Shari’s Gone Country

And just in time, too!

The forecast for next week, about Thanksgiving Day is for rain/snow. We’re going from 10 degrees above average daily temperatures with little or no wind, to 10 degrees below average and a small gale.

So much for going from summer to fall and then to winter. This fall has been like a cooler (Oregon) summer, aside from the leaves turning on the trees.

So, about those winter projects…

Starting with our newly expanded horse stable, we now have an indoor walk-through where we can feed the horses without having to go into each stall with the animals. The walk-through also has room for halters, bridles, and grooming equipment.

What was the combination tack and feed area now stores saddles.

We also have arranged for hay delivery, thanks to Clyde (another of our mentors). We were able to get 72 bales (3-string 125# bales) at $8.00 delivered. We can’t get anymore from the same supplier as he has the rest of contracted to IFA, but will pick up and deliver from a neighboring farm for us… Pretty cool!

Our sheep have their winter home. Now the question is… are they smart enough to go inside?

As of yesterday, Al has bred all five of our girls, so looks like we’ll have a good time lambing starting in early April 2008. This breed is known for multiple births, so we can expect anywhere from 10 to 30 or more lambs… Somehow I can’t imagine it yet.

A few months ago, we had a “greenhouse disaster”. The company sent us a new cover and we’re choosing not to reinstall it until early spring. That way we should avoid a lot of wind damage from winter storms.

In the mean time, Cindy and Bev have wrapped each of the connectors taking all the slack out of the ribs. That may have been a contributing factor, even though there were no instructions to stabilize these joints.

Just yesterday, Cindy finished splitting the two cords of Aspen. That’s sure a nice looking stack of wood. Considering we’ve yet to light the first fire, we should have plenty of wood. We’ve got better than a cord of cedar/pine combination to go with the Aspen and we generally only build a morning fire and then an evening fire, choosing not to keep either stoked.

I know… Who’s Algernon, and why should you care.

Algernon is our big ram. He’s been visiting a neighboring farm for the last month, hanging out with a couple dozen ewes. Well actually, he’s been working.

His job? Breed every last one of them at least once… more if necessary or if he feels like it.

We weren’t watching the roundup when Clyde and Bill put a rope on him and got him into the truck to go visiting… but the coming home was a lot more peaceful. At least Amber said she didn’t see any fresh wounds on Clyde.

Coming home… With Bill slowly navigating the gravel road and finally our dirt driveway, and Clyde and Amber riding in the back of the compact pickup truck along with Algernon, it was a picture of one happy ram returning victoriously.

Before unloading him, we put our brand-spanking new breeding harness on him. One of our mentors (the gal we got him from) always uses one of these devices so she can tell her ram has at least attempted to breed.

Algernon has been through this process, so getting it on is no problem. He’s such a gentle giant.

Time to let him get off the truck and into the pen with “his girls”.

Clyde played “cowboy” holding onto his lead rope. Cindy and I were the ones who would help him turn right into the pen.

With Algernon in a hurry… Clyde was doing his best to keep up long enough to get him securely into the pen before giving Al total freedom.

In a matter of seconds, Al was reunited with his girls. Let the party begin!

“Let’s see… this one smells pretty good. Oh, she tastes good, too. Come to daddy, sweetie.”

“Wham, bam… hey… come back here! I’m not done yet!”

And so it goes. Algernon is one busy boy. He’s busily checking each girl. He grunts and growls and licks ears. The girls are getting interested. They show him “their stuff” stopping to pee so he can become aroused.

Thirty minutes later, we’re sure he’s bred two of the girls and we head for dinner.

As of this morning. Score two for Al. And, he’s got a “maybe”. This evening will be another “go around”.

Come April, we should have some little very cute little black lambs running around.

Finally, we got the trench completely backfilled, with the additional frost-free hydrant at the sheep pen. No more dragging hoses around (I’m talking about the really long ones), and then having to manually drain them in the sub-freezing weather.

The horses are a little undone. We’ve moved most of their water containers to a central location, adjacent to the frost-free at their corral. Dakota will continue to have her water barrel, as she still gets confined from time to time. You see, Dusty still thinks he’s “alpha”… Neche, the mare has yet to show him who’s boss.

We got two cords of aspen a couple weeks ago, and Cindy has been taking out any frustrations on the pile. She splits, and sometimes, I go out and stack. We’re stacking between the trees this year instead of hauling it around to the backyard. That will keep our dogs from using the wood pile as a personal toy box, hauling chunks everywhere.

Algernon, our ram has gone visiting.

