mowing

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.

Spring really is coming

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We have finally given up on the sheep having any more babies. So we tossed the last five ewes in with the rest of the main herd. It is a lot easier tracking one herd than two. There is a third (now second) herd down below. They are the eating ones of which we already have nine sold. We know spring is here as I have commenced the inaugural lawn mowing of our front yard with the sheep. It takes 2-3 days for the sheep to tear the lawn down. They like the shortest grass so clumps of tall grass tend to standout. I had just tossed out a pound of clover seed on the hillside before letting the sheep out to graze. They will push the seed down into the ground. The clover also does great with trying to stay alive after getting eaten so it will spring back twice as thick as it was before the sheep grazed on it. We are finally starting to get some clover all over the hillside now. Due to the clover we have now given up chemical weed control on the hillside. All thistles and stinging nettle are removed with a shovel. I spent a couple of hours this weekend digging weeds.

Since the bees have survived the winter I dug up a couple of patches of dirt and planted flowers on the hillside. I will need to add a small fence around them to keep the dogs out but we should have blooming flowers in 45 days. We are going to use our circle planters in the back yard to plant marigolds in and around our garden. We are hoping the marigolds will help with insect control. We are trying to get more flowers growing for the honey bees. I have a couple of other spots I want to toss out some flower seed on.

Saturday, Meathead and I worked on getting the five new half wine barrels ready for herbs. I drilled holes in the sides so that water could drain and then she filled each barrel with five gallons of gravel to cover the bottom. I would like to say she carried a full bucket of gravel but that is not really realistic. She carried it in two half filled buckets. We had a long discussion about me using the tractor to scoop it up and drive it around but by the time we go through all of the gates and still carry it the final way in a five gallon bucket we have not saved any time so she got to carry gravel in buckets. It takes four buckets of soil to fill the barrel the rest of the way. We have a big tote with gardening soil in it that we are using to fill them.

I took chance out with me to put the sheep in and she did great! The picture of her above is in the lamb shed when we were feeding the ram and bull. She kept them from coming into the shed when I opened the door to feed. She did so well after everyone was put away I let her off the 30’ lead. Huge mistake, she took off running and would not listen to me. I may have gotten upset and hollered repeatedly which caused her to look at me, come within six feet and stay out of reach. I finally calmed down, bent down on one knee and called her, she came running and got hugs and licks in. She is too smart for her own good. It turns out that Annmarie had tried to use Chance to get the sheep out of the yard earlier in the day but only had her on a a six foot leash. The puppy did well enough that Annmarie let her go and then Chance dove for a lamb and would not let it up. This incurred the wrath of Mom which may explain why she was so good working the animals with me later in the evening. Once I got her back onto the lead I used the alpaca as training fodder. This works for the dog and me and the alpaca don’t really care for the dogs so it gives Chance a shot at moving a difficult animal. She did really good.

Our second bee hive arrived, I just need to assemble it. We are going to keep them in the lavender patch. I was out working today and had 4-5 honeybees land on me. I am unsure what they were looking for and as long as you just ignore them and don’t accidentally squish them they are harmless. It takes a while to get used to ignoring them.

I need to be planting fields

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I am getting stuff done on my staycation. Yesterday, I got all of the big bales stacked up against the fence. I backed them up so that the cows could not reach through and eat the backside. We had scavenged enough free pallets this summer to go around two sides of the entire pile. Pile is an odd word since I was unable to lift any bales to stack one on top of another. My row is three bales wide and 13 bales deep. While I was moving hay bales, Mr Professional came out and started mowing field #5 so we can get it ready to plant triticale. The problem was the little John Deere tractor kept overheating. There was too much dust and chaff in the air and it kept clogging up the radiator intake. We finally went to town to get a tarp and discovered that the store was having a huge DeWalt tool sale the next day. This of course meant I had to return the next day. The tarp fit perfectly and we tied down every single grommet to one of the strings on the bales, leaned the pallets against the sides and then distributed pallets all across the top of the tarp to keep it from blowing off or ripping in the wind. The plan is for this to be two years worth of hay for the cows. I plan on keeping the animals out of this field, the pallets along the side are for the deer and elk.

