Mr Rainman

Alpaca shearing time

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s getting hot! The alpaca needed shearing about a month ago but with vacation and haying they seem to always get put off until July. I thought it was going to be easier this year. I honestly think this every year and seem surprised when it isn’t. I had three unused blades and had kept all of my used blades from last year. I figured I could use the old blades on the old alpaca as their coat is fairly thin compared to the young alpaca.

Mr Rainman and I pushed the alpaca toward the barn lot. I had picked some green apples off of the trees and had attempted to bribe them to follow me but they were not buying what I was selling. So instead we steered/chased them to the barnyard. When everyone was in the front of the gate I tossed the green apples into the barn lot and they all ran in to eat them. So I guess the apples did help just not when I wanted initial results. We had one of the alpaca from last year with a missing eye that was again starting to drain. It did not heal up over the winter. Before we let everyone out I put him down so the flies didn’t get into his head literally.

We sheared Snoop first, he is the calmest and mellowist old man. He just laid there and let me shear all his fiber off. He is so easy in every way, even when he is being antisocial toward his buddies he likes us. We have treats! We caught one of the older brown alpaca (I cannot remember his name) and sheared him, again very easy.

Then we caught Padre. Padre was not happy, he was less impressed when we held his head, turned his eyelid inside out and got the cheat grass from under his eyelid out. We then irrigated his eye and cleaned up all the gunk. He is halter trained so he did follow us into the milk shed and stood next to the shearing table. But he is huge, by far and away the largest alpaca we own, probably around 150#. It was all Mr Rainman and I could do to get him up onto the shearing table. Once he was up there he started to growl. Mr Rainman equates growling with getting spit on. He also has a weak stomach and dry heaves at everything nasty. So the more Padre growled the more Mr Rainman thought about gagging and dry heaving. I honestly think the alpaca knew what he was doing. The old blades did not work at all. Padre has very thick hair and required 1.5 blades to get his whole body cleaned off. Unfortunately, the last little bit was hard to get off with a dull blade so his hair cut did leave some questionable styling. We finally just had to be done as Padre kept getting more and more agitated. He was basically sounding like a motorcycle and jumping every time he was touched. We suspect that someone was fairly rough with him when he was younger.

Annmarie had me make some hobbles from a piece of rope that are self tightening and they worked great. We were doing pretty good on time about 20 minutes to shear Snoop and 40 minutes to shear Padre. I did cut Padre’s toenail a little too deep and made him bleed. We had to use the clotting powder which sort of worked.

Once that was done, we were done as there were no more sharp blades. I went in and printed a sharpening order and packaged the blades up and had Sarah ship them off that day. They should be back in 7-10 days. I did order some more ceramic cutters. I like the ceramic ones better than the metal ones. We then went out and fixed the fiber tumbler so it could be stretched out on its side and the leaf blower used on it to blow the loose fiber and dirt free. I even attached two eyebolts to the machine shed uprights so Annmarie could stay inside the machine shed and blow the fiber clean.

She tried this the next day and it worked great. Now she wants to be able to wash the fiber. I just need to find the skirting rack we made a few years ago. I am not having much luck with that task. I have looked everywhere now except the barn and the woodshed. I even checked in the root cellar! There were a lot of spider webs but no skirting rack. She processes the young alpaca fiber and we use the old animal fiber as matting to toss down and keep the areas weed free. It works pretty good for that.

Catch up

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Last weekend was utilized as catchup time. After being gone for a couple of weeks we still had more things to complete to get ready for summer. Annmarie went and got two huge pots for our front entrance. We have a few volunteer lavender plants coming up in our patch and wanted a place for them. We are also going to put a wooden post in the pots so we can hold open the porch gates. We really only need them closed when the sheep are in the yard. Both dogs know how to open them both ways! So they are not a deterrent to them when it comes to getting on the front porch. The planters were heavy and did not provide a great spot to grab onto when moving them.

On Friday I drove over to LaGrande and picked up our second ram (Remie). I just put the animal pickup enclosure on and he rode in that. We want the sheep to lamb in a timely fashion and believe that if there is competition then all of the ewes will get impregnated in a single cycle. So we will have 2 rams and 45 ewes. We put both rams in the corral for about 36 hours to make sure they would cohabitate nicely. There was a lot of butt sniffing but they never fought. We let them out with the ewes and they are doing just fine. I cannot see that they are doing their job but we will know in five months if they are.

Saturday was spent cleaning up around the farm. The footings for the bridge were started. They have to be dug out first then I can build the concrete wooden footings and put some metal in the hole then it can be filled with concrete. We are going to use my small electric concrete mixer when we do it. It will only mix about 200# of sackrete at a time. It’s going to take a while to get the footings poured.