Neighbor Clyde (the guy who helped us with leveling the stable area) has sheep, and his ram is a little young. Also, some of his ewes are cousins to Algernon, having been bred from his father.

At any rate, Bill ( a neighbor with a pickup) and Clyde came over Thursday night and got him. It was really funny, ’cause I knew they would be over, but thought they’d at least come to the door and let us get pictures of the great caper.

I went out after dinner, about an hour before sundown and noticed Algernon wasn’t in his pen. Well, that required a trip over to Clyde’s, where we found him in the height of glory. He was “grinnin’ and pickin’ “, having bred about half the ewe’s within the last hour.

I mentioned to Clyde that I thought he’d at least come to the door. His response…

“We thought we’d just go into the pen, put a rope on him, and put him in the truck, then come get you. Things didn’t turn out quite that way. Once I got a hold of him, he was more than a handful. It was all Bill and I could do to get him into the truck… so we just kept going.

After we got here, the dogs wanted to help, and he wasn’t ready for that… what a rodeo it was, just getting him from the truck into the pen”.

Later, I heard from one of his fellow church members that his arm is pretty skinned up… the result of Al dragging him around the pen. Even Bill asked Bev how much Algernon weighed. Bev’s answer: over 300 pounds.

Saturday brought more lousy weather, so once again, we laid low, doing only what we had to do. That meant getting chores done, and cleaning the horse pen. I needed the manure for the expanded compost pile.

Sunday… time to work the horses.

I got Dakota into the round pen and had a very good session. She remembered “back” with the rope wiggle, and even did a pretty good job of yielding her hindquarters, remembering to step over with her lead foot.

I lunged her for a while, without a lead line, asking her to change directions and turn inward to me. I can sure tell she’s a “right-brained” horse. Asking her to turn left and getting the proper result is challenging, so we’ll be doing extra repetitions on that side.

Neche was next. She was saddled, and Bev took her to the round pen. After some short lunging, Bev thought it would be time to ride her. After all, she’s well-broken. Things were going well enough that Cindy took Mom with her to Clyde’s place.

The idea was that Clyde was going to help Cindy with more of Dusty’s breaking. Well, Clyde wasn’t home, but his new calves had arrived. That kept Cindy and Mom there a little longer than expected.

Just before they left, Cindy had suggested that Bev ride Neche out of the round pen and onto our acreage. So far, so good.

Now, I’m not real sure if Bev has ridden much in the last 20 years, or how much she had ridden while growing up. I do know that no matter what she wanted to do (neck reigning), Neche wasn’t real responsive. Maybe is was the hackamore bridle that Bev wasn’t used to using.

At any rate… Neche wanted to go back to the round pen… so that’s where they went. Bev was tiring of walking in circles, and besides, her butt was starting to hurt. Maybe she should get off…

I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have offered to hold the reigns while she dismounted. Like me, Bev’s got short legs, and neither of us have enough “stretch” to get either from the ground to the stirrup, or visa versa.

Next thought… maybe Bev could ease Neche over to the rail, and just dismount onto the rail… yeah right.

At any rate, Bev had somehow taken her foot out of the right stirrup, and couldn’t get it back into the stirrup. Wearing tennis shoes wasn’t helping. Besides that, the stirrups on her saddle are real narrow.

All this time, they’re still walking around the edge of the round pen. That is, until Bev’s foot banged the round pen rail…

Neche is a bit spooky about the darndest things… The banging rail was all she needed. Let’s go to the left. Let’s go straight really fast for a couple of steps… gotta get away from that noise. Wait… what’s that on my back? Oh, it’s sliding off… going, gone.

And Bev was in a pile face-first, in the soft round pen sand. At least there was no manure.

I quickly checked to make sure she was conscious and then went to get Neche. I didn’t think she’d want Neche to walk on her at that point.

Fortunately, Bev’s only bruised… deeply, but no broken bones, and she’ll live to ride another day.

As for Neche… Well, when Cindy returned, she hopped on her and rode for quite a while. I’d love to have ridden, too, but Neche wanted no part of me, or the hay bale I was standing on to mount her. Talk about hurt feelings… it’s as if she looked at me and said, “No way, heavyweight! Bev was enough for one day.”

Yeah, I know… it’s been nearly a week since I last posted.

Here’s why… another one of those simple, “dig a trench, lay a water line, cover it up” and you’re done projects.

First, to bring you up to date… we didn’t get any snow over the weekend, but it was pretty cold on Saturday. We pretty much “hid out” inside that day. I guess you could say we kind of took most of the day off, with both football and baseball games on the TV.

