Category: Farm Life
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Snow on Mt. Lamborn and Chicken Arrival Day
On June 6th, there was fresh snow on Mt. Lamborn. I even got a picture this time. Over the last day or so, we’ve gotten almost half an inch of rain, and the Grand Mesa got four inches of fresh snow. The rains will be really good for establishing our pastures. Today was also chicken… Continue reading
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The Woolevator
The new shop’s second story is a long way up. When we stored wool in the old Red Barn’s loft, you could toss the wool boxes up, and the person in the loft could catch them. However, the new shop is much too tall for that. While going up and down the stairs may be… Continue reading
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Woolly Lawnmowers
Why dig out the string trimmer when you have sheep? After all, that’s what makes a great lawn: sheep grazing on it. So, we fenced off the front of the house for the sheep. We did have to put some jug panels up on the stairs to prevent sheep from making themselves at home on… Continue reading
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Planting, Marking, Lambing, and More
A lot has been going on, and I haven’t updated this much since we’ve been so busy. The white shed is now completely gone. We still have a few foundation pieces that need removing. They’re rotten logs embedded into the ground, so removing them will take a while. We also had a major hailstorm on… Continue reading
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Demolition!
We’re getting down to the last of the demolition projects on the farm. This old shed was near one corner of the front field. The wooden supports had been eaten by horses, and the siding was just particleboard that had been painted. It didn’t have any foundation – just some old treated telephone poles. It… Continue reading
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More Disking
Several passes later, the front field is looking pretty good. We still need to disk it once more to break up the clods, but we should be ready to plant later this week. As soon as it’s planted and marked, we’ll have to hurry and get irrigation pipes set up on it. The field below… Continue reading
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Disking the Field
Our front-west field is being disked now to prepare it for planting. We don’t have a big enough tractor or disk to do this sort of work, so we hire the job out to custom farmers in our area. We’re going to put it back to permanent irrigated pasture. We’ll be planting a mix of… Continue reading
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Sheep Mathematics
Caridwen is a sheep math wizard, or at least an A student. She can count to three! Not only does she feed all three lambs, but if she only has two, she goes in search of the missing one. The way this year’s lambs are running and bouncing around at very young ages makes keeping… Continue reading
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Final Electrical Inspection
Jake finished all of the electrical stuff except a few small finishing touches. There’s just one fixture and a couple of outlet plates left. The inspector came and gave us the final check-off on the electrical. This is great news for us. Ken can fill the trench now, and we can finish up the fencing… Continue reading
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Win Some, Lose Some
Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. We lost 109 Daron today. She went into an unusual labor, and I couldn’t get the lamb out. It felt weird. I talked to our vet about options. A C-section would have been $300 at minimum with no complications. Realistically, it would have been more like $500+. It’s… Continue reading