rockchucks

Haying done!

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It has been a long summer and it is just getting started! The heat has been incredible. We had a new record high, 116 degrees F. This is an amazing amount of heat and one which normally would have had us hunkered down inside our house enjoying our central heat/ac via heat pump. Yeah, Lady Luck struck again and we had air conditioner issues. The worst kind of issue, the gradual change. As the heat kept increasing every day our heat pump kept losing temperature differential and the house just kept getting hotter. Our house got over 90 degrees and three days after we called a repairman out he came! I consider this a success, but we found out our system has a coolant leak and some valve that needs to be replaced and it turned out to be a factory order so we may get it fixed 8 days after discovering it. If its only 8 days I am going to take it as a win. The heat is now under 100 F and at night it is actually cooling off so we have a huge fan that goes in the breeze porch and sucks in all of the cold air and blows it everywhere via the upstairs hallway. We had to have some relief as Annmarie was sleeping at her moms and I was staying up late or getting up early trying to open the house to get it cooled off.

It turns out my mother had an air conditioner for the shop that she was not using. We thought abut putting it up in our bedroom but it really needs some external support. We ended up putting it down in our craft room with the Murphy bed! That bed is turning out to be on of our great purchases of the year. It is getting a lot of use. I had the saw set up and an old table I had not yet discarded and in an hour we had the stand built and the air conditioner installed and blowing cold air! It was the best nights sleep I had had in one week. The house only got to 79 degrees with the new setup. This is much better than 90, sweat does not run down my back just sitting in the living room now.

Friday was a lazy day for me. I don’t have them very often but it has been a long stretch at work and all of my helpers were busy having lives. So I started the day off by making waffles. I got 2 and the chickens got 4. They fought over theirs more than I did. I binge watched Netflix, I still didn’t manage to finish my TV series, it even has a second season so its going to take some more time. I did spend an hour trying to get our yard sprinkler up and going. I had it apart three times and managed to blow rust, and water all over my face and shirt one time. I did get it up and working eventually, that was my big feat for the day. Annmarie and I even went into town and had a sit down dinner, which hasn’t been happening much with Covid. Our local bunny rabbit makes a showing almost every day now. I see it hopping around and we even saw a covey of Hungarian Partridges (Huns) with babies in our driveway. All of the animals seem to have done well this spring.

Mr Rainman came out today with his wife, Gimpy today to help me pull in the last of the hay off of field #1. There was quite a discussion had, some whining, about my choice of names for helpers. A final ruling was made that a name is given on the very first day you come out to the farm to help and it is never altered. Yes, it may not be as pertinent but unlike your birth name there are no do overs or changes allowed. So Gimpy, without the injured leg, helped load hay today. We pulled another 174 bales off of the field. The best part of this was that our main barn was full so we had to use the lamb shed. What a sweet deal!! Mr Rainman said if I just tossed a round bale on the edge of another by the trailer it would spin and then roll all the way across the ground to the hay stack. This worked fairly well but during the second load he suggested we use the trailer tail gate as a ramp, pure genius and worked perfect! This made unloading super easy. Gimpy decided that the owning a farm was not in her future.

We had a Rock chuck lay out on the wood pile for the first three trips, I finally went into the house and grabbed the 17 HMR and of course we never saw the little varmit again. It was fairly obvious that we had issues with baling hay in field #1. There were just under 100 failed bales that had been jettisoned out of the baler, almost 2 ton. We went around and picked up all of the rolls and fed them to the cows/sheep in the upper pasture. It will take them a couple of weeks to go through 2 ton of feed. This puts off my building fence for a short while. We ended up getting just over 800 bales off of field #1. I think if the weather had not gotten so hot we could have gotten 1000. I am going to spray it with 2-4-D soon after we run the mower over it.

Mr Rainman is going to come out early this week after the holidays and mow down a bunch of cheatgrass. I am hoping to put the hurt on it on Monday. I will stick to the fields around our houses. The front porch has gone no where. So we laid down the same OSB sheets we used to have on it so we could use the front door again. After we get back from our week long respite I am driving to central Oregon to pickup our new ram. He will have a buddy as we are also picking up a ram for the farmer buying 28 of our lambs and starting up his own herd.

Day 3 on new deck

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Sunday was the big day, Mr Rainman and I were going to finish the underlayment and get ready to lay TREX. This proved to be a futile thought as we just kept plodding along and could not seem to speed up. We had to undo a section and recut some pieces as we had subtracted 1/2’ due to the warp in the board. The pressure treated lumber is not ideal. It has more flaws than normal lumber and is still very expense. We need to keep the distance from the house to the outside of edge of the deck the same along the entire length of the deck. This is proving to be possible but not without a lot of attention and detail work.