I did go to town first thing in the morning, I made it into the store twenty minutes after it opened. I was able to get the small 4” clamps DeWalt makes for Annmarie. They are the best when clamping together laser projects, they don’t give or slide. I got a hedge trimmer for the lavender and an electric chain saw. These days I really like looking at products that are quieter. As I keep losing my hearing avoiding loud noises without hearing protection is something I try and avoid. When I got home I started mowing the fields with the Kubota. It still tried to overheat three times. I had to blow out the dust and chaff twice and clean out the air intake two more times. I have the triangle still to mow but I am going to get the field ready for seed tomorrow and hopefully plant on Saturday. I will need to pick up seed on Friday. I will be overspreading grass on a couple of fields and tossing out some crumble fertilizer. My hope is that we can get a great crop in the spring. I will be taking the old John Deere baler in next month to get the bearing replaced and the tie fingers adjusted. I forgot to take the raccoon carcass up to the boneyard. That really needs to happen tomorrow before it gets so bad I don’t want to touch it. The chickens are now laying four eggs a day, double what they were before I killed the raccoon.

The field across the creek needs to be disced and leveled. It had some flooding and water gouging from many years ago and it needs some serious work to create a surface that will be safe to make and cut hay on. I just need to remember where I stashed the disc set?

Finish work before we are finished

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The seamless gutters got installed around the front deck this week. They are amazing! I thought all the water on the front porch was from the wind, well it was the wind and the rain. Since adding the gutters our front porch is mostly dry all of the time now. Annmarie picked up some new outdoor furniture and she 3D printed a new plastic foot for a small side table we have. It’s metal and we don’t want it scratching up our new Trex decking.

Saturday it was time to start back in on the new office. I started out by cleaning some more while I waited for Mr Tex to show up. He apparently slept in. The place needed more cleaning anyways. When he showed up I had him hide all of the attic vent fan supplies and the laser cutter external fan pieces up into the attic. This was just to get everything out of the way as we won’t need these pieces until we are almost finished with everything else. We had about eight boxes worth of stuff.

Tex started installing more insulation in the west wall. While he was doing that I started working on the picture window frame. This was going to be a surprise for Annmarie but as soon as she saw it in the wall and she saw my order for a light from Amazon she correctly guessed that I was putting in a light box for a stained glass piece. The surprise will now be the stained glass piece as she has not seen it. It took me two tries to get the box correct. I needed a thicker piece up at the top to hide the electrical plugin but after I trimmed it for the glass I discovered I failed to take into account the cut down size. I had to redo the entire thing! Once I had it all cut I tried to insert the glass and unsurprisingly the glass piece is not perfectly square. So I had to trim a couple of pieces to account for the nonsquare window.

Once I had that glued and pin nailed in place Tex and I started in on the wall. He also managed to get some insulation into the attic while I was redoing the light box. We had to squirt in foam around the new door to seal it up before we could put up the siding. I was going to start from the ceiling and work down like I did on the other wall but Tex talked me into starting at the bottom. This was a bad idea that was not fully realized until we got above the door and realized we were going to have to work downwards on the other side. Which meant the entire piece had to be cut the whole length of the wall, with cutouts for the door and light box. I cut it and the door was off by 1/4”, so I just gave up! It was quitting time anyways and it’s never good to do wood work when you are frustrated. It tends to go wrong more often just to further frustrate you.

Mr Professional came out and dropped off six laying hens. We were leaving so I did not stick around. When I came back I had to go out and catch five chickens and feed the horse.

Sunday I opted for mowing the cheat grass! The stuff is taking off and growing everywhere. I had already cut around the machine shed and cars earlier so I did the entire barn lot, the ram pasture and all of field 4b. The field took quite a bit of time, when you are doing several acres a four foot wide swath takes a while to get anything done. I almost ran over a grey cat when I was clearing the road alongside the field. The cat crouched down and hid in the grass and I was within 12 inches of it when I went by. I was pretty impressed that the cat held still. I was super impressed with the new Kubota tractor. It is 29 hp and it would power down but it never overheated and if I slowed down the mower would just keep chewing though the tall wet grass. It was very impressive, it did burn a lot more diesel but now we have the big tank it is not near the hassle to fill up.

I did manage to get a look at the little triangle of triticale. It needs to get cut as soon as the rain stops and we can guarantee several days rain free so everything can dry out.