I really did ask for it. I really did.

I shot my mouth off and am paying for it in more ways than one!! Yesterday I decided to move the bull out of the corral down to the schoolhouse. I was tired of feeding him and I am sure he was tired of being confined. I opened the gate and he proceeded to run toward the upper prime pasture bellowing trying to get through the fence.  I had both dogs and turned them loose but the bull would just run to the end of the fence then turnaround and run to the gate. Zeke and mouse could not get him to go toward the schoolhouse. Mouse took a foot to the jaw, rolled a time or two, jumped up and went back after the bull. I finally called the dogs off, went and got two shaker sticks and proceeded to harass the bull.  Even that was not enough.  He kept coming, I had to smack him twice with the shaker sticks to get him to turn around.  He finally headed over by the cars then down by the alpaca gate, once at the gate he looked up on the hillside and saw the other batch of female cows, he hollered and took off at a dead run!  I had the gate open and he just ran right into the lower field.  The cows then went right into the schoolhouse pasture without any prompting.  I walked down there with both dogs, having taken Mouse off of the lead rope because we were done working animals.  As I am closing the gate into the schoolhouse pasture I notice several sheep outside the fence on the road again!  I had to cross the creek and go out over by the wheat field.  This is when I notice one of the problems, that section of fence I had never repaired is in serious need of repair.  The sheep have figured out that it won't hold them and there is a poop highway along the mowed access road leading out to the pavement.  By the time I got down to four corners I could not find the sheep and Mouse did not want to listen anymore.  The more angry I got the worse Zeke did.  He just wanted to lay down and not move.  Of course I kept screaming that at Mouse who wanted to ignore me, then Zeke not cooperating made it worse.  I needed the 30 foot lead I left over by the house.  We ended up walking the whole length of the farm and pushing a lone ewe into the upper prime pasture with the babies. 
I had to leave the fencing for Sunday as I was picking up Annmarie at the airport. 
 



Old fence redone 2/3 complete

Sarah's new paramour volunteered to come out and fix fence with me yesterday.  I said 0700 on Sunday and they were quite prompt.  I offered breakfast and he refused, we grabbed water and then filled the back of the pickup with tools, 75 T posts and 40 wooden stays, all the T post clips I had on the farm, 10# of fencing staples, a roll of smooth wire, a hammer and two pair of fencing pliers.  We would have had two hammers but I forgot one in the shed.  While loading up the T posts the dogs were running around when suddenly we heard this high pitched screaming.  We looked over in the area over by my gate stash and there was a baby deer that had gotten its foot caught in the fence.  Mouse had found it, we called the dogs away and the deer was so scared it managed to free itself and run off down by Donna's house.  We saw the mother deer run out into the wheat field.  Annmarie and I had just seen this baby the night before when we came home.  It was no worse for its encounter.
 We had to clean up around a rock crib, we tossed all the scrap wire and boards onto the top of the crib then had to rebuild one about 2/3 of the way down the fence line.  Once the rock crib was secure then we removed all the staples for the three strands of barb wire and proceeded to tighten them up. We ended up snapping one of them in half with just the applied pressure and had to add a second patch.  It took 3.5 hours to get all this done.  We did take a break for lunch and some more water.  The last 1/3 needed another rock crib redone and it has a large portion of the woven wire buried in the dirt.  This wire is rusted and fragile.  It all needs to be replaced.  While we were rebuilding another rock crib we noticed a three foot garter snake with a vole in its mouth.  The snake had just come out of the grass with a little vole and the vole was still alive.  The snake held on till the vole quit struggling and died.  About this time, 30 seconds after spotting it, I remembered I had a camera in my pocket.  The snake must be afraid of paparazzi because I no sooner got the camera out then it slithered away. 
A friend from Idaho stopped by and we called it quits at 1500.  Unfortunately, I had on some loose baggy pants and after drinking a gallon of water all day and some Gatorade I ended up with a rash.  A painful, walk funny kind of rash.  If my pants would have fit better this would not have been a problem.  I have been losing a few pounds working on the farm and I am sure it is not worth this pain.  I still have 1/3 of the fence to finish...
 