We figured out today to get the overhang correct we needed to face the entire outside 2×10 with another layer of wood so there is a space around the beams we can attach the TREX. We watched another three videos today, figured out that we need some starter screws and some colored deck screws, neither of which came in our build kit plans. We opted out of getting the Butyl tape to go over the top of the pressure treated wood, our deck is covered and this was going to cost $500 for 20 rolls of 50 feet/each. There just has to be a limit. We saw the resident bunny rabbit out by the cars this morning. We tend to spot one every couple of years but they never seem to be able to reproduce in any large quantities.

We did not get done with the underlayment! We have about six feet left. The far corner again proved to be a problem. There was no attachment like the other side to attach the deck to the house. We had to run a board over to the stem wall. Mr Rainman dug out the corner near the house and go the concrete pillar positioned as close to the house as was possible. We then pinned it in place and blocked around it so there is absolutely no movement possible in the deck railing. I figure at least one more solid day on getting the deck prepped and the stairs may take another day also. I still need to purchase the riser/run pieces from the hardware store. We will have to set the lower posts into concrete to ensure they don’t move. I want to wait to dig the concrete until we have the riser/run supports installed.

Mr Rainman spotted a large rock chuck up on the hill but it was hiding in the rocks and I could not shoot it. I kept the 17HMR out in the yard just in case the rock chuck came back down to the ram pasture and greener grass. He did not come down, but eventually I walked up behind the machine shed and got a better angle and shot it. We are down five rock chucks near the house. I think there is at least one more.

Spa Day

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Slim came out today to help groom the alpaca.  We sorted animals last time so it was alpaca shearing day.  Annmarie tells me we should just arrange to have it done with someone else local we know who has a custom shear outfit come do their animals.  I need to see about getting our fiber processed and then decide what we are going to do but for now, we do our own.

We had to move the shear table around, run power cords out to the barn and get all the tools ready before we caught any animals.  We then rounded them all up and put them behind the barn.  I caught the first one and we started in.  First, you put the halter on, then you stand them up next to the shear table and then swing the table down and hold the alpaca on it so it is now laying on the table.  Tie both respective legs together and stretch the animal out on the table.  Tie its head to the corner eyelet.  Now shave half the body.  This year we only kept the saddle portion of the hair. Once you have all but the lower feet and head shaved you untie two feet and shave them.  Next you use the hoof trimmer scissors to cut away the curved toenails.  Try not to cut the foot or get the quick on the toenail.  So far I have not made a single alpaca bleed this year. Now do the other feet, shave then cut toenails. Tie every body part back up and let the head loose and remove the halter, shave the head and now its time to rock and roll!  One person holds the head, the other one takes the hard rubber dog chew toy and gets it into the alpaca mouth and holds it in place so I can cut out the fighting teeth.  This all has to be done so that I don’t cut the tongue or lips with the finger saw.  Once that is done then I have to take the Dremel tool and grind down the front teeth so they are even and match up with the top hard palate.  It smells and its not fun.

Once the animal has had its full spa treatment we untie all legs and let the head go and I spin and rotate the animal off of the table.  It works pretty slick and we don’t have to try and lift the table and slide them off off of it.  We tried that and they are not very graceful.

The alpaca are the ultimate passive aggressive animal.  We managed to get 6 of 8 sheared today and only one did not do the belly flop and refuse to stand up.  As you can see above they just lay down and we had to lift them up, shove your knee under their belly and then flip the table to a horizontal position.

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We had an audience for most of the day.  A new barn swallow who we are pretty sure is not ready for the great outdoors.

We had to stop when the power went out.  We later learned that the wind blowing knocked over  a tree which in turn killed the power to a large area for a couple of hours.

 

We had lucky number 7 alpaca already on the table strung up and ready to go.  We did his toes since he was there and then let him go.  We will get the last two next week hopefully.

As soon as we let the first four out they ran over to lay down and scratch their backs on the grass and weeds.  Slim and I emptied the pickup bed and removed the gravel so we can take the pickup and trailer to an auction in the morning.

Annmarie went out and cut herbs from the garden and wrapped them all up.  I hung them up on thee breeze porch to dry.  As soon as the upstairs bathroom is done I will clean up the breeze porch again.

Annmarie missed another rock chuck out in the ram pasture.  I ran upstairs but when she started to fling lead it ran out of my field of view.  I may have to put out some targets in the field and up on the hill so I can do some practice shots from the bedroom window.

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Scaring away rock chucks

Steve HardinLeave a comment

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Mr Professional came out to the house and picked up bales of hay from the orchard and drove the trailer over to the barn.  He has been working on another project in town that Annmarie asked him to do so his time on the farm has been limited.

On Thursday, Annmarie spotted TWO rock chucks down in the ram pasture and went out the front door with the 22 rifle.  She flung lead at them and they got away.  I saw this all from the living room window.  Without a carcass she gets no kill credit.  She even admitted she missed.

Friday morning, Annmarie’s spotted another two rock chucks and went outside and started flinging lead again.  Again, they both got away.  I was not home at the time but she told me about it.

