Mr Rainman

Predators 15/Farm 5

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Mr Rainman came out early in the week and did a bunch of cleanup on the farm. It seems like we are always doing a lot of cleanup in the fall. This is probably directly related to how many projects I try and finish in the summer and just move on to the next thing without completing the first project. He went down into the root cellar and cleaned it up. I had made quite the mess when I wired the old house. I have a tendency to just throw my trash down on the ground. Especially if I am up in the air and have to climb up on a ladder or platform to work. There is no light down in the root cellar. I need to wire in an outlet and switch. I may be able to buy a light with a wireless controller, if I can then I only need to wire in an outlet. A light would be a great help when I am down here digging around for something. I really need to dump out all the canned food from the last 50 years. Honestly, I am afraid that there may actually be some botulism in one of these jars. Which means I will need to wear rubber gloves and bury the food when its emptied and then dip the jars into bleach water. This is a not priority kinda thing which is why there are a couple of hundred jars on shelves full of various foodstuffs still in the root cellar.

The puppy, Chance, has finally started to settle down and listen to us. I decided to see if she would still ride around on my shoulders like she would a year ago. Annmarie said Chance did not like it but she did wag her tail the whole time. She also grabbed onto my shoulder and chest so she did not fall off.

I had 22 chickens at the beginning of the week. I know this as I had just counted them for my chicken tracker. I try and count them at the beginning of the month so I have an accurate number. Last night I was sleeping downstairs when Annmarie came running down hollering that there was a chicken dying outside. I did not prep for this and coming out of dead sleep there are several things that have to happen, grab eyeglasses, footwear needs to be donned (slippers), pistol needs to be grabbed, spare clip of ammo (slip that into the top of underwear), large 300k candle floodlight (found in top of closet), then cycle action to load pistol, turn on laser and get outside! This time I knew to go right towards the chicken coop and when I shined the light alongside the coop there was a raccoon on the backside of the coop running sideways. I was only able to get off two shots before it went behind the chicken coop. I ran around the front of the coop, passed a dead black feathered Turken chicken on the ground, opened the gate and ran out into the ram pasture looking for a raccoon. I could not find it! I shined the light into the tree, up the dry creek bed, over by the barn and got nothing. I was pretty sure I did not hit anything, the raccoon was a long ways away, 80-100 feet. I need to start practicing those long shots. I say this to myself in the middle of the night but during the day I always find things to do other than practice with the pistol. I put the two other alive chickens into the coop, they were hanging outside the auto chicken door. I headed back to the house and the dead chicken was gone!

I was certain that the raccoon had circled around behind me and came back to steal the chicken carcass. I was less than happy but at the same time impressed with my adversary. After some choice directional language toward the creek bed I headed back to the house and stumbled on the dead chicken, it was alive! It had gotten up and walked away from its deathbed. I spent five minutes trying to catch the thing and it would not let me grab it. I was starting to get cold since I was only in my underwear. I told the chicken it was going to make excellent raccoon bait and went back into the house. I laid the pistol and light on the washing machine and set my slippers by the back door. On further pondering I should have worn my new rubber boots out into the mud, not my slippers.

I went back to bed with the wife and two hours later she was shaking me and hollering that a chicken was dying. This time I was ready! I shot out of bed, ran right to the laundry room and grabbed the arsenal and tools while running for the chicken coop. The raccoon was in the chicken yard and there is only one exit so I knew where it was going to come out. I started banging away as soon as it came out the yard entrance and had it down by the time it got to the hillside. After ensuring that it was dead I looked for the wounded chicken and could only find feathers.

During the day I kept looking for the black turken chicken, I have two of them and could only spot one. Tonight I went out to get eggs after dark and counted the chickens. I had both turkeys, so the raccoon bait lived! Unfortunately, the raccoon had managed to kill and remove two other chickens that did not have the lung capacity or brains to holler for help. I will now be enclosing the top of the chicken yard enclosure so that no predator can climb up the fence and down into the yard and I am going to add a second solar powered chicken door to the yard that has a light sensor that faces West, the auto chicken door on the coop faces North. My hope is the even if the coop door closes the chickens will be inside the yard by the time the yard door closes so the raccoons cannot pick them off. I lose the most chickens on the entrance to the coop as they are just slow and don’t make it in before the door shuts and I never check to ensure they all made it inside. Chickens take 8 months before they start laying eggs, I cannot keep feeding the raccoons. We just started getting 8-10 eggs a day on now 20 pullets. The new door will be here in ten days, here’s hoping I can keep the chickens alive that long.

