Farm ramblings

Outside wall leveled.  It looks level to me.

The outside wall is all leveled.  I ended up placing two new pillars, fixing two more and redoing the entire left corner to sit on rocks and pressure treated shims (2x6).   I ended up with one pier in the middle off the ground a couple of inches.  There was such a bow in the beam that when I attempted to straighten it there were side effects.  I am going to leave it.  I figure given some time and usage the beam will straighten out eventually.  I am not going to plant grass in the back barn lot yet.  I want to get the windows and roof in first.  Otherwise, I would just be trampling the fragile new grass. 

Honey bees, I need the large lens, got stung standing three feet away. 

We have a honey bee hive in the front wall.  There is an enclosed space between the walls and one of the boards split down the middle creating a small opening.  I keep trying to figure out how to keep it in place and work around it without getting stung a 1000 times.  Jason, I hope you aren't allergic to bees?  Annmarie came up with a great idea this morning.  I am going to make a bee tunnel and redirect them to come out near the roof line.  The timing is going to have to be critical as I don't want to redirect them before I get the roof in place!  Now that we have a plan I can work on it. 

Dug out creek in back barn lot.

As an aside, I have been working on the front creek.  Mostly when I got tired of digging under the barn.  It had filled with cow poop and widened drastically.  I just dug a new channel and tossed all the extras to the sides to help stabilize them.  There is an actual gravel bottom, not just mud!  I will plant the sides again so they firm themselves up.  The poop is starting to dry out now that water is not trickling over the top of it.  If you look closely at the part of the creek I have not dug out yet you can see what I mean.  I locked the sheep in the barn lot yesterday hoping they would eat down some of the green in the creek.  They found the hole in the fence next to the barn and have disappeared from their appointed location, go figure.

Other side of the bridge that has not been fixed.

Barn Leveling started.

Digging completed.  Pretty obvious it needs leveling.

I am dog tired.  It has been a long weekend of manual labor.  I worked on leveling the barn yesterday.  I figured it would take me a couple of weeks to finish.  I had planned on going out today and finishing up the last five blocks.  It is raining and I am very sore, who knows, I may still make it outside.  Not feeling particularly motivated.  The whole barn needs to be dug out.  If I can get that done, eventually, then I will expect it to last for another 100 years with a bare minimum of maintenance.  The plan whenever I do a project is for it to last at least 40 years.  I don't want to redo it when I am 70 years old.  I figure I will be dead before I am 85 so that covers the lifespan.  In reality that means I am 50% of the way into my life.  Odd when you think of it that way.  So much to learn.  I am continually learning about the farm and animals.  Never knew that learning to be self sufficient and getting the farm whipped back into shape would become my joys.  I do truly enjoy it, even when it is back braking manual labor. 

This is the before leveling shot.  Yes for all you naysayers, I am going to fix this barn up to 100% useable.  The low front left corner is pretty obvious.

The barn does look a little worn when you look at the two worst sides.  I am going to add some windows for light.  Natural lighting is one of the things that the barn was seriously lacking.  I have several windows saved and ready for installation.  Not sure if I can keep all the window openings the same size.  I am going to try on this side with the six matching openings.  Free is the size of my current window selection, this leads to a wide variety and no matching even with 20 choices. 

I learned something I did not know yesterday.  Bottle jacks have a safety feature to prevent you from breaking them.  On the main body of every bottle jack is a little rubber plug.  The plug pops out when the jack is overloaded, therefore not injuring anything by a mechanical failure.  I bought a 6 ton and 12 ton bottle jack for leveling the barn, but I needed a third one and all I had around the house was a 4 ton bottle jack.  I popped the safety valve when down on the left corner.  I truly don't believe there was 8000 pounds of wood (no roof) but trying to move a large beam that is bent requires a lot of force.  The six ton and 12 ton did the job.  I used the 12 ton to get the most leverage and the 6 ton helped out and held it in place. 

I found some 12 inch concrete cubes buried in the ground at the front of the barn.  They were spread out in front of the grain elevator.  Something must have been there, not sure what.  A couple of the blocks used to have bolts in them (rusted out now) so a piece of equipment could have been secured to the ground.  I dug up 12 of them totaling 1.33 cubic yards of concrete, saving me about $60 in concrete pads.  This has been a great find. 

The main beam still has a slight bow in it after leveling the barn.  I have the whole outside wall completed.  Sarah can even attest to the fact that stating "it doesn't look level" is not the same as taking a level and reading said level.  It is in fact very close to level (bubble is between the lines), not perfect, but I never expected perfection, it is the barn after all.  The rest of the pillars to be placed are for the floor under the barn where the sheep will be.  One of the beams sank and twisted so I need to shore it up. 