Bathroom plant attempt.

While Annmarie was gone I picked up two more house plants.  They are in the bathroom and look like alien invaders.  The bathroom is the perfect spot as they just need a high humidity to survive.  The plants are hung from an oval seashell.  They look alien, and I have been told they don't belong in the bathroom.  I am going to have to find them a home on the jungle breeze porch.  I brought a plant pole that will hold five hanging poles with macramé hangers over to our house from Grandma Ruby's house.  I have a plant basket with a bunch of plants in a single basket from my father's wake that I want to break up and give their own space.  It will look good.  I gave away my two huge plants that I had had for over 10 years.  They were taking up too much space. So now I need to fill it in!  I even managed to start two new African violets from leaf cuttings.  Ruby would be proud, it is a first for me.

Just when you think it's covered

creek crossing reinforced now

I got a call from my mother-in-law on Wednesday while I was at work stating that the sheep were out in three different locations and they could not keep them in the field.  I left work early and came home.  I had asked my nephew to fix the loose sections of fencing the day before.  We had the tools and supplies already loaded in the back of the pickup so after a quick clothing change I was ready to go.  We checked on the upper creek crossing first and it looked like a sheep highway.  My nephew had pounded a post in but had left a gap that the sheep had just pushed open and were using as a highway.  We moved the panels around, clipped them together and even wired several together.  The sheep will not be getting through the fence in that location.  I will need fencing pliers to fix this crossing in the winter!  We then went up to the corner which he had done a great job in tightening.  The back fence had some sagging fence so we tightened and installed wooden stays for almost a quarter of a mile of fencing.  We lowered the woven wire and tightened as much as we could.  This took a few hours to get straightened out. 

 

Upper hillside tightened and stays added

I am running out of wooden stays.  I had 500 stays several years ago.  I have about 40 left and need another 500-750.  I would settle for another 500. I fired up the irrigation line also.  I want the wind to blow as it moves the spray away from my back during pump startup but it screws up the distribution pattern. There was no wind so I got soaking wet.  The pipe is still clogged about 2/3 of the way down each branch of line.  I figured it would have worked its way out by now but no luck.  So tomorrow I am going to have to pull that chunk of pipe out and move it to the end after reconnecting all the other pipe.  I want to move the pipe over  40 feet anyways.  I may have to run it and then on Sunday move it over.  We will see.  I have to clean up the house as Annmarie is coming home tomorrow.  

She keeps telling me I need to quit saying the fence will hold.  She believes I am cursing myself.  I say "Bring it!!"  I will get this figured out.  It just takes perseverance and hard work.  I am amazed that we have fruit in the orchard.  We just planted those trees last summer and they are already putting on fruit.  It is incredible.  I made sure and added a typical farmer selfie at the bottom.
I had another damn chicken be a chicken, it just up and died.  Sometimes they are so stupid I wonder why they don't starve to death.  At this rate I may have to get chicks this fall if I can find them.  My nephew will clean out the coop and I will be able to make a new improved FIRE PROOF baby area!!  Then I will need to redo the entire baby enclosure area and make it sturdier and not so slapdash. 

apple tree

second apple tree

pear tree

Farmer selfie!!

Did I say I had fixed the fence?

