weeds

Spring is here, for sure

Steve Hardin2 Comments

Last weekend I was able to get some much needed spring work done. Annmarie’s number one project is getting the irrigation pump up and going. Honestly, we need it but I am going to have to crawl down into the mud and dig out an entire section of filled in mud and weeds and it is not making me excited.

Instead, I broke out the brush hog and proceeded to mow the entire area around the houses, barn, machine shed and grain bins. I also mowed the fence lines alongside the wheat field and the corner property. I have to mow the fence lines to keep them cleaned up. I do want to get down to four corners and get that entire corner fenced in but it keeps getting moved down the priority list. Instead I mowed it so maybe I can get to it later in the summer. I was able to mow around the CRP edge and alongside the paved road to knock down the weeds. I will need to spray those areas in 2-3 weeks with a broadleaf spray, probably mix some 24D and Milestone to knock down anything trying to creep in from the road and fence lines. I did not see any bunny rabbits, in the fall they were all over the place on the edge of the CRP.

The county got a grant to eliminate a specific type of invasive weed that has been emerging in our area. We are going to participate in the grant. Invasive weeds are the worst! It took me about two days to finish all of the mowing and I only had to crawl under the hog once to cut out some fencing I had sucked into the mower. Okay, twice I had to crawl under it but I only had to cut the fence out once. I did not see a single coyote the whole time I was mowing. I also have started to pick up the big rocks I hit with the mower and just toss them in the tractor bucket. I need rocks down at the house so I might as well collect them with purpose. Next time I won’t have to worry about a big rock being in the way.

Our cows should have had calves by now. I obviously did not count accurately. They still don’t have any calves. The price of cattle at auctions are crazy. They are up to $5-6/lb for small 300-500# feeder steers. The price of beef next year in the grocery store is going to be crazy. We charged $4/# hanging weight this spring for beef. We are obviously going to have to raise the price of our grass fed 100% natural beef.

Before I could dig out the irrigation inlet area I wanted to decrease the amount of water flowing though the ditch. So I went into the orchard area and dropped a 50 gallon drum lid over the culvert intake. This backed it up a little but it just went around the lid. I ended up having to dump eight loads of mud in front of the inlet to slow down and displace the majority of water out into the orchard. The cows were unsure what I was doing but did not seem to mind the water flowing through the orchard.

On Sunday I had no more excuses to not dig out the irrigation ditch. I really wanted an excuse or two but the delay returns were not worth the cost. I really thought there was a concrete floor between the concrete sides. I am unsure why I thought it but I did. The mud and weeds had filled up the entire opening and channel except for a one foot wide shallow track where the water was actually moving. I started digging and tossing it over onto the low side of the concrete. It was nasty dirty and the mud kept splatting when it landed and if it did not splat then I had to beat it off the shovel by banging it on the concrete. I was covered in mud in no time. As I cleared the area out I decided to find the concrete bottom and started to just dig downwards. There is no concrete bottom. But I did dig it deep enough that the water started running over my knee high waterproof muck boots. I just gave up on being clean and just kept digging the mud out. I dug it down till the water went over my boots then quit going down. It is all cleared out now. What I really need to do is create a large wire gate that can be pulled down and a backhoe brought in to clean out the ditch and pond area. I am going to try this as is and then decide later if we need to bring in a backhoe. Now I have to start ordering parts for the pump inlet and get the manifold built. I also need to put some all thread through the support beams. Plus, I need to create a pump bracket so the well pump can sit up on its nose. Lots of stuff to do before it is ready!

Mr Golfpro is coming out every week and keeping up with the yard chores. This is helping out immensely. Our flowers are starting to really bloom.

Catch up

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Last weekend was utilized as catchup time. After being gone for a couple of weeks we still had more things to complete to get ready for summer. Annmarie went and got two huge pots for our front entrance. We have a few volunteer lavender plants coming up in our patch and wanted a place for them. We are also going to put a wooden post in the pots so we can hold open the porch gates. We really only need them closed when the sheep are in the yard. Both dogs know how to open them both ways! So they are not a deterrent to them when it comes to getting on the front porch. The planters were heavy and did not provide a great spot to grab onto when moving them.

On Friday I drove over to LaGrande and picked up our second ram (Remie). I just put the animal pickup enclosure on and he rode in that. We want the sheep to lamb in a timely fashion and believe that if there is competition then all of the ewes will get impregnated in a single cycle. So we will have 2 rams and 45 ewes. We put both rams in the corral for about 36 hours to make sure they would cohabitate nicely. There was a lot of butt sniffing but they never fought. We let them out with the ewes and they are doing just fine. I cannot see that they are doing their job but we will know in five months if they are.