I worked hard on leveling the ground after all the digging was completed.

Digging completed.

Finally finished with the digging yesterday.  It helped that I was sore and tired from the day before.  It made me totally reevaluate what was truly necessary.  Plus, I am skinny, so my ultimate criteria was can I crawl under the barn.  The answer is yes, if I crawl on my belly and squeeze I can get every where.  You have to not mind the dried sheep poop everywhere as you slide along on your belly.  I did dig out a few posts so the dirt was not next to them.  This is most likely going to have to be an ongoing project until I get the whole barn dug out.  My best bet is to save up some money and pay someone else to finish the digging.  Won't happen until Annmarie gets all her window trim inside the house completed. 

I leveled out the back barn lot again.  There was not enough dirt from under the barn so I had to steal some from the sheep shit pile that has not been moved yet.  I kept working the dirt back and forth until I had it nice and level.  Definitely, a wearing your seat belt and roll bar up kind of job.  I am going to hold off on planting grass until after the barn work is done.  If I have to I will drag some sprinklers out and do it in the middle of summer. 

We have two more lambs going for processing this next week.  We sold one and we are going to eat the other.  That leaves me one more to sell.  I am going to put our ram up for sale on Craigslist this week so I will probably put the lamb up at the same time.  Annmarie wants to sell the camel back girl, but I think she is pregnant.  So I will give her one more chance to have a viable lamb.  Currently we are having the sheep eat down the ram pasture.  It was getting out of control and the grass was getting long, almost a foot.  We think the sheep will need at least a week to make it manageable.  I will post some pictures today.  I am going to start working on leveling the barn today.  Once that is done, it is time to tear into the sides and roof!  Amazing how some jobs don't seem to show any progress, but without them everything else is wasted.

Digging nearing end, 1st Quarter Chicken financials.

I moved some dirt today!  If I hit it hard tomorrow I may be able to finish digging in one day.  Not sure if I can accomplish this heavy task, but am going to give it a try.  The only thing left to dig is the front corner and I have to make three feet wide paths that go under the barn twenty feet. Not going to be easy.  On the other hand I sharpened my shovel on Tuesday and it made digging today amazingly easier.  I wonder how many people actually know they need to sharpen their shovel?  I could slide it into the dirt 100% further than before I sharpened it.  I just use a hand file and sharpen it up.  I get it almost rough knife sharp.  The kind of sharp where you do not want to hit your foot or hand because you are going to lose a small appendage easily.

Zeke and I went out tonight and rounded up the sheep.  He is doing great.  He no longer attacks them, he hangs back and gets them to move without jumping on them and hanging off their sides.  We are still working on a few commands "right", "left" and "circle around".  Annmarie tells me there is some fancy name for getting them to circle around, I cannot remember it so I am not going to teach the dog to follow it. I am hoping that once Zeke knows left and right we can segue into the circle around command.  It is so much easier to get the sheep now.

I decided to go away from the monthly chicken report.  I just kept putting it off and the spread sheet keeps a running total that changes if I do two months at the same time.  We will now have a Quarterly chicken report that is cumulative to the year.   The 1st Quarter 2012 (Jan-Mar) report as follows.  Total net income to date is $18.79 loss (not bad considering I purchased a new chicken door for $110 in March).  The average monthly net income is $6.26 loss.  Year to date Laying hens per day 27.7.  Year to date Eggs collected per day 10.6.  Year to date layer productivity is at 38% (not great, hoping it gets better but I caught Zeke today playing with eggs he found in the barn.  He was taking the whole eggs and stashing them and burying them with the shells intact.  Gotta collect eggs before he finds them in the afternoon.).  Year to date pounds of feed consumed per egg 0.41.  Year to date feed cost per egg 0.10 ($1.20/dozen, pretty good at this end, too bad feed is not the only cost).  I think I can be in the black this year, if the new automatic chicken door holds out and the predators don't kill off all my hens. 

Digging the never ending saga.

More digging.  I know that eventually I will be done digging, just not sure when.  I have one four foot section under the barn then just the two narrow deep tracks under the barn to complete.  I had to crawl out from under the barn and do some digging in the front creek.  Sitting on your butt or digging bent over on your knees is not easy.  Lots of upper body movement, especially when you are digging four to five feet away from your body.  The creek was not much easier.  It stunk to high heaven as I was digging out cow poop.  I managed to get half of the back barn lot section dug out.  I am trying to build the banks up in places.  The creek isn't very deep or wide but the cows have filled it and after that accidental redirect of the back creek the spring before we moved here the front creek is way wider than normal.  I am working on getting it back to a narrow stream. 

