tractor

Cows sorted

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I stayed home today in an attempt to catch up on the painting. I had plans of working on it during the week but only got some walls cleaned and pictures down. Today I pulled all the picture pins out of the walls. We will have to start all over again when it comes to pictures. This is painful but it does allow us to change out what was hanging on the walls. So we are already talking about what pictures we want to keep and rearranging the items when we put them back.

I spent a couple of hours taping off the kitchen and then cutting in the corners with paint. I got that all done before Annmarie came back. Before I can roll on paint I will have to plastic off the entire kitchen.

Our plan was to sort cows this afternoon. We need to get the one nutter calf away from any breeding heifers. We also want to wean off the calves. The stupid cows are still letting the year old calves nurse off of them. We pushed the sheep up into the upper prime pasture and locked the horses behind the barn. We brought the dogs along with Gizmo to work the cows. They were hanging out down by the schoolhouse. Mouse kept wanting to get out front of us and chase everything. I kept calling him back nonstop until he started to stay closer. When we got down to lower pasture fence I just picked up each border collie and tossed them over the fence. We were crossing the stream when I found the skull of one of our horned sheep, a young one probably only about 8 months old from a few years ago when all our sheep had horns. I carried the skull back to the house so I can mount it up on a wall. Mouse, Gizmo and I stayed down on the lower flat and Annmarie and Zeke went up on the hillside to push the cows down to the gate. Zeke was listening very well when all of a sudden he just took off and was running around in large circles on the hillside. Annmarie was hollering loudly and he did not listen at all. Turns out he had spooked a rabbit and was hot on its trail! He kept gaining distance the longer they ran until the rabbit ran for a pile of wood. As soon as the rabbit disappeared then Zeke started listening again.

Annmarie was hot! She was hollering at Zeke, she was hollering at me, she was hollering at Mouse, she had some serious tyrant like attributes bleeding off her. We continued to work the cows and the directions kept coming. Once in the barn lot the cows just did not want to go into the corral area. Annmarie tried the dogs but the cows were gunning for the dogs. We finally had to put the dogs away and get out the shakers to drive them into the corral. Annmarie says I don’t pay enough attention to how the animals are behaving. This is true. We finally got the cows sorted, 7 plus the bull will go back down to the schoolhouse area and 6 others will go into the upper prime pasture. The upper prime pasture has water now so we can leave the cows penned up there with a couple of large bales of hay.

I ended up putting two large bales in the upper prime pasture and two more large bales down by their normal feeding area. We decided to give the 8 cows a chance to wander down on their own. The sheep all came wandering down toward me when I took this picture as I was on the tractor. All the animals know the tractor means food. It took us 2.5 hours to sort the cows and it took me another 1.5 hours to do the evening chores.

I am totally psyched about the underground green house. We are trying to come up with a location. I think it needs to go in the ram pasture. Unfortunately, it will be taking up a big chunk. I think it will require some spray paint to mark out several locations so we can find the right spot.

To make sure we had two fences between the separate herds I had to put the gate back up. I used some bailing twine, that stuff is good for everything. If you look real close you can see my handiwork in the picture below!

Mistress & Me

Steve Hardin1 Comment

I had some gravel delivered this week, 10 yards of 3/4″- and 1.5″- for use around the farm. We have purchased at least 100 yards of gravel over the years probably closer to 150 yards. I now set all the railroad fence ties in gravel as they are a lot more secure and not as prone to softening in the spring. We were running low and I am thinking about drilling holes in the barn lot to create a pen for the bull and rams so we can start controlling our time of delivery on all babies. The bigger rock is for the road that loops behind the machine shed. The road was always just a dirt path but we have slowly started to gravel it in and build it up. The single most important reason is that is how the garbage man loops around and leaves the property. Trash pickup at our house is a luxury and we want to make it easy for them. We also realize that our weather is changing and we get a lot more rain than we used to, this has caused some drainage issues and access problems. Gravel is a wonderful cure all for a lot of those problems. I spread about 8 yards out onto the dirt path behind the shed. We will give it a couple of months then have some 3/4″- brought in and have them dump it directly over the road. We will be ordering some more panels for our barn to help sort sheep and they will come on a semitruck. Also our new haying equipment will come on a semitruck, access is vital for us to have year round. I took the last two yards and spread it in front of the corral loading chute. We now have year round access to the chute and mud will no longer be an issue. This also happens to be where the mobile slaughter parks and since I moved the gate opening this process should go a lot smoother also. The mistress is doing well. She needs a bath and I still need to bang that dent out of the hood but she is a trooper. I remembered lunch after completing these tasks and then went back out to check on the upper prime pasture. Annmarie told me we had water running into the ditch in it.