Sunday was more of the “get ready for winter” stuff, and that included work on the compost pile. Bev and I spent about three hours cleaning the horse pen and stalls so we’d have hot, fresh manure to add to the compost pile. When the wind came up, we declared ourselves done for the day.

Monday, I hand cut cucumbers, onions, tomatillos, green tomatos and sweet red peppers so we could can “sweet relish”. Got enough for nearly 8 quarts. Yes, we can our relish by the quart since we use it so much. We managed to get the first 4 quarts done before running out of spices… and even though we’d already run to the corner store… 17 miles one way, we were content to make do with alternate spices for the next 4 quarts.

Tuesday, we spent the day getting ready for our neighbor, Ray to bring his big backhoe over for the “trench project”. The first issue we always have here, is where do all these old irrigation lines go, and what happens if we cut one? Do we have a geyser?

Bev and I cleaned the big hole we’d excavated last spring. This is the one next to the chicken coop, where the first frost-free hydrant will go. In the process, we found a one-inch galvanized line (about 36 inches deep) heading somewhat north from below the nipple for the frost free. Where the hell does it go? What does it feed? We know it’s a “charged line”.

We tried several times to locate the line, even having Ray do a couple of “pot holes”, but were unable to locate it. Oh well… we’ll just have to keep an eye on any wet spots, or if we here the well pump running at odd times.

By dark Tuesday, we’d managed to dig about 25 feet of the trench. I has to be 36 inches deep to be below the frost line here. It was particularly difficult as the chicken run limited access with the backhoe… no room for the stabilizers.

Add to that we just knew there were two lines about 6 or 8 inches below the surface that we had be locate, cut and cap. Again, no idea if they were hot, or charged… or even where they came from or went. Cindy and I had both encountered them when we were trenching in the chicken run… just 8 inches from where this really deep trench was going.

We probed, we tickled the dirt with the backhoe to no avail… Those lines weren’t to be found

Yesterday, we really settled in to all the hard work. This trench is 60 feet long, 36 inches deep, and better than a foot wide… dug in very sandy soil. The real “hard pan” is at about 30 inches, so that meant the backhoe really had to chew hard, and since Ray couldn’t get a direct (inline) shot at the trench, it often meant he was chewing from the broadside.

That meant the trench walls would semi-collapse with each “chew” to go deeper… Enter the “three-man”… well one man, one fat woman, and one young boy… shovel crew. I gotta’ tell you… I really didn’t know I could do all that! I shoveled in that trench for about 5 hours, until finally we had it deep enough, and could move to the next step.

By then, Bev had come home from work… just in time to miss the shovel detail. That’s ok… her job was to help Ray with the plumbing… cut all the PVC, and configure all the valves and angles.

We needed hay to insulate the lines. The worst hay was in the horse barn, so off we go with the backhoe. Now, I had two choices… walk to the horse barn in the 30 mph wind with all the dust swirling from the backhoe, or jump up on it, and ride on the fender. This old lady actually got on the backhoe and rode… both directions! No small feat when you consider all the “lead in my butt”.

Ok, hay in the trench, water line laid, time to backfill. Once again, we’ve got the same issue… The backhoe can only get “so close” and is unable to really compact the fill. I’ll be raking, and watering for weeks.

Ok, I know… it’s been way too long since I brought you up to date about things here at “The Four Country Gals”‘ little spread. I really do spend a fair amount of time “out and about” with the animals, and my roommates.

With excellent weather this past weekend, we worked to get as much protection up for the horses as possible. Oh, we also spent time in training with both Dakota and Dusty.

I’m working with Dakota, who really believes she’s a “pocket pony”. While I love her to death, I’m really working to get her out of my personal “hoola hoop” space. It’s gonna take a while, since she’s a real lover. Together, we’re working on “back” as well as “yield your hindquarters” correctly. That means pick up your inside hind foot and cross it over in front of your other hind foot.

Cindy spent some real quality time with Dusty, and lo and behold… She actually got on him.

All by herself, she saddled him, prepared him for weight with the “jump, jump, jump” and lay across his back. He was such a perfect gentleman, she took time out to get Bev and the camera… just in case.

Here’s the proof! She’s up in the saddle. Looks like she really belongs there, too.

Oh, the chickens… well, they’re laying up a storm, to the point that Mom has asked me to post ads for her… Farm Fresh Brown Eggs For Sale as low as $1.75/doz. We’re getting anywhere from 8 to 10 eggs a day… more than any of us should eat.

Our sheep are still getting fatter. Sure wish I could tell if they’re really pregnant or just getting fat. I’m giving them until October 20 before I turn Algernon (our ram) loose with the ewes. If they aren’t preggie now… they will be all winter!