Garden starts, the squash are ready to go in the ground.

Grape plants doing well.

Hopefully, I can get the digging done this weekend.  I think three more days should do it, but I might need five.  Depends on how it goes when I start getting toward the middle of the barn and have to move the dirt pile a couple of times to get it out from under the barn.  Once that is done I can start leveling the barn.  I want to be done with leveling by third week of May.  I want to start in on the roof and front by June.  It is a plan.  I have found that plans change quickly, but it is better to just start out with something. 

Our garden starts seem to be coming along.  Sarah and Grandma Ruby are going to plant the squash plants this Friday.  The rest of the starts are not big enough.  I did manage to get the wood shed door back on.  I had to drill all the way through the door frame and install two 8 inch bolts through the door frame.  I still had to take the lower hinge off the door and straighten it in the vice.  I got it all back together, but the locking slide bar was 1/8 inch too low.  So I chiseled out another 1/4 inch in the receiving hole and it works.  Here is to hoping it works this time.

I need to get the grape plants out and into the ground.  Our weather has been pretty screwy but I cannot wait much longer.  I want to kill some weeds first before I plant the grapes.  2-4-D kills grapes so I need to be careful with my spray.  I sprayed yesterday and then it rained one hour later.  Not sure my spray will do much good.  

Productive Weekend

Sarah and I finished unloading the wood into the barn.  The trailer was greatly relieved of its heavy burden.  I used the spare tire I was wise enough to purchase (thank goodness for not being a cheapskate).  While I was changing the tire I got Sarah up on the tractor.  She got the five minute demo and off she went to start moving the sheep shit pile.  I only had to give her one more set of pointers and she kept it up for a few more hours and got a nasty sunburn on her face.  The weather was stunning all weekend, great time to be outside. 

I took the trailer into Les Schwab and it turned out to be a rock popped the bead and got inside the tire.  The fixed it for $12.50, best news of the day.   Sarah has about another four days to get both sheep excrement piles consolidated.  We were looking at the front of the barn and noticed some honey bees going in and out of a large crack in the wood.  On the backside of the wall it is all enclosed so I am not sure how large the hive is currently.  This is going to cause me to do some kind of work around when tearing off the front of the barn.  The bee portion is in good shape so I may just leave it alone.  Don't see a lot of honey bees around here. 

Lucky our Ram

On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to catalog the sheep.  We sorted all the sheep into the square pen and attempted to catch the three baby boys that needed banded and tagged.  We chased them back into the barn to catch the last two.  The first one I just flopped on and pinned to the ground.  The damn lambs jump around like jumping jacks.  The little ones can leap four feet off the ground.  Once we had those three finished, we chased them all into the square pen.  I brought Zeke into the pen and had him sit by the gate.  He did great.  Every once in a while he would sneak out of his laying position when I wasn't looking.  Sarah came up with the great idea of chasing all the sheep into the loading chute and then sorting them out.  We needed to check off each ear tag to see which ones were missing.  It was hectic and once we got a few out into the square pen we would chase them out after checking them off our list. 

Stubborn ewe who always fights with Zeke

The sheep are incredibly stubborn.  I had one ewe refuse to leave the square pen (her baby was still in the chute, but is over three months old).  She ducked her head and scraped her hoof on the ground at me.  I sicked Zeke on her.  Have you ever seen a picture of fighting bears?  Both animals up on their hind quarters, mouths open, teeth snarling, and front legs kicking?  Totally Zeke and that ewe, he was snarling and making a heck of racket.  He weighs in at a whopping 30 pounds and the ewe weighs around 100#.  I had to call him off.  I am continually amazed at how hard headed the Barbados Blackbelly breed is when it comes to protecting their young.  We finally got it finished and had six boys left to weigh.  Two of those are over 85# so they are ready for market.  I will start hunting up customers.  One more weighed in at 81# so he will be ready soon.  There are 31 sheep total right now with 10 whethers (neutered boys), one ram and 20 ewes.  I have the spreadsheet all updated again.  There were a couple of errors on our spreadsheet, so I am hoping we catch all those and get them fixed.  You wouldn't think it would be that hard, but a misplaced number makes a big difference.

