spraying

New sprayer boom

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I keep working on getting the star thistle sprayed in the CRP. It had not been controlled for a decade so it made some inroads. The wind and heat has been dictating when I can spray so it has been hit and miss to get it done but I managed to get in a solid three days last week. I can usually get 3-4 tanks done before the wind or the heat picks up enough that I can no longer spray. There are a lot of old coyote dens out in the CRP! It makes driving around on the tractor surprising. You can get lulled into a back and forth rhythm then WHAM, you hit a huge hole and the front tire has fallen in. It takes four wheel drive and going backwards to get out.

The miniature bunnies are all along the fence line. They are living in every single rock crib. This little furry creature thought that if it just held still I would not see it. I guess in its mind it worked as I just snapped a picture and kept on driving. Nothing harassed it so it was successful. We have one down along the driveway also. Annmarie and I were just commenting that we never see babies and we only ever see one at a time yet they keep multiplying.

When I got down to the house I tried to back into the machine shed. Unfortunately, the boom on the left had flopped down and I ran it right into the upright wooden pillar. This caused a bend on the back rigid bar. It was bent too much, when I let the boom down it was pointed forward at a 45 degree angle, no good. In typical farmer fashion I figured I could just straighten it out by hooking it on the same post but pulling with the tractor to straighten it out. Surprisingly, this took quite a bit of effort on the tractor’s part and all it did was break the hokey fix I had done a couple of years ago in the middle. So now I had two issues.

The answer at this point is to just take it apart and rebuild it. But this means relying on my welding skills. They are improving, but that first weld two years ago was so bad I had to screw two holes into the patch and put screws in them. I am getting much better and that was one of my very first repairs. It also held for two years! I went to Irish Iron (Packy’s) and got some square tubing, a small piece of square tubing to go inside both pieces to hold them in alignment when I welded them. I also picked up some channel iron for the gun rack on the Kubota tractor. I was there so I figured I would just get it all.

I had to take it all apart, busted one of the bolts in the process and then had to cut the swing safety ends off. They need to be welded onto the new piece. Since I was having to rebuild the thing anyways I decided to do some improvements to its design. I have a boom and a wand attached but the valve to switch is under the tank currently and it is a standard yard hose Y splitter. So I purchased two valves to weld onto the top of the bar to switch between the wand and boom. I also moved the boom left/right valves to an upright direction so I now have four valves mounted on the spray bar. It was surprisingly not bad once I got the wire feed speed adjusted. I had to slow it down from the Gingerman’s settings. I cannot weld at 200, I did fine at 175 speed. I have no clue what the value for the setting is, I just know the bigger the number the faster the wire comes out.

I go it all welded together and broke the ancient handle off of one of the old valves. I tried to weld it on, it took two attempts before I realized the valve stem is bronze. I will have to eventually replace that valve but for now it will work fine. I have learned to just grab some color of spray paint and cover up the bare metal when I am done. It helps control the rust. I was putting all of the tubing on with hose clamps and of course on the very last clamp the standard screwdriver slipped and dug a gouge out of my thumb. It would not stop bleeding so I whipped out the little first aid kit I have on the tractor. The requisite blood sacrifice for a farm project was given.

The fires have already started to burn all around us. It is a little early for fire season but our lack of rain is starting to show. It does make for a fantastic sunset!

Spring is here

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This is where it gets tricky. Spring is here and there are things to do outside yet our main bathroom remodel is still in progress. I have to stay focused on the bathroom but some projects still have to get done.

The pears and plums are in full bloom but we have had two nights of hard freeze so I am not sure that we will get any fruit! I sure hope we do this year.

I am mowing the lawn with the sheep again this year so Mr Rainman moved our chive planters to the back garden for a week so the sheep don’t scalp them. They tried to eat the roots last year they liked it so much. Unfortunately, our little dog Milo has learned that he likes to chase the sheep. It is cool. Our side fence is not a barrier for our little dog, he squeezes around the end and our border collie just jumps the fence. We tried locking them in the orchard but then both got into the lavender patch and then got into the garden area. The fences don’t seem to be much of a deterrent or barrier. So on Sunday the Gingerman helped me install the side fence. We made it very tall and the dogs are now contained in the garden area. It works great.

Mr Rainman has been spraying 2-4-D and Milestone on the bottoms. He has already managed to spray fields 1-3 and will work on the schoolhouse bottoms tomorrow. He is also going to spray the edges of the CRP ground we just purchased. The weeds are starting to creep in on the edges, so we are going to spot spray and see if we cannot get them stopped. We will also kill a little spot alongside the fences so the weeds don’t choke out the fences. It is way safer than trying to burn the fence lines later in the year.