Yesterday afternoon we had our first “disaster” of sorts. The greenhouse blew apart. We had been aware (to the point of filing a claim against the warranty) that we had wind/sun damage to the greenhouse cover.

Earlier this week, we received a replacement cover, which we’ve not yet installed, as we were busy with the horses, and also waiting for the right time… gotta have little to no wind to install the cover.

Anyhow, yesterday we had a huge windstorm with gusts somewhere around 50. The greenhouse was up when I gathered eggs at 2:30pm and it was down when I went to feed at 4:45pm.

When Bev and Cindy got home, we at least stabilized what we could and laid down both end covers to prevent further damage. I feebly suggested we should maybe move things in case it rained. With a 40% chance of rain, my idea was ignored… not the smartest thing to do.

In about 2 hours, we had a series of hellacious thunderstorms roll through the valley. Lightening took out our new DSL connection for over 3 hours. We got close to a quarter inch of rain… see, I told you so!

Mom checked things over this afternoon and was very relieved to have only lost one small box of “plant food”. Everything else that got wet was ok, so there’s no dog house visits for any of us today.

After taking time yesterday to “recover” from a very late night, it’s now Friday… and it looks like we’ll be working on “indoor” projects most of the weekend. The weather forecast is calling for high winds today and tomorrow, with thunderstorms on Sunday. Can you tell our season is changing?

Yesterday, I took the time to modify the chicken nest boxes a bit… just like in marketing, gotta find a need and fill it. In this case… I’m asking the pullets what they want for their nest boxes. I thought a nice fluffy warm sheep’s wool lining would be comfy. Cindy says they’re using shredded paper out at the farm and those girls love it.

Well, this batch of hay we’re using to feed the sheep is really ratty… It has rye heads and alfalfa roots, as well as pretty good-sized stems. They’re really wasting a lot of it. Since straw isn’t something readily available, I’m trying this hay in one box.

Wouldn’t ya know it… so far the first and only egg to land in a nest box, has landed in the one with the hay.

Oh, we’ve also added a couple of antique glass eggs to give them the idea.

Wednesday afternoon, when we returned from the Senior Center, Bev noticed Dakota, our yearling wasn’t in her usual pen. It looked like she was in one of the new stalls.

Closer inspection revealed she was actually standing in the back walkway area where we’ll be feeding from… not a place for horses.

Now, the big question… How the hell did she get out of her securely closed pen? It’s only 16×16x12×14 feet, so she didn’t have room to run around and then leap over the standard height horse railing.

There’s no sign she went under the fence either as it’s only 15 inches distance. Also, the panels hadn’t been moved around… What a mystery!

We’re pretty sure she’ll do well with Dusty now, as she was standing nose-to-nose with him for some time. She left more than enough evidence of time spent in our walkway.

If it’s Thursday, it must be time to build something.

Today, it’s a shelter for our sheep. You see, we’ve been using a couple of old “pivot wheel” shipping boxes. One for all the girls, and one for Al. That’s just not enough room.

I talked Bev into enlarging the girls (and lambs) shelter by another 8 x 8 feet. That should give them plenty of room for shade and shelter when the cold weather comes, especially the snow.

We got it about half done… that means half the roof and one side. When we’re done, it will have a full roof and three and 1/2 sides. That should also keep the sheep a lot cleaner, as they can escape the sand storms, too.

I’ll get pictures when we get it finished.

This morning we woke to temperatures in the mid 40’s. That’s a sure sign that our first frost isn’t far behind. Average first frost comes anytime now, as the old-timers talk of August frosts that leave the tomatoes green and corn not yet ripe.

In 2005 the first frost came August 30 and in 2006, it came close on Aug 28 and finally got us in mid-September.

Bev and I got the sheep feeder moved, and the panels removed. Tonight, the sheep (and I) should both be much happier. They’ll be able to reach their food, and I won’t get alfalfa leaves in places unmentionable.

You can see in this first photo how we placed the feeder between two fence panels on an east/west line. Once we placed the wire panels, it was like a wind tunnel. The wind blows primarily from the south or west for most of the year, and with the hay laying on top of the panels… it was at the mercy of the wind.

We’ve moved the feeder adjacent to the gate and on more of a north/south line. Removing the panels will let the sheep reach their hay with no problem. I really don’t expect they’ll get hay all over the backs of their heads and necks, either. Until we have lambs, this setup should work fine.

