Fire

I took half a day off this morning so we could use our county burn permit to do some much-needed burning before weather makes it impossible.

It was a perfect day for it -- very little wind; just enough to keep things going. There aren't many good burn days in Kansas.



We've had a major problem with a poison ivy infestation in the meadow (or what we call the "orchard" because it is where my grandparents had a 100-tree apple orchard, and where Steven is trying to create a new orchard). So we really needed to get this area burned off to get it back under control. It had thick matting of heavy grasses.

In addition, we had a large brush pile from where we had cleared out some volunteer elm trees and cedars where we didn't want them growing.

Hopefully this will then become another rotating pasture for the goats. We might use temporary fence for this year, but we would like to eventually be able to keep them in here for extended periods of time to also help control the growth of the area, as well as giving them a fresh pasture often.

Tragedy

Well, apparently Bobbie Sue (the older doe) gave birth yesterday morning. Steven didn't call me at work and tell me about it because the triplets she gave birth to all died. :(

Two were stillborn, and one was barely breathing when born. He was right there and did all he could to revive it, but couldn't keep it breathing. The triplets were two males and a female.

Obviously, Steven (and I) are very discouraged by this. Probably more so for him, because it really sets him back in his plans for his herd; plus there is just the emotional letdown when you try so hard to revive a baby animal and give it mouth-to-mouth and everything, but just can't will it to live. Since this was the first of his herd to give birth, it makes it hard.

We could have had a 100% increase in our herd yesterday (we have three goats now, this would have added 3 more all at once) but instead got a zero gain.

For good news - at least the doe appears okay -- no excessive bleeding or acting like she is hurt in any way by the birthing. Theoretically, she will probably go back into heat with 30 days, and maybe the next birthing will be in the warmer months of August/September. It was so extremely cold yesterday morning, what with the sleet coming down and all -- but we don't think that was an issue. She was in the barn in the straw and Steven was there to warm them - they just weren't viable right from the start. From all appearances (of them) they seemed fully formed and full size and healthy -- nothing to indicate stress in the womb. We will never know why they didn't make it.

Although I remember having this type of thing happen back when I was a youth raising sheep -- it is very disheartening for it to happen the very FIRST time one of your new herd gives birth. I'm sure Steven is hurting (although he would never show it); I know I cried like a baby when I was a teenager if I lost a lamb.

We're not even sure if the other doe is pregnant -- we think so -- but she's not nearly as big as #20 was. Hopefully if she is, then maybe she will just have a single. I would rather have a live, health single birth that triplets or twins that don't make it.

It feels like spring!

Wow, I should really update more often, huh?

Well, we really enjoyed having President's Day off to do some work around the farm, and were blessed with wonderful weather to do it.

In the morning, we decided to make a trip to town to get feed, gasoline for the tractor, and other stuff. However, on the way there, I ran over some debris in the road which included a nail that embedded in my right front tire (and damaged, a bit, my right fender). So we ended up having an hour cut out of our day while waiting on the shop to fix that.

Then Steven and I began working on fencing the holding pen corral. All that is left of that corral from years-gone-by were the posts - none of the board fencing or the ramp/loading dock. We enclosed it all with woven wire, and plan to use it as a small holding area for the buck; or maybe for a doe and her babies; or whatever we need to keep separate until we get the rest of that second pasture finished.

The older doe should drop about any day. Steven is checking her often, and she is huge; but so far not acting like she's ready to delivery. The younger girl is not as big -- not sure what her schedule is going to be.

I've been meaning for some time to post this photo of the hay feeder Steven made. It didn't end up exactly the way he originally planned it, but it has worked quite well this winter. He will probably do some modifications on it before next winter.

He used logs (trees he cut from the grove) to make the bottom stability posts, and the uprights and the cross-beams on the top. He used wire then (he originally planned to use young branches stripped) to make the upright lattice work to hold the hay. He never really got the "tray" beneath finished -- and they keep breaking it off anyway by climbing on it. Anyway, this was about as low budget as you can get -- he cut all the wood himself, and the wire we had around, so there was no cash put into this, and it works fine.

