microhay equipment

Baa Baa, the sheep

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Friends of ours are trying to sell their farm and wanted us to take “Baa Baa” back. The wife had tamed down one of our sheep and it was a pet. I had the stock rack on the back of the pickup and Mr Rainman and I drove over. The wife got Baa Baa back into an old kennel pen. I went in to grab her. Holy Smokes!! Our rams are about 150#, this ewe is so fat that she has teats and has never been bred. I put her at a solid 225#. Mr Rainman and I had to get on each side of her and drag her by her collar to the pickup. It took three grown men to get her up onto the tailgate and into the pen. I was trying to pull down the gate and it got stuck then loose suddenly and hit Mr Rainman’s right hand. This resulted in a lot of pain and swelling and a small amount of blood. (It’s not broken, he had an X-ray). When we came back to the farm we just backed into the field and let Baa Baa jump out of it on her own. Surprisingly, she did not have any trouble jumping down.

Mr Rainman worked on mowing cheat grass in the fields while I tore apart the baler and fixed it. I needed to replace seven pickup teeth and one of the spacer tubes. I stripped about half the screws on top and had to grind them off, so painful. Luckily, I had lots of spare screws. It took me a few hours but I got it all torn down and put back together. I hate doing machine repairs. I know how but I never learned to embrace my grease monkey side.

Once I had the baler back together and the baling tool bag full of needed tools, only the ones needed, I went back to digging the trench for the French drain under the hay room. This project is going to take a while as I am down to using a Polanski to dig out the last eight inches. There are a lot of palm sized rocks that are impeding any rapid progress. The trench is too deep to use the irrigation trencher. I used that to get the first twelve inches. My goal is to get this project completed this weekend.

The Gingerman came out with a spiffy painted beautiful rebuilt orange master cylinder for Little Dumper (1957 Chevy 1 ton). He managed to get it installed and got a slight amount of pressure in the system but now wants to get an easy bleed connector so he can get the brake lines vented. He said he will be back some other time this weekend. It’s the only clean part, other than hoses, in the entire engine compartment. I still have not figured out how to change the side door channel glass holders. I will have to do more you tube searching to find a step by step plan.

I finally made it back inside and as Annmarie is feeding the dogs their evening meals I suddenly start hearing her screaming “mouse, mouse” and running out of the laundry room. This was very confusing for our older Border Collie dog who is named Mouse. He just wanted food and Annmarie just wanted away as she had scooped up some dog food and a dead desiccated mouse. We knew we had a mouse downstairs in the laundry room but I had been unsuccessful at catching it in a trap. I finally put out some bait poison in the closet where we keep the animal food. The mouse must have eaten some poison on their way to the all you can eat buffet. The lesson here is to not get greedy!

Annmarie vowed to never again feed the dogs. As this was no treasonable she now refuses to reach into the dog food container until she has shined a light in it to check for any mice. When I heard her yelp I thought the mouse was alive! The dog, Mouse, thought he was in trouble.

The house is getting sided. We thought they were at a standstill but had not noticed that the fascia was getting installed. This week our new double hung window for the master closet should be installed and they can get the trim up on that side of the house. Pretty quick the new siding should be going up. It’s starting to look like progress now!

660/900 mini round bales

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Well we survived the international flight and made it home. I was ready to be done with vacation, we saw some amazing things but home is the best, even the brown desert of Eastern Oregon. As we pulled into the driveway at 1000 there was a “dead” black colored sheep out in the orchard. It was flat, neck stretched out and belly looked a little bloated so I added carcass disposal to my list of tasks to be completed immediately.

I had to check on chickens, baby chicks, upper sheep (feeders), upper cows, bull in Alcatraz, our new bull, lower sheep (momma, babies and ram), cats, dogs, horse and alpaca. I even drove out to the orchard with the tractor to pickup the “dead” sheep and discovered that it was gone, it had been merely sunning itself. The alpaca can look dead also if you don’t really look at them carefully when they are sunbathing. No one died while we were gone!

I went out to look at the grass hay that was still on the ground. It was pretty dry but it needed to be rowed again so I could bale it early Saturday. It was way too hot to bale any hay, there needs to be some moisture or else the grass is too slick and it won’t roll up into a round bale. Of course since we were still on vacation time change a nap was required!

