The thermometer climbed to 108F for the scond day in a row today. The Pacific Northwest is apparently experiencing a heatwave unlike anything its experienced ever before, not since records were first taken. That makes doing a lot of the work around the place almost unbearably difficult. It also means that we have changed to night time irrigation in an effort to reduce the amout of evaporation happening and thus get more value out of the process.
I feel sorry for the contractors working on the Milk Barn, although they are here at 6.30am and gone by 3.00pm just as the temperature hits 100. They have made excellent progress so far. the new floor slab has been poured and all of the drain plumbing is now in place. Next will be the framing inside and then they will be running the electrical and sink plumbing through the walls. Everything so far looks really good.
I've started to clean out the main loafing barn as well as the jugs, in preparation for the lambing at the end of the year. All the jugs are empty now and I'll need to put some lime down to clear up anything nasty. In a month or two I will lay some straw and everything there will be ready to go. I might be able to do some work on the other end of the barn after that and get it ready for the lambs as a small nursery.
UPDATE: Overnight (29th/30th July) we lost one of our ewes due to the heat. I have been reading that a lot of northwest farmers have lost livestock due to the oppressive heat in the last week. We consider ourselves fortunate that we have plenty of undercover areas and the sheep have access to plenty of fresh water. Unfortunately sometimes you have to take the bad with the good and that's certainly the case when an animal dies. RIP #1134.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Today is.....Shopping Day!
The Milk Barn is now underway at long last. We have had contrators gutting and rebuilding it from the inside out since last week. So far they have redesigned the milking pit, laid all the foundation concrete and taken all the old walls and ceiling materials away. We also have a 'soon to be door' opening between the actual milking area and the two front rooms.
What does all this mean? Well it means we have finally placed the order for all our milking stanchions and our sinks and an electric water blaster that runs hot/cold off the mains. My one day a week ranch hand is a welder by profession and we are going to get him to assemble them into a solid rig as well as add a couple of things to the milking stand we will find useful, such as a quick release for the stanchions that can be operated from within the pit. Once the building is done, we can ramset the milking platform into the new floor.
Our ram 'Mr. T' is in with the younger sheep we got from Vermont Shepherd, which are now over 18 months of age. This means that we will be setup and ready to milk in early December with a second group of ewes lambing in early March as per this year. We are still undecided if at first we will sell the milk in raw liquid form (requires a bulk tank and compressor to cool it for the milk barn) or whether we will freeze it and sell it frozen. the latter would certainly provide us with a broader market as we could sell it interstate to other cheesemakers.
The irrigation is working well. The Irripods are easy to install and reduce the labour of moving pipes as well as providing a flexibility of moving around that the aluminium pipes don't give. It takes me about 15 minutes in the mornings to take the ATV out and shift them. The grass in the front field as well as the field with the irripods is looking really good at the moment, whereas the surrounding properties are all brown and the grass is dormant, thanks to the summer highs of 95 degrees (33 centigrade) we have been experiencing over the last few weeks.
At the end of last week we discovered in one of our old sheds a kitten that had been abandoned by its mother. Poor little thing is only about 4 weeks old, so we have been feeding it and it now seems to be doing well. It's a cute little black ball of fur at the moment, possibly a Coon Cat that will be good to keep the mice down in the barns when it's older.
What does all this mean? Well it means we have finally placed the order for all our milking stanchions and our sinks and an electric water blaster that runs hot/cold off the mains. My one day a week ranch hand is a welder by profession and we are going to get him to assemble them into a solid rig as well as add a couple of things to the milking stand we will find useful, such as a quick release for the stanchions that can be operated from within the pit. Once the building is done, we can ramset the milking platform into the new floor.
Our ram 'Mr. T' is in with the younger sheep we got from Vermont Shepherd, which are now over 18 months of age. This means that we will be setup and ready to milk in early December with a second group of ewes lambing in early March as per this year. We are still undecided if at first we will sell the milk in raw liquid form (requires a bulk tank and compressor to cool it for the milk barn) or whether we will freeze it and sell it frozen. the latter would certainly provide us with a broader market as we could sell it interstate to other cheesemakers.
The irrigation is working well. The Irripods are easy to install and reduce the labour of moving pipes as well as providing a flexibility of moving around that the aluminium pipes don't give. It takes me about 15 minutes in the mornings to take the ATV out and shift them. The grass in the front field as well as the field with the irripods is looking really good at the moment, whereas the surrounding properties are all brown and the grass is dormant, thanks to the summer highs of 95 degrees (33 centigrade) we have been experiencing over the last few weeks.
