Stacking hay

Sunday I got my hay for the year from Wyatt.  I plan to have cattle over this next Winter so I filled my barn with hay.  I always thought the barn would hold 300 hay bales. Now I know... the barn will hold 330 bales when filled from wall to wall and all the way to the front door.

First I had some prep work for the barn.  Friday I cleaned out the barn.  I had 15 bales of straw and I carried them up to the attic after sweeping the dust out of there.  I also put the two hay bales I had left from last year in the attic.

I removed this structure.  I'm not sure what is was for, perhaps to hold hay for livestock allowed in the barn? 

Years ago to keep sunlight off the hay I hung these old coats over the two windows.

I replaced the coats with window blinds.

The two new horses were a pain as they wanted to come in the barn to check things out and to lick up the stray loose hay on the floor.

A clean and empty barn.

As you can see Wyatt's bale wagon stacks the bales high.  Eight rows high.   The wagon holds 55 bales.

The stack is so high I have to use a ladder to remove the bales from the top two rows.

When my Uncle Larry rewired the barn a few years ago I had him attach the light to a board nailed to the ceiling beam. I wanted the light low enough so the beam didn't block the light from the bulb. Last year I discovered the light was a touch too low as I broke the bulb when I tossed the top bale on the stack under the light.  Friday I removed the board and attached the light to the ceiling beam.  This gave me just enough room to safely stack the bales under the light.

I was able to move the first stack of 55 bales by the time Wyatt arrived with another stack.  Fortunately he had to bale more hay bales so I had a break before he arrived with the third stack.  I still had a few bales to move when he arrived with the forth stack.  I then had him alternate placing bales in his hay barn with bringing me the fifth and sixth stacks.  I was slowing down as the day when on.  It was good to have breaks between the fourth, fifth and sixth stacks, but I found I was starting to get stiff in the time between working.

The strings on the bales are not super tight.  Since my stacks are only five rows high this is not a problem.  I did have a problem when two bale were loose enough that they came out of the strings when I carried them against my leg.  Argh!  I stuffed the loose hay from these two bales in the gap on the right side.  If the barn was one foot wider I could have had a complete stack of 10 and not a single stack of five.

Wyatt's bales are about 60 lbs each.  That means 33 bales make a ton of hay.   330 bales total.   So I moved 10 tons of hay on Sunday.  No wonder I was tired at the end of the day.


Here is a 1:07  minute video of the hay bale wagon in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkEE2fLy5Wo

First stump bonfire of the year

Last night Tammy and I had our second stump-burning bonfire of the year.  I figured it was about time to get the photos of the first bonfire up on the blog.

Back on May 11 Tammy and I had our first bonfire of the year to burn a tree stump.  This was a stump I had dug around last year after it had burnt to ground level after we did the Spring burning of the pasture grass and the old rotting stump caught fire.

The stump was right on the hayfield/middle pasture fence line.  The fire does not seem to have affected the barb wire fence.  The stump was somewhat near a large pine tree so - while at times it doesn't look like it - I tried to keep the fire low so the fire's heat would not dry out and kill any branches.  So far it seems as if I was successful.

Even close to the fire Tammy was cold and she wore her hooded sweatshirt.  She was also tired and fell asleep in the chair while watching the fire.

Fire is dying down for the night with the main part of the stump smaller but still there.

One last cardboard box

The next morning the stump looked like this.

The stump still smoldered and after a few days it was mostly gone.

Here it is a few weeks later, and after the cattle had been in the pasture.  The darker dirt is where I started to fill the hole back in.  The whiter dirt on the right is where the cattle messed with the dirt.

Here is a 2 minute 30 second video of the fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeFU6F1Ngyg

Jealous horses

Friday I moved the cattle back to the middle pasture.  The move went smooth.  I took along a bag of freshly cut watermelon rinds and the cattle followed me across the south pasture to the gate.  Once Momma saw the gate was open she ran off through the gate.

The horses saw this activity from the corral.  The two new horses stood in the corner of the corral closest to the pasture and stared at the cattle for the longest time.  The other two horses didn't care.

