Mr Rainman

Fencing proceeds despite communication barriers

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Today the plan was to actually get some posts in the ground and get all of the needed materials to their appropriate locations. This proved much harder than one would assume as the day progressed. Both Mr Rainman and the Apprentice came out today to help with fencing. It took us a half an hour to gather tools and the rest of the railroad ties we needed. As the Apprentice and I got to the barn lot and were loading up large cedar posts to be the other half of an H brace with a railroad tie, I realized we needed more tools. I texted Mr Rainman and after the third text I realized that I just needed to walk over to the machine shed and help load more tools. We almost forgot the rifle, varmit getter. We loaded up 12- 16’x2”x8” rough cut boards onto the Kubota forks to use as the cross pieces for the H braces. That was almost too much weight to safely carry down the fields. The tractor back end kept bouncing off the ground when the path got too bumpy.

The plan was for Mr Rainman and I to start setting railroad ties after we drilled out the 12” holes. We had used the 6” auger yesterday to put in all of the holes and the plan was to widen the holes that needed railroad ties today. The field has dirt and not many rocks where we were digging but the ground has a lot of clay in it and can get very hard. Usually the big auger will just sit on top of the dirt and not cut down into it. It’s better since I welded the holder onto the arm and we stack tractor weights on it. We only had to use 100# of weights today.

The plan was to send the Apprentice back to the fence supply pile for a gate, there were three places on the farm she could find extra railroad ties, she needed to grab used T-posts from another spot and then grab the high tension wire that was on the ground near a culvert. I also have blocked off the wheat field access, I just covered it up with woven wire. This proved very problematic. You have to drive all the way down to field #3 to get out into the wheat field road before you can then drive up alongside the fields and get out onto the gravel road. We had to put one railroad tie on that fence alongside the road. She needed to deliver that said post. I thought I had explained the correct path. When she showed up in field #1 with the post and asked me how to get to the hole I had to reiterate all of the instructions, except this time she did not have to find the railroad tie, she had that. The tie got delivered to the correct spot and then she was supposed to get used T posts and the high tension wire.

Mr Rainman and I managed to get almost all of the railroad ties and cedar posts set when I asked him if he could see the Apprentice. Nope, it turns out that she drove past the used pile of T-posts six times and missed them every time. She had to drive down to the house and dig into the used post pile we have behind the grain bins.

Mr Rainman had to run to the house for a break so I asked him to grab a gate behind the grain bins. He comes rattling down the field with this super fancy very nice gate, not the gate from behind the grain bins. He states that I told him to go down to four corners and get that gate. You could not have picked a further spot from where we were fencing! He had to drive back and drop it off and get the gate we needed from behind the grain bins.

The only consistency here is me. I was the one giving instructions. There may have been some ambiguity present that I did not realize was present! The Apprentice and I got four sets of H braces built. She kept after it. As we were putting in the high tension tighteners she was having trouble using the fencing pliers, no grip strength. I gave her shit for not using the grip strengthener exercise I had told her about. She wants to be a farrier and will need to be able to hold onto the tools even when tired. She then voiced that she has been hurting all over her body since starting to work for me! Her hands hurt, her feet, her legs, her arms and her back all hurt all of the time! I laughed and told her mine do also but we still have to get stuff done. Say what you will, but the Apprentice just keeps coming back for more work. She digs in and just works at it until it is completed. You simply cannot ask for more and it is nice knowing she shows up to getter done. In a month, she goes off to school, so I will be keeping her as busy as possible until then.

Big surprise, we did not see a coyote that could be shot at. There was one across the street on the neighbors place but it was gone in about five seconds. I was up at 0115 due to the puppy barking, I went outside with a flashlight, suppressed 22 pistol and two extra clips to check on the ewe carcass we had left in the orchard, nothing there.

Predators 7 / Farm 1

Steve Hardin2 Comments

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.

Freezer room moving right along

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Mr Rainman came out on Sunday and we moved a ton of hay from the machine shed back into the barn. There was some green hay poking out of the machine shed pile and once we started digging into the pile we managed to get a flat bed load of really nice hay out of the middle of the pile. Between both sides of the barn we have enough hay for the winter.