Bathroom almost complete 99%

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It was getting cold outside but its not now. We are getting up to 50F during the day lately with rain. The entire farm is covered in green grass, even the dirt barn lot is green! We have not started feeding the cows or sheep yet. Every few days I go out and feed the rams and bull in Alcatraz. They are keeping the grass pretty low in that area but it is present and still growing. I was going to burn the weeds in Alcatraz but it rained again, poured actually. I would tell you how much came down but our electronic rain gauge was not working the entire day it rained. I just looked over at the weather station and the rain gauge is back! It says we got 3/4” of rain in the last two days, this is totally believable. I managed to go outside yesterday and dig dirt for a couple of hours. I am still trying to fill in behind the concrete bridge footings. The far footing had about two feet and now has about 18 inches left. It is not exactly fast going as you have to throw the dirt about eight feet and uphill over the footing. I did also manage to pile up more large rocks on the other side of the stream bed. There is no water, its dry this time of year. I will need some more big rocks from the upper hillside to finish the footing rock walls. Two hours of digging is fine, I don’t think I could dig all day any more. Just too much, it’s my concession to aging to only dig 2-3 hours at a time and move a few big rocks.

After the digging I went into the old house and worked on sanding the countertop for the upstairs bathroom. The thing is a solid two inch piece of black walnut that was air dried. This means the board had warped about a half an inch and I had to sand out the bow in the board. I have seen the DeWalt battery powered hand planers and keep wondering if they would make leveling these pieces easier? I keep thinking I want to try it but it’s a $200-300 trial and I don’t want to be wrong. So instead I just kept sanding it and using a two foot metal square to see where the high and low spots were so I could sand them out. I spent three more hours working out most of the high spots. The only thing left was to actually cut the piece to fit. Annmarie and I had a discussion on how best to get an accurate representation of the space. There was some disagreement and I ended up doing it the hard way with a few pieces of newspaper and a lot of clear tape. I then used this as a pattern and made several cuts with my skilsaw. I only had to make two more cuts and one sanding intervention before I managed to get it to fit. Three attempts is not bad considering the space is not a bunch of straight lines. There were a couple of rounded spots that had to be taken into account. Once I had it dry fit I went over the entire top again starting with 40 grit sand paper and ending with 220 grit. I finished the top and front with Tried and True finish. I really like the natural compounds and that is what we used on the walls in the bathroom. It fits great and now I just need to glue it down to the plywood underneath, that is next week’s project. Once that is done I will be 100% complete with my part on the upstairs bathroom!

I was in the craft room last night when I noticed the dreaded ceiling paint sags! The only thing that creates these are water accumulations from a leak. This sucks as I just fixed the ceiling a few years ago from a failed condensate pump in the second story closest. So we went up and started emptying the closet. It means cleaning off all of the shelves and then removing them. I was cutting the zip ties off to get the power cord loose so I could remove the condensate pump and accidentally sliced the discharge rubber hose in half. My pocket knife just got sharpened recently and it is sharp! I eventually got the condensate pump out and it was empty. This is bad as the water was on the closet floor. We opened up the heat pump and found some water inside. We just turned the heat pump off and I contacted the heating guy in the morning. I sent him a text and later today he messaged me from the top of some mountain. He was up with his father hunting elk and would contact me when he gets off the mountain. Once the repair is complete we will discuss how to fix this issue.

