working dogs

Someone messed up

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I was called by the lovely wife the morning following the bull escape. I had made it to work and was playing catch up. She called to tell me that the alpaca were out in the lower barley field. Now the field is actually growing wheat but the “Lower Barley Field” is its name as it was a field her dad developed to prove to his father that he could, hence the name. Now how on earth could the alpaca get into that field? Well, when I went into the field to chase the bull I left the gate open just in case the bull would not turn around, he could go out into the house area of the farm then we could run him into the correct field.

The problem with this is after we put the Bull back in I proceeded to walk the fence line down toward the school house to make sure there were no holes. Unfortunately, on the way back to the house we walked on the road so my shoes and clothes would not get muddier and wetter. I also forgot about the open gate. I recognize this violates the cardinal rule of gate operation where livestock are present. The animals always figure out when a gate has been left in the incorrect location.

Annmarie used the dogs to move the alpaca. This is not the best technique as the alpaca will band together and run at the dogs. Luckily there are two dogs and they are sneaky. The alpaca get tired of one or the other sneaking behind them and biting them on the ankle. There was a large stare down contest going on as I pulled up to help. Annmarie had them all out of the field before I could get out of the car to assist.

In my defense, I came right away and did not complain or offer excuses for not shutting the gate.

Friday morning I went out to feed the animals. Normally, Annmarie does this but I was going into work late so I said I would. I bundled all up as it is getting cold again and was down to 18 F. I went out to feed the horses and the barn kitties. The sheep had spent the night in the barn but I had not locked them in. I went out and found a lamb curled up in the corner. I thought it was asleep at first then I thought it was dead. I touched it and it moved ever so slightly so it was still alive. I took it inside for Annmarie to warm up and feed and Tisha to come pick up. It was one of our #1 ewe’s twins. She is getting old and forgot to make sure it followed her out of the barn. Its 48 hours old so it should have been fine. We have now decided that all babies and moms need to be separated for a few days from the main herd. I asked Annmarie to talk with Tisha about a buy back program for all the bummers this year. No go she is going to use them to diversify her herd! It was worth a try.

Zeke has been doing the escape thing from the yard again. He thinks he is a cat and cannot be corralled. I tried stuffing some panel pieces alongside the creek to stop him from digging out on Thursday, by Friday he was out of the yard again. He had dug a new hole over by the bridge. So this time I blocked it off with yet another panel piece then rolled a 200# rock down next to the fence. He will not be moving it any time this century. I may have to get another rock for the other side once he tries that section of fence. He is so painful to keep in the yard.

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!

50 yards closer

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Yesterday I did not do any hard manual labor, my right elbow hurt too much. I have tendonitis in my elbow and I am trying to rest it and take some Motrin. This is a very slow process to heal it. It aches all the time and we have to go to a dinner for the fire station. Someone will want to shake my hand and inflict terrible pain on my elbow. They did and it happened about three times. I took a walk up the pasture with all three dogs to see if the water was running down by my fence crossing. It was not, it got to the trees and just stopped. I will check it tomorrow. All the dogs wanted to do was eat sheep poop the whole time. Gizmo found something stinky to roll around in that did not stick to him, just the smell.

My mother came out to look at the new floor and we spotted the eagle again. It was sitting in the top of a dead tree staring at the sheep just below it. It stayed there for over 30 minutes before leaving. Hopefully the sheep are old enough and big enough to ward off an attack from the eagle.

Our old hand dug well enclosure is falling apart. I really need to pour it some new walls and build some type of roofed enclosure around it. That needs to happen sooner than later

Tonight when I went out to do chores it was an amazing sunset. Sometimes life can be overwhelming and you just need to step back and realize just how amazing and lucky we are to be alive and on planet Earth. It truly is grounding to see the beauty around us on a daily basis. The older I get the more I appreciate it. Maybe that is my mortality creeping in, who knows. I just know that I have two broody hens who both think sitting on a wooden egg will net them a chick and they are very persistent despite me tossing them out of a nest every night for the last five days.

Day 10 and rockstars we are!

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It is an amazing accomplishment, we are done with the planned tiling that had an allotted 24 days to complete on day 10. I never could have done this without Mr Experience. He has been invaluable and I have learned more about laying tile. We will probably be the only ones that notice the errors. We do have several of them. The grouting is done and now we are going to give the grout its 72 hours to cure.

We are taking tomorrow off from house remodeling. I will be doing some outside work if it doesn’t rain. The tile looks great. Now I am going to have to get the box built around the air intake. It stands out like a crappy metal box amidst that beautiful floor. That will be a priority, I have already started to plan it in my head. I need to build it about 50 times in my head in a variety of ways before I find one I like.

