is a technique to this as the tractor is small and can easily get over balanced. He is to go straight up and back down the hillside once loaded. This allows you to keep the bucket low to the ground and drop it on the ground if tractor tires start lifting off the ground. He must always wear the seatbelt. He is good at this already. It is a must and something that I harp on everyone about. I wear it faithfully. He can loosen the rocks out of the ground with the front bucket but he has to hand load each and every rock. I don’t think he expected it. I suspect he thought he could scoop them up like gravel from the pile. So he hopped off the mistress and we started to load the bucket. Next thing I know he is screaming “snake!” He landed five feet away with a panicked expression on his face. I asked where and started to dig around in the grass to see it. I pointed out that he was getting rocks from a rocky hot hillside and he was going to find lots of snakes. If he doesn’t bother them, they won’t bother him. We got back to work. He managed to back down and got stuck in the dry creek bed. He had popped the mistress out of four wheel drive. When you have that much weight in the bucket you need four wheel drive and positrack to get over slippery surfaces. He was able to drop the rock load into the first rock crib and then I turned him loose. There are five rock cribs to fill currently and each one will take a minimum of two hours each.

After getting cleaned up Annmarie and I headed into town to get me new work boots. One of the local stores has a one day sale and clothing and shoes are 20% off so I try and buy foot wear on this day. I had spotted an add for an estate sale on facebook during Bubba’s lunch time and it was on the way to town so I asked the wife if she was interested in stopping. She was game, we like to do these but most of them are not true estate sales, just glorified yard sales. We like to yard sale but usually on days where we can visit 10+ sales in a single day. I had seen the signs for this sale on Friday while doing the supply run but had not stopped. Big mistake! It was a true liquidation of everything from a man over 90 years old. There was still a lot of stuff left and we went on day three. We found a few odds and ends but the real find was a DOG TAG MACHINE from World War 2! The thing is a beast and weighs around 250#. I just kept coming back to it and finally made the best offer of the day for it. A couple of people were holding out and hoping that no one would want it. I spotted one of these years ago and coveted it then but it was really expensive. They go for $500-1000 depending on how old they are. Most of the ones I have seen are not this old. Once I get it into the house and onto the breeze porch I will start cleaning it up. The thing is sold metal and just has surface rust. Its a light coating from being stored outside in a shed. I will get that cleaned off and lube the machine up with some WD-40 and I will be set! Annmarie asked me what I was going to do with it. I am gonna make tags! I have no idea what for but I am gonna make some. I hunted around and finally found blank tags for 18 cents a piece if I buy 1000. It seems like a nice round number. I figure it will take me 50-100 tags just to get it right and see how many lines I can put on the dog tag. I need to create a postcard with information on the machine and process so I can include it with any tags made. I am pretty stoked about this find! Now I just need two more hardy souls to help me unload it and carry it upstairs and onto the breezeporch. I have it wrapped in a tarp in the the back of our pickup now. I also need to print up the instruction manual.

As an added bonus I spotted this internal gear stacked over against some discarded stuff when we went back to pickup our Graphotype. I was gonna trade it with a couple of buddies. One does metal work and the other does woodwork custom tables. I figured that surely one could use this unique item. Well after talking to Annmarie on the way home we are going to use it! We have been talking about getting a custom metal sign for the farm and we can have someone cut us a pattern using their CNC machine and I could weld it after taking the class this fall. But today as I was staring at the picture it dawned on me that we could just have the CNC machine cut the shape to just barely under the circumference of the gear and I could just drill holes through it and bolt it to the ring! No welding necessary therefore no waiting needed. Annmarie just needs to design it and I need to get two metal posts from the scrap yard. Once I have those posts I can set them in concrete and we will be ready! I really like this idea. Annmarie can do all the design work and just have the CNC machine do its duty. I want to make it out of 1/4″ or 3/16″ plate steel, with the price of steel currently I will probably go for the 3/16″. If we use steel then I can create the rust patina on the new piece easily with a chemical spray.

I did get some new leather boots and some slip on leather shoes!

Bully for us

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This week I have been trying to work on the bull enclosure. The best part of this is after last weekend I went and got a load of hay and had Mr Consumer unload it while I was at work! This is the absolute best way to move hay, by not moving it at all and letting someone else do it.

I decided to change my name for Mr Consumer. Its a big deal for me as I don’t usually do this but I just cannot pass up the opportunity to use a better one. His mother calls him Bubba! I cannot make this up and it is way cooler than my name! So I am switching forever and ever, this one time.

My nephew has been coming out to the house in the late evenings to help me out. We are focusing on the bull enclosure. Its slow going but we have been able to sink 6-8 posts every night. We are setting each post with gravel instead of putting the dirt back. This means we are staying out till 2130on the nights we can work. This means I just come home, eat dinner and then head out to the barn lot to work. This only works 2-3 evenings a week but it is a little more done every day and ultimately it will be done if I just keep at it.

The only lousy part is we are having to manually dig the holes the rest of the way. My tractor just won’t do it. A 16 pound breaker bar will move a lot of rocks a little way then we manually dig them out of the holes. Most of the time you have to dig them out by hand as the post hole digger doesn’t grab the rocks. It is amazing how you can literally break a rock in half with a steel bar and enough effort. I can tell we have been at this for over three weeks, my T-shirts are starting to not be as loose on me from the upper body muscles compensating for the hard work. Now if only this would contribute to a six pack ab set without having to work at it!

We are reusing some old cedar posts in an effort to keep costs down. I am hoping they will hold but the only real way to test this theory out is to build it, put the bull in there and see how it works. So we are going to do a trial by fire after completion.