I had to add a small 1”x2” board on the end of the shelf in the mud room that is over the outside door. Opening and closing the door is causing the items to move closer to the edge and then leap off to their potential death. The board is installed and now you do not have to wonder if something is going to fall on your head when you use the back door.

Annmarie and I have made a list of all current projects and it has ten levels of priority. This actually works nicely as it lets me plan out projects better and if I have a project I want I can add it to the list. Finish the bathroom is priority 1!

Fencing progress

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Mr Rainman has been coming out to work on finishing up the fencing. We need to get the gate installed up at field #1. That way we can drive up alongside the wheat field and directly into the field. Otherwise, we have to drive through field three across the width, into field #2 and drive the entire length and width to get to the only access into field #1.

It took him a couple of days to get the railroad ties set, H braces installed and the gate hung. It takes the tractor with forks on it to hang the gate. You have to get the height at the exact spot before you can drill the holes and attach the gate. We will need to attach a cow panel to the gate so the sheep cannot crawl through the gate. Only the lambs are small enough but they don’t need to get out into the wheat field.

I found a spring steel T clip for attaching wire to metal T-posts that requires no tools online. I ordered a 1000 and will be testing them out. If they work then this will be a huge time saver as installing 8 clips on every T post does take time, especially if you are trying to get the bottom one on tight. Between the new clips, tractor post hole auger, the electric fence stapler and the T-post tractor bucket driver we have managed to really cut down on the time to install new fencing. Now if there was a way to get a robot to build it all that was not super expensive.

The puppy and I went to town and bought some more smooth wire high tensile strength tighteners. We then went down to the four corners field and started working on digging holes. We need to get the railroad ties installed and 3-5 round wooden posts. The T-posts will fill in the rest of the fence. I had forgotten that a lot of the holes had been drilled last year. I managed to clean out two, start in on a third and dig a ledge into a 16’ section of hillside to create a flat spot for the fence. We have to hang a panel over the ditch for water runoff. Once we get that fence installed then the animals will be able to clean up that corner and keep it knocked down.

We had 1.68” of rain last weekend so nothing got done outside. It is now almost 80 F this weekend so all of the greenery is shooting up again. Luckily, Mr Rainman had most of the spraying done except some backpack work alongside the ditch. So our fields are looking great and this year we hit most of the fence lines with RoundUp and that is helping our weed management. In another month we will have to start spraying the hillside for yellow star thistle. It has not emerged yet, it has not been hot enough.

We are also going to set up a gate that can be closed across the driveway when we are working cows. No more stray cows barreling down the driveway and jumping across the cattle guard. The gate will just stay open all of the time until we are working the animals. That is the majority of the fencing that needs to be done this year. We are going to have to start haying in about six weeks.

Welding, Farmer style

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If you want to know what a true road obstacle looks like, look no further it is a herd of alpaca! These guys are truly obstinate. They will not get out of the road for anything. You can drive right up to them and touch them with the bumper of your car and they might think about moving. If they do decide to move a smidgen it will be at their own leisure. It is easier to go around them if at all possible. All of the delivery drivers have learned to not barrel down the driveway. The alpaca will not move no matter how fast you come up on them and since we have not had a single one hit it means they are always winning in an alpaca versus delivery vehicle situation. On the plus side, we never worry about vehicles tearing in or out of the place.

We had another reason for me to have purchased a welder and to have taken the first quarter of the community college’s welding class. The sprayer tried to fall apart! There is a 3 point platform and the upper point of the 3 point is tearing off of the platform. This was supposedly built for a 50 gallon tank but it is certainly not holding up. There is a part in the front that broke in half that then placed all of the stress on the upright base. This is obviously not a good thing. I had not noticed the front crack as the paint covered it. This meant that we had to take the sprayer off first. Of course there was a lot of water in the tank. We did finally manage to get the tank emptied and all of the main parts torn off the platform. I only managed to break two fittings! I simply don’t like plastic for this reason, but it is a lot cheaper than the alternative. We could not beat the upright back into position so we used a tie down from the top to the far side of the platform and cranked it over until it was close enough. I broke out the welder and used the welding gloves this time. Last time I used my thin leather gloves and it was not enough. I got the top repaired and I am not going to be a commercial welder any time soon but even Mr Rainman can tell that my welding skills are getting better. The beads look like an actual bead instead of welding confetti. I wanted to weld both the top and bottom of the platform so we raised the forks on the tractor up high enough I could stand underneath and weld over my head. Now this was not a skill they taught us in class. Yep, I see why now, I had a sold weld burn to my upper right bicep in the first two minutes. It did not feel good. I then went and put on the leather arm guards I had purchased with the welder but had not ever worn before. Safety is a learned craft, the trick is to survive the first accident. I got it all welded and we put on a new heavy piece of angle iron across the front where the initial crack occurred. It is holding as Mr Rainman is back out and spraying. We even installed a couple of new fittings and fixed a couple of slow leaks we had on the rig. It works like a champ now.

