In a self defense move, I rolled all of the completed bales to the outside of the upper field. I was pretty certain I was going to have to pick them up alone and I wanted to make it easier on myself. I also wanted to leave the upper field clean so after I moved all the completed bales I went through the entire field again and raked it up a second time into four long rows. I managed to get another 20 bales out of the leftover grass from the first baling.
I left the bottom for an around a week, the Gingerman went over and raked it up into rows so I could sleep after working the night shift. It rained a 1/4” of rain later that week so I let it sit for a few more days before turning it again. I then let it sit for another five days in the hopes that it would dry out.
When I went over to bale it I had loaded up on shear bolts so the toolbar was all ready for me to repair any issues. I broke almost 25 shear bolts just baling the small bottom area. I would get close then an entire section of wet damp grass would jump into the baler and break the shear bolt! There was a very large amount of swearing involved in getting that field all baled up. By the time I was done it was taking me about three minutes to replace the shear bolt and get the tractor up and going again.
I had Mr Rainman for two days last weekend and we concentrated on getting the lower bales picked up one day. We were able to load up 30 bales into the back of the pickup, strap down each of the three rows and then creep up the steep rocky road in 4wd low. We only lost part of one load when the strap popped loose. We put 30 bales into each cow feeder at the house. So we filled all three feeders, one for the female pregnant cows, one for the feeder cows below and then one in Alcatraz. Currently, the only animals in Alcatraz are our three rams. Eventually, we will have to sort off the bull and put him in there with the rams.
We took the wettest bales and dumped them out for feed to be immediately eaten. Unfortunately, despite the farm looking like a food desert the cows and sheep are ignoring the lush green grass available in the feeders. Obviously, they know something we do not.
Sunday we focused on getting the Rambler set up to grind grain. I walked him through it for about 20 minutes then cut him loose. We had two 55 gallon drums set by the grinder and we set it up next to the chicken coop so he could just carry the buckets into the back of the coop and dump them into drums. There is no way to move the full drums into the back of the coop so this has to be done a bucket at a time. He did pretty good but as soon as he was close to getting finished we brought over two more drums full of grain. He thought he was done and Mr Rainman and I told him there was more after this and he just needed to keep going. We ended up loading four more 55 gallon drums into the back of the chicken coop and we still need to fill 2.5 drums. I am sure once they are all full we will be able to go eight months.
I have an old grain bin that can be mounted outside the coop and a feed hole can be cut into the side of the building. It should hold about 800# and can be loaded from the outside. It needs a new bottom welded on it. I am thinking a piece of 3/32” sheet metal. I am sure the grain gate will need to be altered so it can be manipulated from inside the building. I may even move the gate to the bottom of a long chute so it can be placed inside the coop. I won’t really know until we have the bin moved over to the machine shed and we can take some measurements.
Once the Rambler was set we went to clean up the old house. Annmarie wants the porch cleared so we neatened it and removed the scrap wood. The inside still had tools and materials scattered about from the bathroom project. So we created a huge trash pile and started to put tools away. Tools went into the old house, the old chicken coop, the machine shed and the fencing shed. The Gingerman brought out some more concrete chunks and we dumped them next to the culvert in an attempt to harden the one edge from the flooding water. Hopefully, we will not see any more flooding! But since the weatherman has a hard time predicting the weather, who really knows if it will flood.
There is a little frog living in the root cellar! It is bouncing between the top three stairs. If it likes spiders then there is a lot of food down there. I had to clean out all of the cobwebs before I could go down the stairs. The entire stair area was full of cobwebs. It had been a while since I had been down there. I store all of the construction materials that are unique and we may need to repair in the future. I put some bathroom tiles and metal trim down in the root cellar.
The sheep have been hollering like they are dying. No one likes to get weaned. We had a hard time driving the tractor through the barn lot as the sheep on both sides kept trying to bum rush the gate every time it was opened. The babies had managed to crawl under the creek crossing so we went out and lowered the panels so they cannot get out.
