lambs

Lambs for sale

Steve HardinLeave a comment

The Apprentice has been incredibly game for whatever comes her way. So on Friday we were ready to sort lambs and I wanted to weigh them. We have never weighed our sheep before. We bought the slings and scale several years ago with the intention of doing it occasionally but in all reality it was not necessary. I had posted an ad for the lambs on Craigslist and someone was interested but they wanted to know how many of the lambs were slaughter weight. Well we are keeping seven of the big lambs for our local customers. We have six sold but due to the current coyote problems we are having I through it prudent to keep an extra on hand.

Due to us keeping seven and me stating they weighed anywhere from 35-85# I figured we better have some weights. We grabbed a short section of chain from the fence (I keep all of the short sections I find all over the farm next to the outhouse trash enclosure). The new scale and slings were in the tack room. The one sling is for newborn lambs and the other for everyone else up to 200#. We hung the scale up in the momma/baby area. This way if the lamb got loose we could easily catch it again. The only bad part of this plan is you have to get the sheep into the harness on the ground then lift them up onto the hooks of the scale. So this means lifting every single lamb after you have already caught them and drug them over to the scale.

We got all 59 lambs into the barn and pushed down to the far end so they can feed into the chute and then we can count and sort them. I manned the sorting gate and chute. The Apprentice was at the end of the chute and had to catch them as I pushed them out and drag them over to the momma/baby area. Keep in mind she weighs 115# and is 5’4” and has never wrangled sheep before. It went pretty well actually.

She determined that horns on sheep are unnecessary. I like to use them as handles but the ones with little nubbins kept managing to head but her or dig their horns into her biceps. She got tossed around a few times and losses control of the lamb. We just pushed them into the momma/baby area and then caught them again. We had one crazy female, who weighed 112# that just head butted right into my left side and tried to knock me down. We finally snagged her and got her into the scale. If she was not already going away that behavior would have earned a ticket to cull city! One time she held on but got tossed all over the barn while managing barely to stay on her feet and keep ahold of the very large lamb. On one occasion while getting the lamb into the harness she got jerked toward the side and I had to catch her to keep her from hitting her head. After that I held the sheep and she put the harness on. We finished with all 59, with 52 weighed. We did not weigh the seven we were keeping. It was getting pretty long as that took us about four hours to do fifty sheep. So about 5 minutes per sheep.

We then let the 52 go out into the upper end fields and moved the keeper seven over to the lower pastures to go into our main herd of ewes and two rams. We only kept whethers so this is possible.

Once that was done we needed to take the pile of discarded and not valuable alpaca fiber that was still in the milking area of the barn over into the lavender patch. We are using the fiber as a weed suppressant, ground cloth. It works pretty good for that but it takes a lot of fiber to do that. Luckily, we have a lot. We drug it through the corral and front yard and then went to toss it over the fence. This is when the Apprentice announced she “cannot move my arms” when we went to lift the fiber over the fence. It was a 12 x10’ tarp full of fiber.

We worked on clearing the front hillside of puncture vine. It’s so hard to get rid of so we are taking it out and bagging it all to go to the dump. We don’t want any of it on the property. Once we had the bag full the apprentice could not lift it so she brought the trash can into the yard and managed to get the bag into it on her own. We called it a day after that.

I am getting too old to go all day, I hurt by the end of the day. Annmarie tells me I should be conditioning my body in the off summer season but I am not sure that will help my joints, my achy knees, elbows and shoulders! So instead I just keep moving and keep doing stuff despite the pain.

Predators 9/Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been one of those weeks, The Apprentice wanted to keep working all week. The fence building did not deter her. We have two leaky frost free faucets that need to be replaced. Unfortunately, to do that they have to be dug out. This is due to the reducers that had to be added to match the 2” pipe that is original to the farm. I placed some tools on the ground to outline a space and asked her to dig. She knocked out the first hole on day 1. Her only real obstacles were the dogs kept dropping the throw balls onto her head when the hole started to get deep. I imagine she threw the ball all day for both dogs. I am sure they loved it. I saw her on her way out and told her there was another faucet in the back yard that needed dug out but it was near a tree stump and would probably not be as easy. This did not seem to deter her and The Apprentice stated she would be back the next day.

