Huckleberries

I am ready to crash.  I got up early (before 6 am!) to go pick huckleberries with Joyce.  She was here at 7 am.  We arrived at the huckleberry patch at 8 am and promptly started picking huckleberries.  Four hours later (which flew by and felt like only two hours to me) Joyce had picked two gallons of berries and I picked one gallon.  Joyce - in her late 70s - is a fast picker and she has not slowed down since we last picked huckleberries four or five years ago.

The morning was cool and our time spent picking huckleberries had moderate temperatures.  Once we left the mountains and returned to the Valley we were back in the blast furnace heat.

As the huckleberry bushes are low and I am tall I spent a fair amount of time on my knees in order to save my back.  The knees of my pants are stained purple.

Supposedly this is a banner year for huckleberries as there are lots of them.   Ads have people selling them for $40 to $45 a gallon.

July 30 sunset rain cloud

This evening we had a large rain cloud move by just north of me.  Unfortunately I didn't get any rain even though the cloud must have had a lot - the temperature dropped a fair amount as it passed by.  As the cloud started to move away eastward the winds kicked in.

More hay and white horse's pleasure

I thought I was done with hay but Monday noon Dan said he had three more large round bales if I wanted them.  Sure.  I borrowed the skid steer loader from Jamie again.  But the time I got permission and returned with the loader Dan had rolled the three bales off his trailer.  I used the loader to stack the bales on pallets.

Early evening Monday Dan called and said he had two final bales.  Did I want them?   Sure.  Better to have a few too many than a few too few.  Who knows?  It could be a harsh Winter and the cattle go through lots of hay.

For the final two bales I laid pallets down and Dan and I rolled the bales off his trailer onto the pallets.  Who needs a skid steer loader?

For sure I am now done getting any more hay bales.  I have 29 large bales now.

The cattle are still at the neighbor's place and are behaving.


The white horse must be in heat as today I caught her for a second time masturbating on the support boards for my entry way. I had to put a large roll of field fence in front of the boards to keep her away.  First I tried to push her away with my foot against her rear end (taking care in case she tried to kick me) but she tried to ignore me as she was concentrating on pushing against the boards. Finally she moved away reluctantly. I had to stop her as otherwise she may break the boards as she pushes and pushes her rear end a certain way against them. I was in the house when I heard the boards groan as she pushed against them.   I know... I'm mean to stop a female from her pleasure.

The red "V" is what the white horse masturbates against.

Sunset photos

Sunday night's sunset.

Horses in yard again

Remember when on Thursday July 17 I let the horses into the fruit tree and garden area?

http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2014/07/fruit-tree-area-for-horses.html

That area is completely eaten down to almost nothing.  So on Saturday morning I let the horses back into the yard.  For two reasons.  First I didn't want them to walk though the NE pasture with the hay bales to get to the north pasture.  Second, the yard grass grew since the horses were last in there.  Usually I only let the horses in the yard once a year, but this year with Tammy leaving I never mowed the front yard to even it out, and the June wet weather got the grass growing again good.

I figure the horses will have the yard re-eaten in three or four days.  Then they can go out to the tall grass in the north pasture.

A difference from last time the horses were in the yard..  now when they take a break they often stand by the house door.

Round hay bales

I got all my hay for the year.  Cross my fingers as something often changes and I need more hay.   I have 9 to 10 tons of small hay bales already in the barn and today I got 24 large round bales.  In the past Dan said his friend produced bales that weighed 1600 to 1700 lbs each.  If 1600 lbs - and these bales look like they weigh this much - then  I got a little over 19 tons of hay.  At 1700 lbs I would have a little over 20 tons.  All in all I should have at least 28 to 29 tons of hay.  This should be enough hay so I don't have to scramble to find hay next Spring.  We'll see.

Dan delivered the hay from a guy Dan knew.  With Dan's flatbed truck pulling his flatbed trailer he could haul four bales total.  If I used my pickup I could only haul three bales on the trailer.   Dan's friend with the hay brought out one load of eight bales so I could get all the hay today.

Why the rush to get all the hay today?  Think of how hard it is to move a 1600 lb hay bale.  I can barely push a 1200 lb bale.   To make unloading easier and quicker I talked to my neighbor Jamie.  He has a tractor but it is smallish and I learned it can barely move the 1200 lb bales he has.  But Jamie - a logger - has a good sized skid steer with a bale spear that he let me use.

