Cold, Wet January

It's been a cold, wet January, so not much has been going on down at the farm. All the kids activities, and wet weather have been collaborating against me going to the prop and getting anything done.

However, I was able to sneak down for a few minutes last weekend to check on things and snap a few photos. I had an interesting experience while I was throwing out some hay for the goats.

It was pretty quiet, when I heard a truck pull into the unfenced property next door. Pretty much anyone pulling in there is up to no good, so I wasn't surprised to hear the sound of lumber crashing to the ground. Even though there's a dump center about a mile down the road, people seem to like to dump their junk in vacant properties. Sure enough, this guy was doing the same.

I decided jump on the quad and go catch them in the act and get a license plate number, so I strapped on the .45, got the camera, and fired up the quad. As soon as they heard me fire up the quad, I could hear them scrambling to get in their truck and they tore off down the road. The race was on!

Unfortunately, trucks are faster than quads and all I caught was the sight of them going over the rise. Next time, I might have to sneak through the woods.

On a lighter note, it looks like it takes about a month for the goats to eat through a full roll of hay. Here's all that's left from rolling it on 12/20. They'd pretty much demolished it by 1/20

Before

From 2011-12-20

After

From 2012-01-24

The mushrooms are finally growing. I'd pretty much given up on them, but I was moving the logs around and noticed these oyster mushrooms growing out of the bottom of the log. Maybe there's hope after all.

From 2012-01-24

The interlopers ladder is still in place. Some kids dad is going to be real mad when he goes to find his ladder.  It's been here since mid-January.  It'll be interesting to see how long it's there.

From 2012-01-24

I've been too lazy to haul the endless bottles we find to garbage can, so I decided to start making a bottletree in the corral, to help the goats better appreciate art and the finer things in life.  Actually, it looks better in real life, when the sun is shining.

From 2012-01-24

Puttering Around the Farm

With all the schedule disruption and mud this month, we didn't get much work done on the farm. About all we accomplished were basic maintenance and setting up the Christmas toys. Since the kids had a lot of extra time on their hands, they came down and helped me out. Sarah's job was to be the archivist and take lots of pictures. Her other job was to sit in the tree stand and help me site a good place to put my new deer feeder.

From 2012-01-03

The feeder works well, but I'm going to have to experiment a bit with the siting. I'd like it to be somewhere close to the tree stand but not so close that the deer get disturbed by my comings and goings.

From 2012-01-03

I still have a lot of cleanup to do around the pond area. One thing I didn't factor in when I made it was that once it filled up with water, I'd be very limited on what I could do to it. Now I'm probably going to have to wait until it dries up in the summer before I can do any serious work. Here's Seth standing on some trees around the pond that I need to finish cutting.

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

Trying to start one of the brush piles on fire. Believe it or not, after dumping several cups of diesel on the pile, I still couldn't get it to start. It ended up fizzling out. It's tough to get things to burn in Tennessee.

From 2012-01-03

I love driving around the bulldozer. I took a full day off work and just bulldozed all day. One of the best days in recent memory. Having fun and being productive, what better combo could you get.

From 2012-01-03

Playing With Fire

Sarah did a cool photo series on us using my "gas fuse" technique to light a pile of brush. I think it looked pretty cool. Try to scroll through fast to get the full effect.

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

From 2012-01-03

Burning Bushes and Feeding the Goats

My education in the vagaries of the hay business and feeding goats continues. We started off the winter by feeding the goats with square bales from a local farmer. However, we found out late in the season that hay has become something of a hot commodity around here and prices are going up quickly. The reason? The drought in Texas. Apparently, the prices have gotten so high that it's become cost effective to send the hay there, so now there's none here and the people that do have it are holding on tightly. We were also getting tired of having to go down every couple of days to feed them. The animals plow through the small square bales pretty quickly, so we were looking for new ideas. Luckily we found a guy in Spring Hill that was selling the giant 5x5 netted bales at really reasonable price. Each roll has enough hay to feed the animals for a month (or possibly more). I also found out that the netting is superior to string tied rolls because the strings cause pinch points that allow water to pool and seep in. Water and hay don't mix. When it's netted, the top layer gets moist, but the insides stay dry. I was happy to find a cost effective alternative, so I had the farmer load us up a couple rolls.

From 2011-12-20

I was a little worried the trailer wouldn't handle it, but it performed admirably and we were able to haul them with no problems.

From 2011-12-20

Sawyer was an excellent helper and had a great time climbing around on the rolls.

From 2011-12-20

We ran into a problem when we arrived at the prop. How do we get these monsters off the trailer without a tractor? We decided to string a rope between the trees and then pull forward.

From 2011-12-20

It worked pretty well. The roll came right off the end.

From 2011-12-20

Once it was off the trailer, we were able to muscle it into the corral. Sadie was very happy with her new endless food supply.

From 2011-12-20

I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and took a day off work, as a Christmas present to myself. Since there was no wind and we had a couple days with no rain, I decided it would be a good time to burn one of the big brush piles. It's hard to see how big the pile is from this picture. It's about 7-8 feet high and 20-25 yards long.

From 2011-12-20

The dry cedar burns better than gas! I just put a cup full of diesel on it and lit a napkin and we were off to the races.