Later in the day yesterday, we tore apart all the plumbing to the bathtub in the house, because the lime build up has really made for water flow problems. I'm going to pick up new hardware on the way home today, and hopefully put it all back together tonight.

This weekend we plan a controlled burn of the orchard meadow, and some brush piles, weather permitting. Try to get the poison ivy problem under control.

Ice, Snow and Etcetera

Wow. I've had so much to write about and post up here lately, but no time to do so!

So this past weekend's ice storm hit our place a bit harder than it did the metropolitan area, but not as hard as it hit many other areas, or as hard as the 2005 ice storm did. We lost trees limbs, (which also downed our clothesline), but no serious damage. Since I was already very sick with a head cold, I didn't even attempt to get out and about during this, either.

Saturday morning Steven and I had go into Wichita to attend my company's employee party, and that didn't do much to help me feel better, and the weather was getting bad. I went ahead and attended bible study Saturday night, but by Sunday didn't feel like going anywhere at all, as the weather was getting increasingly worse. So we missed church, missed attending the musical Oklahoma that I had tickets to for the afternoon, and missed choir.

Sunday night we realized our windmill drive stock watering tank was very very low (no wind for a couple of days, and the cows drink a lot). We have goldfish in there to keep algae down, and at that rate, we were going to lose them all, if the 2 inches of water left were to freeze clear through.

We have a gas water pump for emergencies, but it was frozen up. So we had to bring the gas pump inside and put it in the bathtub to thaw out and drain. Then at 10 PM at night, Steven and I were out there in the dark, with pouring freezing rain, hooking up that pump and filling up the tank. We carried it down in the pickup, which was covered with a solid sheet of ice.

Ah, farm living!

We only lost power for a bit of time on Tuesday night, but the house sure did get chilly during those hours. We played gin rummy by candelight in the dining room until it got late enough to go to bed.

Our water heater quit working, too. Appears to be a faulty thermostat, so I hope to pick up that part this week and fix it.

It's always something! :)

Last night we finally hauled the entire big round hale bay into the goat pen near the barn for them to forage as necessary. Up until now, we have been "doling" it out in quantities to control how much they ate and prevent waste. We realize having the whole bale in there will lead to more wasted hay, but it's supposed to snow up to eight inches tonight, and so it was our best option for now.

Busy weekend

This is the stock rack we had given to us this past weekend (that I referred to in an earlier post). It is such a perfect fit for my truck - I was thrilled.

It took us about an hour to drive over to where it was on Saturday, but they helped us load it, and some other stuff. We are also getting a brooder hood and a big feeder from them. Steven cut his finger pretty badly trying to get the brooder out. Since we had no water, hopefully it doesn't get infected; but it seems to be healing okay.

Then on the way home we stopped at the Carp's and got 10 bales of straw to start weatherizing the house and animals (since it is supposed to turn cold this week, that's not a moment too soon). We got those bales placed on Saturday before I left for bible study, so overall, it was a very full day.

Things we still have to do before winter really sets in includes: plastic on the north windows; more straw bales around house foundation; clean out goat barn; finish mulching garden, winterize the mowers and tractor. Then throughout the winter we plan to do a lot of work with the chain saw to clear some areas up.

Veteran's Day

I’m back at work now recovering from my day off. Man, if I worked as hard here everyday as I do at home, I would never gain weight. The way it is, I work super hard on my days off, then my muscles hurt for days afterward…

We had blocked off my Veterans Day off as the day to clean out the chicken house really thoroughly before winter, do some patching and repairing, etc. Steven wanted to get all the litter and manure spread on the garden, too, before the predicted rain (that never rained). So we got up early and had breakfast, then started right away on the chicken house. It was cloudy and kinda misty in the morning. We chased the chickens out, and put the nesting box outside of the house near the door they use. Then proceeded to get all the gunk shoveled off the floor. That was many, many wheelbarrows full. We wanted to do a really good job, so that meant once we got the main part out, using scrapers to get anything stuck to the floor from years of us just changing litter without doing that.

