01/17/2009 Saturday: Light overcast but the sun broke through a couple of times much to our joy.
This was a really busy day for us around here. My Mexican friends showed up to help me with many tasks. I actually made a list last night.
I had the guys removed the calf-tel from the pig pen. I was using the calf-tel for housing for the last two batches of pigs. They used the tractor and palate to carry the calf-tel to the sheep pasture. Ernesto carefully lifted the calf-tel over the fence. Juan and I took the calf-tel off the palate and laid it on the ground. I still have to put hay into the calf-tel to give the four sheep someplace dry to lie down. The good thing about the calf-tel is that I can move it from place to place as the sheep dirty the hay. (They're not too careful about where they do their business. One place is as good as another).
The also took out the pig's water trough. I need to clean it and take it over to Mike's place to have him weld on rounds on each end and two on the long side so that I can fasten the feeder to the hog panel so that the pigs can't move it. That way I always know the feeder is where I want it to be for morning and evening feedings.
We moved square bales to the green barn and replace all the hay that I'd used up in December and January. The ATV's battery seems to be dying. We couldn't get it going so we just pushed it out of the way and used the tractor to move the hay on. First we put a palate on the forks and stacked hay on the palate. Juan climbed to the top of the stack (not all that high any more) and tossed down bales. Enrique and I stacked them on the palate. The guys drove the tractor over to the green barn and unloaded it and came back for two more loads.
Next we moved the hog panel that I'd been storing in the horse's grave in our turn around to the spot where we cut down the cascara tree. (There's actually no horse buried there, we just refer to it as that because we're weird). I wanted to be able to support the wisteria with something. I decided to use the hog panel bent in half and kept stationary by pounding in one six-foot long rebar at each corner.
We actually laid the hog panel out on its side and tied the bottom in the middle to make the width I wanted. I didn't actually want the height to be great, just enough to make a pleasant looking arbor. Before we could put the wisteria where we thought it should go, we had to free it from a metal panel. When it was young, instead of tying the wisteria to the panel, the very slender trunk was woven through the bars of this panel. We had to cut the panel into thirds to free the wisteria. Enrique used my long handled cutting tool to clip the rounds of metal.
Then we put the wisteria trunk and branches up and over the top of the hog panel arbor. The wisteria needs pruning badly but I will wait till it has had a chance to recover from the trauma of being freed from the wires and the metal panel.
By the time I get all the arbors in place I will have at least three in the cottage garden. I want to remove the stones directly in front of the hog panel arbor and use them to delineate a path through the arbor - so they'll be put parallel to each other out from the arbor to the edge of the flower bed. We'll lay in wood chips there to form a path that will go into the "shade" garden.
After that came the really hard job. We had to clean out the muck from the cattle lean-to and then drag the pasture in front of the barn to get rid of the accumulated manure and hay. We used the back blade which really doesn't work as well as the box scraper. We'll have to put the box scraper back on the three-point hitch.
We picked up two railroad ties that I stored in the equipment shed along with the tractor and other equipment such as our two trailers. I used the rotted-out tie in front of the lean-to entrance to make a shorter step up to the concrete in the barn. It worked for awhile but finally collapsed under the weight of the tractor and heavy bucket. The tie was pretty rotten. I used the other railroad tie as a barrier to keep the grain near the cows when I feed them their grain in the mornings.
It was about a 4.5 hour job in all. Juan and I pitch forked out a lot of muck and a lot of wet hay. Enrique scooped it up or we filled the bucket and he'd go out and drop it on top of the compost pile. When we were done we could walk on the ground without sinking into the muck. I'm sure the cattle are much happier now.
Cleaning out the barn also allow me to fix the collapsible feeder which wasn't collapsing because there was too much muck built up under the ends so it couldn't collapse.
I also asked Juan and Enrique if they would move the old manger back into the barn so that I could use it as a grain feeder. I had Enrique remove the old supports but not the dividers.
We gave a superficial wash to the tractor to remove most of the muck but I will have to spend some time tomorrow giving it a good scrub-down.
After we finished washing the tractor (a lick and a promise with me to do a better job tomorrow) we moved 2 round bales into the Hereford's cleaned out feeder and one into the Dexter's feeder. One of the round bales we put in the Hereford's feeder was the one that had the binding torn off it. I'll feed the hay that got left on the barn floor to the little Dexter bull. I'll be moving him back in with the adults a week Monday (26th).
Dinner was Tres Maria's Chipolte Chicken over rice with squash. I hate using prepared food but was too tired to fuss with dinner. I got a hard workout today.
I ordered white, red and green button tags with HCDF on one side and 0001, 0002, etc on the 20 tags. I plan on using the white tags for any cow born in 2007 or earlier, the red on 2008 calves (if I can catch them), and green on the 2009 calves. These will be used on any calf regardless of whether or not I bred it.
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