It never fails, once an animal learns it can get out of the fence it is all they want to do.  It doesn't matter that there is plenty of feed the GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE!!  My nephew spent most of the day cleaning out the daylight basement of the old schoolhouse.  He found 6 snakes hiding in amongst the old wood piles.  The sheep also decided to sneak out of the pasture and head to town.  My mother-in-law and him chased them back into the schoolhouse pasture.  One jumped over the fence in the same place the deer are crossing the fence.  I got home from work late, changed clothes really quick and back into the pickup to go see if I could find the sheep hole.  I, of course, had to put Zeke back in the front yard because he had already found a way out of the front yard!  My patch the day before was not enough to keep him in the yard.  Teaching him to jump over, under, through and running up rock cribs to herd the sheep is haunting us when it comes to keeping him in the yard. 
We drove down to four corners and found out that the deer again have been jumping through the fence and squished it down in several places.  We fixed the hanging rock crib, tightened the wires along the top, drove in a couple of new metal posts, and straightened the fence along this short section.  It looked great.  I am confident it will work now.  As we headed back to the house I decided to go check on the hay fields to see if it is time to cut them for hay.  They look like they are ready, but I noticed these moving blobs on the back hillside, sheep where they should not be!  We had to drive back and go herd them back into the field.  They are crawling through the creek crossing again.  I attempted to straighten out the panels, but it needs one more panel to fill in the gap.  Mouse did better than Zeke.  Zeke got distracted by the deer and Mouse stayed on task.  Now Mouse didn't want to quit and Zeke would but I was able to finally call Mouse off after he pushed everyone into a tight ball. 

When we got to the house Mouse ran after the black and white kitty and started fighting with it.  He would not back off!  I ran at him screaming now and let go, he ignored me, as I rounded the corner of the shed he let go of the cat.  I grabbed him by the throat, rolled him onto his back and choked him for about ten seconds growling at him as I exerted some dominance behavior.  He caught on quick.  I made him sit in the yard while we finished up with the chickens.  He has been very good the rest of the evening.  I am always amazed at this breed to attempt to establish dominance.  As a puppy they are very aggressive. Mouse is so much better and more responsive than Zeke was at age 2, and he is only about 8 months old. 
I did spot the cows this morning and this evening.  They are where they belong and everyone is in the correct place.  I also saw four more little bucks on my way to work in the morning. 
Here is to tomorrow being boring.

Good neighbors

Father's day activity



This is why I prefer to fence in the spring, three snakes later no rattler found.

I had to work late last night so I decided to sleep in this morning.  After a long talk with Annmarie on the phone I was contemplating going back to sleep.  It was later in the morning but I had only had 6 hours of sleep so it was still an option.  The phone rang and Donna was calling me to say that one of the neighbors had called her and stated our sheep were out on the road.  The neighbors all know we have the weird animals and always call when someone gets out.  It is very nice of them to give us a heads up. I have learned that no matter how often you fix a length of fence the animals eventually figure out how to get through it.  This happens 1-2 times a year.  I got dressed, grabbed coffee, both dogs and loaded them into the truck.  Zeke was bouncing all over, he loves riding in the back of the truck.  I had to trick Mouse just to get a hold of him to throw him in the cab with me.  He hates any vehicle!!  He tries to crawl in your lap and drools all over everything.  We pushed the sheep up the road and back into the pasture.  Donna made sure no one barreled over the top of the hill at a high speed.  This is when I discovered that the sheep have been bedding down inside the old school house during the heat of the day.  It is a concrete enclosure and much cooler inside.  There is a bunch of old wood debris on the floor that needs to be moved.  I will get that cleaned out soon. 

I walked the fence line and found multiple loose wires and wooden stays.  I blamed the Bull initially but after starting my repairs I realized that the deer are making paths up to the fence and washing the rocks down onto the fence in certain places.  It took me a couple of hours to get all the fence secured and back into place.  I drove four new posts, and the 12 hours of rain we just had did not soften the soil at all!  I had to move several loose rocks that had piled onto the lower wire of the fence.  This reminded me why I like to do this task in the spring.  I found three separate snakes while moving rocks.  I let them be, they eat mice and mice are bad.  No rattlesnakes that I recognized.