I had gone out to barn to move the hay inside off of the trailer.  It was a mere 98 degrees F and I did bring some water.  There were 60 bales to go in from the orchard haying (1.25 ton) and someone had to do it.  I got them all in the barn and stacked.  I needed the trailer cleared off so I could go and see if the metal scrapyard had any panels or culvert for me.  I found some amazing panels but the owner was taking them home and I did find a piece of 4’ culvert hidden in the back corner inside a piece of 6’ culvert. I will come back in a few weeks after I gets some more haying done and have them pull it out and cut it down to 16’ long.  I decided to go with a longer culvert.  The gate is 16’ wide and that would allow any size truck to cross.  I am going to use Rasta blocks and install a concrete wall on both sides of the culvert so it can withstand the water cresting it if needed.  On a plus side, I did not pickup any scrap metal and they gave me a sold recommendation for a portable welder.  I will be buying a Miller Multimatic 200 and using flux core wire.  I have been shopping around looking at prices but it looks like $2200 is the price I am going to have to pay. This is less than the allotted $3k I had set aside for this needed purchase.  It will even work off of my generator and will do 110/220v power supply.  This was a major tip and I am grateful for it.  I will be converting my old small pickup bed trailer to a welding trailer and mounting the cutting torch and welder and generator on it all so I can just hook up and go!

I was dragging after unloading the hay in the heat, tired, did not feel good, so after my shower I am upstairs dressing and Annmarie started shooting again at rock chucks!  At her opportunity rate I am going to have to increase my accuracy to offset it.  She shot at two more rock chucks.  I am thinking its the same two she always shoots at.  She now has to sneak out the back door as they will run away if you use the front door.  Friday morning I had removed the screen from our bedroom closet window so I could get a shot off if needed.  It doesn’t show the whole ram pasture but I can see  the hillside.  I spotted a rock chuck running up the hill and got off two shots.  We both missed.  My plan is to now just use the upstairs window when I want to shoot at the rock-chucks.

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This is my view from the upstairs bedroom closet!  I have a decent field of fire if they run for the upper rock pile.
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Animals contained

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Sunday started off with another surprise, another fairly new calf!  This one has white on it also and has a white heart shaped design on its forehead.  The other heart headed calf has been named “Valentine” so Annmarie wants to call this one “Cupid”.  We are fairly certain that those are the last two calves and as soon as we sort off the young heifers we will turn the bull loose back into the main herd.  This will give us a calving date next year of March 2021.

After breakfast, I caught up on thee blog.  I would like to spread them out a little more but its hard to write when you work until 2200 then shower and need to go to work the next day.  I take notes for every day I work on the farm now so I don’t shortchange myself and take credit for the things I actually did.  I then did the dishes, emptied the compost, emptied the dishwasher, started Roomba and finally ran out of excuses to go outside and build fence.

I grabbed a roll of new wire (my last one), an old 2×6 board, two charged batteries for the sawzall and two cow panels.  I used the hitch on the pickup to pull the cow panels behind me out into the field.  First thing I did was install the bird cross posts.  I am unsure if the birds will use them but I climbed up the post and installed them.  I made sure to crawl up first before I pounded all the T-posts into the ground and hammered in staples for a few hours.  I needed maximum strength and my lackluster enthusiasm is not helping, I am so looking forward to going back to work this week, I need the rest.

I rolled out and stretched new woven wire.  I installed a smooth wire over the top of the woven to hopefully keep the horses from crushing my woven wire at the top.  I got the new side all clipped in and even installed a 26’ breakaway section near the ditch using cow panels.  They are anchored at the top and then nailed along both sides from the back so that the water pressure can just pop out the staples and the panels will lift.  I have a total of 42’ of breakaway frontage in this section of fence alone.  My goal is to install at least 16’ in every cross fence.  I opened the gate and called the sheep through, called Annmarie to verify the horses location and shut the gate.  The sheep and horses are officially stuck in Prime field.  I even hung the panel across the ditch and clipped it in place.  The left side of the fence still needs clips and wooden stays installed.  Once that is done then its onto the orchard pasture so we can get it fixed and sort the sheep. I was back in the house by 1600.

I showered and was upstairs in our closet and spotted a critter out on the ram pasture, it was a rock chuck!  Our score, Steve 1: Annmarie 1, on dead rock chucks is even, not that I am counting mind you.  So it was crucial that I get outside and make the kill.  I jumped into  my slippers, grabbed my 17 HR and ran out the back door making sure to not let the door make any noise on the way out.  Unfortunately for me the sheep and horses are in the barn lot and I had to pick and choose my shot.  I missed twice!  Now in my defense I did not use a rest and my arms feel like rubber after all the hard work this weekend.  They are living under one of my rockcribs down by the back creek and they will dig out underneath it and cause it to fall or lean over.  Annmarie shot this photo below for posterity.  The second coming of Sasquatch!

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