I started spraying weeds.  This will be a never ending battle, but now that I have the trailer I will be taking the mule (four wheeler vehicle) over to get it fixed so it can become the permanent spraying vehicle.  This will be nice as dragging a little 2 gallon sprayer around is very painful.  I need to get on top of those thistles before they get huge.   I got a series of wonderful birthday presents.  Annmarie got me a predator camera for the coop that does infared 30 feet at night and transmits wireless to the home computer.  My parents got me a .17 HMR rifle.  It is very nice and boy those coyotes better look out now.  Very nice rifle.   

New trailer Farmerized.

Wood for barn siding and part of floor, notice flat tire and mounted spare in spare holder keeping trailer off ground.

My poor brand new trailer.  Lets preface this by saying the passenger side mirror doesn't stay in place, it moves around in the wind.  I went and picked up the trailer Tuesday night.  I forgot to mention that on the way home that night I had to swerve to miss a very large dog standing in the middle of the highway.  I couldn't swerve too much as I was towing the trailer.  When I looked back in my side mirror the dog was still standing.  Now mind you it was facing 180 degrees opposite of when I went past in the vehicle.  I just took that as an odd coincidence.  Come on, the dog was still standing!!  When I woke up the next morning and was going to work I noticed the dent in the driver side fender of the brand new trailer.  Damn dog. 

Burned paint off and made a bubble in metal from friction.

Today, I went to go pick up lumber for the barn.  I got 4500 bf of lumber at a total weight of 7500 pounds.  The trailer is rated for 7000 pounds.  I was going to go the back roads home (all gravel and not traveled) so I thought I would be safe.  About half way home I started to have traction issues in the pickup.  Then I started to notice the squeaking noise coming from the driver side trailer.  It sounded like a wheel bearing going bad on my brand new trailer.  About 4 miles from home I started to notice the smoke coming from the driver side tire on the trailer.  1 mile from the house I noticed sparks flying from the tire well on the drivers side.   I stopped to open the gate into the barn lot and just about could not get the trailer to pull in next to the barn.  I parked and looked on the passenger side.  The rear tire on the trailer was flat.  The spare tire was hitting the ground occasionally, keeping the rear of the trailer from dragging on the road. The driver side rear tire had been rubbing on the wheel well, burned the paint right off.

Dent in front fender from dog in road. 

My whole load had shifted back two feet.  Too much weight on the back half of the trailer, dire consequences.  I am hoping that I only ruined the tire, not the rim, not the brakes, nothing else.  Nothing is ever easy.  Annmarie helped me unload half the trailer today and Sarah and I will finish it tomorrow so I can have the trailer tire looked at.  I am always amazed at how wrong things continue to happen. 

Life goes on.

Lots of things to catch up on.  Annmarie has deemed my work on the upstairs bedroom incomplete.  The barn is taking precedence and she says I never finish my winter project until late spring any ways.  That means the spare room is not getting done before summer.  I vacuumed and washed the walls and floor today, we rolled out a couple of rugs and I am going to screw in all the outlets and put covers over them so people cannot stick their finger into them.  We are going to set the spare bed back up and I will keep a gate over the entrance so the animals cannot get into the room.  This should keep the floor pretty clean so I can jump right back in this winter.  I took the small shop vac up into the attic and vacuumed up about 60 wasps/yellow jackets buzzing around the attic.  I took up one trap and need to set up another.  They are coming in at the peak of the roof.  I don't mind them in the attic but we have killed five in the house.  It may be time to bug bomb the attic.  I want to give the traps a chance and see if they can take care of the stinging pests first.

I came home the other day and Zeke had black and white feathers all over the yard at his feet.  I thought he had killed one of my chickens!  So I took a feather and smacked him on the nose with it and told him bad dog.  Turns out he found a wing of a dead bird and drug it to the house.  I think they are turkey feathers, but I have never killed a wild turkey so I am not sure.  I was very glad that he didn't kill a chicken.  Damn dog is all over the place.  I am giving him a bath three times a week and today I had to hose the mud off his legs twice.  He has started digging in the yard now when he is on the run.  I realize he is bored, but he cannot terrorize the sheep while we are gone.  Considering he sneaked off this evening and we caught him chasing the sheep around on the hillside.  He has the sheep so spooked they start moving when he is 50 yards away.  He will go down now even when is way out there.  Our down command is to lay and stay.  I still cannot point left or right yet and get him to go that direction to herd the sheep in the direction I want not the one he wants.