Water is my nemesis! We just don’t get along and after Annmarie told me it was running in the upper field I just knew the Mistress and I needed to tackle the next problem. Or in my history, create one involving water.

There was indeed water running in the upper prime pasture. It had gotten to the blackberry bush but was not running any further. I dug out the ditch on our side of the blackberry bush and used it to try and level off the area near the fence there. It is very hard to get the tractor by as the hill is slanted into the bush. I will keep using the soil I dig out of the ditch to level this off. I went down the ditch farther near the hand dug well and dug out a trench in the ditch. The ditch. Is covered in grass and if I dig down about a foot then the water runs faster and it will create a low spot where the animals can drink. We just opened the upper prime pasture to the sheep yesterday. The horses are confined to the barn lot so they cannot fallow on all this fresh new green grass.

I drove up through the upper prime pasture into the next one (still working on a name) and noticed that the water was just starting to run out the end and form a swamp by all appearances this started in the last 1-2 days. I had a trench at one point from the central ditch running across the field to the original spring starting point. This got worked away during the hay growing process. I went in and dig a ditch starting at the spring so there was no water in the ditch I was creating. I built up a berm on one side so we can find it and we will just have to work around the ditch. It is needed as another swamp is not needed if we can avoid it. The spring in the middle of the field is running again. The only way to make a pond here is to line it. I have tried twice and the stream just cuts through the berm or the water gets absorbed. If I put a lining in we could have a little pond up here for about 6 months out of the year, probably enough to get a pair of ducks to stop and have babies. This is a project for a later time. The water coming out of this second spring is almost as much as the first so the downstream load is doubled. I expect this to cause us problems down in the barn lot. We think it may actually start running and eroding another path above ground. We may have to put in a culvert to allow us to cross the water. I am trying to avoid any crossings where we drive through the water. It’s not always possible but with the front spring the water is slow and not crazy, just persistent.

I went up and drug out an old ditch on the wheat side of that same field and then dug it back out. There was a 50 yard section that had filled back in over time. I dug it back out. I think when I rent a backhoe next time I will dig this down another 3 feet. If I can get it lower I think it will help drain the field. I need to finish the fence in this section so we can turn the animals loose in this area to forage and eat it down. I will be keeping it clean and weed free this summer in preparation for planting in the fall. We are going to plant Round up resistant alfalfa.

You can see the first spring starting point above. It looks like a little pond but if you look closely you can see the water bubbling out of the ground and forming a current. Its pretty cool. I kept chasing deer out of the fields and noticed these freeloaders eating the new wheat, almost 40 deer. I drove up to the next field to inspect it. This is one I have not burned yet. This needs to be done soon but it keeps raining and I would like a little wind to fan the fire and drive it across the field. Its wet enough I don’t have to worry about it jumping off the field and going elsewhere.

This is the field where Ted, father-in-law, got buried in his mule in the middle of the summer our first year here. Annmarie tells me stories of burying wheat trucks when driving through it at harvest time. The dark patch is solid water and the lowest spot in the field. You can see the two places I tried to drive out into that area and got stuck in the mud. I had to push myself out with the bucket on the tractor. This is with four wheel drive and I kept the box blade on the back to add weight to the back tires. I want to stake out this area this summer. The plan is dig a shallow area about 18-24 inches deep and drag all that soil to the surrounding area. Then I will build a fence around this area to keep the livestock out and just plant grass in the fenced in area. It will either survive or not. Hopefully, this will contain the water enough that we can use the field. I might look into some marsh plants to plant in this area also. The trouble is it doesn’t hold water year round so it does dry out in late summer/fall. So I am unsure how a marsh plant would fare as it is not truly a marsh. Its just a low spot with a high water table some years.

As the world turns

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As always something comes up, whether you want it to or not. I was reminded yesterday that the cows probably needed food as they had tipped over the feeder. Usually I can get 1-2 days after the feeder gets tipped over as they are just trying to get to the stuff below the solid panels. But with all the snow on the ground I felt sorry for them so I opted to feed them early. I had been charging my car battery in the hopes that it not starting was just a fluke. So I walked out to the machine shed to start up the tractor with the dogs in tow. The dogs are a necessity as the cows will bum rush the large hay bale as I attempt to push it into the field. I jumped onto the tractor, put my hearing protection ear muffs on and turned that key expecting it to start. I was disappointed. It did nothing but light up a couple of lights, no tick, no noise whatsoever. Luckily, we spent $2500 last year to get a single 110v outlet and light out to the machine shop!