The sprayer had to be cleaned out and set back up on the tractor. Mr Rainman worked on that. We had a couple of plugged nozzles from the last usage and he went through the entire setup and got it all cleaned up. He also greased and filled all tractor fluids on both tractors. Mr Flow is going to work on cutting thistles down along the back creek. It’s not glorious work but it needs to be done. Once the thistles are knocked down then he can clean out the chicken coop.

I was pretty sure we had a chicken predator as I could only find five chickens once we got back from vacation and was only getting one egg a day. So on Sunday, Mr Rainman and I worked on skirting the old house. I crawled under it first to make sure there were no dead animal carcasses. Lo and behold there was a passel of live chickens. We chased them out by me tossing rocks and Mr Rainman beating on the outside skirting. Otherwise, I would have been crawling and chasing chickens under the building. Once the chickens were out we locked them up in the coop and proceeded to skirt the building. We also built an enclosure around the laser vent fan to keep the weather off of it. Once that was done we built a rain lean to over the fan enclosure and outlet to prevent water from getting on any of it. This was supposed to happen a while ago but got put on the back burner.

I have started working on the freezer room floor. I need to cut diagonal floor supports to make the floor level. The only problem was I burned up the table saw blade and I have multiple replacements for the radial arm saw and hand skilsaw, but none for the table saw! I need to cut five more and we can then shim the floor level and get it down. This is the next big thing for the old house remodel. Once the floor is in I can slap up the wall from scrap plywood I have saved for this purpose. I can then move all three freezers and install some shelves into the room. Once that is done its onto my room! I think I have enough wood scraps for the walls to be sheeted so its pretty much installing two doors and finish the wiring and insulate two walls. I expect it to take me a year or more to finish my side. I really need to just focus on getting all of the switches and outlets installed.

Due to the heat I had to come up with a way to keep water and Gatorade cold. The front spring is 40F year round so I took an old broken bucket and placed it in the ditch and filled it with drinks. It doesn’t keep them ice cold but they are cool and easy to drink plus its free.

569/900 round bales

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We were trying to get things straightened out mid June on the farm so we could go on vacation for a couple of weeks. We were going to leave the country and visit our other daughter, Monica in Glasgow where she is going to college. Mr Rainman and I were trying to get all of the hay put up before we left but the rain was not cooperating. Nor was the paying job as it kept me away from haying. Despite Mr Rainman attempting to get all the hay done before he went on vacation also we had to leave 1/3 of field #1 on the ground as it was too wet to bale.

The Gimp came out one day while I was working and helped Mr Rainman pickup baled hay from field #1. They put it all in the lamb shed as the barn was ready to stack from seven foot to sixteen foot height and The Gimp did not want to lift bales that high. I appreciate the help and we need hay out in the lamb shed this winter anyways so it kills two birds with one stone. The Gimp did express some muscle soreness occurred the next day. They are no longer suffering from a bum leg but nicknames do not get changed, they are assigned on the first day and last forever!

While we were out of the country there was a large fire adjacent to our property. The neighbor’s field directly across the gravel road caught fire. Sarah did not call us because it did not come onto our property, someone else told us so we called her. She was taking care of feeding the animals while we were gone.

The puppy, Chance, is turning out to be a very pretty girl. She is very smart and probably our most athletic dog we have ever owned. She can jump the back yard side fence in the yard and now when she wants to eat the cat food off of the elevated table she no longer jumps up with her front paws only. She just jumps up onto the table like the cats and gets easy access to all of the food. She does the same thing in our raised garden beds. She is a menace, the only good thing is we have not taught this one how to go over/under/through fences. I am still amazed we did that the first time, it was convenient when we were out in the fields but so problematic when it came time to keep the dog in the yard!

I bounce

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Haying is still going on every day and night. I am able to crawl on the tractor in the evening and work into the night to get the hay cut or turned. Mr Rainman comes out and does the actual baling during the day and I am able to do all the prep work after the paying job. It does make for some long days. Of course since we are haying it has decided to rain some more. It never fails, if I want it to rain I just need to cut some hay and get it on the ground.

It of course rained today delaying the baling process for a few hours. Mr Rainman tried to get the wrapped hay into the barn to get it out of the rain. So when I came home tonight we used the moisture tester to sort out the dried bales from the damp bales and moved the damp ones out of the barn to sit upright outside to dry. I decided we needed to go to the ceiling with the next batch of hay. Mr Rainman did not want to walk on the edge of the leaning bales. So I climbed up on top of the bales and started to stack the pile higher. It was time to get down off the pile and Mr Rainman was outside getting more bales off of the trailer when I decided to get down. This was a good and needed decision, except my method of getting down is fairly questionable. I decided that jumping off of a seven foot high pile to land on a 18 inch wide bale. I was able to land on top of the bale then it promptly squirted out the side and I hit my right elbow, left arm, middle of back and right hip. I did NOT hit my head! I did make a fairly impressive thumping sound as I hit the floor and bounced off. Mr Rainman came running hoping I did not hurt anything. He was afraid of all the flack he would catch if I injured myself. The wife stated later she would not blame him for anything I did on the farm. She figures I will have done something to deserve it.