I may even have enough skill to work on the stock rack for the pickup this fall. It needs some repair and rebuild.

Cows sorted

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Well I seem to be a couple of weeks behind recently on the blog. After a solid weekend working I am having trouble taking the time on Sunday night to crank out a couple of blog posts. Now that we are onto daylight savings times we are doing more little stuff outside after work therefore cutting into my blog time. I will attempt to keep up, just like I say every time!

Last weekend was the great swap! We needed to move all the animals around to get ready for spring. All of the cows needed to come into the corral so we can sort off last years yearlings and calves. Our cow should be having babies in April. We calve when the weather is warmer as the Dexters do better when you are not calving in the cold. Plus, we needed to count the cows as I can never remember how many we have. The cows of course were split and we ended up having to walk all the way to the end of field one to push them down toward the corral. We blocked off field #2 and field #4A so that no cows could get into either one. We will hay field #2 but #4A is so that the weanling calves cannot reach the momma cows. They will nurse the calves through the fence unless you put some distance between them. The mommas need all of their energy and milk for the calves that are coming next month. So Mr Rainman and I walked all over the farm moving cows.

When we were moving cows through field #3 we noticed something new. There is a spring head that comes out of the ground and has been for years. It just seeped out of the dirt in a ten foot area and had several faucet sized streams. That has changed! There is now a 12” diameter hole in the ground spouting water. The water volume is about double what it used to be and the water is moving fast enough that it is starting to dig down into the ditch. It lowered the ditch water level another 18 inches since last fall. We have a pretty soft muddy area up there that is around 50’ wide already. We may have to slow the water down and let it make a bigger softer area to keep the water from running away as fast. At a bare minimum we need to get a fence around the spring outlet so nothing falls in it. We could not see the bottom.

Sorting the cows was fairly anticlimactic. Once we pushed them down behind the barn we just starting sorting them 1-2 at a time as they ran through the gate. I only got hit once in the face with the gate when trying to push a calf into the chute. Both of them got out and we had to try again. Nothing got broken and I did not even get a bruise so all was good. Once we sorted off the 13 (or 14) heifers (all but 2 pregnant maybe) we pushed them up into field #4B so they were contained then pushed all of now weaned and last years calves up to field #3. There was a lot of bellowing and hollering by all parties due to the split. We isolated the alleyway to let it grow also. I was able to use Chance to move the cows back out to the field. By the end of it she was able to work the cows without the lead. She listens fairly well but does lay down when I ask. The dogs just don’t like the words “right” “left”. It takes me longer to train them with hand signals which is usually what they respond to. I must need to come up with two new words, I just thought of them “port” & “starboard”. I may have to give it a try.

Once that was done we moved both rams into the sheep herd. We need those two to do their job! Within minutes of them entering the herd they were sniffing pee and trying to mount the ewes. Annmarie and I have decided that they get two months in with the ewes and then we are removing them. Any ewe that doesn’t get pregnant gets an ear knocked and we will work on culling the herd until we only have a bunch of calm good mother hussies. We are not going to lamb for four months any more.

Mr Rainman went out to spread solid fertilizer onto fields #1, 2, triangle and down by the schoolhouse. I worked on rewiring the entire sprayer on the Kubota tractor. The wires and switch had been getting very hot to the touch and burned the switch up. We are not sure why as the sprayer worked fine all last year. I wired the pump up with the old wire from a previous inline switch from the manufacturer. This was the quickest fix. The switch welded closed the next day and Mr Rainman had to manually pull the wires apart at a connection to turn off the pump. I have since rewired the assembly with 10g wire and installed a new switch and made a PVC switch holder from PVC pipe fittings. This lasted about 4 hours before this switch welded shut. I have since replaced the switch and ordered two 30A waterproof switches. I am hoping this 3rd fix works and the extra switches are just insurance. I have learned to have parts on hand to just be able to do the fix real time without going to the store.

The daughter says I don’t take enough pictures of myself so I decided to take a farmer selfie, enjoy!