Saturday I went out at 0530 and baled until about 0830 when it got too hot. Another nap was required and we went to a wedding and visited friends. I am truly going to take my actual vacation this time and try and rest. Sunday, I was up at 0430 and had the rest of the field baled and ready to go by 0745. Mr Flow came over and we picked up all of the hay in the field and got it into the barn. We stacked it up and got most of the bales that were still drying out moisture checked and into the barn. We had about 15 bales that had to be turned and six that need to be fed to the bull in Alcatraz, they are never going to dry out.

We did some work picking up stuff at my mother’s house then started digging the footings for the back bridge. This was not easy as we kept hitting scrap metal pieces and rocks. Once the footings are dug I will build them up with wood so we can pour some concrete. The back creek is almost dry again. It happens every year and even as dry as it is it still has a little water in it. I suspect it will be bone dry by the end of July. We need to get the bridge in so I can make an area in the wood shed to hang all of our bee frames and store all of our extra bee boxes. This will keep them all contained to one area and easy to find.

569/900 round bales

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We were trying to get things straightened out mid June on the farm so we could go on vacation for a couple of weeks. We were going to leave the country and visit our other daughter, Monica in Glasgow where she is going to college. Mr Rainman and I were trying to get all of the hay put up before we left but the rain was not cooperating. Nor was the paying job as it kept me away from haying. Despite Mr Rainman attempting to get all the hay done before he went on vacation also we had to leave 1/3 of field #1 on the ground as it was too wet to bale.

The Gimp came out one day while I was working and helped Mr Rainman pickup baled hay from field #1. They put it all in the lamb shed as the barn was ready to stack from seven foot to sixteen foot height and The Gimp did not want to lift bales that high. I appreciate the help and we need hay out in the lamb shed this winter anyways so it kills two birds with one stone. The Gimp did express some muscle soreness occurred the next day. They are no longer suffering from a bum leg but nicknames do not get changed, they are assigned on the first day and last forever!

While we were out of the country there was a large fire adjacent to our property. The neighbor’s field directly across the gravel road caught fire. Sarah did not call us because it did not come onto our property, someone else told us so we called her. She was taking care of feeding the animals while we were gone.

The puppy, Chance, is turning out to be a very pretty girl. She is very smart and probably our most athletic dog we have ever owned. She can jump the back yard side fence in the yard and now when she wants to eat the cat food off of the elevated table she no longer jumps up with her front paws only. She just jumps up onto the table like the cats and gets easy access to all of the food. She does the same thing in our raised garden beds. She is a menace, the only good thing is we have not taught this one how to go over/under/through fences. I am still amazed we did that the first time, it was convenient when we were out in the fields but so problematic when it came time to keep the dog in the yard!

More haying

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Annmarie is getting a migraine so the weather is changing. She would have made a great weather witch. She knows a few days before the weatherman that rain or a storm is coming. It’s supposed to rain by Friday. I cut two small fields and 1/3 of field #1 today. I will turn them on Tuesday and we should be able to bale them on Wednesday. The two little fields will have around 25 bales in each field so about 1000# of hay in each one. I am hopeful the 1/3 will get us around 150 bales. At this point it is all a guessing game.

I did not have any trouble with the little sickle bar mower, but it is noisier than the other one and noise tends to equal soon to break issues. My hope is to get all of field #1 cut without breaking the mower. But now that I know its going to rain, courtesy of Annmarie, we will need to get all of the baled hay out of the fields and into the barn.

So tomorrow after work, Annmarie and I will have to go out and pickup a 100 bales and get them into the barn. I had to sleep downstairs last night. I moan in my sleep once I start getting my physical activity up to hay speed. My shoulders and back do not appreciate the workout. I am able to stack the bales to seven feet without climbing anything but it is a shoulder workout.

Calling the mommas in at night

Our lavender is looking great and should start blooming soon. I went through it today and pulled the few weeds that are growing in it. It really needs a leaf blower used in it before the blooms start but I am not sure we have time for that. Both bee hives are still alive, we thought the original one had went kaput but it snapped back and there are more drones now. We are looking at another flower area to the left of the lavender so we can time the blooms accordingly. We need something to be blooming at all times all summer long. The quail are in pairs all over the farm. I have not seen any babies yet but I expect them to start crawling out from everywhere soon.