So I grabbed the charger from the car and put it on the tractor. I then had to unload the propane tank and all season tires from Annmarie’s car out of the back of the pickup so I could use it to haul hay. We still have some 100# bales of alfalfa in the machine shop so I loaded up six bales and drove them out into the pasture and tossed them into the feeder. The nice thing about a moveable feeder is I move it every time I feed otherwise the cows create a mud pit. We are still feeding at the far end of the field away from the houses also. In the spring I want to drag a set of discs all around the field and spread out all the leftover hay and cow poop, maybe I can get it to mulch in.

The horse’s hooves needed cleaning out as it looked like they were walking on ice bubbles. It takes some effort to get those broken up enough to scrape them off the hooves.

My chickens are causing me grief again. I thought I was down six hens due to the raccoon and then this week number 19 magically appeared in the coop one night when I was counting them. I had been spotting this random hen out in the barn before the snow came down. Annmarie spotted it yesterday in the barn. We have no idea where it is roosting in the barn but it is not returning to the coop at night. It is just wandering the barn digging through the sheep and horse poop as content as can be. Tonight when we went out to do chores it was digging through horse poop and we caught it. It is now living with its comrades in the coop. This is chicken number 20! So the raccoon can only be credited with killing four hens now.

Annmarie called me today to say that when she went out to feed in the morning that the twin miniature babies were ice cold. They were totally limp and not very responsive. I asked if their new mom had abandoned them but she said they were curled up against mom. All we can figure is that she is not producing enough milk for the babies and they are unable to get enough calories to stay warm. She called to ask if I would come tube feed them. We have never had to do it before but you just insert a tube into their stomach and give the formula in with a syringe. I told her they were most likely not going to make it and just try her best. She put them by the gas stove and fed them every 5-10 minutes little dribbles until they got warm and strong. They were both sitting up and looking around 6 hours later! We gave them to the housekeeper. She now has 9 bummers from us! Its crazy how many problems we have had this year. Including the two that have died that’s 11 sheep we have lost out on for a cost of $770. We still have at least 10 ewes that need to give birth still. They are all our older more experienced ewes. We figure they avoided the ram the longest. My sister is visiting family this week and is coming out on Saturday. We will tag and band all the babies again to get caught up. To know if the baby has been tagged or banded you just look for the floppy lowered left ear. The ear tags weigh down their ears for the first couple of weeks. Its easier to spot the low ear than the actual tag from across the barn.

On the plus side, I did not have to go fishing for a retained placenta in one of the ewes tonight. She had passed it today on the second day. I have a pack of 100 shoulder length gloves that I have only used 5 out of in the last 5 years. I am hoping to continue the streak of infrequent utilization.

Still at it

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Slow but steady wins the fencing race. I ended up fencing in the rain on Thursday. I have these fancy all rubber overalls I picked up this summer at a yard sale and my rubber boots and waterproof coat. It went great except I had leather gloves and it didn’t take them long to get wet and slimy. I spent a couple of hours nailing in wooden stays. Some would say wooden stays are archaic. But I had noticed that all my fence done with wooden stays survived the elk last year. My neighbors had a bunch of fence torn up by the same elk. I was told by someone who is licensed to harass the elk that they see the wooden stays and will leap the fence, on other fences they just run right through it. Plus the horses and cows cannot push the top wire down when you use wooden stays. I still have about 40 more feet and the first 60% of the fence will be completed. Although Annmarie has told me I need to go back and wire both woven fences together between each wooden stays so the sheep cannot slip through. I did this down in the corner I know they bunch up in but she wants it the entire length of the fence. As soon as I don’t do this then the sheep will learn to slip through and then I will still have to do it after tightening the fence again.

Annmarie had told me she thought the chicken killer raccoon had moved out to the barn under the old milking barn section. So we opted to quit feeding the cats at night as we don’t want to feed the raccoon. I took a good look at the area today and yes i do believe the raccoon dug under the barn but for a different reason. I have had a raccoon leg trap out their for almost three weeks baited with peanut butter. The trap is chained with metal chain to the wall so that it cannot be drug off by a raccoon. The trap can only be triggered by putting a paw down into the tube and then pulling up on the actuator. There is no way a cat or dog can trigger the trap. It has been sitting there doing nothing for so long I had forgotten about it. It looks like the raccoon finally decided to try his hand out. We go out to the barn every morning and every evening so it must have managed to get loose before morning. There was some loose hair stuck in the trap. We think this is a “Townie” raccoon as it is avoiding traps. It was most likely trapped and dumped off out at four corners. We have discovered this is more common than we believed. This of course just forces me to deal with the problem in a lethal method. This is very hard to do when you never see the offending critter. We have a ninja raccoon!