Saturday was spent cleaning up around the farm. The footings for the bridge were started. They have to be dug out first then I can build the concrete wooden footings and put some metal in the hole then it can be filled with concrete. We are going to use my small electric concrete mixer when we do it. It will only mix about 200# of sackrete at a time. It’s going to take a while to get the footings poured.

The sprayer had to be cleaned out and set back up on the tractor. Mr Rainman worked on that. We had a couple of plugged nozzles from the last usage and he went through the entire setup and got it all cleaned up. He also greased and filled all tractor fluids on both tractors. Mr Flow is going to work on cutting thistles down along the back creek. It’s not glorious work but it needs to be done. Once the thistles are knocked down then he can clean out the chicken coop.

I was pretty sure we had a chicken predator as I could only find five chickens once we got back from vacation and was only getting one egg a day. So on Sunday, Mr Rainman and I worked on skirting the old house. I crawled under it first to make sure there were no dead animal carcasses. Lo and behold there was a passel of live chickens. We chased them out by me tossing rocks and Mr Rainman beating on the outside skirting. Otherwise, I would have been crawling and chasing chickens under the building. Once the chickens were out we locked them up in the coop and proceeded to skirt the building. We also built an enclosure around the laser vent fan to keep the weather off of it. Once that was done we built a rain lean to over the fan enclosure and outlet to prevent water from getting on any of it. This was supposed to happen a while ago but got put on the back burner.

I have started working on the freezer room floor. I need to cut diagonal floor supports to make the floor level. The only problem was I burned up the table saw blade and I have multiple replacements for the radial arm saw and hand skilsaw, but none for the table saw! I need to cut five more and we can then shim the floor level and get it down. This is the next big thing for the old house remodel. Once the floor is in I can slap up the wall from scrap plywood I have saved for this purpose. I can then move all three freezers and install some shelves into the room. Once that is done its onto my room! I think I have enough wood scraps for the walls to be sheeted so its pretty much installing two doors and finish the wiring and insulate two walls. I expect it to take me a year or more to finish my side. I really need to just focus on getting all of the switches and outlets installed.

Due to the heat I had to come up with a way to keep water and Gatorade cold. The front spring is 40F year round so I took an old broken bucket and placed it in the ditch and filled it with drinks. It doesn’t keep them ice cold but they are cool and easy to drink plus its free.

Boring is necessary

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I had lots of help on Saturday, Mr I Need a Belt Bad and Mr Professional came out. Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I helped Annmarie sort sheep first thing in the morning. We had the sheep in the barn first then set up the gates. It’s easier if we do the gates first but the simple fact is using the gates and sorting chute is one of the best decisions we have made when it comes to raising sheep. It doesn’t take up much space and we can sort them whenever we need. We never want to sort the sheep, its always a need. We needed to sort off more lambs that were over 90 days old. We got 18 more pulled off and even managed to mark three of the little girls as savers and future breeders for us, they are incredibly calm. We proceeded to push them through the front hillside and over into the orchard pasture. This would have gone smoother if Mouse had not decided that he knew how to herd sheep better than Annmarie’s directions and just as they neared the gate he broke and rushed in. There was some chasing of a particular sheep and yelling and some creative word play. On the next attempt the dogs listened and the sheep went through the gate. This all leads to the necessity of a woven fence on top of our rock wall to keep the sheep out of the yard. We also want to keep the dogs out of our yard so we can get a no hole yard. This whole process only took one hour. It used to take around 2-3 hours before the chute and then you had to chase the sheep around the barn and dive on them or catch them mid air when they tried to leap away. It was entertaining but a lot more work and we are not getting any younger. Our ram is starting to lose weight and it looks like some of our ewes are pregnant. We hope so as he only has one job.

