Happenings Around the Barnyard

We have managed to accomplish a lot of the goals we had for this year and the year isn't over yet. We find that setting goals and objectives are essential for managing our various projects and getting this old farm up to a level where we aren't buried in maintenance/rehabilitation and we can be a productive farm.

Back at the beginning of the year we mentioned that getting electricity to the shop was a main goal along with at least starting to renovate the big barn. We would have done it sooner but life, other commitments, and finances got in the way so we got a bit of a late start.

We ended up having three power poles placed in the back (had to get a utility easement from a neighboring farm to tie onto his line). The meter will be placed on this pole with an underground power connection to the shop breaker panel which will be in the back left of the shop as you look at this picture. I still need to start the wiring inside but that will be pleasurable and we will end up with an outside light over the roll up door, a porch light, an outside 110 and 220v outlet and plenty of outlets and overhead lights inside. I want the 220 for my welder and so I can plug in the camper up there if need be.

One of the reasons we didn't go with a complete underground system was cost but we also wanted a dedicated transformer close to the shop so we didn't get too much voltage drop for the welder.

We have noticed that cats like to be in a box of just about any type and Whiskers has taken over this old abandoned flower pot.

Judy continues to make and sell quilts and still longs for her own quilting machine.....but they are upwards of 20K...can you imagine that for a glorified sewing machine? She still holds out hope though and maybe she will win the lottery.

The unexpected and early hard frost meant we had to harvest most of the remaining garden crops and in the next post we will show how we preserve this through canning, dehydrating and freezing. We got about 50lbs of mostly green tomatoes that will go into relish and green tomato pickles while some that had started to ripen will be allowed to fully ripen. We also got a mess of bell peppers and pounds of Serrano and Thai chilies along with some herbs.

We didn't plant as many sweet potato slips this year as I am not particularly a fan but we got a good harvest and what we don't sell we will store in the root cellar. Right now they are inside hardening getting their protective skin.

We got rid of most of the old doors on the barn and rebuilt them like they should be built and we have painted the trim white which looks so much better than the dreary grey trim. A barn should be red with white trim...I think its some kind of law (or should be). The hay loft elevator door still needs to be rebuilt along with the double door on the lower right.

We have a long way to go with new framing around the windows, some structural repair, refastening some of the tin, some new posts inside, and we have a few more doors to rebuild but just what we have done so far has made the barn much more useful and the paint really brightens it up.

For some reason the previous owner made some doors that opened out instead of in like they should be and they were made of thin interior grade lumber but we have rebuilt the doors with 2x6 pressure treated lumber with Z bracing inside and heavy duty hinges and barrel bolts.

We also need to touch up the paint on the bottom of the stem walls where the previous owner painted down to where the grass had grown up instead of trimming it and doing it right. I don't mean to harp and I am sure that plenty of people could criticize our efforts as well but some of the short cuts we have had to fix are aggravating.

We only cut hay on one pasture for the second cutting and ended up with 56 bales which compares to the total of 65 bales for all the pastures we managed during last years drought. We now have over 500 bales in the hay mow and its a very satisfying feeling.

That is a lot of hay for us to have put up but there is nothing like going into an old barn and enjoying the smell of the hay, the smell of the old machinery, and looking for all the treasures in an old barn....like.....

This claw foot cast iron tub that has good porcelain and only needs to be cleaned up and the bottom painted. It has all four claw feet intact which is hard to find and we will be installing this when we remodel our bathroom next year.

Buster our bull calf is growing and doing well and we are still expecting Louise to drop her calf before Christmas.

My best friend and wife Holly sure looked pretty in the fancy gown she wore for the wedding but I confess I much prefer her like this. Riding her four wheeler in the back pasture and scouting for turkey and deer. Its hunting season soon and we are looking forward to filling the freezer as we have almost consumed all of our wild game from last year.

Holly, Judy and I have found we get great pleasure from wandering around our little farm and seeing the results of our labors. It was a blank slate and so run down when we bought it that we didn't know where to start but now we see the fences and the corrals and the renovations and building additions along with the animals and the place is alive. We both gave up high paying jobs and opportunities to embark on this journey...no regrets what so ever.

Its hard to convey some of these scenes in pictures because the sounds and smells are just as big a part of the enjoyment (at least for me) than the sights. As I took this picture the new rooster was crowing in the background, Thelma (this cow) was slurping water, the sheep were bleating and Maybelle decided to get vocal up on the hill. No other sounds other than a few birds. The smells I also find pleasing, I have always liked cattle and the faint manure smells, the smells associated with their regurgitation (cud), the smell of the earth and the fresh air all combine for me to equal peace.