The skid steer saved the day.  I hate to think how hard it would have been without its use.   Jamie needed it back by Saturday so that was why Dan and I tried to get all the hay done Friday.  I even canceled going on a hike to Stanton Ridge that I wanted to do for some time.

I got the skid steer on Thursday in case Dan could bring a load Thursday night.  Nope.

Daisy of course had to give the skid steer the once over.

Since I had my arms crushed while operating a smaller version of these back in 1980 I took running it slow.  And moving a 1600+ lb heavy bale also had me going slow.  I didn't want to tip over, even if wearing a seat belt (which is required in order to start the machine).

Since I have a a number of wooden pallets laying around I put the bales on them to keep them off the ground.  I placed the bales on higher ground than where I had the bales last Spring; but still I feel better having the bales off the ground.  They can't help but draw moisture from the ground.


The first four bales...

All 24 bales from above.

Four across...

Six long.

A pretty stout bale.    (The green spots are where the bale spear and two small prongs went in the bale).

While round bales shed water, still, it doesn't hurt to throw tarps over the tops of them.  I'll do that next week.  And I'll have to rake the ground.  Turning on a dime sure tears the ground up - especially when carrying 1600+ lbs.
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Bucket of bull thistle flowers

Wednesday, after fixing one of Bob's and Jan's underground sprinkler connections, I decided to clip off the bull thistle flowers growing on two plants in my hayfield.  The flowers are getting ready to turn to seed and I haven't gotten to spraying weeds yet.

Once clipped my flowers I noticed all the bull thistle plants on my absentee neighbor's property across the road. After I got on his property I saw there were more plants than I saw from the road.  I thought I would clip flowers off some of the plants, but not all of them as I had other projects to do.   But the more I clipped the more I kept going.  I ended up clipping all of them and filled a five gallon bucket with the flowers.  I only put in the bucket the flowers that had gone to seed (but thankfully not opened) or were turning to seed.  The other flowers I left on the ground.

Garden path

I tried again this year to have a garden. I was late in rotor-tilling the garden area in early June.  Once I got the ground tilled I needed to lay down concrete blocks to have a path along the fences on the west and south sides.  When I had a garden before I had grass paths on those sides and they were a pain to mow in addition to getting muddy when it rained.  And I had various concrete pieces I needed to use instead of having them just sit around.

I laid down some blocks on the west side and then the rain started.  Lots of rain in June.  I finally finished the west path during Tammy's yard sale when she didn't want me around.

Then interruptions again.

The past few days, after letting the horses in the fruit tree and garden area, I thought I could quickly finish the path on the south side.  I finally finished today.

Needless to say - no garden this year.  But this effort should make next year's garden preparation go quicker.


The view of the area after I took up the plastic and boards used to kill the grass.  For the most part they did, but not completely.  It was tough going through the roots with the rotor-tiller.  In the photo following this one you can see how the grass is coming back.

As you can the paths are not straight.  I tried to align the large blocks with the fence posts and the fence is not straight.

Also as you can see, I had so many concrete pieces of different sizes and styles.  As these pieces were gathered over the years, instead of purchased just for the garden I had this and that and not enough of one style.

Function over style once again.  Good thing Tammy is not here else I would get crap on how bad it looks.

The three odd pieces in the middle... odd and ends left over.  They are not part of the path.  I just left them here for now.  They will come in handy when I lay plastic down later to kill the grass for next year's garden.

Hayshed gate

A few days ago I noticed the horses pushed against the hayshed wooden gates and broke part of them.  I fixed the gates.   Then I decided to finally fix the north gate's lag bolt hinge.  The lag bolt had come out of the supporting post and board.  Past attmepts to fix the lag bolt resulted in the hole getting stripped out and enlarged.  I had to be careful when opening the gate as the bolt would pop out.

I cut off the bad part of the board and replaced it with a newer one in which to screw in the bottom lag bolt.

I also wanted to have the gate sit slightly higher as the gate would catch on the ground as I opened it.  The top bolt needed also go slightly over to one side so the gate would not track down when opened.  I got distracted talking with the neighbor lady and my brain checked out slightly and I drilled the new hole lower when I needed to go higher as shown below

The gate now opens smoothly and doesn't drag against the ground.

 The horses naturally were interested in what I was doing.  Here one horse inspects my fix.

Daisy kept me company while I worked.  She was inside the hayshed and when I finished she hopped up on the gate.  Here you can see how much I raised the gate.  It used to be even lower than the other gate on the left.