Thursday morning, she texted me around 0930, a late start for sure. I am sure that first hole was causing some physical discomfort. I had messaged her first thing to check on a sheep carcass in the orchard. My mother-in-law had called me at work stating she thought there was a dead sheep in the orchard. The Apprentice confirmed there was indeed a dead ewe, #325, in the orchard with no intestines. I told her to just leave it. She tore into the back faucet with less enthusiasm and more problems. There were tree roots everywhere and she had to keep cutting through them. I knew this was going to be a problem. She had to leave around 1330 and said there was more to dig.

When Annmarie came home she called me at work to tell me there was a dead sheep in the orchard. I had forgotten to tell her. She had spotted it because there was a Golden Eagle feasting on the carcass! I asked if she had gotten a picture of the eagle, nope. We discussed my failure to keep her informed and that the sheep had to now be brought into the barn lot. This means running them through the front yard every night and letting them back out every morning. I opted to leave the carcass in the orchard as I was going to be around the farm all weekend and wanted a crack at the coyote doing this.

Friday morning when Mr Rainman and I went out to fix the gate into the tree orchard area, he hit it with the tractor earlier in the summer. We noticed that the carcass only had the head intact and three legs. One leg was missing and one was off in the pasture about 40 feet from the carcass. It had been stripped down. We found a dig out spot under the fence. This is where the predators have been crawling under the fence to get to the sheep. It was a fresh crawl spot and the dirt was still moist. We ended up planting a wooden post in the field and mounting the electronic eyes on all four sides of the post. They are solar powered with a battery that lasts all night. So they charge all day and then light up and flash at night. It is supposed to look like light reflecting off of eyes. This is supposed to scare the predators off. We got everything mounted but did not turn them on. I went back up to the machine shed and created a snare to place over the hole. We are going to leave the carcass in the orchard for one more night to see if something returns tonight. This meant that the four vultures that showed up today got to fill their bellies all day long. They were pretty satiated. I will move the carcass tomorrow if we don’t catch anything. If we do I will try the snare a second night. Who knows what will happen.

We carried a rifle all day while working on the fence and faucets and did not see a single coyote. It is so painful to have the thing on you most of the day. We finally just put it in the pickup so it was out of the way. We did get the frost free faucets changed out and they work and do not leak. The Apprentice can fill in the holes at a later date. We went up and pounded T posts in on two sides of field #1. The stupid flood buried the woven wire alongside the road in two different places. We will have to cut the wire and splice in new to sit above the dirt. Their is a large drop off so we had to pound the T-posts in by hand alongside the road.

We measured the fence line distance alongside the creek. Each roll of woven wire is 330’. So I decided that instead of trying to wire all the woven wire into one long contiguous piece of wire I would just install them in 312-320’ increments. We marked out a H brace every 312-320 feet. We can install one entire section of fence, tighten it up and then attach the new one and do it again. Their needs to be some H braces interspersed along a long fence anyways and this made perfect sense to me. We marked out all of the H braces and drilled the first holes with the 6” auger. The rain we had earlier in the week and the storm we had today made drilling into the soil very easy. We got 5/100” of rain today. I missed out on measuring the earlier rain storm due to a dead battery in our rain gauge, I fixed it on Wednesday.

I did try and call the animal auction yard today but no one answered and their voicemail was full. I will try an email this weekend. We have 55 lambs that need a new home with only five sold at this time.

Predators 8/ Farm 1

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Friday I went up to field #3 first thing in the morning to attempt to call the coyote in. I am using the new electronic call I got this week. I hung out for about an hour and did not see a single coyote. The quail did not see me as I was hiding behind the cattle feeder. The sheep ran by without seeing me either, yet no coyote showed up. I went down and picked wild blackberries for a little over an hour. I filled all my containers I had brought. I only picked two patches and skipped another three. It was starting to warm up and the hornets like the berries when it gets warm. I went inside and washed them all off and then repacked them into individual bags and froze them. I ended up with 25 snack size bags full. Annmarie uses a single frozen bag every morning in her breakfast smoothie. I try and collect them for her and I will need to collect more in 2 and 4 cup quantities so we can make pie and cobbler throughout the year.