From 2011-12-20

The pile burned down to a smoldering pile. The only thing left was the stumps. That's then next problem I have to figure out. How to remove the dirt from the stumps so they'll burn? I've tried rolling them and beating them up with the bulldozer but that dirt is tenacious. I can bang the smaller stumps against the ground and clear them but, obviously that won't work on the big ones. The experiment continues ....

From 2011-12-20

Great Fall Weather

We continued to take advantage of the beautiful fall weather to clean up and build roads. This week we were lucky to have Sammy finally join us after a long absence. The first of the two big projects was to move the old fireplace that was left over from the blown down cabin. The problem was that it was in the middle of the area I'm trying clear for a barn and was becoming a pain to work around. The rock was very nicely shaped, and it seemed a shame to bury it, so we decided to stack it by hand, out of the way, to save for some future use. We worked hard and got most of it stacked in about an hour. However, I think we'll be turning up rocks for months to come.

From 2011-11-21

Part of Sammy's job was to be the documentarian as we worked. She has a real talent for photography and took these nice pictures of the goats. The first one is of Little Momma giving us one of her looks. She's very smart but standoffish and only comes around when there's food. We like to joke that it's lucky she has brains, because she definitely wasn't blessed with looks.

From 2011-11-21

Gracie is the social one. Here she is, sticking her head through the fence, fighting to get some corn. She is a fun little goat and will follow us anywhere. She is very curious is always coming up to see whats going on.

From 2011-11-21

We also did a lot of work getting the new field cleared so we could start putting the road in. The idea is to create a big loop, so that we can pull a trailer straight through and not have to back it in. We've been taking it slow, to get a chance to see how the water drains during big storms, to see how it looks in different seasons, and to just get a general idea of how to lay things out.

From 2011-11-21

After much thought I finally took the bulldozer to it and laid out where we want the road to go. So far, I like it. Once things dry out, we'll try pulling the trailer through it and see how it does. The next step will be to dig a deep hole for the septic system I'm noodling.

Goat Wrangling

We did a lot of farm work Saturday. The goats have been penned up in the main corral for the longest duration since we've had them. During the spring and summer, they'd always been out in the forest with plenty to eat. Now that fall has hit, we've had to keep them in main corral and feed them hay. We've also had to deal with keeping their stall cleaned out.

From 2011-11-14

I've alternated between a couple of strategies and haven't really settled on the best one yet. The first is to rake out the straw and burn it. It's pretty easy to do but as you can see below, the wet hay is very smoky when it burns and it's kind of a pain to babysit the fire. The second is to just shovel it into the little trailer, spread it around, and use it for compost. You don't have to deal with the fire, but it's a pain to hook the trailer up to the quad and it's less efficient because you have to shovel twice. I'll keep experimenting until I find the best way.

From 2011-11-14

Our next project was to deworm the goats. It sounds a lot worse than it is. We just feed them some treated feed mixed in with their regular feed every 3 months. The hardest part is keeping them from eating each others batch and getting the wrong dose. This time we tried make a little cage and just feeding them one at time. It was still tough. They ones who were waiting kept crashing the gate, trying to get an extra bite or two. Greedy little buggers.

From 2011-11-14

To keep Little Momma away, Sawyer tried riding her. We were amazed that she held up and was able to ride him around. It's not something you want to do the poor critters every day, but I have to admit it was pretty funny to watch.

From 2011-11-14

Of course Seth couldn't miss out on the action and had to start riding Gracie. Gracie was so happy to have her feed that I don't think she even noticed.

From 2011-11-14

Seth celebrated getting them dewormed by carrying Gracie around for a victory lap.

From 2011-11-14

We also moved the old cut-rock, hand built chimney so we could finish bulldozing by the old cabin. It was kind of sad to move it. Not just because it's a pain carrying and stacking and endless supply of heavy rocks, but because it was the last remnant of the old house. It's all gone now. I'll have to post a before/after picture in the next installment.

New Road, New Fence

All the stars lined up last weekend and I was finally able to g0 to the property and get some work done. I started the day by calling in load of gravel, as a base for the roads I've been building. I've never coordinated this all by myself, so I started off a little conservative. I figured there would be less risk to try out the process with one load and see how it went before going crazy on the rest.

From 2011-10-12

After getting the new roadbed laid, I realized that my fence line along the road was too far back, which was aesthetically unpleasing as well as I was cutting off a big part of space I could use for the corral. As much as I didn't want to move fence posts, I bit the bullet and did it. In the background you can see the old fence posts (the post hole digger is laying against one) and how much area I was able to recover.

From 2011-10-12

The joy of digging fence posts in this area is that you can go down 24 inches through nothing but clay then move 10 feet over for the next post and hit nothing but limestone. Generally, if the layer of rock is thin enough, you can break it up with the breaker bar, but other times it's too thick and you have to either drill or have uneven fence posts. Neither is a good option. As you can see from the picture below, I was bringing up nothing but limestone on this hole.

From 2011-10-12

Luckily I had a well place tree at the end of the fence row. I was able to hook the come-along to it and stretch the fence. If that tree wouldn't have been there, it would've been tough trying to get the truck or quad back there to anchor to. I've come to the realization that stretching the fence is problaby the most critical aspect of putting in a good one.

From 2011-10-12

After all the hard work, the boys tried out the new road by playing Frisbee. I think, for a first effort, the road turned out pretty well. I definitely learned some lessons on what to do and not do next time. Stayed tuned for more news to come.

From 2011-10-12