Young men, guns, curry, plumbing and bonfires

We collected scrap metal from a lady's yard to help pay for rehabbing her house. The scrap yard wouldn't take these old gas cylinders unless we removed the valve on top, or put holes in tank. Gee, no brainer - let's put holes in them...using high powered rifles at long range. You can't do this in the city.

K8's first attempt at making Indian beef curry turned out very tasty.

We lost water pressure and I traced it to this water bubbler. Had water coming up out of the ground from a broken line. Required professional help.

Took a few hours and a few hundred dollars, but it's now fixed.

Finally got around to burning brush pile from last year's clearing of a few acres on the hill. As you can see by the comparison of K6's body to the brush, the pile was bigger than our house.

It was very dry, so with a little help from some liquid fuel, it ignited fast, and the fire was huge. There was no wind, but I warned both of my neighbors with houses nearby - one came over to watch it with me. 

All of the grass seeding we did last year is coming up nicely this Spring.

Tagging sheep

We tagged all 18 lambs, and banded several males who are slated for the freezer instead of breeding.

We also tagged a few adults that did not have ear tags. The boys built a 2nd "capture" pen so we could hold the entire flock.

It was another full and rewarding day on the farm.

Animals leaving the farm

We recently sold two of our dairy cows to our neighbors - the light tan one in this pic had a bull calf this afternoon. We also sold two dairy cross-bred steers to customers for their meat - both are hanging at the butcher's along with a ram for our freezer. We are down to the final two dairy girls on the farm, which I am keeping for milk. I am happy to get back to focusing predominately on building our Dexter cattle herd and our St Croix sheep flock.

We also sold our young turkey tom. He was beginning to fight with his father over the hens. The hens are all sitting on nests, and Mom is also incubating more eggs, so we should have a good number of turkeys this year. I want to build the flock and start selling more on a regular basis.

A ground hog also departed our farm, and this earth. You can see her as a tiny brown spot across the paddock near the fence...just before K7 shot it. You can't do this in the city or burbs! Why shoot it? Because this large pesky rodent digs very large burrow holes. While clearing the stream bank last month, I accidentally stepped into a hole covered with leaves, and my leg went down 3 feet. Luckily, I didn't end up with a broken leg, which would happen to our cattle if they step in one. On our farm, this critter gets an automatic death sentence, along with digging armadillos, hungry coyotes, poisonous snakes, any rabid mammal, and predatory stray dogs or other mammals that are threatening our herd or flocks. We gave this ground hog a Viking funeral on top of one of our burn piles.

The past month

A month ago, we had our last big snow of winter. The boys walked back and forth across all the pastures spreading clover seed.

As soon as the snow melted, we were back to clearing brush along the stream bank, creating more grazing areas for cattle, and removing the nasty stuff that is favored as shelter by ticks and poisonous snakes. This tree fell into it's neighbor, so K6 had to pull it down with a rope and muscle.

All the brown area was totally covered by thorny brambles, thick brush and poison ivy vines from the tree line almost to my pasture fence - I could barely drive my truck past it.

After many hours of labor and many fires, we have now cleaned this strip. We spread grass seed across it last week, and have gained a few more acres of grazing land.

This giant red oak tree fell across the stream last year in a severe storm. It is over 80 feet long.  Before we removed all the under brush and top branches, you could not see it very clearly. It took us a few days of cutting to expose it. Now we need to get a tractor with forks to hold it up while we cut it into firewood. I'm leaving the long straight trunk across the stream for my neighbor, who will run it through his saw mill and get quite a bit of lumber out of it.

This entire tree line was thick with brush and vines which hid a couple hundred feet of old rusted barbed wire fencing. K8 is in the center distance of photo cutting out more wire and rolling it up.

After he got the wire removed, I was able to drag this and other big pieces off the bank, so we cut it into firewood.

This particular oak tree was leaning dangerously toward our gate. Just behind K8 you can see where the trunk was once wrapped with barbed wire fencing which gouged deeply into the wood, so it had to come down now rather than later. K8 is making a loop in the rope. We attached the other end of rope to the tractor and I pulled him quickly up to a large branch so he could cut the top off of the tree.

He is our "go to" guy when we need an agile man for a dangerous job. He is using a small, one-handed chainsaw to cut off branches that would break our fence if we were to just drop the tree. 

Glad his Mom doesn't know what he's doing.

While K7 and Jack dropped and cut up the oak into firewood, K8 helped me drag a couple of logs out of the stream. He wraps the chain around top of log and I have the easy job of driving the tractor. We already have enough firewood for next winter, so we are now cutting and drying wood for 2015.

The Greenhouse is finally operational!

K6 got the new posts & old gate installed and painted a few weeks ago.

The hole for this post is bigger than needed, and took longer to dig, because of the huge boulder sitting behind and to the right of the post.

After a very long & cold winter, the crew called Friday and said they would be here Saturday morning before 9:00 A.M. (they live an hour north) to finally "wrap" the plastic cover.

They arrived about 8:45 A.M. and the temperature was 32 degrees. The first layer of plastic goes on.

The crew was Tim, his brother Mike, and son Jesse, but they needed lots of hands to do it right.  It was kind of embarrassing at first, because every time we turned around, one or all of our boys had disappeared into the house for some frivolous reason or other, and we had to go get them twice. They finally got the message and stayed put - which really helped keep the work flowing.

Mike had help from K6 with the "slam" stapler on the back side.

Then the second layer went on. This time the plastic was strengthened with strips of wood and nailed into the frame for a solid hold.

Time to find the right fitting board for the shelving - a bit like doing a jig-saw puzzle, because each piece was just slightly different length.

The last outside job was cutting hole in the plastic wall for the air exhaust vent unit.

Why two layers? Because we have a blower (lower left side wall) which keeps a constant air barrier between the two layers for insulation.

Does it work? Ask "S", who immediately started stripping off her coat once inside the finished greenhouse, complaining it was too hot. We won't be needing the wood stove (behind her) until next Fall. It will take us a few days of experimenting to figure out how to best regulate the temperature inside.

Mike & Tim are getting ready to attach the shop light to the two pieces of rope hanging from the ceiling, and they were done. It took about two hours to complete the entire wrapping job. We had less than 15 minutes to get ready and listen to the first session of General Conference. Busy morning.

The greenhouse is the last piece of "S"'s garden. Well, maybe. She asked K8 to build her two more grow boxes. This year, she meticulously planned her garden, and drew a map of where every fruit & vegetable will go. She may want me to take down the walnut tree just to the right of her garden, but I hope not.

Her greenhouse and garden look great! The two boxes on the right and closest to the greenhouse have strawberry beds. 

The boys have already carried the pile of plastic pots on the right into the greenhouse along with two giant bags of potting soil, so she isn't wasting any time getting to work. She already has trays of seedlings started. You can see the chicken wire along the bottom of the fence which keeps even the littlest dogs out of the garden. Now I'm going to spread cedar chips and sulfur around the outside of the fence line to keep out other pests.