Since fall is coming, we have to ensure that what can ripen or mature, will do so. I pulled the sugar snap pea plants today, harvesting as I was going. Most of the hulls were sunburned, so I took the time to shell them… ummmm, fresh, hot, buttered peas for dinner. Now the cucumbers will have more room, since the peas were crowding them.

As you can see, we’ll have some nice onions, but doubt if the corn will make it. It’s just now tasseling and I haven’t seen any little ears yet. We have a pumpkin on the vine. Of course, it will do ok in the first frost.

I heard Mom say she ate the only ripe tomato we have… and Bev told her that would be the last of that… you’re supposed to bring things into the house first.

Bev got my skirting table done, so looks like now it’s time to finish off the rest of the fleeces. I still have four or so fleeces that I’ve not looked at. Hope they stand up like they should.

The market lambs are being advertised on Craigslist. If we can sell them privately, we’ll make a little more money than at the auction. So far, I’m running the ad in the St. George area, and will expand it to Las Vegas, as there’s a huge ethnic market there.

Ya’ know, we built this new sheep feeder a couple weeks ago. Last week we got the final parts (a couple of 4×4 screen panels) which are designed to limit how far into the hay the sheep can get their heads.

Well, after using it for a week, the sheep are still pretty pissed off. Seems we humans may not have ordered the right panels.

When you’re a rookie at things, you can easily make mistakes just because you don’t have anything to compare. Nothing provides a good education like a mistake… call it the “education process of learning by doing, and doing again in a different manner”.

Yesterday, we had a dust/windstorm with sustained winds in excess of 30mph. Now, I thought turning the feeder due E/W so the sheep would have their backs to our “normal” southerly winds made good sense. It did, until this silly farmer had to fork the hay into the feeder from the north side.

I had alfalfa leaves in places no woman should ever have alfalfa!

The sheep are so pissed at me, they keep going over to our ram’s area and reaching as far through the fence panels (8×8) as possible. Mind you, he gets exactly the same feed, so it’s obviously a matter of access.

This week (tomorrow) we’ll be removing the panels, and if I have my way, we’ll also relocate this beautiful feeder adjacent to the entrance gate and place it more north/south. That should make things better on all accounts.

With the panels costing about $14 a piece, we’ll re-think that process for a couple of months. Until the lambs are born, the current occupants are too large to crawl through the feeder and go walkabout.

When we get the job done, I’ll post before and after pictures. Hopefully I’ll show you happy sheep again.

This a quick post before our neighbor Clyde returns with the big tractor and post hole auger. He stopped by about a half hour ago and was off to return the box scraper and go to another farm to pick up the post hole auger.

This will get a lot of the really hard work done fairly quickly and also make the stable a lot more solid. We were digging holes the other day and hit hard pan at about two feet. We’d like to sink the posts at least 28 to 34 inches.

Last evening, another of our “mentors” came out for a consultation on our sheep. Linda is the owner of “R Ewe Spinning” and was the lady who sold us “Algernon”, our ram. She and her husband spent nearly three hours with us, discussing the sheep, the wool, the markets, and the rest of our farm operation.

What a wealth of information!

We learned that our ewes are most likely all preggie (except Beulah, the matriarch) by Al, and we should start expecting lambs five months from when we brought the girls over from Dixie’s. That would be the first half of October.

Now, that’s just a little disappointing, but not clearly a set back, as we’ll hit the Easter market for meat lambs. It also means we’ll have to provide a bit more protection from our harsh winter conditions.

On the really positive side, they marveled at “Al”. He’s grown so much, and has really “beefed up”. That’s a trait he’ll pass to the lambs. We had been down to their farm to observe some of his offspring.

Here’s a picture of one of his offspring at three weeks and 30 pounds.

They also shared a lot of ideas about how to build inexpensive “handling chutes”. I’m not interested in doing flying tackles as our girls are racing about the paddock. To me, sheep are docile and should be handled in the same manner. They share the same philosophy, so we’ll be adding a few more “goodies” to their new pen.

We spent considerable time discussing the wool, and our potential markets. With the suffolk mixed into the Merino, our best market is probably “the rug market”. That means I’ll be targeting “fiber artists” more than “spinners”. They too, were puzzled by the lack of lanolin.

I will definitely be contacting Texas A&M for some testing. First I need to see about a price list for their services.

On a closing note, Linda was so “in love” with the wool that I insisted she take samples of the triplets’ wool, as well as a sample of Al’s wool. I’ll compile her comments along with the comments from the spinners, who graciously have worked their samples.

Ok, the tractor is about to arrive, so it’s time to grab my hat and gloves and head into the Utah desert heat.