Another crop we haven't harvested yet besides the carrots still in the ground and the cabbage and broccoli that are thriving are these Persimmons. We have several Persimmon trees that all bear way more fruit than we could ever want and we offer it to anyone who wants to come pick it...its just that no one wants it in these modern times. Used to be they were a staple around here but along with Hickory nuts they aren't much sought after anymore. We plan to harvest them and make jam with them but you have to catch them when they are just ripe because they are very bitter until a frost softens them and brings out their sweetness.

They are very tasty when ripe and you can make bread and a bunch of other things with them but if all else fails......

The chickens love them and we supplement their daily scratch rations with Persimmons when they are available. One interesting thing we are still figuring out though is that they tend to ferment sometimes and we wonder if we are making alcoholics out of our chickens...hmmmm

And finally for this post, we harvested the last of our Asian Pears and will be canning these for use in tarts and pies this winter. One of the things we want to improve with this blog is that we want to show more of how we do things and the next post in a day or so will show how we are preserving this late harvest. We have a NESCO dehydrator which is very reasonably priced and it is a good way to preserve food even if you live in a city and want to take advantage of some of the sales that come up in the store. Nothing finer than preparing meals in the middle of winter with food you preserved and you just can beat the taste. So until next time.... 

Minnesota and the Wedding

Well its been almost a month since the last update and its been a busy one. I continue to attend Fire Fighter II school which is starting to take a toll during this busy time of the year, we travelled to northern Minnesota for our daughter Jenny's wedding, we have had the electrical poles and transformer put in to get electric service to the pole barn shop, we have cleared brush, we did our second cutting of hay and groomed the various pastures, we made significant progress on renovating the dairy barn, and last but not least we had to do our fall harvest a little early due to an unexpected and early hard freeze.

The wedding was nice but it was a long way to go and we are now tired and broke. Northern Minnesota (Brainerd) is beautiful but the last time I was there was 30 years ago when I was in the Marine Corps and went through cold weather training at Camp Ripley and the sleepy northern countryside I remember has been replaced with lots of traffic and development and it was frankly depressing to see. Everything went off without a hitch but we didn't get to see much of Jenny or her now husband Steve and I wish we had been able to spend more time exploring the area but it was not to be.

One thing that we really appreciated though was that our other daughter Heather was there with our grandson Alex and we got to spend a lot of quality time with both of them. Alex is about 21 months old and we had never seen him in person and he took to Grandma and Grandpa right away.

The night before we left I had class until 2200, then we got up at 0400 and drove 3 hours to St Louis, took a shuttle from the parking area, flew 1.5 hours to Minneapolis, then took a shuttle to the rental car place, then drove another 3 hours to Brainerd and 3 days later we reversed the process except we left Brainerd during a snow storm. To say we were relieved to get back to our old farm and the 73 degree sunny weather is an understatement.

The cabin we rented was close to everything for the wedding and right on the lake.

This dock was right outside our bedroom and though the pictures make it look like it was warm it was in the low thirties and we had a lot of wind and scattered rain, sleet and snow all weekend.

My first inclination was to wear my best bib overalls but I got overruled by the ladies. When I was commissioned in the Marine Corps and went to the Officer's Basic Course they spent a lot of time teaching us how to choose clothing and dress like gentlemen even in civilian attire and though it never really took with me, I actually do know how to dress appropriately. Thankfully, its now a rare occasion where I have to break down and wear a tie.

My three ladies, Holly, Jenny and Heather. Note the pained expression on Holly, the hair dresser had her hair pinned up so tight it was painful and she was wearing makeup which she dislikes immensely.

Alex was such a good boy during all of the goings on and we are looking forward to having him out to the farm.

Newlyweds Jenny and Steve made a fine looking couple. They are still debating where to take their honeymoon but I think they are leaning towards Belize.

Grandma Judy and Jenny. I know Holly and I were tired and can only imagine how tired Judy was. When we got back she went to bed almost right away.

Heather was Maid of Honor and looked radiant in her gown.

And finally just to show how country we are. When we got home we checked the cattle, the fence lines, the sheep and the chickens and all seemed to be in order so we went to bed early. About 0600 the next morning, I awoke to the sound of a rooster crowing (remember our rooster Carmine died of a heart attack earlier this year so we didn't have a rooster) and I poked Holly to get her to confirm. She stirred and told me it must be the neighbor farmers rooster but the crowing was very close and his farm is almost a mile away. I finally got up and found this beautiful Araucana rooster locked up in our pen and all of our other chickens fully accounted for. He has fit in quite well and though we haven't figured out who did it, one of our friends came over and gave us a nice rooster while we were gone.

