Mr Rainman

Cow sorting

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Last week we did actually get some needed items checked off the winter list. Mr Rainman came out and tackled the orchard. He trimmed all of the fruit trees. Not only did he trim them, he cut them way back so they can gain some limb strength. This was a much needed thing as the limbs were having a hard time carrying a full load of fruit. He also tackled the ancient apple trees and raised the limbs enough that we can drive the tractor underneath the tree!

Mr Rainman is also building up a second pile of limbs near the irrigation ditch for the quail. The quail use the limb piles as cover to protect themselves from predators. This will be the fifth pile we have created on the farm for them. We have two coveys this winter of about 80 birds each. They are healthy and fly around the houses at least once a day. Even if I cannot see them they can be heard as they are quite noisy. This took both days to get completed. The raspberries and blackberries are the last thing that needs to get trimmed this winter.

Gingerman and I went out first thing in the morning last Saturday to sort the cows. We needed to get the bull into Alcatraz and the three weanling calves off the female cows they are 6-7 months old now. It was fairly cold and I could see steam coming off the pile of manure from two years ago.

I drove the tractor and the Gingerman cycled gates. The cows associate the tractor with food so they always come running when they hear it. I opened a gate into the pasture around the old chicken coop and the cows proceeded to rush the fence into the ram pasture. This led them to spot the open gate onto the hillside so they ran up the hillside looking for a way out. I had to get down off the tractor and the Gingerman and I herded them back into the ram pasture and back out towards the gate over by Alcatraz. The horse was locked into the old lamb barn and we had both gates down to the spring closed so it was a straight shot toward the corral. The new gate/fence in the barn lot worked incredibly well and we got the cows into the front barn lot without much hassle. Once we got them into the lot it was not very hard to push them into the corral area. We managed to sort off three heifers and then the bull got stuck out by himself so we pushed him back into the horse area to wait. He needed to go to Alcatraz but with the heifers already getting sorted we need to move them first. The calves all bunched up in the area near the barn and the Gingerman was walking up behind them to get them moving when the pretty brown calf smashed his hind leg backwards to state his displeasure at being handled. The problem with this is the Gingerman was too close and caught the hoof in the left testicle. He did not hit the ground himself but it was a close call. He ended up leaning on the gate while I casually sorted the rest of the cows.

We ran the calves through the yard into the orchard. The heifers just got pushed out into field #4 to continue eating and growing their pregnant bellies.

The bull just sauntered over towards the fence to get to the heifers. The fence and the Gingerman were in his way. He kept trying to get around the Gingerman and he would just wave his head and push forward against the Gingerman. We finally got him turned, then just chased him into Alcatraz so he did not have time to think about what he was doing.

I ended up sanding all of the pine pieces for the inside trim of the bathroom. I would have rather spent the day outside. It was a sunny and clear day, absolutely beautiful. But the bathroom must progress.

Still doing Fall catchup

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Last weekend Mr Rainman came out to help for the weekend. The plan was to knock out the Lavender and get it all trimmed and weeded so it was all ready for spring. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you view it Saturday was a burn day! We have been trying to burn the pile for the last two months but we keep missing the burn days. So we got the pile of cardboard from the old house, the mud room and the pickup and then proceeded to light the pile on fire. It took off straight away so we decided to go down the driveway and start pitchforking the tumbleweeds over the fence and stuff them in the back of the pickup to be tossed on the burn pile. My Mother-in-law came out and said she had a bunch of stuff for the burn pile so we piled that on then noticed that the apple tree broken branch had been cut out by one of the nephews so we piled that onto the burn pile and kept one branch to start the new burn pile behind the grain bins out of sight of both houses.

We kept forking weeds over the fence until the wind was blowing so hard that we had to hold them on the fire with a pitchfork so they didn’t just blow away before they could catch on fire. We were losing weeds and figured that it was a waste of time to just keep going.

Annmarie has been cutting stuff out of cow hide for the progeny’s wedding on the laser. It smells like charred leather so I offered to hang them out in the old house. This way they can air out and start to smell good. It worked amazingly well! Nothing the smell of dirt and old wood cannot fix.