Sheep sorting again, ram time

Steve Hardin5 Comments

Yesterday was sheep sorting day. We have a bunch of skinny mommas and we need to wean off the lambs that are old enough, we need to worm everyone, create two herds (edible, keep) and turn the Ram loose in with the mommas (keep). This seems simple enough on the surface but nothing is ever simple when you are working with animals that have not been touched in three months. Most of the lambs have only been touched once in their entire life which makes them the most difficult group to handle. We started by having to dig trenches in the barn to be able to move the panels around and create chutes and three large pens in the barn. Once that was done I found the oral drenching tool and our wormer. I did not have enough oral drench so Annmarie volunteered to go to town and get more while we tagged and banded. I had about a 1/3 of a bottle so we could start while she was in transit. Mr Rainman and I then attempted to push the sheep into the barn. Nope, they would not go, no matter what we did, they kept breaking free of the pile and would not go into the chute into the barn.

Mr Rainman went and got Chance, border collie puppy, and he attempted to get her to move the sheep into the barn while she was on a lead. She would not really listen to him and since she is learning you have to be patient and strict at the same time. I took over and she was baling them up well but they would not go into the barn. She would be within four feet of them and they would not budge. One broke loose and she dived for it, I had a hold of the lead rope with just my hands, no gloves. I had to clamp down and grab rope to jerk her back for a correction. I ended up with a two inch rope burn on my middle finger! But I did get the puppy stopped and corrected. We had to go get Mouse also and squeeze the sheep from both sides and push them into the barn with the dogs. They just would not go on their own, and before that would work we had to open up the barn so they could just go through the door, once in the barn we pushed them to the far end so we could run them through the chute. We were still having trouble getting them into the chute so Mr Rainman started to just catch the little ones and then I could tag and band them. We had about ten lambs that needed tagged and banded still. On one of his snags he caught a pink tagged big lamb that was a ram! So it got banded, which was not easy as the testicles were so big I had to pop them through the bander opening one at a time. I have not made this mistake in years, so it was a great catch by Mr Rainman.

We used the oral drenched but the little clip that holds the bottle to the belt does not work so I tie it upside down under the belt with a piece of cord then it will work. It’s fairly redneck but it does the job and using the drencher hand pump is so much faster than having to measure out a syringe every time you need to dose a sheep. Once we had two groups of sheep we had to run them through the chute again to count them! Here are the final numbers: 46 ewes, 10 babies (too young to wean) , 1 ram in the first group and 40 lambs, 1 cull ewe, 13 eating size in second group for a total of 111 sheep. We are going to be taking the eating size ones to sale soon to see how they do. The ram is now in with the momma herd and we are keeping them in the orchard for now so he doesn’t have to chase them all over. We are bringing both groups into the barn lot every night to keep the predators at bay. One group in the front side and one group on the back side. They can see each other but not mix. There is an amazing amount of noise for the first few days once we separate off the lambs.

I hooked up the sickle mower onto the Kubota and tried to cut the orchard but the space is full of trees and metal rings around the trees. I did not even make it around the field once before I hit a cow panel and popped off a tooth from the bar. So I had to go put that sickle bar up and put the rake on the Kubota and set up the smaller sickle bar on the John Deere. We did not use it last year so I had to make some adjustments and get it all greased up. The Italians that designed it put one essential grease zirk where it is near impossible to access. It took me 30 minutes to get the thing into a spot where I could access it with a small grease gun and a 90 degree elbow. It is of course exactly where the bolt fails every time so it has to be done. I can pop the other mower apart and redo the rivets but that will take time. So it will be something I need to do after hay season. I had to pull the break away bar from the mower and beat on it with an eight pound sledge hammer to get it back into some semblance of shape and function. It’s not perfect but it is much improved. I am now ready to cut more hay today. The plan is to cut 1/3 of the leftover ground today and turn it on Tuesday. Then bale it on Wednesday. I will cut more hay on Tuesday, another 1/3. We have managed to bale 346/900 needed bales and 252/900 are in the barn. I was able to scavenge another 20 bales yesterday from the leftovers.