I got all the tools together to go up and work on the fence surrounding field #1. It is a green seven acre field that the sheep and cows need to get into so they can eat for a few more weeks. I had the tractor bucket full of tools and wire and stays to drive up there. Of course I did not take a rifle, there is no place to put it on the tractor, I would have to hold it the entire time. Of course I saw two coyotes running out of field #3 and a dead lamb in the field. They had just killed it and it was almost noon! I dumped off the supplies and went back to the house to get the rifle and call. I spent another three hours trying to call them back and had no luck. We have now decided to lock the sheep into the barn lot and feed them last years hay from the machine shed.

This is honestly a stupid problem. This weekend alone I have spent about 6 hours trying to spot coyotes. Each sheep lost is $100 down the drain. I will keep going out every day until I can kill them. The next evening when I walked up to the find the carcass and hopefully catch someone snacking I had to walk around looking for the carcass. The only thing left after 24 hours was a hide and a spine with a few ribs attached. Nothing else! I of course did not see a coyote.

Sunday I went out to get Annmarie some blackberries for her breakfast, as I froze all the others I had picked. I went out and checked on our thornless berries in the garden. I had to come back inside three times to get more containers. The berries are huge compared to the wild ones. I left some fresh ones for Annmarie and froze another 16 bags. I will need to pick berries again in about four days. I had plans to go up and look for coyotes again but ended up cleaning house instead. Sarah said she would help me shear alpaca after she got done at church. My helpers are gone again for a couple of weeks. So we need to get the alpaca done.

When she got home we rounded up the alpaca and ended up shearing four more in about three hours. The only ones left are the three babies. One of them had crawled down into the ditch and was covered in water so he would not have been easy to shear. We are planning on shearing the rest on Tuesday or Thursday this week to get them all done. Annmarie has been washing the alpaca and is on her second saddle. It is amazingly cleaner when she is done.

My priority now is the fence around field #1, coyotes and finishing the freezer room. I want to store the cleaned and ready to be cleaned alpaca fiber in the freezer room. This will get it out of the house and into one spot. I just have one piece of OSB to install on the wall and it will be ready. Okay, I need to wire five outlets also but that will only take an hour. I can wire the light later. I am pretty sure I stole power from the next room for the overhead light. Basically, I need to get some more stuff done on the old house but it will have to wait until this winter.

Smattering of oddities

Steve HardinLeave a comment

There are times when a week of little things turns out to be an amazing week of accomplishments. This is not normal but it is fulfilling mostly due to its novelty. This week was such a thing. My air plant is blooming which is a first for me! I usually have a hard time keeping them alive but this year I have managed to keep six kicking and one doing well.

On Monday, the plumber came out to look at our instant hot water propane tank. We have been getting an error code for months now that will turn off the propane so there is no hot water. We figured out that stopping the demand or limiting it minimized your chance of losing hot water. Eventually, you just needed to shower faster so the hot water did not disappear. It was at a point where it needed to be corrected. I had dug some carbon out of the exhaust but could not figure out how to get inside of the heater. The plumber tore it apart and discovered that the squirrel fan that blows the air was full of dead flies. Not only was the fan full of dead flies, there was a paste of dead flies inside the fan housing and on the sensor unit. All of that was cleaned and reassembled and the hot water heater has been amazing ever since! This is a way cheaper fix than replacing the instant tank.

Tuesday, Sarah called in the late afternoon to say that one of the sheep had been attacked and something was hanging out. I came home and walked out to the ram pasture. Yep, one of the lambs, 5 month old, had crawled through some metal and cut open its stomach. It unfortunately had knicked the bowel also so I had to put it down. Not a great outcome but it is no longer suffering. I took it up to the boneyard that day. It’s too hot to leave anything dead near the house.

Thursday, I started working on converting the 20V DeWalt charger into a 12V power supply base. I gutted the charger and then had to cut holes in the plastic for the 12V regulator to be visible. Cutting holes in plastic with the a Dremel tool resulted in a lot of melting cuts. My only current problem is the screws are not designed to go through two layers of plastic. As dusty as the barn is I need the top clear piece installed. I will have to go to the hardware store and see if I can find longer bolts. The only thing left is to remove the solder from the battery terminals so I can solder on new ones to convert the battery to a power supply. I just need to finish that last piece and then I can mount it in the barn and start wiring the barn for 12V LED light strings. I am going to have five strings and they will be controlled from a switch bank next to the battery. I also picked up three Banty hens from a neighbor who died recently. We agreed to take care of them.

