Ryan Comes to Work for the First Time

08/26/2008 Tuesday: Overcast and cold until 1:15 pm or so. Then the sun started shining and it warmed up.

I worked on Nancy S's evaluation letter for UFL all morning. It's due Friday this week. This kind of letter is really hard to write especially if you have a good candidate. So many things to choose from/emphasize.

Ryan came in the afternoon, around 1:00pm. He's the young man that Pat brought over last night. Ryan and I went out and started cutting out the barn wall. The bottom was rotten anyway and the wall is a non-bearing wall. I wanted to be able to push a whole bale of hay (all 500 pounds) into the feeder without peeling off layers (leaves) of hay and tossing them over the gate and into the feeder and without going into the lean-to. I especially wanted the cows to be able to feed themselves instead of me tossing hay to them twice a day.

I'm trying to make things as easy for Chas as I can. It worked beautifully.

I had Ryan cut a 4 foot wide hole with the chainsaw, basically wide enough to shove a 4 foot wide bale of hay through to the manger beyond. After we got the hole cut we moved the feeder into position and tied it together at the far end with wire and tied the open end to staples I pounded into the remaining wall.

If the opening in the wall isn't large enough to push hay through I may just enlarge the hole by about half a foot; it's currently 4 feet across but I could make it 4 feet 6 inches or even 5 feet across. I would probably need to bring in a larger gate to fill the enlarged hole. I really need to measure the width of the stall to see which gate would fit best. A 10 foot gate should fit.

The futon gate I've put in temporarily would be too small for an enlarged hole but now that I think of it, two smaller gates would be even better since I could swing the gates to each side and out of the way. A large gate would be more difficult to open within the confines of the stall.

I would need to pound in two t-posts to attach the ends of the gates to. The center opening would be closed with a single binding twine or chain.

As I said, I now have one of the futon back gates on the inside of the stall just in case one of the cows or calves tried to wander through the feeder. The gate will keep them out of the stall. This is good since it's hard to close the outside gate. It remains open to the driveway all the time. I would not want the cows to get out.

I wondered if the opening on the feeder which currently looks like a boat with the prow pointed away from the side of the stall might be too wide on the barn side but figured that I could always push the hay from the center to the edges using my pitchfork. So far the animals seem to be able to reach the hay.

After we admired our work Ryan and I took the ATV and went out to the highway and picked up three large loads of branches deposited by the Chehalis River during the December 2007 flood. We put the wood in the burn pile closest to the house.

We still have to pick up the little stuff but I want Ryan to weedwhack along the fenceline so that we can actually see what's there. Also I want Chas to smooth the land next to the fence. The river left a four foot wide swath along the fence that is about 6 inches high. That dirt should be smoothed back to blend in with the rest of the pasture or the dirt used to fill in holes.

We finished working about 3:50 pm. Ryan has another job to do tomorrow but will be back Thursday. I think he's not used to women who know how to farm and who tell him specifically how she wants things done.

Dinner was bangers and mash. Chas really wanted this meal and it is easy to prepare.