09/17/2008 Wednesday: Kind of a strange day, weather-wise. The sky looked overcast but the sun was shining. The sun was a peculiar shade of yellow (gold). Chas thought it might be the results of the fires in Eastern Washington. So, it wasn't very hot today. The mornings for the past two weeks have been hovering around 40 degrees F. Burrr.
When I wandered over to look over the Herefords I was surprised to see that only about half of the round bale I put out late yesterday afternoon was still uneaten. I guess 12 cows and their babies plus one bull can go through a lot of hay. Anyhow, the cows ate, laid around and burped and slept. Late in the afternoon I noticed they were wandering out to the pasture to graze. They must have gotten tired of the hay.
I'm going to force them to graze by only setting out a round bale about once every 5-7 days.
Chas covered the perforated drainage pipe in the ditch he dug. He's going to wait till the rain settles the dirt and then smooth the ground over the pipe and trench into a smoother look.
While Chas was doing the work on rerouting the water from the barn, I started painting the rest of the tool shed. I had some rafters (2x4s) to paint and the door, both sides. I finished it about noon. Dean came around 11am.
After lunch I noticed that the Dexters were playing with something. Dang, I said to myself, they've taken apart my feeder - and they had. I put that back together again muttering and cursing under my breath. It didn't help that the bull spent his time growling and pawing at the Black Angus bull.
I began filling in the stripes and painting under the sofits along the east wall of the living room. Painting the cracks/stripes and touching up the missed areas overhead was sort of fun. I got that one side pretty much painted and started on the deck side of our living room. I didn't get that much done because Mike H showed up to pick up the pieces of the fork lift apparatus that he'd welded for me and which I managed to destroy in about 30 seconds. He's going to try putting it together with bolts which he will smooth off so they don't catch on the hay.
Deana asked me why I wanted a fork lift kind of loader instead of a lance-type hay carrier. I told her that I wanted something that would let me pick up a pallet loaded with at least 6 bales of hay and carry it from my cow barn to the goat barn. This would make my life so much easier. Just bring the tractor into the barn, set the pallet down, load the hay bales, back up and drive over to the green barn. Very cool. In short, the fork lift tool would be more versatile for me since I need to feed hay bales to the goats. Well, I suppose I could haul in a round bale and strip off leaves but that's a lot of work.
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