Mr Rainman says I plan vacations around haying season. I took a week off and went and visited old buddies from the military for a week. He ended up having to finish rowing and baling field one. That would not have been too bad but the field is very rough. We need to rig some kind of ground roller up so we can run it over the ground in the spring! We really need to get some of the ridges and bumps out of the field. Having the elk in there every winter is not helping it at all either. They are leaving holes from digging in the snow. On those little tractors it is very bouncy.
Honestly, the best part of my vacation was not having to finish picking up bales from the field! Mr Rainman brought in all of the bales and stacked them into the barn. He is a rockstar. I think if the two of us finish raising the height of the bales in the barn we will be able to get all of the second cutting into the barn.
We still have to move the old hay from two years ago from the old lamb shed into the barn on the overhead walkway. We will use it for bedding for the winter. I used to sell it but I realized eventually that I could just use it for bedding. The new hay is so much nicer that the sheep really just ignore the old stuff and spread it around looking for a couple of wonderful morsels. This way I do not have to buy any straw.
It looks like we may get a second cutting on about 1/3 of field #1 and #2. So I figure around 2-3 tons and I will cut the Naked Gardener’s field for a second time also. He is about two miles away from our house so I just drive over with my small equipment as needed until I get it all done.
He ended up finding a pheasant’s nest and she would not give it up, so he placed two torn up bales on either side of the nest. The hen seemed to think that was plenty of cover and came right back to sit on the nest.
We have decided to spray some more Rejuvra this fall. We are going to go down by the schoolhouse and see if we can get the good grass to spread out. We are also going to spray a section of field #2 and #1. Field #3 and #4 are a waste currently. They are 100% cheat grass. I really need to burn the fields but the fire’s have already started up around us. I am going to plow them. It’s another way to kill the cheat grass seed. It cannot emerge when it is buried under a lot of soil. I am just not sure what will work better.
Hay season always puts things on hold. I have not worked on the bathroom for two weeks now in an attempt to get all of the hay done. I have finally had to resort to doing my own mechanical work. I am capable but it is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly, as soon as you tear into something you find two more things that need to be repaired. I still refuse to do any serious work on the tractors. I take them in and have the dealer do all of the real work on them. The hay equipment is from Italy, so there is no one to work on it so by default I have to do it.
I did manage to actually mow the lawn with the actual lawn mower today. I really need to get the rock wall and metal fence up before I let the sheep back into the yard.
Annmarie got rid of all of her old dirty alpaca fiber. She posted it on Facebook for free and she had someone call her within fifteen minutes and that person was out to the house 30 minutes later to pick it up. She went through it all and found one that had moths in it, we tossed it, and ended up loading up eight bags into her vehicle and driving off with all of it. It was from all over the farm, Mr Rainman and I went to three different locations to find it all. Now she is only keeping the saddle portion of the alpaca that are being sheared before the organic matter and dust is embedded into the alpaca. It think if I can find a time to do it in April it will be in the best shape. She has a new setup to wash it while standing up and then she lets it dry in a netted herb bag with five shelves and a zipper that totally encloses it. This way the fiber can air dry and no matter how much wind we get no fiber disappears. Once it is all cleaned then she has to do two more processes on it before it can be spun into yarn. She has used or given away all that she had made into yarn.
I bought some sun chokes this year to see if we can grow them. Supposedly, they will grow anywhere and can become so prolific that they are problematic. I just put them into the ground in the place we are going to add a third row of raspberries. I am unsure if they are going to survive or not but it will not be for lack of water.
We had two different sets of friends come out Friday evening and Saturday morning to feed Frank/Francine. They both have young children and wanted to see and feed him. We were showing them around the house and spotted a break in the watering system in the lavender. This was causing our strawberries to not get enough water. Hopefully, we caught it in time as the strawberries are just putting on berries now. I am going to go find some netting so we can cover the strawberries so we actually get some this year. Last year the robins ate every single red berry, so all of the strawberries and raspberries. We are hoping to get some for ourselves and freeze them for use in the wintertime.
