mowing

Beautiful spring day

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Saturday was amazing, the sun was shining and it was a near perfect day. Since it was going to rain on Sunday we opted to just make it a work outside only day. Once the sheep were done we started to look for my set of small discs. Mr Rainman and I went all over the farm. We could not find them anywhere. I ended up mowing all around the upper CRP field. I mowed down by four corners but hit a buried baling twine bundle and had to take thirty minutes to cut it out of the mower blades.

The kids brought down a bunch of concrete from their remodel. We are going to use it to help stabilize the bank. It keeps getting eroded by the seeps, water and sheep. They have at least three more loads and I think that will make a great addition to this corner. We should be able to stop the corner from falling in.

The seven yearling cows that will be sold or eaten this fall got pushed down by four corners. They are in amongst the trees. We are going to start killing the cheat grass in the two fields near the mother-in-law’s house. We hope to get water on them so we can keep getting the cheat grass to sprout then kill it and start the process over.

I was able to sell five, one year old lambs this weekend ($120 each) so there are seven left to sell by this fall. It was very easy as we just pulled them off as we wormed the entire herd. They came and picked them up a couple of hours later. We just ran them out into the corral and down the chute into their horse trailer. The corral makes loading animals very easy.

The gate gremlins were out in force this weekend. The teenager cows got out of the lower pasture the gate was open. The horse got out of the barn lot, the gate was open. The horse got into the ran pasture with the sheep and was trying to eat the green grass, the gate was open. The surprising part of this is that each gate was left open by a different person! No one was harmed and the animals did just fine. This stuff happens.

I was able to get down to field one and mow the newly made ditch. Mr Rainman spotted some fresh coyote prints in the mud. We have not seen any yet this season but they are obviously out there. I went to the other side of the creek and worked on getting it mowed down. I managed to get the huge hole filled in! That has been there for over 25 years. Someone buried two huge track backhoes in there and spent three days trying to get them out. They left a huge hole that was never filled in. The edges of the hole were straight walled and over eight feet high. It is not safe to drive the tractor in that area without knowing exactly where you going and where the hole is located. I got the entire thing filled in and now anyone can safely go back there and mow it down as needed. That has been on my list for over 15 years and I just never got around to doing it. Usually, when I wanted to do it the ground was so hard that I could not move the dirt. I even used the little John Deere 2520 to do it.

Sunday I was able to work on the baler. Unfortunately, I am missing two parts. One that never got sent to me and one I think I sent back accidentally when I sent back the wrong sprockets. I am pretty sure that one is on me. I have the part numbers written down and will get them ordered first thing on Monday. Otherwise, all of the other parts are all installed, tightened and adjusted. I can get those two parts and the new chain on in less than 90 minutes. Mr Rainman did remind me that we may need to do some maintenance on the sickle bar mowers before we use them. I think I have all the parts for those already.

Baa Baa, the sheep

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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!

Can we mow?

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All I wanted to do on Sunday was mow cheatgrass. We had to bend out part of the metal skirt on the mower on Saturday and after mowing into the dark I had managed to bend it back. Mr Rainman said we had better fix it before going out to mow as we would just have to fix it again the next day. So we broke out the welder and grinder and then really looked at the mower. Wow! After 15 years the poor mower has cracks, bends and broken stuff all over the frame. We tried to bend the skirt but even with pipe wrenches we could not get it back in place. We had to split the skirt with a grinder cutting blade and bend smaller pieces. I would then attempt to weld them back together.

I did wear heavy leather gloves, arm and chest protection. I still managed to drop hot metal on my ankle by sitting too close to the welding. We had to cut a few filler metal pieces that I welded in place. I was also able to weld some of the cracks closed. I am still having trouble at time with making holes and then not being able to fill them. I keep getting a little better at welding every time I do it. I don’t expect to ever be an expert but in a couple of years I will be passing. Currently, I would rate my welding skill as good enough to hold stuff together. Welding overhead is not very fun and requires a lot more technique. This took a couple of hours to complete.

I am trying to use up all of the different types of spray paint I have on hand so color matching an item is not really a concern. Once I get all the extra used up I will keep green and black on hand. For now I am just getting a coat of paint on to help provide some needed rust protection.

The mower worked like a champ after that when I went out and mowed. After working on it last year and this year I am hoping to be able to ignore it for another five years. I do recommend eye protection as the rubber guard on the intake area is no more and occasionally stuff comes flying out.

Weekend update

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Mr Rainman came out on Saturday so we could pour some more concrete. I ran into town and got another pallet (56) bags of Sackcrete and three bags of sand only Sackcrete so I could do the brick power enclosure near the front bridge if there was time. Mr Rainman got the mixer in place and the last two supports on each side of the form installed. We carried around 30 bags over to our work area then started mixing and pouring. It was a lot easier, there was more room to work and we were higher than the mixer so you did not have to try and muscle the bag up while dumping it out. This time I managed to mix almost half the bags before trading spots. We only needed 40 bags to get the other bridge footing poured. Once it was poured we covered it all up with a tarp. It is getting down into the 40F range at night so I wanted to try and trap some of the heat into the form and concrete.