 

Yup, its good to be home.

Getting Close

We are within days of having the sewer hookup and couldn't be happier. If you have never lived with a failing septic system you probably cant imagine the stress but we live in constant fear of an imminent backup and total failure. I admit it publicly...I hate dealing with bodily fluids unless I am on the scene of an accident as a First Responder and then I go into my zone..otherwise...NO!

We bought the place knowing it needed a new septic but after we were here for a few months we found out we were the last house in this direction not scheduled to be hooked up to the new community sewer project. So I went before the water board and asked if there was any money left over that we be connected (it was a rural development Federal grant) and they said they would look into it. And they did...turns out they had a few Shekels left over and the Feds said it could only be used to hook up new households so we ended up first on the list. Now there are about 15 households that declined when this first came out that now want to be hooked up but we got priority and we are very grateful we were so fortunate.

They have gotten to the point of placing the tank/lift station. We are a couple of miles away and over a ridge so the effluent goes into this tank from the farm house and Judy's mobile home where a macerater grinds everything up and then a float valve triggers a lift pump to get it all down range.

The top of the tank will be a couple inches above grade with a stainless steel hatch to gain access to the pump and its workings...and no I have no intent of ever checking it out once in use and you cant pay me enough money to change my mind. Since this does require electricity to operate the pump and since we are prone to long power outages they are also installing a transfer switch so we can operate the thing with a generator several times a week if the power is out. Like the Boy Scouts say..be prepared.

 

As I have said previously, I like machinery and there is a certain buzz in the air when big projects are happening. Bulldozers, backhoes, end loaders, etc have been operating for a week or so and we find it fascinating.

I am not an engineer but I suspect the amount of concrete they placed was to keep the tank from popping out of the ground when the water table rises and the tank is full. Think of a fishing lure bobber..gotta keep that baby buried.

 

Our hired hand Travis and I have also been busy fencing and we completed this pasture fence last week. The T-Posts in the fore ground only have 4 strands so we still need another strand which will be done when the sewer project is completed.

The actual isolation pasture fence we just completed has 5 strands and that is our standard. Lots of 4 strand pasture fencing around here but we feel the 5 strands give better security and its relatively cheap insurance against a cow from escaping. We plan to use this pasture to isolate sick cattle or to isolate new cows prior to introduction to the herd (sale barns have bargains but you need to be careful about introducing illness etc) and we also plan on experimenting with new pasture mixes in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the University of Missouri. Our interest is in finding a forage mix that is indigenous to this area and that provides the nutrient mix we seek for our cattle.

 

The yellow sighting rope you see in this picture looking down on the newly fenced pasture is the border of the next phase of fencing and we already have much of the T-Posts driven for this next fencing project though they aren't shown in this picture (thanks to Travis). We use cheap polypropylene rope strung along the property boundaries to guide us in installing the fences. Some old timers can do it by sight but we cant and I doubt I will ever be able to do that. We also used cattle panels to fence off the end of this pasture because we hit ledge rock limestone and couldn't sink the corner posts as deep as we wanted and we didn't want to stress them by stringing 5 strands of barbed wire.

The plants in this picture that look like feathery trees or bushes is Asparagus and we found a patch while fencing. Sometime in the past this must have been a garden spot as I don't think Asparagus spread from bird guano like many plants but....does anyone know?

 

And to answer a couple of questions we have gotten on the chicken coop, we have 6 nest boxes in the coop  and drop down doors where we can access them from outside. We collect eggs in the morning and evening and find eggs at one time or another in all of the boxes but they often lay in just 2 or 3 of the boxes and as you can see; both the Barred Rocks and the Brown Leghorns lay in the same boxes at times.

 

We have also been working on setting up the pole barn shop, re-pairing the outside wood boiler (next post), splitting wood for winter, prepping the gardens for winter, and we just got the signed permit to widen the drive. But most important of all to us, we are preparing for #1 daughter Jenny and her fiance Steve and # 3 son Matt to visit us for the Thanksgiving Holiday. And did I mention its opening day of deer season Saturday and that #4 son Al is in his last semester at UNC-Charlotte and now wants to pursue his Masters? .....we love this time of year!