I am trying to get the freezer room completed so we can move the freezers. Mr Rainman keeps trying to talk me into using some of my 1×8 or 1×10 wide pine boards for the walls and ceiling. I keep telling him it’s a freezer room and it only gets the scraps. We had purchased some leftover piles from the stores in town and I am finally using a bunch of the sheets. So the walls in the freezer room are made out of 1/2” OSB (two different kinds), 3/4” OSB flooring, 3/4” oak plywood, 1/2” CDX plywood, some old 3/4” solid wood piece from an old table top. I have 1/2” OSB for ceiling with some new vintage 70’s looking wood paneling! I spray painted some blue on the walls to mark where the wiring was behind the sheets so I would not accidentally hit anything when I install the shelves for this room. All in all a very functional freezer room when I am done. I did have to order an in window fan so we can keep the room a little cooler in the summer. I am going to use a WiFi power plug dongle to control the fan. I will be able to program the start and stop times remotely via the phone.

I managed to get all of the freezer walls covered but one side about 46” wide. So one full sheet of OSB and two cutouts for the outlets and I am done with the walls. I will still need to put some trim in the corners to make it look pretty.

I was sent out to change the bee’s feeding solution. They are getting some sugar water due to the shrinking flower supply. I spent about 15 minutes tossing apples from the ground in the orchard to the sheep. They were all wandering around trying to eat as many apples as they could. I even throw the dried out husks of apples, the sheep think they are dried apple treats. Annmarie has been using a “picker”, this wooden box with a ton of nails at cross angles with a sliding lid with more nails. Basically, it looks like a medieval hand shredding torture device. It is used to open up the alpaca fiber after she washed and sound dried it. It is working and she almost has the entire fleece picked.

The chickens are trying to compete with the sheep this year over who can die faster without a reason. I think the chickens are ahead this year. Another one of my babies was sick. I have to remove them from the coop so they don’t make anyone else sick. It’s usually some type of bird flu. On top of the chickens trying to die I have four broody hens who are refusing to lay eggs but want to sit on everyone else’s. Plus I am only getting 1-2 eggs/day.

Front porch now 96% done

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Annmarie has been working on washing and cleaning the alpaca fleece. She uses a bin and some fabric netting. She has washed this single fleece four times and each time she pulls it out of the water the organic matter gets physically picked out. After four times, actual progress is being made. It will have taken a solid 48 hours to get the fleece dry. Annmarie wants to dry this one before she starts in on a second one. She has some medieval looking device that is full of nails that is supposed to align the fibers and help pull out the rest of the organic matter. Getting the fibers all lined up will make a huge difference. Just being clean has made a huge difference. She will sort it directly into a vacuum bag and can work on spinning it when its cold outside. We cover the fiber with the fine netting and fold it under, all around the edges so that the wind cannot blow it away and the birds cannot steal it for nesting material.

Annmarie and I had been discussing my weekend project priorities all week. The alpaca are pretty high on the list but I have someone who has never helped shear coming out next weekend to assist me. It will be a hoot for them. So that is next week. I need to hammer out the fence around two sides of field one so I can turn the animals loose in there next month. This was my preferred choice. Nope, my number one task will be to fix the front porch decking. We did not get the last board screwed in correctly and it is bowed now. Unfortunately, the thought was someone would have to crawl under the porch and army crawl 40 feet through cobwebs, gravel, dirt and yellow jacks to get to the far end of the porch. The real problem is there is a special decking screw for the TREX decking and I know I have some somewhere on the farm I am just unsure where they are. So Mr Rainman and I proceeded to look for said special screws. After about 45 minutes I came to the conclusion that piling stuff in the old house for the last eight months has made a huge mess and I cannot find anything. So we started to throw away trash and put stuff away. After almost one and a half hours cleaning Mr Rainman found them on the shelf we had both already looked at. On a plus, side the old house is a lot cleaner now!

I did not really want to crawl under the porch. It had a lot of spiderwebs and a Yellowjacket nest under there. Unfortunately, the entrance is fairly small. I did not realize how small until Mr Rainman attempted to get in through the opening. I had to lay on my belly with my arms forward and crawls forward using my feet and elbows only. I was only able to move forward about two inches at a time. We had an old long handle to knock down the cobwebs so you did not have to crawl through them. They can be a little overwhelming. I was about ten feet under the porch when we realized that I could not actually scoot the board over from underneath. I had to back out two inches at a time. We were able to pry it from above and get it screwed down. There was dust and cobwebs everywhere so Mr Rainman pressure washed the entire porch and outside furniture while I went and put away tools in the machine shed.

