Chores and More

It was a delightful weekend at the farm – warm temps, cool breezes.  Kate and Eileen arrived around 8 pm Friday evening – they were welcomed to the Upper Valley by a hot air balloon flying ridiculously close to I-91.  Father’s Day Weekend is also Quechee Hot Air Balloon festival weekend, and after two years of soaking rains (which prevent balloons from launching), this year the weather was perfect – balloons launched @ 6 pm Friday, and 6 am and 6 pm both Saturday and Sunday.  Peg and Eileen were treated to 3 balloons floating off to the west on Sunday morning (Kate and I were still in bed).

Saturday, Kate and I finished mucking out the barn.  A few weeks ago, Jason, Peg and I got about half the job done, and we wanted it to be finished before the wedding. Wedding? Yes, the date is rapidly approaching – Jason and Lori will be married on the farm on Saturday, June 25.

Anyway, Kate was on tractor and I was on pitchfork. She very quickly got good at scraping along the cement floor and scooping up the layers of hay matted with poop and urine. It’s not easy to scoop up unless you have something providing resistance – like a barn wall – but we definitely do NOT want to do that. We quickly learned that scraping backwards on the matted hay with the bucket pointed down helps to break the mat into chunks, which are more easily scooped up.  Once the bucket was full, either by a good scoop or a fair scoop followed by tossing in more with the pitchfork, Kate would maneuver out the back of the barn into the woods where we have built a 12 foot by 12 foot manure pit out of hemlock posts and roughhewn lumber.  All in all, the job took about 90 minutes.  At the tail end of the task, I would stand in front of the tractor and put a foot on the targeted pile to provide some resistance.  This required me to yell out to Kate when to scoop – once or twice I waited too long and almost got myself scooped up!

Next task for Kate and me – fence repair.  This is a first on the farm. A week ago, while brush hogging a section of the west field, I got too close to the perimeter fence and somehow broke the second of five strands of high tensile wire. Since I’ve never repaired the fence before, I needed to order some tools and supplies – fencing pliers, a box of gritted crimping sleeves, four polyrope tensioners, and 1000 feet of 12 ½ gauge aluminized galvanized steel wire. Amazon Prime had it all on the farm by Thursday. A thousand feet should last a while – couldn’t find a smaller amount for a good price.

Kate and I headed down to the fence with the needed equipment. Rather than lug the heavy spool of wire, we cut the length we thought we would need. Wrong! I marched back to the house and lugged down the spool.  We figured out how to do the crimping – Kate held the sleeves in place while I squeezed with the pliers as hard as I could.  We also figured out how to work the tensioner – using a large monkey wrench instead of the ½” drive ratchet that I don’t have (mine is 3/8”).  Great – splice a section of new wire into the fence line, tighten the tensioner and we’re all done. Not so fast.

After finishing that job, I marched down the fence line to the section where five wire tighteners sat on the wires (there are probably 10 or so sets along the entire fence – I typically tighten them once a summer). Oh, boy, the tightener on the second line is broken and the wire is snapped. Kate brings the rest of the equipment and I bring the spool. First, we have to unwind the broken wire that is on the tightener spool.  This is not easy, as the wire is very stiff. Next, we have to repair the tightener. Also not easy but we got it back to functional. Finally, apply one more splice then feed the end of the added wire into the tightener and crank it with the monkey wrench. Success! Just took a lot longer than I expected.

Seeing two breaks in the line has me wondering where the broken wire went. I never saw the break when I did it with the brush hog, and didn’t even realize I’d broken the line until the second pass with the tractor.  I heard some funny noise on that second pass, and now I think I know what that noise was – wire wrapping around the rotor of the brush hog blade.

That pretty much wrapped up the chores for Saturday. George has been cutting and whipping hay in the east field. This could be remarkably good news for Lori, as she is contemplating having the vows ceremony at the top of the east field facing the beautiful view to the north. In the late afternoon, George’s cousin Andy (Andy SAVAGE) is out baling up the hay at the top of the field. I wait for him to take a couple of passes, and at 5:30 pm I walk out and put stakes in the grass where the shade from the tree line is hitting the field.  This is exactly one week before the ceremony, and with the summer solstice falling in between it’s a pretty good measure for conditions next week. The early forecast is for a hot and sunny day next Saturday – the seats for the ceremony really should be in the shade. I take photos of the shady sections of the lawn and the top of the field and send them to Lori.

Saturday evening we treated Kate and Eileen to a pleasant dinner at a new restaurant (to us) in Fairlee – Middle Brook Farm. We arrive at 6:30 to a beautiful farm in a valley, pretty much have the space to ourselves, and enjoyed a wonderful meal.

Sunday morning Peg, Eileen and I take Jack for a long walk, and then Eileen and Kate packed up and headed home. Peg and I had some things on the docket for the boys, and I said “let’s get it done before it gets too hot.” Deworming, hoof trimming, and jacketing. First we had to get them up in the east field chute, so we could pen them in a corner.  They dutifully followed me up through the tall grass with a pail of grain. This isn’t always so easy with the skittish wethers, but Sunday they were very calm.

Up in the chute, fortunately in the shade, we gave each of the boys oral deworming medication, then set up the “sling” and backed them – one by one – into it so their hooves were pointing up for Peg to trim. Wrestling them into the sling is hard work, and I catch my breath each time while holding the animal in the sling as Peg trims. Finally, we put jackets on Nash, Schuyler, and Levi – other than changing them for larger sizes as the fleece grows in, the jackets won’t come off until next March, prior to shearing.

As we finish and pack up stuff, Peg says, “well that went smoothly,” and I agreed. We are getting into routines and patterns with the sheep, and that is good for all involved. She heads down to the west field to change the girls’ water and I head down to set up a new paddock for the boys. Again with the pail of grain, they follow me back down to the paddock, but not before Calvin gives me a nice shove in the butt.  Really can’t turn my back on him.

After showering, we head over to the balloon festival. Steve – who is on the board of the Hartford Chamber of Commerce (which runs the festival) and is working at the Chamber’s information booth – generously gave us free passes for the entire weekend. Peg wants to survey the vendors that are there to determine if we should be selling yarn, sausage (though we will run out if we don’t make more this summer) and maybe lambskin rugs next year. A quick walk through says “probably not.”

Back at the farm, the final chore for the weekend is brush hogging the last section of the west field that had the girls. It is a two-person job (for us, at least) to mount the brush hog on the back of the tractor, and we seem to be getting better at that, too. Before heading down to the field, we raise the brush hog as high as it can go to look underneath, and sure enough, there is probably about six feet of wire wrapped on the rotor.  A chore for another day.

Todd