Winter is coming

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Well Winter is definitely coming, we had our first freeze this fall. It dropped down into the low 20’s F and there is snow visible on the mountains and low foothills. We got rain instead of snow but Winter is coming. This spurred the decision to finally go and pickup the big bales of alfalfa that I had purchased this spring. My supplier holds them for me as I almost always pick them up late! I am a reliable customer so it works for both of us. I had been selling off the old small round bales from the machine shed and I managed to get the last of them unloaded and sold the day I went and picked up the large bales. I could store most of the years alfalfa in the machine shed if I had a tractor that could lift 1400# bales 14 feet into the air. But since I do not, I put 15 bales in the machine shed and they are the very last bales that I feed in the late winter/early spring. The rest go out onto the hillside in field 4b. The animals all get locked out of that field and I usually buy a big tarp and toss a lot of pallets on it to hold it in place. After buying the vinyl sign to use as a tarp and seeing how thick it is I bought two 12’x40’ signs/tarps and will lay those across the top of the large bales. I think they may even survive the winter. They should be here by the end of the week. Mr Rainman/me bent the loader support on the Kubota. It is for removing the loader and helping it be freestanding. The pull pin got displaced and the arm popped down while a big bale was getting jostled in place and it bent. The main pin had to be cut in three places to get it to let go! A 2# hammer and punch could not drive it out. The pin has spring clips so it will have to be a special order item. We were able to keep moving hay and that was the important part.

One of the things observed when we got the machine shed cleaned out was that there is a pretty damp back corner of the hay storage side. I had put down pallets last time and that worked really well to keep the hay from rotting. Years ago I had dug a trench on the backside of the machine shed and filled it with gravel to increase the drainage removal from the roof runoff. This did help quite a bit but it looks like it needs more help. Next year the gravel needs to be dug out and some French drain hose installed and then replace the gravel. I will also run the end of the drain farther away from the building. This should help quite a bit. The front ditch works wonders but I made a big sink hole for all of the water to go into and I did not do that with the back section.

Sunday we went out first thing to sort the cows. It was cold again so I put on a long sleeve shirt, knit hat, knit neck warmer, insulated carharts, large bulky quilted long sleeve over shirt and insulated gloves. I had a heavy vest ready to go but decided that I was dressing for -20F instead of 22F. I put the puppy, Chance, on a lead rope and we opened up gates to get the cows to the corral so that the bull could be sorted off. Once the bull is in Alcatraz we can put all of the cows into one herd. We can run one herd of cows until January when this years calves need to be weaned off. We will sort off the market cows and the calves and put those 11 cows down by the houses and keep the other above the house, there will be three fences and 100 yards minimum between the two herds. In reality there are a bunch of buildings and earthworks that prevent a line of sight from happening. They can still talk to each other and will especially right after we separate them. It is about 3-5 days of lots of hollering and voiced displeasure from both parties.

Chance did great once she got settled down. She wanted to sniff the hillside and find coyotes. She does not like other dogs as they are interlopers on her property. She does fine with our other border collie but not any other dog. We have not discouraged this as our coyote problem is immense and we want her to alert us if she spots one. Mr Rainman and I merely walked to the schoolhouse, had to run halfway up the hill once and then casually walk the cows to the hen house pasture. Once there we were able to separate the bull from the rest of the herd, opened the back door to Alcatraz and he went in as directed. We did not even have to use the corral to sort! I took Chance into the front barn lot and we worked the cows in an enclosed space. I let her run around with the lead rope trailing (there is nothing for the rope to catch on) and giving her commands to move the cows. She did great! I can now get her to lay down while she is mid chase on one of the cows. She will stop and drop to the ground. We need more work on her directions, left, right and circle around. The true key though is to be able to turn off the dog no matter what the circumstances, once you can do that training the other commands is easy. Once we let the cows out there were about 18 sheep that had come in still in the area, so I had Mr Rainman call Chance and work the sheep. We want her to respond to multiple people. A one person dog is great when you are the only one working the dog but having one that will listen to other people is handy. She is a true people pleaser so this fits right in with her personality.

I had shed the gloves, hat and neck warmer by the time we got off the hillside and by the time we got to the hen house I had taken off the outer jacket and was just wearing my Carharts and a light long sleeve shirt! I should have known, the rule is to leave the house with enough clothes that you are just a little uncomfortable and want more to stay warm. Work and exercise will give you the needed heat to stay warm and you won’t sweat.