Mr Rainman did some preventative maintenance on the John Deere tractor. We cut down all the sucker trees from the front yard and tossed them over to the sheep as a snack. We started to work on the floor in the new freezer room. I had measured and cut the new floor boards but somehow am off by a bit. The new floor is not quite level. I will need to cut a little piece for two legs of the freezer so it sits level. I am still not sure how I managed to do this. On the plus side I think I can finish the floor and maybe the siding tomorrow. Once that is done we can move the freezers into this room. They should stay a lot more clutter free this way. Once the freezers are in I will see about adding some storage shelves into the space. The space where the freezers are currently will be for the two tool boxes in my future office space. This should open the space up so it can be worked on gradually. The front porch will be done when I finish installing a door to get under the porch. Currently, it’s a crawl way with the horse mounting block stopping the dogs from getting underneath it. I will work on this also! I will, really…

Predators 5 / Farm 1

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We have been leaving the dogs outside at night this summer. The puppy has been raising Cain some nights but the few times I have gone outside to look, I have not spotted anything. The side effect of the dogs being out is that the sheep from the upper and lower pasture come in next to our yard in the evenings so the puppy can watch and patrol the yard. We have not lost any sheep to a predator since we started doing this, stupidity yes but not a predator. You cannot fix stupid.

We picked some plums from our orchard today. Another side effect of the puppy patrolling the yard is the deer are not coming in near the house. Every piece of fruit in the orchard is untouched by four legged animals, this is amazing! A first for us since we started the orchard. I had thought up plans to raise the fence another four feet and just leaving the dogs out at night has fixed it. We don’t even have the dogs in the orchard. My fence raising plans are on hold now. Because we are storing our fruit ladder in the orchard now we can selectively pick the fruit as it ripens. This will stretch out our fruit supply. The ancient pear tree (120 years we think) is going to die. It survived splitting but now it is getting some brown all throughout its leaves. I may get lucky and get one of the shoots to survive. I had one that was about five years old and I thought it was going to be a replacement and it up and died on me. As an added bonus I spent 15 minutes tossing fallen apples from orchard over the fence for the animals. They are starting to realize that the fruit is falling so they come check the alleyway twice daily looking for sweet treats.

I was switching sprinklers on the front hillside this week and found a dead possum. This is the second possum that has been killed. It was just dead. It either fell out of the tree or the puppy broke its neck. She doesn’t maul them or anything, she just protects her yard. Mouse (older border collie) just hides under the bridge footing. He has dug a nice hole under there to hide and stay out of the heat.

Wednesday night the puppy, Chance, was just going to town and would not shut up. This woke me up and even without my hearing aids it was annoying enough to get me out of bed. It was pitch black outside and I needed to retrieve the pistol and flashlight from the car, so I just ran outside in my slippers in the buff, the uniform of all night time farm predator responses. I ran out to the car, grabbed the flashlight and started panning around the farm. I spotted both herds of sheep and the alpaca. There was a cat under the flatbed trailer but nothing requiring my attention. I went over to the side of the yard and spotted the chicken coop and yard to make sure nothing was trying to get at my chickens, nope. Just before going inside I decided to pan the flashlight over the back garden. I spotted four pair of eyes on the back hillside near the creek. I whipped open the gate and ran down the sidewalk toward the creek and spotted four raccoons! I opened fire with the 22 pistol. It does not take long to throw ten bullets downstream at four targets. I was hitting them, at least two for sure but they don’t go down easily. I ran out of lead. This has now required me to break out the second clip to carry out with me at night. I got up the next night due to Chance’s barking but there was nothing but skunk smell. Luckily, it did not get on the dogs. Annmarie doesn’t credit me for any predator control until there is a body. I tell her its not like fishing stories but somehow she doesn’t believe me. Running around naked in the summer is a lot more pleasant than the winter!

Predators spotted so far this year are raccoons, skunk, coyotes and possum. I have two raccoon traps at the mother in law’s house but so far they have not yielded anything. They are eating her cat food and she knows they are around. The coyote has not been spotted in over two weeks.