Category: Farm Life
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Solar Continues
The installation of the solar hot water system continues. The heat sink pipe is now in the ground, and it’s been fully covered. Continue reading
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Solar Hot Water System Started
We’ve decided to install a solar hot water system to provide domestic hot water and heat to the house in winter. We already use a combination hot water heater and boiler that gives us domestic hot water and in-floor radiant heat, but it’s propane-fired. We are in an excellent area for solar, and we hope Continue reading
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Some of the Horses
Here are a few of the mares out on pasture. We’ve run out of grass in the back, so they’re getting hay for now. Continue reading
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Chickens
The first batch of dinner chickens is ready to butcher. These guys are a bit smaller than last year, but they’re also two weeks younger. The difference in food costs may offset the smaller size. Anyway, we’ve been out of chicken for a while, so it will be good to get them done. We do Continue reading
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Spare Bovine
We had a spare bull show up at the house yesterday. The neighbor had borrowed a bull to breed his two cows to, and the bull decided to go on a walkabout around the entire mesa. He visited several places, including ours. After strolling past the house, he went back to harass the guard dogs. Continue reading
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Sheep Show
Thursday was the sheep show at the Delta County Fair. We took nine sheep. Three were ewe lambs, three were ram lambs, and three were aged ewes. Stephanie and Jacob trained the sheep with me, and all three of us showed in the open classes. The poor judge had never seen little black sheep before, Continue reading
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Chicken Show
Tuesday was the Delta County Fair Open and 4H Poultry Show. The Hellecksons and I show chickens in the open class. Here we are in the judging lineup with our old Gold Pencilled Hamburg hens, who were molting and looked pretty scruffy. Stephanie took first, Jacob second, and I had a barely-not-disqualified third. My birds’ Continue reading
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Cleaning Up
We’ve been cleaning the garage in preparation for some modifications to our heating system. Here is proof that Ken is actually throwing away a computer. Of course, it doesn’t work, but still. Continue reading
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Loom Assembled and First Fleece Skirting
The big Glimakra loom was assembled in the shop on August 4th. My friend Elena Dent came to visit and got roped into not just the assembly process, but to start skirting our 2008 fleeces as well. Normally we’re done by now, but with the construction, I didn’t get started until now. Continue reading
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Sheep Shots
On the 31st of July, we gave all the lambs their first vaccinations, plus dewormer. Nose bots are a real problem this year, so we have had to watch carefully and deworm more frequently. Here, the sheep are going back up to their grazing segment. We use Electronet as a guide rather than a herding Continue reading