For the past couple of days I’ve been praying that I will be able to catch one or both of my yearling Dexter heifers.
We came home from my daughter’s karate class last night to discover that Maggie was all tangled up in fence line string that apparently was left within her reach of her horns. She loves to play with anything she can get her horns on and this time it was her undoing. Maggie wasn’t the one I was hoping to catch first, but apparently God thinks I need to tame her first.
I managed to snap a lead line on her halter while I was carefully cutting her free and then I led her, with Matilda tagging along, to the corral. I tied her up for an hour or so and then let her loose with the lead rope dragging behind her so that I can catch her again in the morning. She will spend a good portion of today tied up in the shed until she starts to get desensitized to my presence and starts allowing contact.
A field fence unroller/stretcher is a real back and time saver. I first heard a description and saw pictures of one of these nifty devices at the Homesteading Today board. The person had purchased theirs from Tractor Supply, but since there isn’t a Tractor Supply in the whole state of Oregon I had to go looking on-line.
The only other manufacturer I found was Farmland by Tarter. Fortunately Coastal Farm and Ranch is one of their suppliers and even then I had to have it special ordered. No one at my local Coastal had ever seen anything like it and a couple of the guys that helped me load it asked about buying it from me when I was done with it.
The description from Farmland is pretty accurate, “This Unroller/Stretcher lets one person handle the work of a crew. Field fence of all sizes can be unrolled and stretched easily without kinking or tangling. Once unrolled, fence can be stretched to the desired tightness and held in place for nailing or stapling. Easily hooks up to your 3-point hitch using the Category I pins included.” We never tried working with it with only one person, but I could see how that claim would be true. Usually we had at least two people and sometimes more helping attach the fence to the t-posts. “Many hands, makes light work!”
We also used Wedge-Loc fittings for all of our corners so that we didn’t need to use wooden posts. The best price I found for these fittings was at Kencove Farm Fence. Basically the system uses t-posts to form any sort of braces your fence might need. The Wedge-Loc company also has hinges that fit t-posts, and other accessories that allow you to build simple run in shelters using t-posts and plywood.
“There is no place like a farm for raising children, where they can have in such abundance the fresh air and sunshine, with pure living water, good wholesome food and a happy outdoor life” -Laura Ingalls Wilder
It is surely a blessing to be able to live on a little acreage and give the kids a chance to experience the joys, responsibilities, and even the occasional disappointments of caring for a variety of critters.
For the first time ever I decided to enter the County Fair in the photography category. Just went and picked up my entries and discovered that I received three awards. A third place in the Farm Animal category for the picture of Sunshine (our new herd buck) and a 1st place in the same category for the picture of Bekah and Stormy. The picture of Bekah and Stormy also received a special award for “Most Representative of the Fair Theme”.
This evening we had another small addition to the “ranch”. Koozy is a friendly 12-15 year old miniature donkey who is used to children and doesn’t mind giving them rides. Ari & Bekah are thrilled with him, but the cows aren’t quite sure what to think of him, especially after he chased them around the pasture when they dared to wander off from his location.
Right now they are out on the newly fenced pasture (yes it is all finally done!!!!) and he is in the corral. We will try the introductions again in the morning when the cows can more easily see the fence line. Hopefully they will all adjust to sharing the same three acres, and we won’t have to fence in a separate paddock for him.
Hubby came home early from work this afternoon and got a whole bunch of t-posts pounded in! Only about 45 more to go and then we will be ready to try out the fancy field fence unroller/stretcher that I got for the tractor. It is supposed to make installing fence a one person operation. Since he is off tomorrow we might have the pasture completely fenced by dark tomorrow evening.
Just in time for the newest member of our mini-ranch to arrive. But I will save that announcement until he is actually here.
This morning I got all the old electric fence wire and posts pulled at the bottom of the pasture – had to hack into the blackberry jungle to do it. Also cut half a pick-up load of grass for the goats and cows. It is better nutrition and a whole lot cheaper than feeding them hay. Plus cutting grass by with a hand scythe is good exercise for me. But I’ll be glad when the pasture is finally fenced and I don’t have to do that any more.
Now that those old posts are out of the way and the wire is cleaned up, we can figure out the fence line for the new fence and start pounding posts. Hubby doesn’t have a day off this week, but is going to try and take at least an extra half day at the beginning of next week to help me pound posts.
I’ve been reading up on folks like Gene Sollock who raise their beef cows 100% on pasture without any supplimental grain or hay! I’m hoping to figure a way to do that sort of thing with my cows on the just under 3 acres of pasture we have.
There is entire series of videos available on YouTube featuring his on the farm seminars. Here is episode #1:
You can find links to the rest of the epsiodes here.
What an adventure the last twenty-four hours have turned out to be! Monday afternoon I finished up the buck shelter and moved Sunshine into his new digs. Then I used the left over wood to make him a little play platform since he likes climb.
Got a call back from the nice guy that gave me hay Sunday evening that he did indeed have a couple of tons of grass hay available. My original plan was to pick up just one ton on Monday evening, and do the rest later in the week. But then hubby said he would do the unloading and I got ambitious and got the entire two tons loaded out of the field! Fortunately the field is less than a mile and a half down the road, because I had to make 5 trips to get it all here. Needless to say I was pretty sore this morning.
Today was dehorning day. I stopped off at the power company yard on my way to the rental place and picked up three wooden spools to make a larger playground for Sunshine and Stormy to climb on. Then it was off to the rental place to pick up the rusty old squeeze chute. Took almost an hour for them to get it working. Got it home and then had some trouble getting it set up in the corral, but with the help of my sister, we finally got it ready and the girls coaxed into the holding pen just about the time the vet was supposed to arrive. A half hour later he shows and after a brief consultation decides that the set up, timing etc just wasn’t right and didn’t want to go ahead with the job. Oh yeah, his office had forgotten to tell me in all my many calls that we needed to have electricity available at the site. At least he didn’t charge me for the visit. So no horns were touched, but at least we did manage to get a pour on dewormer on them.
Had to call hubby for some extra “he-man” muscle to get the squeeze chute out of the corral and hooked back up to the truck. If all this heavy lifting doesn’t kill me I’m going to end up with some “he-man” muscle of my own. Never a dull momment on the “ranch”!
Our new herd sire, who is officially known as “Capri-Dance RA Maple’s Sunshine”, arrived today. Bekah named him Sunshine because of his color and he will probably be known as “Sunny”. This handsome fellow was born March 16, 2008 and comes from some great milky lines. He will be co-owned with the breeder we got our orgional goats from. All of the does were very happy to see him!
It’s 7am and Bekah and I are walking hand in hand down to the cow corral to feed & water this morning when she looks up and says to me with all the earnestness that a 4 year old can muster, “I love doing chores!” It’s those kind of priceless moments that make it all worthwhile.
Actually I love doing chores too – especially at this time of year when the temperature in the morning and evening is just right and you can smell the freshly harvested rye grass on the breeze.
Morning chores only take about 20 minutes and evening chores (i.e “putting the chickens to bed”) take 10 minutes or less right now, but next year we will be milking more animals so that means we will have to be up a lot earlier in the morning. Some how I don’t think Bekah will mind. I just pray that she will still love chores as much when she is old enough to do more than just carry a feed bucket or hold the water hose.
