While the solar system was being installed we continued fall work. One task was to clean out one of the ditches. Ken used the backhoe to clean it out on 11 September. This area is where we will rebuild the pens for the rams for winter.
We have an apple crop this year and we want to try to make some cider. Our apple press is in need of work and here Ken is sandblasting the crusher parts to clean them. Some of the blades are broken so we have new ones on order. It’s pretty close to done now on 13 September.
It’s also time to bring the sheep in from pasture. We coated as many adult ewes as I had coats for and sent the rest and all the ewe lambs back out on pasture for a few more days. I need to get busy sewing more sheep coats before we can finish getting the girls in the barn for winter.
The two fields we planted this year had grown up in major weeds. The front one especially had hundreds of cockleburrs. In an attempt to keep them from setting seeds Ken decided to mow the entire field and hope he could kill the cockleburrs. It looked so good that he did the other field too. We’ve got the sheep off the field and hope that it will grow some more before winter and get fully established by next summer.