All I wanted last night was to go to bed and be asleep by 2100. I was exhausted! No one else was onboard with this plan. The big dogs had to sleep in the laundry room as they could not walk up to their kennels. The outsides cats started to throw a hissy fit then they started to fight then they started to scream. I finally got up around 2135 and ran outside with my Walther P-22 and found nothing. I could hear something so I turned the dogs loose in the yard. They tore around the yard and didn’t find anything but their mere presence quieted the night. I went back to bed and fell asleep until Annmarie called me slightly tipsy and wanting to talk. She had gone to dinner with school friends at the end of her week long intensive. I finally got to sleep around 2300. When my alarm went off at 0500 I could not remember why I had it set so early and fell back asleep. At 0600 when I did get up I remembered that I needed to brown the mutton (ram meat) for the slow cooker so we could eat it for lunch. I did this and at lunch we ate the ram in tacos. It was amazing! He tasted very good.

Day 8, grouting in progress

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Good Morning! It’s really day 9 now but since this is about yesterday and the sun is not out yet I think it will be okay. I finished up early, 1630, yesterday then went out to dinner and at dinner was reminded that there was a volunteer fire department meeting I needed to go to. I ran home, did the chores and went to the meeting. Which worked out for them as we ended up doing case reviews. By the time I got home I called and talked to Annmarie and then it was time for a shower and bed. I thought I would check my email just before falling asleep and had a reply from a friend who is in China so I wrote her back. I should have just gone to bed. If Annmarie were home I would have. Oh well, I will sleep good tonight.

We cleaned up the tile, vacuumed, cleaned out the grout gaps with a cool diamond cleaner we picked up and then cleaned some more. Mr Experience had told me about the pastry approach to grout application. I had ordered two bags from Amazon but on Wednesday at Home Depot I bought another for $5. He inquired and I said never trust the shipping time, when you want and need it you get burned. Luckily, we had one as our other ones had not arrived yet. It is literally a literally just a pastry bag for grout. It totally saves on cleanup. It is a learned technique as you cannot clean it up until it has hardened but if you wait too long then its hard to work. It is much faster and much neater and uses way less grout. I purchased the recommended amount and I bet we will only use 50% of it. Ugh. It was a custom order. I will know now and we may just pick a tile color for the upstairs that allows us to use the same grout color and call it continuity!

The entire entry way is done. The dogs are tired of getting moved around. This work has totally disturbed their schedule and sleep location. The big dogs have slept in the laundry room twice this week to keep them off the tiles. All dogs were kenneled during the day once and Gizmo had to spend several hours outside yesterday and came in shivering, he thought he had turned into a popsicle.

I wanted to fix the front yard fence yesterday but I got distracted. This is my single biggest weakness. I have so many things I want to do that I occasionally get distracted. Annmarie might say more than occasionally but we know that is a biased opinion. I think all wives would think that. So I got “side tracked” into finishing her cutting board revamp. I had a custom cutting board made for the kitchen to go into the premise slot. I measured it, sent pictures of it to a friend who does custom woodworking. He was swamped so he farmed me out to another guy. This guy did a great job except I wanted the pull part to turn down so that Annmarie had a stop to prevent the board from moving on the countertop when she pulls it out to make bread. Now if I would get our new custom island built I want to put a whole intact slab of granite on it so she can do her cooking counter work on it. Anyways, I needed to add a lip. Since I had measured the opening incorrectly (yes, I know I only had one job to measure it!) I had two 1/2 inch pieces from each edge. I sanded down one side glued and then drilled out five holes and glued in oak pegs. I will just need to cut them flush today, sand down and oil them and it will be done. It works perfectly with only a 1/4 inch lip, I tried it out.

I am unsure if we can get it all done today. Mr Experience says yes, we will see. No side jobs today, I am going to stay focused. I really want to be able to set the house back up by 1600 on Saturday when Annmarie comes back from her trip but it is going to be a close thing. We might not make it.

When I was out feeding in the barn yesterday morning I spotted a tuft of fur on the ground. I thought it was someone’s ear! The sheep catch their head on stuff all the time and rip out their ear tags. I bent over to pick it up and it was not an ear, it was a scrotum! The rubber bands were both still in place and intact but some little boy was now a whether instead of a ram, a job well done. I did stop and watch the lambs jump and play. I even snagged one and got some lamby time. They are super curious at this stage and are easy to grab.