 

 

 

 

A Rooster Tale

No that isn't a typo...its a tale of our two roosters that finally has been resolved. When we got our day old chicks last spring one of them was mis-sexed and we ended up with two Brown Leghorn roosters. They both had uniquely different personalities but were both cocky and we named them Carmine and Sal. Carmine is the smaller of the two and has a deformed foot (on one foot the toes are crooked) and until a couple weeks ago they mostly got along okay. But, Sal started picking on Carmine and it culminated in Carmine getting his foot caught in some of the cage wire and being attacked by both Sal and a bunch of the hens. We were out in the garden when we heard this pitiful scream and lots of commotion by the coop and poor Carmine was down and getting pecked to death. I freed him and he went up on the nesting boxes to stay away and we decided to see how it went.

Later on that afternoon I looked in the coop and there was blood all over and poor Carmine was wedged between the coop wall and the nesting boxes and all we could see was his tail feathers and one leg...he wasn't moving. Feeling bad for letting him down I reached over and pulled him out and much to our surprise he was bloody but alive and scared to death so we made a temp cage in the garage and nursed him back to health...two long weeks of him crowing and making a whining sound in our garage. You may or may not be surprised at how hard it is to give away a rooster. We put up ads at the feed store, the gas station and put the word out along with posted it prominently on our road side produce stand sign. Long story short, finally a young couple came and took Sal off our hands and now Carmine is all healed up and back in the coop with his lady friends and happy as a clam. We couldn't get rid of poor Carmine because he was just so pitiful and having a clubbed foot we just kind of feel protective over him.

So we have also been busy cutting wood, picking apples, and we have been going back and forth to Ft Leonard Wood dealing with the VA and my medical issues. We don't go to the base much but it was kind of fun dinking around and we shopped at the PX and Commissary and looked around a bit. Its a nice base but I just don't miss that at all, don't get me wrong I am glad its there with all its amenities if we choose to use it but we just don't have much desire to.

Cutting wood can be dangerous but we take precautions and use all safety gear recommended. A couple of times we had trees that lodged against other trees and we had to use the come-a-long and a heavy chain to pull them into where we could cut them up for loading. We didn't take the tractor to this location but it would have helped.

I cut and position the logs and Holly and Judy load the truck and the trailer. My back started acting up at one point and I was totally laid up which is a bummer but we try to just cut and haul a half cord at a time. I just have to learn to go slower..

 

We load the truck with the smaller pieces and then load the larger pieces we need to split on the trailer. We have found that lots of farmers around here clear trees or want their trees cleared for them and wood is relatively easy to come by. What many of the farmers tell us is that they offer wood to people and they want it already cur and split and are too lazy to haul it off. Not a problem for us.

I have used a Stihl MS 310 chainsaw since we moved to the farm and I am really impressed. I have gone through 5 chains (sharpened until they have nothing left to sharpen), flip the bar every other chain change and I put Stabil in the gas and blow out the air filter and the thing starts on the second or third pull every time. Keep in mind we are cutting red and white oak, hickory, and black walnut and this stuff is really hard wood that gives out great BTUs for its weight.

 

Once we get home we all unload and I split the logs and the gals stack it. As you can see we have a good start on the winters heating fuel and are about 1/3rd done which is really early for this time of year. We still have a lot of wood waiting to be split that isn't in this picture.

We have used this 22 tonne log splitter for three years now and its been flawless. You really get an appreciation for the old guys who used to split this stuff using a maul. Oak, hickory and walnut is so hard its a real bear to split.

 

This has been one of the worst fire seasons in our fire districts history and its just a handful of us who respond to most of the calls. I am on the far left and am very happy to be part of this fire department as a fire fighter and first responder. After so many years in the military this has given me a feeling of belonging and purpose..it may not make sense but it just is.

So look at the egg on the left...its huge and is so much bigger than the other eggs we have been collecting. When we cracked it it was a double yolk and I can only admire the chicken that laid it...ouch!

 

And this is pure indulgence. We used the Dodge while we were fixing part of the back pasture fence and I had to get some pictures.

If you have ever had a black car or truck you know that every little blemish shows up and even though some people say it looks good, I am not satisfied and this will get a repaint and a lot of body work completed. I am concentrating on the mechanicals for now but soon we will begin the body work and I have to decide if black is really what I want to repaint it with.

 

I am thinking headers with Flow Masters some Torque Thrust chrome wheels and new tires, maybe drop down from 17 to 16" etc.

 

Well that's the update for now. We have harvested apples and will be canning them tomorrow and the fall garden has been planted. Next project...the pole barn shop.