Later I heard bang and splashing at the water trough.  The new spotted horse stood with her front legs in the trough and kicked up the water splashing it out of the trough and all over everything.

What the heck?!

I went out over to her and the trough and she got out of the trough.  But the damage was done.  She fouled the water.  The other horses checked the water but didn't want anything to do with it.  So I emptied the water from the trough, washed it out and refilled it with fresh water.

Then the spotted horse was acting crazy in the yard.  She would look in the tool shed windows then suddenly walk to the back of the tool shed and look, then walk back to the tool shed window and stare inside and then to the back of the tool shed.  She did this over and over and her movements were agitated.  I kept my distance from her.

A short time later I walked out to the pastures with tools and a wheelbarrow.  When I was crossing the middle pasture where the cattle were laying in the shadow of a pine tree the two horses again came to the corral corner and then whinnied at me.

What is up with the horses?  Jealous?

Two more horses

Tuesday the owners brought two more horses to the pasture.  These horses have never been here before.  Two mares.  The owner said they would end up being the dominant two horses once they got the pecking order sorted out.

One horse is the daughter of Sierra, but those two don't know it.  The other horse is the mother of Lily but those two don't know it.  I am unclear as to why this is but had something to do with how the babies were raised.

One horse is named Cheynne and the other is named something like Cherokee (Chair-e-o-kee).

So far they are behaving.  The two new horses keep together more than spend time with Sierra and Lily.  The spotted horse kicked at Sierra at the water trough this evening so they are still working things out.

Cowgirl and Lily in the front yard

Here are some older photos of Cowgirl and Lily.  Last Sunday Cowgirl was taken out and replaced by Sierra, an older horse more in need of fattening up on my grass.

I have the horses in the yard to eat the tall grass.

Daisy tolerates the horses in the yard but I think she would rather have them back in the corral.

Raspberry weeding

I lost my strawberry patch last year to grass...

Now this year the grass is trying to take over my raspberry patch.

Daisy came to keep me company while I weeded.  Sometimes she would search for mice, sometimes she would lay in the shade or in the raspberry patch, and sometimes she would act 'crazy'.

Here is a 1 minute 48 second video of Daisy and the raspberry patch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X81PRfN8UaI

Horse broke fence

This afternoon before the owners came to get Cowgirl I discovered my back yard fence was broken.

A horse broke two boards but did not get out into the hayfield.  I don't know why the horse did it.  Last night Lily was acting weird and skittish for an hour and for a while would suddenly take off running around the yard which would get Cowgirl running too.  But the fence was not broken then.

This morning the horses were skittish when part of my stack of tree branches fell.  They kept looking at the stack for a few minutes until they were reassured no more of the stack would fall.

I fixed the fence before the owners brought Sierra to swap for Cowgirl.   For more on their visit and Daisy's interactions with their dog, follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1esC0B2Pkks

Cattle behaving

The cattle have behaved since their jailbreak.  On Friday I was sore from the dental work to prepare for my crown so I didn't get to fixing the jailbreak area until Saturday.

I didn't want the cattle see me do the work as they are very curious as to what I do and often come when I am working or else after I am done to check out my work.

The cattle came towards the river side of the pasture before I got all my tools and material staged along my fence to go over and fix the fence along the river on Wyatt's property.

So I had to wait until they got bored and drifted off.

Momma stared wistfully at the taller grass on the other side of the fence.  Baby is next to her.

I had a few cattle who wanted to sniff or lick my clothes.

The three cattle in back are my cattle.  60 and 70 are the flighty steers.  Notice they have their ears back until they relaxed a little bit.

I got the fence fixed and improved in a few spots.  I never had cattle cross at the deep part of the river's bend, but there is always a first time for everything related to cattle.

Garden failure

This happened before I went to North Dakota.  I don't want you to think I tried to plant a garden this late in the year!

I planned on having a garden this year.  I hadn't had a garden for several years now and the grass grew in the old garden spot.  After I used Bob and Jan's rototiller to dig their garden I came down to dig my garden.