After that we went out and cleaned up amount 75% of the machine shed. We had filled the trash can up already so there is a large pile in the machine shed. I will keep throwing some in every week until I make it vanish. There were parts bins and tools all over from when I was repairing all of the haying equipment. I also replaced the outlet on the wall. I had been too aggressive with a screwdriver the day before trying to reset the GFI trip, it does work again.
We then trimmed the trumpet vine away from the roof and the house siding. I am trying to get a runner onto the new section of trellis around our living room window. It is looking promising. I would like to get a few branches trained then I can kill all the other suckers coming out of the ground. We tossed all the cuttings over the fence for the sheep. They love to eat most plans and trumpet vine is no exception.
I spent the last half an hour with the Rambler. He had stopped grinding to think about a more efficient way to grind grain. So we were so efficient with my system that he could hardly keep up with the grinder unloading and loading and moving the ground material into the chicken coop. He was covered in flour and looked like a ghost. He had it out with the sheep early on as they kept sneaking up on him to stick their nose in and get some grain. Before he knew it he had 20 sheep pushing in and trying to get a mouthful of grain. By the time I came over in the afternoon there were no sheep around. They decided it was easier to find a meal elsewhere. We did end up dumping out one bag of grain that had too many rocks in it. The sheep do not care and will eat it in any fashion offered. I may take the sheep in to the auction. We know someone who took little ones in and got $120-140/each. I would gladly take that price. I need to look at my work calendar to decide when it will be feasible to take a Tuesday off to drive them over to the auction.
I did find out that the dead raccoon was on the fence and had not been moved out to the bone pile. So I had to use a shovel to scoop it up and toss it in the tractor bucket for its eternal resting trip.
Our plan in two weeks is to work the cows to tag and band the calves. There are still only three calves from our six cows. One of the cows was fairly young so it is not surprising she does not have a calf. We did have one of the cows slough a baby, it looked malformed and incomplete, so there is really only one slacker.
I had promised the better half that I would spend part of Saturday doing some things for her. So Mr Rainman and I drove over to Milton Freewater and repaired a couple of items on the outside of the church that required a 30’ ladder. No one was injured. I did notice that I now actually pay attention to where I am putting my feet as I go up and down the very tall ladder. I used to just scramble up it without a care in the world. I am getting a little older every year.
We had picked up a “farmer pack” of 2×4 boards from Tum a Lum. They were warped boards of various lengths that they just bundle together and sell as a unit. We needed to make branch props for the fruit trees and $3/board seemed like the right price, considering they were just going to be out in the weather getting warped. We cut notches in one end and went out and propped up branches on our little plum tree. It is sagging horribly. I used a couple on the apricot tree also. This is the first year we have had apricots. We have had that tree for over seven years and I always thought it was decorative. This spring Annmarie was out working on the bees and told me to just cut the tree down as we were not getting any fruit and suddenly we have fruit!
After we had that done, Mr Rainman went home and I went out to attempt to repair our grain cracker. It had one too many rocks go through it earlier and the auger portion kept getting jammed. I needed to weld the ridge back on top of the auger, the three feed windings needed to be raised. The trouble is that Mr Gingerman converted the welder from a stick welder to a flux core wire feed. I did not take the second half of the welding class where we were taught how to weld with a wire fed machine. I had tried the day before to get an arc without any success. I gave up and then that night while talking to the Gingerman at dinner he figured out I was not pulling the trigger! You don’t have a trigger when you are stick welding! I was able to get the welder working and to get some material built up so I can make the auger work correctly. I did have to hit it with the grinder when I was done but the grain cracker is back in business! It won’t do as fine as it used to but if I can milk it along for another year it will have been a solid investment. We have already saved over $1000 on feed for a $200 purchase. It has really worked out well and the chickens love it.
On Sunday we worked on getting a temporary fence up in the front yard. This is so we can bring the animals onto the front hillside to knock it down. Milo got three pieces of cheat grass in his ears and had to go to the vet on Fourth of July, Ugh. So now the plan is for the animals to take it down to a couple of inches. We have been watering it so with this heat and water the clover should just snap right back nice and strong. The fence took about three hours to get in place and situated. Our border collie, Chance does not like it. We put it close enough to the rock wall that it is an eight foot leap for her to jump it. Even with the animals on the hillside she has not tried to scale the fence.