I went and picked up the new trailer tonight!  It pulled great, could hardly tell it was hooked up to the pickup.  I am all ready to start picking up supplies for the barn.  I will start on Friday with the local mill and then next week drop off the mule (four wheeler) for repairs and pick up some more wood.  Hopefully, I can get all the big errands done next week.  Somewhere in there I will have to create some racks for the trailer.  I am going to make some low two foot racks all the way around then some four foot racks that slip on top, giving me a six foot high enclosure.  I will run a few chains across the top to hold the sides in.  Still planning the design in my head.

The thistles are starting to make a strong come back.  This weekend hopefully it will not rain so we can spray them and get them stopped before they get huge.

More digging

I had another picture of the barn lot, but the stupid camera didn't memorize it.  Sometimes, I know gremlins exist.  I went out and dug for another three hours today.  This morning at 0400 I tried to roll out of bed to pee and thought I was going to die.  Every muscle above my waist was screaming at me to lay back down, but my bladder was louder than the rest.  I made it out of bed.  After taking Zeke to the vet and running some errands I was feeling better and decided that the digging would not complete itself magically.  I decided to go to the other end of the barn and work my way back towards the middle for a change of pace.  I learned that some maintenance has been done to the barn.  The floor in the first 16 feet of the barn has been replaced at one time.  It is laid out differently than the rest of the floor and has a separate crossbeam support structure.  I realize that may seem germane but it means I have to dig two separate paths almost 20 feet under the barn to get to the newer supports!  This sucks mightily. 

Start of my twenty foot path under the barn,

Those are 16 inch beams running North to South.  The rest of the barn the supports run East to West.  On this end of the barn I have found four posts that do not even touch the ground.   Amazing since the barn has sunken almost a foot on this end.  I would have expected them to be touching the ground by now.  I did go buy another rake today.  It was much easier in places using the rake. 

No wonder this part of the barn sunk down. 

They also just kind of tucked the support beam next to the outer support beam.  So there are two different beams on a single rock.  Going to make it painful to jack these all up at the same time. I fired up the tractor and spread more dirt out.  It looks like the whole lot is getting flatter and more dirt, but it could be my imagination.  Once I get all the digging done I will replant some pasture grass in the lot.  We will have to lock the sheep and horses out.  I am not sure how I am going to keep the chickens from eating all my seed while it is trying to germinate. 

Very left corner of the barn. 

The front left corner of the barn didn't even have a post under it.  You had to look under the barn a couple of feet to find the first post.  I have to dig alongside all  those rocks under the barn.

More Barn Digging

Day 2 of digging and spreading dirt to level and smooth barn lot.

I really did dig more sheep turds and dirt today.  I only have one more day to dig before I get tied up with something else so I am going gangbusters.  I cleared another two pillars today.  I also managed to get a bunch of large chunks of dried poop (comes out in huge clumps) out of all the areas.  I then went along and reached in with a shovel and dug back as far as I could standing from the outside.  I would have used the rake, but I broke that yesterday.  I have broken at least five rakes since we moved out to the farm, two different shovels and three post hole diggers.  I was real happy with how the lot is turning out.  There is so much soil under the barn that I am able to really start leveling the entire lot.  I think I will be able to get the entire lot to the same height before I am done.  No more dodging all the rocks sticking up.  I even went over and made our path to the bridge level. 

The most amazing part is with all the different tasks I have completed with the tractor I still have under 20 run hours on the engine.  I am amazed.  The rental guy told me I would probably put less than 100 hours on it per year and he is going to be right.  I will probably only have about 50 hours on it in the first year. 

You can see my shovel.  It is starting to look pretty obvious why I need to fix the supports.

 

Needless to say, I am going to be glad to go back to work just so I can rest.  The upstairs bedroom is not completed.  Annmarie has given me a pass on it and wants the barn done first.  Zeke goes to the vet tomorrow for the "snip, snip" (castration).  I am hoping it slows him down some.  He is all over the place.  We have been actively reinforcing the "down" command.  It means lay and stay all in one command.  We have to give him the release signal to let him up again.  He does it for a few seconds now.  I have to keep reminding myself that he is only 6 months old and has learned far more than any other dog we have ever had at this age.

The sheep are getting out of every hole I burned into the fence this winter.  Fencing is on the immediate horizon, I just need the weather to be a little better.  I have also been getting the old lambing shed emptied and ready for the tractor and all its implements.  Still some more stuff to rip out and I can then put each implement in its own home for easy access.  Our new trailer comes next week.  Things are starting to fall together all at once.