The horses inspecting my tools.

The next photos show how I have to protect my little trees from the livestock.   The cattle especially will chomp on the trees.  That is why the tree below is narrower on the lower half than the upper half.

Other makeshift tree protections.  Some trees are out growing their protection.

Final fence rebuild for now

I have rebuilt quite a bit of fence this year and am tired of it. I also rebuilt part of the corral fence for which I haven't gotten to posting photos of.  On my to-do list.

After completing the fence rebuild by the road last week, the last fence rebuilds were fixes for rotting posts.  First up was the front yard fence.  July 15 I replaced three small rotted posts at one spot with one newer solid post.

Before

After

That didn't take too long so I went to fix the rotted corner post between the hayfield, south and middle pastures.  Being a corner post this called for a railroad tie.  And a secondary smaller railroad tie to make a solid start to the fence.  While the next gate on my list to be replaced is a short distance (50 ft or so) away, I am so tired of rebuilding fences that other than the corner posts which had to be done, I didn't rebuild this short section of fence as I knew it would take a few days.

New corner posts.

Auction feeder

Saturday I attended an auction in south Kalispell.  The items were mainly farm and ranch consignments.

The prices were decent to a good buy.  If I knew my mechanics there was an older Massey Ferguson tractor model 1130 with a cab, loader and a bale spear that appeared decent. It sold for only $2900.  A swather and a baler also appear to go for a reasonable to low price.

They also had two John Deere 510 round balers.  They looked old but in decent shape. One sold for only $1250 and the other one with older looking belts sold for $500. When Wyatt delivered my hay last week I told him I may buy a round baler and have him use it to make round bales for me in the future.  I wish he was at the auction or that I had a cell phone to call him as I was interested in one of these balers.  But as I know nothing of the mechanics I wouldn't bid on them.  I don't want to spend money on something I would have to fix.

Since my metal feeder is bent I had my eye on a metal round hay feeder at the auction.

The auction had a HW Tombstone bull feeder.  A good quality heavy duty feeder.  The local Murdoch's farm and ranch store sells them for $740.  I didn't know the exact price at the time other than I remembered it being between $600 and $800.

http://www.murdochs.com/shop/hutchison-western-tombstone-bull-feeder

While things can go cheap at an auction, all it takes is one person bidding against you to bid the price up.  He bid at $250.  I bid at $350.  He bid at $400.  I declined a bid at $450.  The auctioneer offered another bid at $425 and I took it.  It seemed like forever that he tried to entice the other bidder to bid $450.  He declined and I got the feeder.

I didn't get it cheap but at a reasonable price since the feeder looked like it had been never used.  No dents or scratches or signs of use.  Someone may have bought it and then for whatever reason never used it.

I like that the feeder sits on "loops" instead of the entire feeder sitting on the ground.  My old feeder completely sat on the ground and that is what did it in as the rust started from there.   This feeder also has guard bars that angle in.  This should let the cattle reach the center of the feeder, unlike my older feeder.

Smoke

Forest fires in central Washington State are filling our skies with smoke.  Friday the smoke moved into the Valleys.  The air quality declined all day and is now rated as unhealthy.  Friday I went hiking down in the Mission Mountains.  Up high in the mountains the smoke level didn't change all day: increase or decrease.  But once we came down out of the mountains we could tell the smoke had definitely gotten worse in the Valleys.


Here is how one usually sees the mountains  (taken earlier this week).

Here is how the view looked like this afternoon.

Apparently there are lots of fires in Oregon and Idaho too.  So, even if the wind shifts direction we will get smoke from a fire somewhere.
 

Fruit tree area for the horses

Wednesday I did some "horse proofing" in the fruit tree and garden area.

This is the best my rhubarb has done.  I don't know if the weather caused this, the horses eating it down last year, or if digging a larger area around the plants so the leaves don't go into the grass did it.  Now the leaves again grow out into the grass.

In the past the cattle and horses avoided the rhubarb leaves since they didn't like the taste.  But one or more horses developed a taste last year and started to eat it down.  Hence the cage around the plant this year.

Four strawberry plants are all that are left from my patch.  The grass overtook the rest of the plants.  It appears my raspberry patch may be heading that way this year.  I haven't found the time to keep up the weeding.


Thursday morning I let the horses in here to eat the grass down.  Usually this occurs earlier in the year and the grass is not as tall.