Mr Rainman and the mermaid (formerly the Gimp) came out on a Friday to help me harvest some of the lavender. It did not take us long we had about half the patch harvested in two hours with Mr Rainman and I weeding as we went along. By the time we were done harvesting we had the entire patch weeded! I used a little serrated sickle bar and it worked slick. I grabbed a full handful, cut it and then passed it off to the mermaid who rubber banded it together. We filled seven totes/boxes and they took two for helping harvest.
Annmarie posted it on Facebook classifieds and we got zero hits. I had put it all in her office and cranked the air conditioning up so it’s about 62F in her office now. We ended up taking a bunch to work to give away. This was over two weeks ago and another 25% of the lavender patch is ready to be harvested again. The Grosso (type of lavender) still needs another two weeks before it is ready. We are going to use that to redo our wreath we have inside the house. Annmarie puts new flowers on the wreath every year and we hang it up in our dining room.
The garden is starting to produce finally. We have collected almost three full flats of strawberries from a 2×6 foot trough elevated bed. It is amazing how many berries we have been getting. We are freezing them in one cup baggies so Annmarie can use them in her breakfast smoothies. We did have to net the berries this year to prevent the birds from eating all of the berries like last year. The raspberries have just started to turn red so we will be picking them seriously by next weekend.
I really need to get out into the garden with a hoe and clear some weeds. I had done it a couple of weeks ago but it already needs it again.
Just before we left for camp last week, I set up a drip system for all of the fruit trees. Each tree is getting 12-24 gallons of water a day. The plums and apricots were checked today and they have another 1-2 weeks before they are ripe. We will be harvesting everything this year and cutting and prepping the extra for the freezer for Annmarie’s breakfast smoothies.
The wild blackberries are blooming continuously and we should have a bumper crop this year. So between all of the berries and fruit trees we should not have to buy any frozen fruit this next year.
The sunchokes I planted are already two feet high! I am hoping they do really well so I can move them to someplace else in the yard. We have never grown them before so we really did not know what to expect.
Well it is that time of year again when the predators decide to come out and play. We had a lamb killed up in field four by the old hand dug well. The lambs are 2-3 months old at this point but still easy pickings for a coyote. We had someone come out with thermals but they only killed one coyote. I have yet to see a coyote in the last three months. Mr Rainman spotted one in field four but did not have a rifle. He sat out watching the area after he grabbed one but the coyote never reappeared.
The cheat grass is horrible this year so we are going to have to push all of the animals down by the schoolhouse. The grass is much better down there. We have had one cow give birth and it is a cute little black calf. Everyone was so tame that Mr Rainman carried the calf across the water and no one cared. After about day four he could not catch the calf, it was too fast! We have five black cows and one brown one. The brown one was the calmest of the bunch we sold off. Now that we only have calm cows we need to get rid of the brown one, it’s too crazy. It is amazing how much your tolerance drops once you have gotten rid of the crazy ones. Placid is perfect.
Needless to say with the coyotes making a reemergence we have started to carry a rifle around. Frank doesn’t seem to mind, he just wants to be fed his bottle. Unfortunately, we are weaning him so he only gets a bottle in the evening now. He is really not onboard with this plan. The lambs head butt the ewes udder to promote milk release. In other words when Frank is standing directly in front of you, pay attention or he will head butt you some place you don’t want and it will not feel good. He did still get his bottle so from his perspective it worked.
We pulled the bull off of the cows before we let them down by the schoolhouse. We still have seven teenagers running around down there and one of them is an unbred heifer. He does not like being separated and has been beating on the gates so we had to make a repair. I remembered why the gate had not been repaired before this, the gates were put on with the last of the hardware I had on hand. I used three different kinds of bolts/screws and they all have a different driver! It took us a half an hour to find all of the right tools and one of the anchor bolts had a custom pattern. We beat it out with a hammer and wrench. Hopefully, the old large bolts we installed will hold up better than the fancy new ones.
Stewart Creek Somethings 