Friday, Annmarie called about a new pellet grill she had found for 50% off. Most people have already purchased their summer grill and ours had just died last week. So we got it strapped down into the back of the pickup and Annmarie told me to just use the tractor and a pallet to move it around.

Saturday, I cleaned off the back porch and pulled out the dead grill. Once I had a spot cleaned I got the tractor and pallet level with the tailgate and rolled the grill onto the pallet, strapped it down and brought it around to the side yard. I was able to roll it right up to the back porch. There was some finagling to get it up the three stairs by myself but I got it done without dumping the grill over on its side. I then had to start it up and do a 30 minute burn to clean it all out. I tossed the old grill in the trash. We had a 1.5 yard dumpster delivered this week and I filled it up from the net wrap in the barn. I have the big barn cleaned out and have started in on emptying the lamb shed but I ran out of room. I was also able to find the skirting table that had gotten stashed out in the old chicken coop. I had been looking for the thing all week and that was literally the only place left to look.

Sunday, I set up two leg traps in my mother-in-law’s front yard for raccoons. She has several coming up to the front porch now to eat cat food. So we will see how the traps perform. I cannot have them come up to the house and start snacking on our chickens. I set up the skirting table in the yard so that Annmarie can wash alpaca fiber and lay it out to dry. I also cleaned the main windows downstairs inside and out. I like looking out them. It’s really too hot to be outside for any length of time. So I went upstairs and glued on all the magnets for our fabric frames to cover up the storage closet. We should be able to start working on those this week.

All in all it was a lot of things that got marked off the to do list and I am happy.

Horse trailer wired!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Finally, something has gone my way this month. It has been a long month and a lot has happened, most of it not great. My new hard hat came and after three of us tried to adjust the straps to lower it on my head, Meathead figured it out. I wore it when I was wiring the trailer! I will definitely need to wear a cloth rag on my head when I wear the hard hat. I was sweating. I complained to Annmarie about the heat and she pointed out that it was 84 F. This would explain why I though it was so hot, that is the highest we have been this year. I managed to get the entire horse trailer wired, added a small internal light and taped up all the future wear spots to protect them. I was worried that I would spend all that time and something would not work, that problem is very hard to fix if you think you did it right the first time. Everything worked perfectly, I was truly amazed. I did not even blow the fuse in the pickup. I had three spares just in case I needed to do some trouble shooting.

Now I need to get the tire off and replaced. I will take the tire off today and get it replaced tomorrow. I will also probably pickup a second spare tire. I will also get the spare tire for the flat bed trailer fixed. Might as well get it all taken care of at the same time. Unfortunately, the pickup tires need replacing soon also. I have to take five cows over to Lagrande this week to get slaughtered.

Mr Rainman worked on spraying around the house and the garden area had a nice kill rate. In a few days we will be able to clean up the dead grass and weeds. Field #1 & 2 are sprayed with 2-4-d and Milestone. I am hopeful I can get out and spray #3 this afternoon. He also got the lavender spot sprayed and started spot spraying the orchard. As soon as we get the spraying done we are going to spread some fertilizer. This will be the first year I have ever tried to fertilize. I am hopeful it makes a difference. The real test will be to see if the value added is worth the cost.

Annmarie has been working on the garden watering system. She added all of the wine barrels onto a new line and they will be growing our herbs. We kept some dried herbs to use throughout the winter and found that they were way better than the store bought ones. So we are going to put up more herbs this year.

We are going to get more bee hives. Mr Rainman made three concrete block spots out in the orchard for the hives to live on. I am going to add two posts and then we will hold them in place with a 2x8x16’ board across the top. I will use eye hooks and clips on the post and ends of the board to keep the hives from getting blown over in the wind like last year. The bee hives don’t do well in 80 mph winds. We are hoping to have the same success this year that we did last year.

Our back runoff creek has stayed amazingly quite this year. It is running clear and only about eight inches deep. No four foot mud wave roaring behind the house. This bodes well for not getting the upper fields flooded out this year. I need to do a little more ditch digging and cut down 1-2 trees and we will be ready for another flood level stream height.

The sheep may be done now. We have had a set of twins and a set of triplets in the last week. I need to catch them and tag and band them still. I will get the final stats done in a couple of weeks. I need to make sure there are not any more stragglers.