We put in another gate into the alleyway from the hen house pasture. This way the animals can always get to water. The main spring on the farm originates in that pasture. We have had the gate leaning up against the fence since last year when we finished the alleyway. Now the cows will always be able to get to water. I even chained the gate open so it cannot accidentally get closed. There is one more gate still to be installed there and one small section of fence to install so that the cows can get to most of field four but not the area where we store the cow hay.

Some things continue to amaze me. We had a volunteer pumpkin grow at the main burn pile. The alpaca did not eat the plant, flower or pumpkin but the most amazing part was the plant got zero water. This summer we went over two months with no rain at one point. Annmarie made pumpkin purée and froze it today. We will be eating the rest for dinner tonight. I am going to plant several seeds around the pile in the spring! Who knows maybe this is the trick to growing pumpkins. The quail are everywhere, we have very large coveys all over the farm and we have started to keep a quail feed block out front by the old farm equipment pile. We hear quail all of the time now whenever we are outside. Heck, we even have a new pair of barn owls on the place. They have decided to roost in the large trees out front just before sunrise. They talk back and forth and are quite noisy. The coyote hunters have tried two more times without any success. They did see more coyotes but could not safely shoot them. Pretty quick we will be locking the sheep up at night and only letting them go out into the ram pasture as they will have lambs.

Freezer room completed

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been a very productive last couple of days. Mr Rainman has been out for two days and we have been working on getting things completed. I love the stages of a project where you can just keep checking things off and then moving onto the next thing and checking it off! Mr Rainman worked on getting the coal side of the old wood shed cleaned out. This ties into us completing the back bridge as that is the only way to get to the wood shed. We have managed to make quite a mess back there with lots of scrap wood and junk from the shed added onto the pile. We knew that a day of cleanup was coming but The Apprentice reached out last week and said she was coming home this weekend and wanted to know if there was work. We just kept making a mess as we knew the Apprentice was coming and it would cleaned up.

I worked on getting the rest of the freezer room wired. I always have to break out an electrical wiring book when I do three way and four way switches. I just don’t do it enough to be able to do it without writing it down. I am happy to report that the three way switch worked on the first try. I got the light wired and the rest of the outlets tested today. Mr Rainman and I moved the deep freezer and the very first small upright Annmarie and I ever purchased, it is 29 years old! We just jockeyed them back and forth and slid them into place. They both had to be leveled and then we spent the time to organize and clean out both of those freezers. This allowed us to empty a large portion of the big freezer. The little fridge got cleaned out and up and is now going to be our water and gatorade fridge. I will keep it stocked year round. Tomorrow we will unload the big freezer and defrost it with the wife’s hair dryer. Once that is moved we will pull out the ancient radial arm saw and see if someone wants it. This will let me move most of the tools out of my soon to be space in the old house.

The Apprentice started a wood burn pile and lit it on fire after the first hour. They just kept throwing scrap wood on it. She did take some plum tree rounds that were cut on a diagonal and looked like horse hooves to use for nailing practice at farrier school. She did lament that on top of grip strength she worked on this summer she needed to work on thigh strength, its hard to hold the horse hooves between her legs. I didn’t think of that when we were working. Once all of the burnables were picked up she started filling in the dirt on both ends of the wood shed bridge. Tomorrow that will be her primary job.

Mr Rainman and I worked on getting the coal side of the wood shed lined with wood and sealed up. The goal is to get the walls lined then take the 6 mil vinyl sheet, used to be a road sign, and mount it 360 degrees in the room. Once that is done and stickers hold it in place we will bring in pallets for the floor and then close up the door. The goal is to keep the dust and bugs down to almost zero. I need to get all of the bee stuff into one location and get the frames hung up.

We had some people come out to hunt coyotes and they killed zero, did not even see any. They did thin out the pigeons some.