 

I fed the bull some extra food tonight.  He looks lonely, I need to move him next weekend.  I am going to try and let Zeke roam the yard tomorrow.  I have installed another section of woven wire tonight in the yard fence.  I hope I have all the holes covered now.  The only true test is to let him run around and see if he is out of the yard by the time I come home.  I did not see the cows today.  It is time to lay some eyes on them so we know where they are hanging out at. 

Old school house basement.  The sheep have been hanging out as it is much cooler in here. 



Good looking fence now sheep proof, again.

Barn almost done

Bull doesn't know this is old straw from the barn floor, he thinks its food.

Sarah's old bedroom, soon to be office

Chicken chili

I came home on Thursday and attempted to move the straw bedding pile from the barn out to the barn lot.  My nephew is almost done cleaning out the barn and I wanted to shrink the pile leaning next to the barn.  Our bull thought I was going to feed him.  I did feed him later.  I use the tractor and drive over food and drop it over the fence for him.  He really wants to get out of the corral. 
I will have to chase the alpaca into the orchard, lock them in and then run the bull down to the schoolhouse area.  I am thinking that needs to happen this weekend. 
Sarah got all moved out of the house.  I had told Annmarie that we had one room 100% complete in our house and then after Sarah moved out it was discovered that there is no wall molding on the floor.  Oops, so I will be putting in a call to get some finished and I can cut and install it myself.  The other thing to install is some Ethernet cable from the living room downstairs, up into the attic and down into this room.  We want the computer hard wired in up here for speed and to add a second wireless transmitter upstairs.  The wireless internet is slow, there is a lot of interference in the house.  We cannot get a satellite signal for the internet or TV, again too much interference from landscape and trees. 
I am a bachelor, for a short while as Annmarie is off getting more school in Berkley so I made chicken chili over rice for dinner.  I have been eating it for four days now!  I still have two more meals left.  I am going to have to alter my cooking habits with just Annmarie and I at home. 

Catching up on chores, summer is here

Last of the lambs.  Only 10 left alone.

I knew I was behind on my posts.  This one is from June 6.  I saved the pictures I thought and tonight when I was looking at my phone I realized that it was telling me to retry the upload.  I had a low light picture of seven bucks but it was too blurry to post.  I was walking down to turn off the irrigation pump and 9 bucks were drinking in our front creek.  I hope they come back during hunting season.  I still don't know if I got a tag or not.  It would have been a cool picture.  The iphones just do not take decent low light pictures in my opinion.  Pretty quick it will be time to sort off the baby sheep again from the main herd.  They can go hang out with their brethren in the barn lot.
I put an add up on Craigslist for our two baby calves to be sold in mid July.  They will be six months old and can be weaned off of their moms. 

Our babies for sale, only one visible.

It only took two weeks to sell our sheep on Craigslist this time.  That is pretty fast for us.  Last time it took all summer long.  It helps when someone wanted all we had and we had to limit them to 30.  Annmarie and Sarah took care of that while I was off at a funeral. 

Predators 3, Farm 2

Barn floor

I came home last night and spotted a raccoon running up one of front trees!  I could not believe the audacity of the critter.  Mouse treed it and I ran inside to arm myself against the invasion.  There was a brief internal struggle as to what type of weapon should I bring.  Do I go for the shotgun?  I wasn't sure where in the tree it would be and didn't want to damage the tree.  Do I just grab the trusty Walther P22?  If it is way up high in the tree this might cause me problems.  I opted for the standard Ruger 10/22 but I have left the bolt action at mom's house so I had to get the one out of the zip up case, loaded it and then grabbed the Walther P22 because one can never be really sure about which weapon is truly needed.  It took me a while to find it in the tree.  Then all I could see was its face looking out behind a large branch.  So the rifle was a good first choice.  As it came down out of the tree I had to switch to the pistol.  One more chicken killer down. 

We had to take Mouse into the vet for cheat grass removal between his toes.  He got an abscess.  This happened to Zeke as a puppy also.  Puppies are too stupid to clean out their own feet.  Zeke is really good about it now.  So Mouse is on antibiotics and we now have to clean out his feet every day.
 