My car battery died because I left the dome light on. I let it sit around for a week before I put the ancient charger on it. Mind you when I put the charger on it you could turn the key and get the radio and dash lights. After 12 hours on the charger the battery was totally dead, nothing worked. I tossed the ancient broken charger into the trash can. Mr Rainman offered to come out during the week and install a new battery. I had been driving the gas guzzling pickup for over a week and had already filled the tank twice. I looked at the battery compartment and was dreading the attempt to install it. He had it changed out in no time and it works like a champ again.

The bathroom deadline is approaching quickly so I have been working on getting it completed. We shimmed out the wall on the inside of the door so it is ready for trim. The entire inside of the bathroom is ready for trim. I need to get the Sheetrock repairs completed so that I can put primer on the wall and get it painted. There is a lot of height difference in some places so I am going to have to build it out with the mud to make it look right. I am not the best sheetrock person but I can muddle through.

On Sunday it was supposed to rain so after feeding the cows and getting the barn ready for the momma sheep we went out to the lavender patch to trim it up. We had intentions of keeping nice individual plants. In places it is growing into a single row and we are going to let it. While Mr Rainman cut the lavender I worked on pulling weeds next to the yard and in the next walkway. The weeds were the worst in those two rows. In the spring after we spray the grass we are going to have to use some kind of growth inhibitor to keep the grass from invading again. We even spotted a few honey bees on the lavender despite the wind blowing pretty hard.

Winter is coming eventually

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I think Winter will show up eventually but it is slow in arriving. We have had a couple of hard freezes and I have actually scraped ice off of the vehicle windshields twice. Mr Rainman came out last weekend for a couple of days to help me. It is nice to have the help and I am still healing up from the pneumonia, a little pericarditis tends to slow you down some. The Winter chores need to get done so we worked on that Saturday. We stripped the garden clean and rearranged the beds so that different vegetables would be planted in different bins in the spring. I dug up the other half of the potato bin. I did decide to leave the beets in the ground that I planted late this fall. The greenery is still intact and has not wilted so I am going to let them grow/hibernate until the greenery dies. I planted one bin three weeks earlier than the other and it is doing much better. We had never planted beets before so it is a great experiment. Once that was done and we had the garden area ready for Winter the bulbs were next.

I had an entire vegetable crisper bin in the fridge full of flower bulbs. It was time to get them planted before the ground froze solid. Since the rock wall is only completed on the right hand side of the bridge I only wanted to plant bulbs on that side. After much contemplation and input from various sources I am going to have to rip out about 15 feet of completed rock wall on the left hand side. When I dug down I found the original base stones and I was using those as they lay. The wall is kicking out the further I get toward the barn. So I need to tear it back and scoot it closer towards the house and keep it in line with the right hand side wall. I may even put up a stake with a string! We tore down the fence and I had to bring over five loads of dirt and a load of rocks to finish getting the flower bed lined and height correct. We opened up the packages and read the planting instructions to determine the height of the final plant. We tossed out the packages based on height then laid out all of the bulbs on the surface of the dirt. Once we had them all laid out we planted them. Surprisingly, there were a lot of bulbs. We ended up planting a bulb almost every six inches throughout the entire flower bed. The tallest flowers are toward the edge of the wall so they will shade the short plants. I realize that appears backwards when you are driving in and walking down the sidewalk but from the house we will see more flowers. Most of the short bulbs are early risers and like partial shade. We will know next year how they do but they are in the ground! Once that was done we laid out the fence over the top of the entire flower bed to keep Chance from digging up the bulbs. So far it has been one week and she has not dug up any bulbs. She has another hole to China started and it is deep enough now that when she goes in it she disappears. This hole is of course in the front yard.

Mr Rainman had to leave after a few hours so I spent the rest of the day on the tractor working on building up our dirt levee over by the old chicken coop. I had extended the hill last year but the cows had torn it down to only about six inches high. This time I piled up the dirt and then proceeded to drive on it every time I went back for another scoop of dirt. This really helped compact it down. Once I had the entire thing done I ran over it again in two directions to compact it one more time. I am only looking for about 16” of berm. Those last two horrible floods could have been diverted back into the stream bed with a 12” berm. I am just trying to get the flood precautions all finished. I have one more thing to do, there is a downed tree in the dry creek bed that is backing up water. I need to cut the middle out of the downed branch so it doesn’t create an artificial dam and flood out field #1. Once I get that done all of the flood precautions that should help if we get another bad flood will be in place. There is no guarantee they will work but honestly, I would rather do all the work, guess and take precautions and never find out if they were necessary! It has taken me years to rebuild all of the stuff torn out, or up or altered by the flooding.