Mr I Need a Belt Bad and I then stayed in the barn and proceeded to get it ready for hay. We did this by putting all of the netting and hay string into empty 50# feed bags and tossing them into the back of the pickup. The dumpster is still on the property and got emptied Friday so it needs to be filled again. I was hoping that I could be done with one more week but after emptying two hay rooms and picking up all of the netting and more buried twine we filled the entire dumpster with the addition of all of the feed bags from the chicken coop. I still have a lot of items in the old house that need to be round filed so the dumpster will have to stay for one more week to get filled for the last time, a total of 6 yards of trash will have been removed from the farm. I sure am glad we have weekly trash service. Once we had all of the trash corralled we went into the barn and reorganized some wood. I had built a loft over the sheep feeding area and had been storing wood on it. We reorganized the room over the tack room and then moved and restacked all of the lumber except the 1×12 boards into that room. I used the 1×12 boards to toss down and cover some of the holes in the decking. We are going to start haying soon and we have a couple acres of cheat grass. The flood ruined a couple of the fields and now there is a lot of cheat grass. I just about had it under control in a couple of fields and it is back. So we are going to hay it and use it for bedding. The bales will be stored up on the walkway and you will be able to just cut them open and dump them off the walkway. The sheep will break them up and spread them out. It’s a great use for them and stops me from having to buy straw. It also lets me work out any kinks in the baling process before I get to the good grass. Practice is essential as we have only used it for one year. When it comes time to clean out the barn I need to open up all of the doors and use the leaf blower to blow the dust off of everything. I will need goggles and an N95 mask for that as it will be very dirty and dusty.

Mr Professional arrived and started to work on getting the lawn mower running, he had it fired up in no time and started in on the lawn. Mr I Need a Belt Bad went to the back garden to weed for the second time. All of the grass that he missed last week had gotten some rain, sun and some extra room to grow. It had taken off and he was able to knock it down one more time. I will mix a little Roundup now and keep it in a little one gallon hand pump sprayer. I used it every 1-2 weeks to knock down the grass instead of having to pull weeds all the time. Weeding sucks. While they did that I finished spray painting another three metal gates. If I waited much longer the rust was going to become much worse. Mr Professional fired up the weed eater and I knocked down an especially tall spot in the yard then proceeded to weed eat the berry garden. Once we had it down, we went around to each plant and pulled out the weeds by hand to create a weed free zone around each berry bush. I may even plant some blueberries as well as the berry garden is doing. I am going to bring over our large water trough and get it set up for strawberries. This will keep them from spreading all over the place. We do have a mole out there and I am going to have to set a trap. We tried to find the entrance hole but couldn’t find it. So all of the mounds got spread out so I can decide wear to set the trap.

Mr Professional and I set up my Christmas present and I now have two targets mounted on the hillside at 100 yards. Now to see if the sheep will leave them alone. I was able to use the rangefinder to figure out how far objects on the hillside were, 150-200 yards. The side by side had a flat front tire so we took it off and I will get it fixed this week. The tractor is the key piece of equipment that is missing. As soon as it comes the sickle bar mower needs to get attached and fired up to do a job.

Weeding

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Saturday evening Annmarie and I had to go down to the far end of the property and get the sheep. They were in an area they were not supposed to be and had to crawl through a hole in the creek crossing. I knew the flood had damaged the creek crossing fence but had not been down to repair it yet. The sheep found the hole like they always do and went through. This area is still fenced but I just did not want them in there yet. I took Mouse as he doesn’t work well for me and we are trying to reinforce the dogs training and obedience. It took a while, it would have been faster had I listened to Annmarie, this does seem to be a trend in my life. She really is the smarter individual. It got done and Mouse listened much better to me then he had at any time this year.

Mr I Need a Belt Bad came out again on Sunday. I had some things to do inside and it rained again last night, so mowing the lawn was not going to happen again. I turned him loose on the grass and weeds in the back garden area. There was a jungle and lawn attempting to grow and he tackled it with a pair of bent needle nose pliers! He got the entire area cleaned out, I have a few stragglers that I will hand spray with Roundup and put them out of their misery. I even went and got the leaf blower out and blew all of the winter leaves out and cleaned up the area. It looks much better and this needed to be done.

I stayed inside and did some inside chores, cleaned up and even hung up another oil lantern. Annnmarie’s grandparents had these drop down cast iron stands for lamps. I took one last night and scrubbed on it nonstop and got it fairly clean. I also cleaned up an oil lamp from them also. The lamp was stunning! It had an amazing color to the glass and we wanted to showcase it. So I hung the lamp shelf in the bathroom on the slanted wall that was never going to have anything in it. The lamp looks great and it will be a nice reminder of them.

After 24 hours without a front porch I was ready to be done, using the back door nonstop is going to be painful. So we finished pulling nails out of the porch and laid down temporary sheets of OSB I had out in the machine shop sitting around. The dogs and everyone else appreciates the return to our routine. Once we start back up with the supplies this is going to be a big incentive to get things completed in a timely fashion. I may even take some time off to just see it through to the end. I think we could be done in a week.