As in all wise things one should probably look both ways before opening your mouth. I had finished putting together the baler, unfortunately, I missed a lower sprocket that drives the entire front end of the baler. It took an hour to extend the chain and fish it through the correct route. The route I had actually marked with arrows on the machine. Now we were ready to do until I tried to open the dump back and the hydraulic line blew a hole in it! It was the weekend so I had to wait until Tuesday to get the part built in Pendleton, it was Memorial Day weekend. I ordered the correct part first thing Tuesday morning from the Midwest and found a place in Pendleton that actually had metric fittings. Unfortunately, the new hose is bigger and it has a more robust end that means it’s more rigid. We had to put it on three times to find a way to feed it to the correct spot where it did not get pinched when the dump was raised and were it actually fit through the gaps. I had purchased a wrap to go around the outside. We had to remove that over a portion of the hose to get it to fit. We also had to stabilize it with some zip ties as it would not feed through the small opening the original tubing did. It works and it works like a champ! It sounds so much better and I only had to dig it out twice while making 300 bales (6 ton).
We have loaded 112 bales into the barn already, 100 bales went to Sarah and Gingerman for their horses. We have about another 150 bales that need to be picked up and put into the barn. We were pretty picky this year. The cheat grass is bad this year. So we only cut the good stuff. The Rejuvra is working, field one had some bare spots where no cheat grass grew this year. The orchard grass will slowly keep filling in. We are going to spray field 2, all around the machine shed and down by the school house with Rejuvra in the fall.
I think we are going to have to actually plow under the cheat grass. We could burn it but the risk is so high of it taking off that we will just turn it under, disc it then smooth it out.
I finished baling field two yesterday. I wanted to get started on cutting field 1 but I had no sooner gotten into the field when I hit a hidden piece of metal. This caused the blade to bind up as two teeth had popped off and lodged in place crooked to seize the blade in place. I had to go back to the shop, pull out the tooth bar and loosen up all of the clamps. I had the new teeth but the wrong size rivet. I was hoping that D & B carried the correct rivet as I knew that they had some over in fastener section. I found the rivets, they were longer than necessary but I was going to grind them down anyways so it didn’t matter. They had five different sizes of teeth for the mower and none of them will work, they are all too short. Luckily, I only needed the rivets.
I have never had to install teeth onto the bar before. I know you just pound out the rivet, set the new one, put it on a firm surface and bang on it with a big hammer, once flat then just grind it smooth on both sides. Sounds easy. We had an extra bar that got replaced last year so I went ahead and repaired them both. I had to use a 2.5” crescent wrench as a lever attached to a 22mm end wrench on bar guide nuts. They were incredibly stuck and would not come loose. I of course do not have a socket in metric bigger than 20mm. I managed to get the bar in place without cutting my fingers or gloves and it sounded great.
I managed to get once around the field before a different blade popped off and bound up the blade. I drove back, took it apart and was back in the field in under 45 minutes! Not bad, when you figure it takes me almost 8 minutes to drive out to the field. I managed to continue cutting all of field one until 2300. Half of the field is thin and the other half is very thick.
The mower has a guide on the end that is supposed to push the cut hay back into the middle but it was not working and my weld job lasted about ten minutes the first time. I struggled with it the entire time I was cutting field one. So this morning, Gingerman helped me out, I took it off, he welded the bolt in place from the other side and I straightened the piece out with a vice and 3# hammer. Then cut a support and bent it to fit. He welded the crack in the guide then welded the patch in place. He also welded the bolt hole smaller. I drilled the hole back out and put it all together again. It looks like it did originally and it appears that it will work accordingly. We just use any color of spray paint after any welding or repair job, it just so happens that there are a few cans of black out in the shop.
Mr Rainman should be able to get all of field one baled this week. A couple of the fields look good enough that we may be able to get a second cutting on them if we can get a little rain soon. Preferably after Thursday of this week.
It is that time of year again and I am getting behind on the blog. Last weekend Mr Rainman and I took Saturday to shear the alpaca. Ideally we would have done it a month ago but it was not a true priority yet. We have learned that they must be sheared before the cheatgrass comes to a head or else their fiber just gets loaded with organic matter and it is very hard to shear them when they are filthy.
They will find a dirt patch and just roll around trying to get as dirty as possible. We used to do it midsummer and it did not work out well so we have slowly been making it earlier and earlier every year. I think April is probably the perfect month but it has to be dry enough that they have not been rained on for a few days.