At the end of last week we discovered in one of our old sheds a kitten that had been abandoned by its mother. Poor little thing is only about 4 weeks old, so we have been feeding it and it now seems to be doing well. It's a cute little black ball of fur at the moment, possibly a Coon Cat that will be good to keep the mice down in the barns when it's older.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Irrigation Jigsaw Puzzle
With the end of the haying for this year we are back into laying out the irrigation system. Last year, being our first experience, there were several issues that required major work, from buying a new 5HP pump to determining the best layout of pipes to irrigate maximum land. All that took time and unfortunately because of that and other tasks we were undertaking at the time we were unable to get a second hay cutting on any of our fields. This year things will be different.
Last year we had someone helping us hay, this year we had the same person, but next year we are planning on doing the whole thing ourselves. I bailed the front field using our old New Holland Hayliner, and after a few disasterous results we managed to get a good yield of 110 bales. The irrigation is now on that field so we will get another cutting come late August I am hoping and if the weather is good a third is not out of the question.
Beyond that we have 2 other fields that are being worked on. Moving the 5HP pump to the river side and connecting up the 6" mainline we will be able to irrigate both of them. The smaller will hopefully net us about 200 square bales in a second cutting. All of this is good news because our actual hay consumption in winter is small, meaning that all of the hay we have just cut can be sold - which amounts to about 120 round bales (that sell for about $20 each). As I mentioned because of the lack of rain this year during spring, this season will be a lean one for hay so we will keep ours undercover for a few months and anticipate the price going up.
In order to get a lot of the work done around the place - work that requires two men, I have found myself a farmhand for one day a week. He's been helping now for a couple of weeks and we've already made spectacular progress rebuilding a couple of our fences. I'm hoping that by winter we will have done most of the renovation work around the farm, from the fencing to reseeding a couple of the fields (they're full of foxtail, but that's another story!).
One important piece of news, our cow finally had her calf, a heifer, and she's very sweet. she's already bigger than the ewes so even at 2 weeks of age she's bossing them around.
In a weeks time we put our ram in with the lambs we got last year. They are now about 20 months of age so ready to start producing. This means that we will be lambing in November and then again next March/April. We have a dozen that will lamb at the end of the year assuming all goes well and this will be a good lead into a full milking schedule for next year. By April we will have ironed out all our issues and will be milking around 50 ewes.
We are waiting on the contractor to give us a start date on the renovation of the milk barn. after going through the new plans, the renovation plans and various permutations, we have a list of what needs doing and what needs buying. The hard work there will also be done by the time we lamb/milk in November.
Note: Someone requested more pictures, so I will attempt to add more in each post.
Last year we had someone helping us hay, this year we had the same person, but next year we are planning on doing the whole thing ourselves. I bailed the front field using our old New Holland Hayliner, and after a few disasterous results we managed to get a good yield of 110 bales. The irrigation is now on that field so we will get another cutting come late August I am hoping and if the weather is good a third is not out of the question.
Beyond that we have 2 other fields that are being worked on. Moving the 5HP pump to the river side and connecting up the 6" mainline we will be able to irrigate both of them. The smaller will hopefully net us about 200 square bales in a second cutting. All of this is good news because our actual hay consumption in winter is small, meaning that all of the hay we have just cut can be sold - which amounts to about 120 round bales (that sell for about $20 each). As I mentioned because of the lack of rain this year during spring, this season will be a lean one for hay so we will keep ours undercover for a few months and anticipate the price going up.
In order to get a lot of the work done around the place - work that requires two men, I have found myself a farmhand for one day a week. He's been helping now for a couple of weeks and we've already made spectacular progress rebuilding a couple of our fences. I'm hoping that by winter we will have done most of the renovation work around the farm, from the fencing to reseeding a couple of the fields (they're full of foxtail, but that's another story!).
One important piece of news, our cow finally had her calf, a heifer, and she's very sweet. she's already bigger than the ewes so even at 2 weeks of age she's bossing them around.In a weeks time we put our ram in with the lambs we got last year. They are now about 20 months of age so ready to start producing. This means that we will be lambing in November and then again next March/April. We have a dozen that will lamb at the end of the year assuming all goes well and this will be a good lead into a full milking schedule for next year. By April we will have ironed out all our issues and will be milking around 50 ewes.
We are waiting on the contractor to give us a start date on the renovation of the milk barn. after going through the new plans, the renovation plans and various permutations, we have a list of what needs doing and what needs buying. The hard work there will also be done by the time we lamb/milk in November.
Note: Someone requested more pictures, so I will attempt to add more in each post.
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