Rain off and on all day.
Worked at LCHD today for four and a half hours. Got a fairly early start and couldn't stop working. I was really making progress on the variables.
Got home at 2:45pm and sat for half an hour to recuperate.
Chas and I put a bale of hay into the Dexter feeder. I fed them with a bale of hay this morning. They were happy to see me and my treats.
Chas is putting together a shaker screen, railroad tie (for weight), and a couple of chains to make a pasture harrow for me, one that I can drag behind the tractor. The shaker screen has little hookies on each end that can be used to scrape the ground and level the mole hills and piles of poop. We borrowed something similar from our neighbor across the street and just loved it. Since we already had the screen we decided to put together a screen harrow of our own. I can hardly wait.
I can tell you I will not be fertilizing the winter pasture this year. It has been fertilized enough.
I bought a little drag behind the ATV lime and seed spreader a few days ago. It would no doubt be more economical to have someone come in to spread the lime but then I'd have to take down all the fencing.
Just as we were about to put the bale of hay into the feeder Pat, the landscaper, showed up.
Pat is going to give us a bid for putting in a trench containing a water line, 4-5 hydrants, and electric wire in plastic pipe all the way from one end of the property to the other (practically). We'll have water at the garden/chicken coop/potting shed all the way out to the equipment shed near the highway. And power too. Means I can do chores in the evening if I have to, or early in the morning. We'll buy the electric wire but he'll put it into the trench in the 1" protective plastic pipe. It's a project I scheduled for this year along with getting the back of the cow barns dug out and gravel laid in.
I met Pat at the Farm Store last year. We had a nice chat and I invited them (he and his wife) back to see the Dexters. We ran into each other at the Small Farmer's workshop on Saturday and I asked him if he had any interest in giving me a bid on this project. Obviously he did since he showed up.
Pat has his own trencher. He's basically a landscape gardener and has put in sprinkler systems all over the county. I may ask him for advice about my cottage garden.
The year after this one (2010) I'll gravel the circular driveway. Got to make improvements as I have the money.
(Although I do worry that I'll run out of fun projects to do and will be left with just the day-to-day mundane chores, LOL).
Pat came in for coffee and while we were chatting told us how to build a corral by using pipe as the top of the fence along with 3-4 lines of cable between the ground and the pipe that runs along the top. The cable is welded to the corner posts and has a turnbuckle on each strand of cable to tighten it. He says the cows definitely won't be able to get out of the corral.
He's built those before because he lived on a farm in Montana that ran 300 head of mostly Black Baldies and that's what they used. Hum, wonder if he'd be interested in helping me build the corral. I have a welder to weld the pipe (he says to use drilling pipe (pipe left over from oil well drilling) because it's so strong and because you can weld chain links to the drilling pipe for the cable to go through. I was thrilled to hear what he had to say. I just knew the Herefords, big as they are would just trash even a stout wooden structure.
Using cable probably won't be as expensive as buying 2x6x10s but even if it is I'll have peace of mind knowing it will be strong. He also mentioned using concrete posts but I'm not sure I'll go that far. Maybe I'll use those railroad rails I've been saving. They're quite long and I have quite a few of them, like maybe 10. They'd make perfect corners dropped into cement. Doesn't that sound wonderful? Having a real corral to contain the cows where I can work on them makes me happy.
I'll keep the corral open intermittently with a protein block in the corral so that they get used to going in there when I open it up.
Pat suggested that we'd get very good/excellent meat from a 900 lb steer. It would be much better than from our old cows. I never thought of butchering at that weight but it makes sense.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment