Spring watering area

Lambogeddon finally looks like it is here

Steve HardinLeave a comment

Thanksgiving was very nice, a good friend of our came up to spend it with our family. This is always nice as I did not do any work on the farm other than feed and take care of babies while Doug was visiting. He left Saturday morning and I headed out to the barn to do chores right afterwards. There were four more ewes that had given birth! There were two sets of twins and two singles. I pushed everyone else out of the barn then proceeded to rearrange areas to take the new babies and mommas. I put both singles and their mothers in the same pen, I tag and banded the twins that were under the stairs and released them into the momma/baby area. I put a new set of twins under the stairs and I penned the last set of twins in the far back corner of the barn mostly because they were there already and it was easy to pen them there. I then had to feed and water everyone. At some point trying to get over the 2×4 we keep at the barn entrance, to keep the horse out of the barn, I ended up falling on my face. Luckily, the ground was dry and I was able to slow my fall. This would have been very messy earlier in the week when there was four inches of squishy mud and sheep poop. I will be moving the 2×4 over to the end gate on the side of the barn, I don’t know why I did not think of this sooner. I guess I just needed the proper motivation.

I had noticed that the spring was getting pretty muddy the previous day. It was a combination of silt buildup and sheep pushing dirt into the spring bed. So after taking care of the sheep I went and dug out a short section of the spring bed. I even built a new cinder block wall out of six blocks using sticks, mud and gravel, not my best work but I do expect it to last through the winter until it can be corrected in the summer. I went in and took a nap after that. I used the breaker bar too much last week helping with the fence and had to sleep 10-12 hours a night for three nights running to even feel good. My chest pain started to come back so I have vowed to take it easier and let my helpers do the metal breaker bar work and I need to let them do the heavy lifting. Even after 12 months of catching Covid, I am still taking high dose aspirin, only twice a day now, and get intermittent chest pain with increased physical activity. My hope is that by 18 months I will be back to normal, the only real problem is I will be 1.5 years older and out of shape!

Mr Rainman and Mr Tex came out this morning to work on fence. There was another set of twin lambs born last night. So all of the mommas/babys from yesterday all got shoved together in the far end of the barn and the new set of twins got put under the stairs.

Lamb statistics

  • 11 of 34 ewes have given birth, 32% completed
  • Lambs born alive 18, birth rate 164%
  • Stillborn lambs 0
  • Lambs rejected 0
  • Lambs died before 2 weeks 0
  • Lambs bummered not rejected 0
  • Flock productivity 164%
  • Singles 5 of 11, 45%
  • Twins 5 of 11, 45%
  • Triplets 1 of 11, 9%

My single biggest summer project is getting the rastra and new drive over culvert installed. After that is in then I can think about other items. We would like to get our septic tank pumped but currently no big truck can get to the house.

We worked on the fence some more, the barn lot is pretty beat up alongside the wheat field. The horse has been pushing on it and bending the T-posts. We are working on getting some wooden posts in the ground along that side of the fence but it is rock from about 12” down, very hard to dig a hole in. Luckily, with the moisture we have had we are having pretty good luck digging holes with the tractor auger, I only sheared 3 shear bolts today. We are working on the corridor fence that will allow us to run the animals from pasture to pasture without keeping all of the pastures open. We want to control the pasture rotation better next year. We think we can extend the usefulness of our pasture this way. We got 18 posts set today with 12 of those including digging the hole. We had to create one rock-jack as the posts were directly on top of a rock bluff. I think four more days should see us getting the fence completed. Its a race with the weather now. Although it was 66 degrees F today and we all wore short sleeves and blue jeans, except me, I wore a long sleeve shirt also but I do that when its 100 degrees F. The weather is very crazy.

Forever Friday 11/42

Steve HardinLeave a comment


Sunday was spent doing a few inside chores then going outside to push the large bales together from Saturday. The bales are too heavy to lift with my little tractor as it only lifts 800#. I left the manure forks on the bucket so that gave me another 20” of pushing ability. I figured out quickly when filling up the machine shed that it was possible to get a second layer of bales lifted onto the first with some appropriate juggling. Push the potential top bale within about three feet of the bottom row, then stand it up on end and then quickly push the top so it is now leaning upright. Then take the tractor bucket and put it under the bottom of the bale, reach back and lower the box blade to prevent you from tipping sideways or backwards. As you lift the bale, back the tractor up this will cause the bale to pivot and allow you to lift it so it is parallel to the top of the bales then quickly push it forward onto the top of the stack! Now you have double stacked the bales! This sounds easy but it took some trial and error and the tractor being on two opposing tires before I managed to perfect the technique. The alpaca are loving the all you can eat buffet. They are so lazy they will lay down and eat. We have all the hay we need for winter on the farm. I would still like to get 2-3 tons of straw for the barn floor and some protein tub licks for the cows.

Annmarie saw a video for onion jam over the weekend so she made some yesterday. It doesn’t have a lot of ingredients but it does take about two hours to cook down and caramelize the onions. She made four pints with 8 pounds of onions. We are going to see how it does, its for meats and soups as a spice. If we like it we will be doing it again next year but may have to buy some onions.

Monday I puttered around the house in the morning, made bacon and eggs for breakfast and ended up outside in the afternoon. I had plans for Mr Ears to dig out the holes for the bridge footings but he was unexpectedly detained and unable to come out to the house. So instead I painted a spot out for both footings and dug one out! It was not easy between the tree roots and buried rocks. I had to use the breaker bar most of the time and only had to break two rocks in half that I could not get out. I set the blocks so they are overlapping and then back filled around them. I will pound in rebar next then we will fill them all with concrete. I want to make one sold piece of concrete for the footing so when it floods again the footings just stay in place and the water will tear out the bridge and the fence. I am going to put breakaway panels on the fence so the water can just push it away from the posts. I am going to anchor the upper sections of fence with rock cribs so the breakaway portions of the fence will give away first. This will cut down dramatically on the amount of fence I actually have to repair in the event of a flood. It took me about four and a half hours to dig the footing and set the blocks and backfill it. So I expect it to take me another 7 hours to finish the other side as the rock wall was only two blocks high not four and that will need to be completed first. Once I have both bridge footings completed I will mix and pour the concrete. I purchased 40 bags so 20 bags per side, hopefully that will be enough.

I really need to cut off the lower section of the trailer fenders as I kept bending them back against the trailer tires when I was moving the large bales around and pushing them off the trailer. It involves a lot of tractor brute force and just getting the bale part way off and driving away in the pickup letting the bale fall off the rest of the way. This is rough on fenders.