Moving Rocks from Here to There

Cold in the am; hot in the pm.

Sherry came to clean the house, thank heavens.

While she was cleaning our place Chas and I went out to the cow barn, actually to the north exterior wall of the barn and continued cleaning the area up. We found two metal pipes, flashing, more slabs of metal and a funny piece of automobile equipment that I'm not sure of buried in the dirt alongside the wall.

We moved two of the old barn doors to the burn pile and one to the green barn. I plan to lean the door against the side as a temporary shelter for the sheep. Or build a short enclosure out of a couple of stacked railroad ties and a barn door.

Chas and I spent most of the day moving dirt and rocks. Chas is trying to put up new downspouts for me along the north side of the barn. I wanted to lay in a foundation for the waterer so that the animals wouldn't sink up to their hocks in clay mud in the dead of winter when the monsoons hit.

So, we took the tractor and a shovel and dug a trench for the 4 inch perforated black pipe that we're using to take the water away from the barn and that required we dig the trench by hand using a shovel. We did the digging after we'd first leveled and then piled dirt in the hole where the old fence used to run. After that it was putting in a layer of mixed, but mostly >3 inch rock, every one placed by hand. It took us five hours to do that work even with the tractor. I worked three hours, went in for lunch and had a nap and then went outside and moved rock for another 2 hours. It's not that the rocks were all that huge but there were a lot of them. We have more to put in tomorrow and then we're going to put in a layer of gravel, then some sand and gravel mix, then top everything off with 3/4 inch horse stall rubber mats. We'll do that tomorrow.

But then I'm hoping that the area will remain clear. The good news is that I can hose the mats off when they get yucky.

We siphoned off the water from the trough. It took forever but didn't get water in the area where we'll be working.

We'll be doing the same thing in the Dexter pasture although it's going to be a little trickier since there's less room to maneuver there since the fence is pretty close to the lean-to addition. Plus, I have to buy another mat. These mats are 4'x6' and 3/4 of an inch think (oh, I said that already. It's worth mentioning again).

It takes my (four adults and three babies) Dexters between 7.5 and 8 days to finish off a 500 lb round bale. I'm keeping track of the start date and the end date when I put a bale into their feeder (and will also count and date the bales I feed to the Herefords). Man, does having a round bale feeder ever save me time.

I'm a little worried about picking up the Herefords round bale feeder to put over a round bale. I haven't done it yet and don't know what to expect. I will probably use the tractor since I'm not strong enough to lift it into the air and roll it to the new location. The Herefords still have plenty of grass to munch on so I haven't put out a bale.

I will rotate the Herefords into a new pasture on Saturday. They'll be complaining that they're starving by then.