Treasures

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Sunday we went over to a neighbor’s house to finish getting his chicken coop ready for chickens. It now has chicken wire over all the windows and around the entire yard with bird netting over the entire chicken yard. He is all ready for chickens. I will hopefully be getting a few laying hens over there in the next week. He doesn’t want a rooster so I will have to get rid of the third rooster we now have. I usually only keep one rooster but we now have the chickens ranging up past the old chicken coop, behind the barn and up on the back hillside. Both roosters are trying very hard to keep apart and it is leading to a much wider roaming region.

Mr Rainman went over with me and we got our trailer loaded with an old cow feeder, a wind directional feeder, an old grain bin that used to be on a very old combine and an old cook stove. The cow feeder just needed rolled out into the pasture and filled with hay. The wind directional feeder needs a wire bucket installed so the hay will be contained while the horse is eating it. The grain bin is big and should hold a lot of grain but the entire bottom is rusted out. We poked holes in it while we were loading it. We knew this before we loaded it but reality set in when the tractor forks went through the floor. The stove just needs a wire wheel brush and some new stove black paint to get it back in shape.

We are going to put the stove in the gazebo. I will cut a vent hole in the door of the gazebo and make a covered wood pile out next to the corral. We won’t need that much wood and it will all have to be fairly small to fit into the fire box on the stove. The fire box and ash box are in great shape and do not need any repairs. The floor has to go into the gazebo before the stove can be set.

I will need to get some sheet metal to fix the grain bin. I am thinking 1/16” should be plenty thick. I am not sure what gauge of sheet metal that corresponds to, Google will have to tell me. Google says it is almost 14 gauge so I guess 14 gauge is what I will use. I will definitely need to practice first and I suspect the wire feed is going to be the key to my success when working with sheet metal.

The wheat field has gotten enough water to really shoot up and is doing well. The mild temperatures have been allowing it to grow.

Sickness cannot halt progress

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Sickness cannot halt production on the farm, it can merely sideline it! I was very ill last week and ended up catching pneumonia. Ever since that first bought of Covid my lungs have not snapped back and I get pneumonia pretty easily now. Of course I got it and finally had to reach out to my PCP when my oxygen saturations started to drop into the mid 80% range. This caused several days of missed work but Mr. Rainman was coming out for the weekend last week and I needed to take advantage of the help. The plan was to get the sand down and compacted in the Gazebo so that we could lay the pavers. There are about 1200 pavers that have to go down to fill up the space. This does seem like a lot but they just have to lay down then we can put special grout down and seal them all in place.

The real problem was we had still not managed to get the compactor to function correctly. We have done multiple things to get it going. We ended up having to change the oil as this model somehow gets fuel into the oil which then causes the motor to kill itself when it gets up to speed. Once we did that it worked but the throttle cable was still not working correctly and Mr Rainman ended up touching the hot exhaust plat and burning a couple of bolt patterns into his palm. We decided that this project was going to have to wait until the spring. We need to fix the throttle cable again and we need some water available to water down the sand as we compact it. I managed to find a throttle cable that is used on a concrete cutter that allows you to set it at various locations and the cable will not retract with vibrations. I have ordered said cable and it should be here this week. I am sure I will have to fabricate some type of holder to hold it in place but if the throttle cable stays in place it will be worth it. I just need to get a tarp and cover up the compactor for the winter. This chewed up five hours trying to get things up and going before we finally just called uncle and gave up. There is a plan in place and we will pick it up in the spring.

I have several other items that need to get done before the ground freezes so I have to pivot my to do list to get these items knocked out soon. If I were not sick they would have been done now but I have been having to rest. Rest is a four word cuss word when you are talking to a farmer/rancher. It is fairly derogatory and tends to get in the way of all progress. It is not one I like to hear in regard to my work output. I have been hearing it a lot lately from a lot of different directions. Ultimately, despite my will I have been forced to rest and recuperate.