I am going to hurt in the morning. I can already feel all of the muscles tightening all over my back, right arm and side. I hope I can get to sleep tonight easily.

Sheep sorting again, ram time

Steve Hardin5 Comments

Yesterday was sheep sorting day. We have a bunch of skinny mommas and we need to wean off the lambs that are old enough, we need to worm everyone, create two herds (edible, keep) and turn the Ram loose in with the mommas (keep). This seems simple enough on the surface but nothing is ever simple when you are working with animals that have not been touched in three months. Most of the lambs have only been touched once in their entire life which makes them the most difficult group to handle. We started by having to dig trenches in the barn to be able to move the panels around and create chutes and three large pens in the barn. Once that was done I found the oral drenching tool and our wormer. I did not have enough oral drench so Annmarie volunteered to go to town and get more while we tagged and banded. I had about a 1/3 of a bottle so we could start while she was in transit. Mr Rainman and I then attempted to push the sheep into the barn. Nope, they would not go, no matter what we did, they kept breaking free of the pile and would not go into the chute into the barn.

Mr Rainman went and got Chance, border collie puppy, and he attempted to get her to move the sheep into the barn while she was on a lead. She would not really listen to him and since she is learning you have to be patient and strict at the same time. I took over and she was baling them up well but they would not go into the barn. She would be within four feet of them and they would not budge. One broke loose and she dived for it, I had a hold of the lead rope with just my hands, no gloves. I had to clamp down and grab rope to jerk her back for a correction. I ended up with a two inch rope burn on my middle finger! But I did get the puppy stopped and corrected. We had to go get Mouse also and squeeze the sheep from both sides and push them into the barn with the dogs. They just would not go on their own, and before that would work we had to open up the barn so they could just go through the door, once in the barn we pushed them to the far end so we could run them through the chute. We were still having trouble getting them into the chute so Mr Rainman started to just catch the little ones and then I could tag and band them. We had about ten lambs that needed tagged and banded still. On one of his snags he caught a pink tagged big lamb that was a ram! So it got banded, which was not easy as the testicles were so big I had to pop them through the bander opening one at a time. I have not made this mistake in years, so it was a great catch by Mr Rainman.

We used the oral drenched but the little clip that holds the bottle to the belt does not work so I tie it upside down under the belt with a piece of cord then it will work. It’s fairly redneck but it does the job and using the drencher hand pump is so much faster than having to measure out a syringe every time you need to dose a sheep. Once we had two groups of sheep we had to run them through the chute again to count them! Here are the final numbers: 46 ewes, 10 babies (too young to wean) , 1 ram in the first group and 40 lambs, 1 cull ewe, 13 eating size in second group for a total of 111 sheep. We are going to be taking the eating size ones to sale soon to see how they do. The ram is now in with the momma herd and we are keeping them in the orchard for now so he doesn’t have to chase them all over. We are bringing both groups into the barn lot every night to keep the predators at bay. One group in the front side and one group on the back side. They can see each other but not mix. There is an amazing amount of noise for the first few days once we separate off the lambs.

I hooked up the sickle mower onto the Kubota and tried to cut the orchard but the space is full of trees and metal rings around the trees. I did not even make it around the field once before I hit a cow panel and popped off a tooth from the bar. So I had to go put that sickle bar up and put the rake on the Kubota and set up the smaller sickle bar on the John Deere. We did not use it last year so I had to make some adjustments and get it all greased up. The Italians that designed it put one essential grease zirk where it is near impossible to access. It took me 30 minutes to get the thing into a spot where I could access it with a small grease gun and a 90 degree elbow. It is of course exactly where the bolt fails every time so it has to be done. I can pop the other mower apart and redo the rivets but that will take time. So it will be something I need to do after hay season. I had to pull the break away bar from the mower and beat on it with an eight pound sledge hammer to get it back into some semblance of shape and function. It’s not perfect but it is much improved. I am now ready to cut more hay today. The plan is to cut 1/3 of the leftover ground today and turn it on Tuesday. Then bale it on Wednesday. I will cut more hay on Tuesday, another 1/3. We have managed to bale 346/900 needed bales and 252/900 are in the barn. I was able to scavenge another 20 bales yesterday from the leftovers.