For the past month I had laid plastic and tarps over the spot where I was going to have a garden.

When it came time to remove them to dig the garden I found the black plastic killed the grass while the blue tarps did not.  Unfortunately I had more blue tarps than black plastic.

I mowed the grass then started to rototill.  The grass roots were dense and the ground was harder than I expected.  After a number of passes to break up the ground I looked down and saw lots and lots of grass roots.

 Healthy looking grass roots.

Very healthy looking grass roots.  Too healthy looking.  I lost my strawberry garden because I couldn't keep the grass roots out.   So I threw in the towel and quit roto-tilling.  I will have to find a way this Summer to kill the grass and its roots.  Then next year I will have a garden.

Once I quit roto-tilling the garden Daisy came and played in the freshly dug dirt.  Follow this link to her blog to see her in action.

http://tallpinescat.blogspot.com/2013/06/in-garden.html

Pasture tree

A photo of a tree in the north pasture the other evening.

Not the most fun of days

First, I had a dental visit.  Wednesday's lunch resulted in a tooth problem.  I thought a large filling had broken or chipped off near the gum line on a molar.  The toughest food item I ate was broccoli.  The $86 dental visit discovered a small piece of the tooth had broken off up there.  Apparently fillings don't flex and over time due to stresses of eating, and expansion and contraction from hot and cool items, large fillings can cause fractures and breakage on a tooth.

The fix: a crown.   After removal of the large filling and building up the tooth to support the crown.

Toss in a dental exam and cleaning, etc. since this is a new dentist.  (I haven't been to a dentist since 2003?  2004? 2005? and my previous dentist may have retired as I can't find him.

Cost: over $1500. 

Yah. 


Then my bicycle needs a new freewheel.  I bought what I thought was the correct item but when I got home I discovered that I had forgotten I changed a wheel last year when the rim broke and the new wheel does not have the same type of freewheel.  And I don't have a tool to remove this type of freewheel.

After the crown-prep dental visit tomorrow, I will have to visit the bicycle shop again.


Then in the evening... my neighbor Wyatt came over.  A bunch of cattle were on his property down by the river.

*sigh* 

So I had to herd 15 head of cattle back home through the trees and tall grass.  Six of the herd were still in my pasture so I couldn't leave the gate open.

The cattle were pretty calm.  I brought some grain in a bucket but that didn't interest them too much.  They milled around me but wouldn't follow me.  I start to try to herd them but then a deer ran off and the cattle got excited by my herding and the deer and ran back to the river.

I was able to herd them through the trees over halfway to the pasture before they came out of the trees to the grass.

The grass was tall but the cattle headed on their own towards the pasture.

Then they stopped.  I had to herd them until they got close enough for them to see the six cattle still in the pasture.

Then I herded them along the fence to the gate.  The gate is a small four to six width.  In the past I had trouble getting cattle to actually go through this gate.   The only trouble I had this time was that the six cattle wanted to come out while I tried to herd the 15 cattle through the gate.  The cattle started to get agitated and then three of them made a break away from the gate.

Wyatt was helping me herd by driving his truck in the background.  He cut off the three cattle and turned them around while I got the rest of the cattle through the gate and way from the gate inside the pasture.  Then I went back and herded the three cattle through the gate.

The cattle once they were back in the pasture.  They were calm and followed me across the pasture until I left it and returned home.
 

.

While I was hot and sweaty from herding the cattle - and itchy from walking through the tall grass that is beginning to release their seeds and pollen - I had to figure out how the cattle got out of the pasture.

The answer: the cattle went from the island across the river to Wyatt's property.  The simple fence I had maintained on his property had eroded in a few spots from the high water this Spring and fallen down.  Even though the cattle have plenty of tall green grass in the pasture, the spot where the fence fell was enough for the bored cattle to get an itch to go on a trip.  Before it got dark I laid a bunch of dead tree branches at the spot until I can do a better job tomorrow of fixing the fence.

On the island

The river is slowly going down.  Once again, the cattle discovered the island.  They have lots of tall green grass in the pasture, but you know... "The grass is greener..."