It went pretty smooth this year. There are only eight now, not 12 and that made it a reasonable day. Doing 12 takes a lot of time and effort. We decided early on that we would do the three siblings early as it is only their second year getting sheared. They are still smaller than most of the other alpaca and they were a lot crazy last year when we strapped them down to the shearing table. They all three did amazing! There was no standing on the table and panicking off and on throughout the shearing process. They have wonderful fiber and we have been separating out the fleeces, one to a burlap bag, so that Annmarie can clean them as a single animal, store them and spin them all from a single alpaca. We used to put their names in the bag also but we are over that. She can tell who it is now just by the fiber quality and color.
The babies are changing colors! They were all white and all brown when we got them but now they are turning into a multicolored blend. When we were shearing we noticed the color change happening. Neither one of us got spit on directly. We had one unsatisfied customer who kept drooling stomach contents onto the table and complaining throughout the entire process. The babies need a lot more work on their toenails than anyone else and we had to ground down teeth on three of the alpaca. Next year we are going to have to cut off a few fighting teeth.
I did cut two fairly badly this year, it just happened. The cuts were about 3 cm. Any bigger and I was going to have to suture the skin closed. Luckily, we just slapped some of the blue wound cleaner on it and let them go. Some years it just happens and yes I had sharpened blades. As we worked toward the last alpaca Mr Rainman and I decided that 6 is the ideal number of alpaca. Snoop looked great this year and even being old as dirt I suspect he has another year in him. He is at least 15-16 years old already possibly 18 years old. There is a brown one that is all skin and bones, I suspect he won’t last the year. So the realistic goal is 6-8 alpaca. Usually when we find them for sale there is a buddy for sale at the same time as they don’t do well alone.
Saturday was amazing, the sun was shining and it was a near perfect day. Since it was going to rain on Sunday we opted to just make it a work outside only day. Once the sheep were done we started to look for my set of small discs. Mr Rainman and I went all over the farm. We could not find them anywhere. I ended up mowing all around the upper CRP field. I mowed down by four corners but hit a buried baling twine bundle and had to take thirty minutes to cut it out of the mower blades.
The kids brought down a bunch of concrete from their remodel. We are going to use it to help stabilize the bank. It keeps getting eroded by the seeps, water and sheep. They have at least three more loads and I think that will make a great addition to this corner. We should be able to stop the corner from falling in.
The seven yearling cows that will be sold or eaten this fall got pushed down by four corners. They are in amongst the trees. We are going to start killing the cheat grass in the two fields near the mother-in-law’s house. We hope to get water on them so we can keep getting the cheat grass to sprout then kill it and start the process over.
I was able to sell five, one year old lambs this weekend ($120 each) so there are seven left to sell by this fall. It was very easy as we just pulled them off as we wormed the entire herd. They came and picked them up a couple of hours later. We just ran them out into the corral and down the chute into their horse trailer. The corral makes loading animals very easy.
The gate gremlins were out in force this weekend. The teenager cows got out of the lower pasture the gate was open. The horse got out of the barn lot, the gate was open. The horse got into the ran pasture with the sheep and was trying to eat the green grass, the gate was open. The surprising part of this is that each gate was left open by a different person! No one was harmed and the animals did just fine. This stuff happens.
I was able to get down to field one and mow the newly made ditch. Mr Rainman spotted some fresh coyote prints in the mud. We have not seen any yet this season but they are obviously out there. I went to the other side of the creek and worked on getting it mowed down. I managed to get the huge hole filled in! That has been there for over 25 years. Someone buried two huge track backhoes in there and spent three days trying to get them out. They left a huge hole that was never filled in. The edges of the hole were straight walled and over eight feet high. It is not safe to drive the tractor in that area without knowing exactly where you going and where the hole is located. I got the entire thing filled in and now anyone can safely go back there and mow it down as needed. That has been on my list for over 15 years and I just never got around to doing it. Usually, when I wanted to do it the ground was so hard that I could not move the dirt. I even used the little John Deere 2520 to do it.
Sunday I was able to work on the baler. Unfortunately, I am missing two parts. One that never got sent to me and one I think I sent back accidentally when I sent back the wrong sprockets. I am pretty sure that one is on me. I have the part numbers written down and will get them ordered first thing on Monday. Otherwise, all of the other parts are all installed, tightened and adjusted. I can get those two parts and the new chain on in less than 90 minutes. Mr Rainman did remind me that we may need to do some maintenance on the sickle bar mowers before we use them. I think I have all the parts for those already.
Stewart Creek Somethings 