Predators 13/Farm 1

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Last week was another kick in the teeth and yet super productive. Mr Rainman came out and spread grass seed on field #1 and the triangle. He then proceeded to mow field #2 then sprayed Rejuvra on field #2, 3, 4A. We are going to try Rejuvra it was designed for CRP and grasslands. It creates a 3/4” deep barrier that kills newly germinated cheatgrass. So as the cheatgrass seeds germinate they are killed. Since the seeds can sit around for years this process is essential to remove the weed seed. This is a fairly new product. Our cheat grass was so bad this year that we are willing to just spray it on and see what happens. We didn’t get to hay or use the fields until after we mowed because the cheat grass was horrible. I need to buy one more quart of it to spray the lower fields. The joy of this is that it lets the preexisting grasses thrive and grow through the chemical barrier. As long as they spread by root propagation they can continue to grow and thicken while the cheatgrass is choked out. This was great and he just kept after it until it was done.

The kick in the teeth came when he went down to the lower schoolhouse field. It needed to be mowed to get ready for the spray. As he was driving the tractor around the field he found two more dead ewes! One had just been killed that day or the day before. It looks like something grabbed it by the throat and it bled out. The other one had obviously died earlier as there was nothing left but a skeleton. There is no question that the coyotes are winning this year. We have had a serious coyote hunter out here all last week. He had in around 24 hours combined for the week and on the last day spotted a coyote running up the creek bottom. He did not get a shot off. I have another hunter who came out today with a call and to get shown around the property. He did wonder if he could come out at night with a thermal scope and hunt coyotes. I of course agreed to this! I have another hunter coming on Sunday to be shown around. I am hoping that between them they can figure out how to kill several coyotes. There is no way we have one coyote killing this many sheep. We have not lost a single cow. My mother-in-law is losing kittens and cats quickly. We think the coyotes are eating the cats also. This is a stupid problem.

I will say the 300K lumen light I now use when going out at night combined with a green laser and silencer on a 22 pistol is amazing. Unfortunately, this setup is not helping me with the coyotes. If they are howling and just over the hill I remove the silencer and pop off a few rounds into the ground to scare them away. Let me just say that a guard dog would cost us around $1500-2000 annually for seven years. We are not even close to having lost enough sheep to justify that expense. Now that the barn is open the sheep can hole up in the barn every night and we have never ever had a predator kill anything in our barn.

Today I had to take our only cow left and two sheep in for butchering. I got the six feeder cows into the corral and managed to separate off the large one going to slaughter. The cows are crazy! I ended up spending almost an hour and half chasing them all over the fields until I managed to corral them by just shutting every gate the closer we got to the barn lot so there was only one place they could run. I locked the sheep into the little spot in front of the barn. I figured I could just wade in and catch two whethers. Man, I needed way more coffee this morning before engaging with the animals. The steer was crazy! He ran into the stock trailer. But I had to get in the trailer to release the dividing door, he ran at me and I had to scrunch up in the corner while he ran out. I released the door then went and chased him back in and again had to get into the trailer with him. I managed to slam the door closed before he jumped back out again. He raised hell while I went to get the sheep. Nope, they would not go into the barn. I finally had to go get Chance (border collie teenager), put her on the lead and then we walked the sheep right into the barn. I shut the barn door then tried to catch a whether. Nope, they were too fast. So I made a pen with a 2’ entrance, pushed all of the sheep into it then bum rushed the sheep from one end. They form a mob before they try to squirt past me on all sides. That is time to grab your victim and drag them to the back door of the barn. The first one had horns which make great handholds. The second one I had to drag out by its head and it almost got away a couple of times. I ran them into the corral and then down the chute. They jumped right into the trailer, but after the cow fiasco I rushed down the alley to get to the outer door. Nope, dame sheep took a leap at my head trying to get out. I had to toss a 90# sheep back into the trailer twice! I imagine it feels like being a hockey goalie. I managed to get the slider door shut and the animals transported with no other incidents. Once unloaded the cow did try and get at me through their pen. I don’t know if it was saying goodbye or using my name in vain as it tried to get at me, either way the outcome was the same and someone is going to eat good.

When I got back I went to the barn and fixed the lights in the barn and finished that last string. It was not my splicing connection. One of the lights had a bad connector and I had to cut off the first two connectors I had used and after replacing them they worked perfectly. We now have lights in the barn! This is going to be great, I just know it. More to come as it starts getting dark and we have to start feeding.