We had company come out on Saturday to see the baby lambs. We have been sorting only and had a passel of babies that needed to be tagged and banded. They had four children age 10 to age 4. They had a great time! There is no one that doesn’t love baby lambs! I did all the tagging and banding while Annmarie did the catching and then we just had everyone line up like an assembly line to hand me sheep. There were the inevitable questions about why I put different colored tags in their ears? We have a pink based color for the girls and all the boys get the same blue color. I alter the girl color every 50-75 babies to give us a rough approximation of the ewes age. It does actually work. They wanted to know why I kept playing with the little boys testicles? I said I had to make sure to get both testes when I banded or they would still be a ram. Next was did it hurt them when I put two small rubber bands on the boys scrotum? Yes for about five minutes then it hurts no more as there is no more blood flow. Did we need to shear the sheep? No, they are hair sheep and we just use them for meat. They then got to hand feed the horses, go inside the chicken coop and gather eggs, then walk out and watch Annmarie hand feed the bull and one of the heifers some apple slices. Mouse was in heaven as the children kept throwing the ball repeatedly and tirelessly while they were here. He was very tired after they left. We fed them all lamb bits for dinner. It was delicious. I put mine over a baked potato like a topping and it is amazing. Zeke said “peace out”” and went and hid in the laundry room to get away from the children. Gizmo is starting to get more social and finally quit barking at them after the first 20 minutes.

I had real high hopes that we could get through this lambing period with our ram and he could then impregnate everyone and then we could kill him for stew meat. It’s not looking like that is going to be possible. He is now pushing and head butting the ewes in an effort to bully them. He is humping pregnant ewes who are almost ready to give birth. He used to just drink their pee to tell if they were in estrus and then mount them. No more he is on a total dominance kick. But the real reason he has to go is that he has head butted a gate twice in the last week that Annmarie was standing on the other side, totally not cool. I am so pissed off when I get in the barn with a stick that I just yell and swear at him to take his best shot because if he knocks me down I am going for my knife and only one of us is getting up. He seems to understand and has been staying away from me. But I cannot have him hurting Annmarie. So I have arranged some help and right after Christmas he will meet his demise. I am still hoping I can get a shot behind his ear. Last time I shot a ram between the eyes it just knocked him out for a couple of minutes. The bullet could not get through the front of the skull! This animal is designed to crack heads at full speed with another ram for dominance. We have a gal who wants to use his bones and hide and parts to practice her budding taxidermy skills on. It’s a great use of resources. We will just bone him out right away and cut up the meat into stew sized pieces.

I have been looking at our skinning pole arch and I think I need to dig out an area around it about 1 foot down and then fill it all in with 2 inch gravel with a 3 inch layer of 3/4 minus over the top for drainage and dryness of the ground. I like this idea and am going to do it next year.

Gizmo got involved in my selfie! He is a whopping 6.5 lbs now and 11 months old. He is not as social as Sprout but he is finally starting to figure out that people are not evil. He loves Annmarie and I. He will finally go to Sarah now.

We also have another plumbing issue. Our hot water relief valve off of the gas tankless water heater is leaking very slightly. I would have never noticed except it got below freezing and I noticed the huge icicle hanging from the outside vent tubing. I will need to call the plumber and see what can be done. I tried to finish painting the hallway and am of course about a quart short on brown paint. I will have to go back and buy an entire gallon just to get the one quart I need. I am also going to try and get a new white color for the hallway and entryway. We don’t want super bright white.

Stock trailer in our future!

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It is now a reality, we can have a stock trailer. I listed the three items for sale on Saturday and by today I had four people lined up for the trailer. They kept asking more questions and wanting inside dimensions and inside pictures. One guy would have had it on Saturday but his pickup lights were not working and by the time he got back to me I had two people ahead of him. I sold it to a gentleman from Burns. He asked me this morning if I would save it if he made the trip. I said I would as it is not fair to sell it out from under him while he is making the trip. Do people really do that? I realize they must or he would not have asked. He inspected the trailer and paid the asking price without hesitation. I only had one person try to low ball me and he was the fourth in line. I was happy to tell him that it sold for the asking price.

The tractor sold today also! It went to someone who can fix it up and will take care of it. This is great news and I have already put the word out that we are in the market for a stock trailer. To cap off the evening when I went out to get eggs none of the chickens were sitting outside! They had all gone into the chicken coop before the door closed. I even collected 10 eggs from the last two days from 25 chickens. This doesn’t seem like very many but since three days ago I only got 2 this is great. The chickens hate change and adding new hens always screws up the pecking order and the laying patterns of all the hens. Now we just need to wait and see if the guy who said he was mailing a cashiers check for the car actually does it, I have the potential to score a trifecta this week.