Mr Professional came out to look at replacing the front bearing seal on the tractor. Once we figured out you needed a hydraulic press and had the potential to damage the bearings we just hooked up the trailer and loaded it up. I will drop it off at the dealers tomorrow at lunch and get it fixed. We will need it in a couple of weeks to mow. I need to get the parts for the second sickle bar and get it up and ready also, we may get to make some hay this year. We are working on adding a large marine battery to the side by side. It will go under the drivers seat so we can hook the sprayer up to it and it has a voltage sensing switch that will isolate the main battery if it starts to go low so we will always be able to start the side by side. I am draining the little batteries trying to run the sprayer as much as we do. The sprayer hose all needs to be replaced, I have all the parts but just have not done it yet. I need to weld on the extensions and just get it done. There is always something. I have one good day in me on the weekends and then take it easy on the second day. I am feeling better but I am not out of the woods yet with my post Covid symptoms. It has been five months now since I caught it.

Tragedy

Steve Hardin2 Comments

Well last Sunday I decided that I needed to mow the upper field #2.  Since Mr. Professional is helping me we have devised a simple way to talk about the various fields. We start from the upper bottom pasture and number them in ascending order 1-4.  Then you have the “pea field” down by mother in laws house then you have lower pasture down by schoolhouse.  This forgets about the 1 acre piece closer to mother-in-law’s house and across the creek.  We don’t talk about that field specifically so it just gets tossed into the schoolhouse field.

I had sprayed #2 field a couple of weeks earlier but it is so thick and tall it needs to be knocked down then sprayed 2 weeks later to kill the thistles.  I drove up there in the tractor and remembered to add on a crescent wrench so I could fix the broken gate.

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After fixing the gate, there was some internal dialogue about fixing the gate on my way out of the field, but you never know what is going to happen so I opted to just fix the gate first thing as a safer move.  I think the bolt just came loose and it fell down, I don’t believe it was anything nefarious.

I started mowing on the left hand side of the field first.  It’s the smaller side and I would get to see results sooner.  The pecker poles are amazing!  I knew exactly where the water was and was able to not get the tractor stuck.  As I continued to go around in circles I kept spotting the baby deer.  There were four different deer all had spots and they were about dog sized and running all over the place.  The pheasants are also plentiful this year.  I jumped four juvenile roosters that had their colors but no tail feathers at all.  Since it was almost a 100 F outside I had raised the mower deck about 14 inches off of the ground.  The weeds are incredibly thick and I did not want the mower to get overheated.  My goal is simply to knock them down so that when I drive over the area with the side by side the spray gets evenly distributed.  You could see where some swaths of field had great spray coverage and others were limited by the height of the weeds and spray dispersement.

I was taking a break after the first section was done when Richard pulled out and asked me if I was ok.  He is the one who pulled the tractor out of the mud for me.  He thought I had gotten stuck again as I was parked near where I was buried before.  I chuckled and thanked him for checking on me but no, I was taking a break as the field is very rough and furrowed from the flooding and the tractor is beating me up.  It really works your lower back muscles.

There are hawks everywhere!  We have at least 6-8 living all over the farm.  It is pretty amazing.  I am sure that at least two of them are juveniles as our nesting pair is back but we may now have two pair of nesting hawks.  They used to only be on the upper end of the property but are now the full length of the place.

I started in on the second half and about halfway through tragedy struck!!  The weeds are tall and you cannot see the ground.  I do pay attention as I don’t want to hit rocks and need to stay on the completed line so I can get finished in a timely manner.  I came around in a shorter square pattern, I get tired of doing the entire field and tend to break them up into pieces.  It looks like I am getting done quicker.  I came back around and saw a 1-2 day old fawn on the ground dying.  I had run over it with my actual tractor wheel.  If I had mowed over it the fawn would have been just fine as the mower is set high, but alas of the four foot wide swath my tractor makes only a 2.5 foot tire free zone.  This did cause me angst for the rest of the day.  The fawn never tried to get up or run away and it was so much younger than all the other babies I had been watching run all over the fields.

After mowing I spent another hour digging more ditches.  I managed to not get stuck this time.  There is still water coming out of the ground and forming a small running spring.  This water does not leave the field it ends up running down about half way and getting reabsorbed.   I finished the field and went back and cleaned off the tractor.  A couple of days later I had come to terms with the mowing tragedy.  I took a finished photo below.

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