We then went to the other bridge and I installed a 36 brick rectangle with a power outlet built into the side of it. I am not a very good brick layer. It took some trial and error. Time will tell if I did it right. I have a hollow rectangle now. I am going to find a concrete block that I can just use as a topper. That way I can have access to the inside for wiring in the outdoor kitchen light power (after its built!).

I was pretty stoked to get all of that done in a single day. So the next day we were going to get the tractor mower going and Mr Rainman would mow the rest of the fields and I would work on wiring the lights in the barn. I hate playing at being a mechanic. When Mr Rainman went to hook up the new PTO shaft he noticed that the gear box on the mower was loose. You could shake it and move it around about 1/8” in either direction. He showed me so I said lets just tighten it up as I have done nothing in ten years to ensure its tight. I want it to last another ten years. So we lift it up with the rear three point hitch and he crawls under it. After much swearing and two four foot lengths of pipe (cheater bars) I manage to break a large crescent wrench. We tip the mower up on its side and chain it to the other mower bucket for safety. Then we proceeded to try and take it apart. I hate cotter pins. I hate tight spaces. Who has a 1.5” open end wrench laying around? I did find the wrench after I went and raided the last of my father’s machinist tools. I have never needed anything that large before and I am pretty sure the bolt was metric. No go, we could not get it apart. So Mr Rainman went home to get a 1/2” DeWalt impact driver for just this type of problem and I tried to get more parts and a torch.

We tried the impact driver and got no where! Nope, Nada, Nothing, it was not going to budge. I get impatient and just said cut bolt head off. After taking off all of the guards on the grinder and putting on a cutting wheel we were able to hack off the bolt heads. The threads had been worn off due to the rattling and looseness, there was no way it was coming apart or getting any tighter. It took us four hours to do nothing. I finally just gave up, had him grind off the bolts while I went and wired lights. He hooked up the spreader and went and over-seeded field #1 and the triangle. I got all of the light strings wired but one. That last strand I had one light that would not work and the last light on the string that did. I have one more sixteen feet in the air to still wire in. I think the first one has a wiring issue. My splice piece did not want to go on easily and I think it failed. Needless to say the last run is the one that lights up the hay rooms! So there is no light when you are getting hay until I fix it. I did discover that we can only run two strands of light at any one time. The voltage drops too far if you try and run three strands at the same time. Two is just fine and will work perfectly.

Mr Rainman is going to come out the next couple of days to work on the fields.

Predators 7 / Farm 1

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Mr Rainman came out today and sprayed the orchard. We have to use the backpack sprayer so the trees don’t get damaged and it took two sprayers full to get the entire area done. Once that was done he went out to mow the fields. I asked that he started close to the house and work his way outwards. I figured this was as good a plan as any. If the mower starts a fire at least the short grass will be near our house. There is a water fire extinguisher tank strapped to the forks on the front of the tractor. I don’t anticipate any problems with fire but its better to be safe.

He was in field four when he found the first lamb. It had just been killed, still soft. It had its throat torn and intestines opened up. Most likely a coyote did it. As he kept mowing he discovered a second corpse. All bones and a little hide with an ear tag. Two more sheep dead! This is just the other side of the barn lot. I know the sheep are in every night next to the barn because I keep getting up in the middle of the night when the puppy is barking. I see both groups of sheep as a sea of eyes when I am searching the area for predators. The tractor proceeded to overheat due to the dust filling up the radiator and then he saw only one quail baby. I finally messaged him and asked for some good news and he sent me a picture of a tape measure he found out in the middle of the field while mowing the cheat grass!

The dead sheep are still not enough loss to justify extreme circumstances or the expense of a guard dog, but it is a principle thing. I will be getting up at 0400 on weekends for a while and going up to the pasture and attempting to call in the coyotes. I purchased an electronic call that can be triggered from up to 200 yards away. I can stick the speaker into a patch of blackberries and back off about a 100 yards. I will be able to spot the far hillside, its within 400-500 yards. Not ideal with a 243 but not unreasonable and the whole point of the call is to be patient and let it come closer. I don’t believe we have a den of coyotes on the place this time. Usually, those become self evident when the pups start coming out, they are easy to spot. This one is very cagey and has only been spotted twice on the farm and in different places and not for very long.

I have not managed to spot any more raccoons, possums or skunks during my nightly excursions. I did manage to get some serious uninterrupted sleep this last night. I was so tired after two nights of broken sleep from night patrols that I heard nothing. There was a harvest moon the other night and it was amazingly bright outside.