Barn floor

Heath is cleaning out the barn and making good progress.  I am hoping it gets done by the end of the week.  After the barn the next big thing is to clean out the chicken coop then to move the hay around in the barn to get ready for this years hay. We have to restack the old stuff so it gets used first.  It is so dried out we may just feed 50% old and 50% new till we run out of old. 

Sarah talked me into helping her create a chalkboard for wedding party names for a friend's wedding.  She supplied all the painting labor and I supplied the cutting and assembly.  She helped me hold during the assembly part.  It came out nice but it took me almost 3 hours in labor without doing any painting.  It does seem like Pinterest was invented as some fancy Man Torture, just saying. 



 

Wedding board finished

Everybody needs a catch up day.

Maybe sand will do the trick

I spent Sunday afternoon playing catchup. Our front gate keeps getting loose.  I set the post in gravel but the constant opening and closing causes the post to sag.  Instead of digging all the gravel out and pouring concrete around it I just poured sand over the top and slammed it in with a large breaker bar.  It is pretty stiff now, time will tell if it actually worked.  I may have to dig it out and set it in concrete yet. 

My nephew is digging out the barn and doing a few odd chores around the place.  I started him on the barn and took the tractor out to mow the grass again.  We have had so much rain that the cheat grass needs to be mowed a second time! 

I did walk around and pick up scrap metal all around the machine shop.  I cannot stop myself, its like a compulsion.  I had to use a pickaxe to get some of it out of the ground.  I just keep after it, I doubt I will ever get it all in my lifetime.  I pick a few hundred pounds out of the ground every year. 



Back deck ready for furniture and steps

I needed to spread out more paver sound on the back deck.  I used a whole bag and ended up with a full second bag.  The bad part is it cannot get wet.  I still need to put together both outside chair sets and get them stained. I also need to attach one of the grill wheels, it fell off and needs to be reattached. 

We have had the bull penned up in the corral for the last week. He is not happy about the arrangements.  We need to get the baby calves sold so he can mix with all the other cows.

Water ho!

I did it, I got the water running!!  It took a bit but it is spraying where it is needed. I needed a new discharge hose and had to go to three businesses before I found one that had it. The real problem was I was in a time crunch and was afraid no one in Pendleton would have it. I ended up buying it at the equipment rental place.  I only needed 15 feet but they had 50 & 100 ft rolls with attached connectors. I asked about bulk hose but it would take 2 days and cost $17/foot!!

I bought a pre made 50 ft roll for $135 or approximately $2.75/foot it was "slightly used". It looked brand new to me. I hacked off one end when I got to the farm. This summer when we run out of water I will get a real quick connector welded to the pipe so I can use fittings instead of hose clamps on the discharge hose. It will make it much easier to replace in the future. I left both end caps off and am hoping that the water pressure cleans out the mud and debris in the pipe. Annmarie told me yesterday that four more sprinkler heads had cleared themselves. We will run the irrigation until there is not enough water. I have no idea what the electricity bill will be. The guy on the phone tried to explain it to me, but it was quite convoluted. So much so that I closed the conversation with "you will send me a bill?"  Once I was assured that the billing address was correct I gave up on caring how much it costs we need to run the pump and we are being billed at irrigation rates. Once the bill comes I will have an approximate rate. I am told that at the end of the summer I get an extra bill based on my peak draw rate I.e. Startup of pump. So in all reality I have no clue what it will cost. 

I out an add on Craigslist for the sheep. So far I have only gotten one email and she wanted pictures. I sent an email with the blog link but I do need to go take some more pictures and link them to the ad.  

My dog proofing of the yard has failed already.  Zeke has figured out how to get out. No one has seen him in the act yet so we are not sure where it is occurring. I am going to have to install woven wire across the entire front. On a plus side, Sprout has not been able to get out of the yard since the update on the fencing.