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Kevin's Thoughts!

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Jul 14

6

Not to little, not too big…

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on July 6, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | 3 Comments

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Cute right?  That is Martha, born 3/18/14 on the left and my Daughter “Gabby”, going on 8.  Unfortunately, that is NOT an exit from the cattle chute, but rather just a 6″ or so gap between two frame sections.  Martha’s head made it through, but not without taking off some paint.  The rest of her didn’t have a chance.  Took us awhile to get her to work herself free, first one year, then another.  You would think a ~14 week old calf would be easy to work – wrong.  I made the mistake of trying to block her escape in our cattle run – and she plastered me against one of the walls.  I have the marks on my back to prove it…

Anyhow, to the subject of this post:  if she was a few weeks younger she would have been able to back out easily.  A few weeks older and she never would have gotten her head through.  They grow up SO fast.
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On the other end of the scale is Borka.  He is a 1550lb Steer overdue for butchering.  The plan was to do him this spring, but our spring didn’t quite work out as planned.  All I can say is that I’m real happy we didn’t buy the lighter duty squeeze chute.  And no, I’m not standing in a hole – Borka’s back is well over my 5’10” shoulders.

Anyhow, today was “cattle day”.   We moved them last  night into the field with the corral (last years project, although it still needs work).  Today was weighing, pour on dewormer (scratch one $100 bottle of dewormer, but its the dung beetle friendly type), castration banding and association tetanus antidote injections for two of the boys.

We are up to 23 head of cattle now, feeling like the herd is just about the right size.  We will need to find a home for Larry, Borka has an appointment we need to make, and if the new butcher is fair, we will be selling Curly and Moe for meat.

Jul 14

5

4th of July weekend?

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on July 5, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | 1 Comment

Huh?  What happened?  Why has it been a month?  Well… life hasn’t worked out well for us.  Three weeks ago my Mom fell in her garden, tripping over a hose, and broke three ribs.  She ended up spending about 2 weeks in the hospital and is now at Delmar Gardens for a bit longer for recovery.  It was touch-and-go at one point, she had gone from 1 liter/min of Oxygen when she checked in to 3 literes, to 5 liters, to 6 liters (almost max) and was having problems breathing do the pain.  Blood clots were forming in her legs and lungs, it wasn’t looking good.  But the doctors pulled here through.  She will be 89 in August, there is no such thing as a minor hospital visit.  My 2nd daughter, Krystal, has been great, often visiting Mom twice a day.  Between her and us, family has been with her about 4 hours a day throughout her hospital stay.  Suffice it to say:  the farm wasn’t visited.

The above event did have me concerned, since the field we had moved the animals too was meant for a 2 week event.  However, the Highlands took matters into their own hands, and per Sonny, after about 2 weeks broke down an interior fence and went back out into the mail fields.  Normally, this would be annoying, this time it was a relief.

Our electric fence is horribly shorted with overgrowth.  Evia spent most of Friday weed wacking around her garden and the fence.  I spent the time brushhogging and trying to reclaim the farm from the overgrowth.  Also manged to stand the kids playset back up.  Its usable, but a bit worse for the wear (amazing what you can accomplish with a chain and a tractor).  We broke for lunch (and to cool down) around 2pm.  Evia when back out to work some more, I attacked our Kubota RTV.  The RTV was due for fluid changes.  About 5 hours later, the oil and tranmission were complete, and the oil, both tranmission, and air filters were changed.  I was surprised when I read the owners manual suggest on the air filter (pleated paper like most):  They recommended blowing it out with 30 PSI air pressure at every oil change, and to only replace it if there was visible holes or after 6 cleaning.  I should note that there is an inner cleaner as well, that should last decades, so anything going through the outer air cleaner would by caught by the inner one.  Also discovered that the muffler had a service port that is suppose to be opened and the unit allowed about 15 minutes of runtime to “blow out” anything that has accumulate inside the muffler with every oil change (about 100 hours of run time between oil changes).  We went for a quick twilight tool in the evening and the Kubota still works, so I guess I did everything OK.

Rose, the last of the 4 sisters to calve, has done so.  We are guessing she gave birth a few days ago.  So everyone we expected to provide a calf now has, although almost a year late for 3 of them.  This puts us at 23 cattle, although one steer is now several months overdue for an appointment with a butcher.  Really REALLY need to find a home for Larry.  Once we are satisified with the butcher (the last on, you may recall, ripped us off of an estimated 125lbs of ground beef), we will need to find buyers for Larry’s brothers – their appointments are fast approaching needing to be scheduled.  That will be a sad day, but it must happen. 

Oh, Roses calf has crop-ear, thats 2 for 2 for her.  Its not a problem, just a genetic thing that Highlands have.  The original breeders called it “Elf Ear”, but the result in short ears that curl.

We are now into 2nd generation calves.  Of the four original yearling heifers we bought, one ran over the neighbors bulls to get pregnant and three were services by Duncan.  The wayward cow had Noshka – a 50/50 Highland/Angus.  The other 3 sisters had Larry, Curly, and Moe – all boys.  Noshka had Sven back in April, a 75/25 Highland/Angus.  Sven is growing nicely, and MUCH faster than his siblings – undoubtedly due to something simply called “Hybrid Vigor” – an effect found when cattle are cross bred.  Sven looks mostly like a Highland – except for a short tail and odd tuffs of light color hair growing down from his ears like micro beards.

Saturday morning found us getting rain – a good thing, but not in our work schedule.  We ended up going into town to buy supplies.  Went to use my Farm credit card just to have it declined.  That was when we remembered that we had received new cards a couple of months ago (even though the old ones were not even close to expiring) with a note to “Please activate but don’t use until <some date that was like 2 months out>”.  Apparently that date has come and gone, and the new cards are back in the city.  Oh well.  Annoying for tax tracking purposes but thats about it.

Enough for now, still a day and a half of this weekend to go.

Jul 14

5

Winds!   6/8/2014

Posted by Kevin Carpenter on July 5, 2014
Posted in Still alive in 2019  | No Comments yet, please leave one

Very high winds during the previous week.  This is what is left of an old cottonwood – one of our favorites.  Its base was an easy 3-4 in diameter.  It was hollow enough on the inside that you could stand in it.

Besides the cottonwood, our kids play house was blown on its side – the slide ripped off and found a field over, the swing set beam shattered and metal brackets bent.

When we arrived, Evia (photoed above) noticed the cloths line was blown over.  My first thought was “No Way!  I’ve anchored that thing is 450lbs of concrete!”  Well, we were both right – it didn’t blow over, the metal pole was snapped off.

House was fine though. 

Most of this weekend was spent finishing up some electric fence work we started during our last visit.  One injury… we use spring gates (20′ long springs) across our electric fences.  I was measuring for a post position by using one such spring when it came loose from the far end and sailed toward me.  Caught that across my right leg and stomach.  If it had been a solid piece of iron, I’m sure it would have shattered my leg.  (since I’m writing this almost a month later, I can tell you I had a massive bruise from groin to knee and a baseball size one on my stomach.)  Still, we got everything done and now have a decent sorting area between our fields.

We spent Sunday afternoon moving the cows into the south fields.  Still haven’t got the castration done.  Not good.  Bees look fine though.