Chickens are really dumb, did you know that? Even though we put the nesting box by the door, this chicken would come into the house while we were working on it, and literally throw herself up against the wall where the nesting box used to be. “Duh! Don’t you see it’s not there?” We finally had to move the nesting box back inside and just work around it because they were freakin’ out.

There are holes all over the chicken house floor from where the rats have chewed up from underneath (the flooring is tongue-n-groove 1 x 6 oak – the house was made to be portable and was on runners, but pretty much the earth has filled in underneath (it’s almost 60 years old) and the rats' nest under and chew up the floor to get to the chicken grain.) In the past I have put small pieces of tin over the holes, but now the holes are bigger, and, as Steven points out, the more we cover the holes, they are just going to make new ones. We pretty much agreed to handle it the way we have most lately – just leave one of our mouser-cats in the chicken house at night when we lock them up. There are two cats that have done an excellent job with this, and I think they have pretty much wiped out the rat population that used to be there. The chickens don’t mind the cats, and they ignore the chickens, so it works.

We went to the hardware store to see about getting pieces of sheet metal to cover some of the worst areas, but choked at the price. A little 2’ x 3’ piece of sheet metal is over $20!! So we passed on that, and came back home and used wood we had around to fix some of the problem boards and shore up some areas. We hosed down the whole inside really well and let it dry; then put in new bedding and everything else. We put in a different roost (one we had picked up from the neighbor’s house before they auctioned it) because it was much better built than ours. I wanted to cut it down a bit because it is much bigger, but Steven didn’t want to, so we made it work. Then we patched up the north side, put plastic around to winterize it, and called it good. That took almost the entire day. It was getting on toward evening, and Steven had decided when we got this project done, he wanted to go fishing, because we hadn’t been to the ponds to fish yet this year! (have been down there several times, but not fishing). So he rushed through the last of our job to get it done while still light.

Then he loaded the truck and we went down to the ponds. Of course, during the middle of the day the front had come through and it was quite a bit colder, with a north wind, but that meant the barometric pressure was good for fishing. The ponds have drastically changed since the flood this past spring, and I don’t know how much longer then will be viable. But we got bites the minute we cast out our lures. I ended up catching three small bass, and Steven, two, but only two overall were really big enough to keep (and that may have been questionable in some people’s minds – but we were hungry, so we were desperate). So we had a couple medium large-mouth bass for supper. It was pitch black by the time we drove home to fix them, though, and I was really beat tired. Tried to teach Steven how to clean the fish, and realized we don’t have a decently sharp knife anywhere in the place, so I really kinda mutilated it. But he got the idea.

Saturday we had spent the day tilling the garden (although it was basically dust); doing some jobs with the tractor, and grazing the goats out. We tried to graze the goats out on Monday while working on the chicken house, but they are just too curious for their own good. They kept coming over and bugging us and coming in the house, and didn't really seem interested in grazing much of anywhere, so we put them back in the pen.

More free stuff

We had another friend inform us that her son had purchased a rural property that "had some stuff" on it when he bought it that he was just going to get rid of, or cut up for scrap. Offered it to us.

We went over there in the car on Sunday and looked it over -- a huge hog feeder, a chicken brooder hood, some small cages, etc. Usable -- definitely not something that should be just scrapped out. I don't know if we will use all the stuff, but we can take it off their hands and then figured it out from there.

What I was most excited about, though, was when we went behind the barn, where he was mentioning an old cattle chute -- but next to it was a wonderful stock rack (to be mounted on a pickup bed)! It's perfect for my pickup -- I had been drawing up plans to build my own out of wood, but don't have the money for the lumber. This was a wonderful livestock carrier that is all steel and have a pulley-type gate on the back. It alone was so worth the trip out there to see the stuff!

The only down side is we need to go get the stuff - and it is over a hour away from our house. That's a lot of gas in my old pickup, with its bald tires that I'm not sure will make the trip. :( So I would love to get the stuff this week, but don't have the money for gas to go get it. And it will probably take more than one trip to get all the stuff out of there. *sigh*