Project Day

Last Thursday was a highly unusual day. The kids all had a sleepover at Deedee and Papa’s house, and Mommy had an extra shift at work, so Daddy had a morning and part of an afternoon to work on the farm.

However, first things first. On a weekday with no other responsibilities, it is always good to start with morning Mass. However, since I didn’t want to come back home and cook, I made an egg pie and took it with me.

In the console of the truck it kept warm beautifully in its cast-iron pan and was the perfect eating temp after Mass.

And it was such a lovely egg pie. Nothing puffs up like a duck egg.

So much for that being breakfast and lunch. We’ll have to come up with something else for lunch.

First business of the day was setting up a lane to move the Berkshire pigs into the pen with the Meishan pigs.

I need to set up a livestock scale, but I didn’t want to do that with the Berkshires in the pen with me. They are not friendly pigs.

Getting them into the same pen was easy.

However, they immediately started fighting with the Meishans.

They pushed them around the yard, biting at their tales and sides and hind legs. Gertrude can hold her own against the smaller one, but poor Bacon…

He is such a gentle critter. He got scraped up pretty good and pushed around until he is totally at the bottom of the pen heirarchy.

I moved the sheep into the pen that the berkshires had been in. I don’t care if they are nosing around while I work. They aren’t, as a rule. They stay as far away as possible. Since I had access to the gate by the corner of the barn, I let them out for a little snack as well.

I also put Iris and Darla into the second paddock on the North pasture. She has mowed the grass pretty close in the first paddock, far closer than I like, but she needs as much high protein green grass as we can get her to make milk.

We aren’t putting her in with the sheep right now, because she was pushing the new lamb around a bit roughly (she’s a jerk when she’s in Mom mode). We also aren’t keeping them on pasture at night due to high coyote activity in the area. However, we are going to have to take that chance eventually. They can’t live in the barn their whole lives.

The second project was a quick one, just installing a pair of gates on the end of the barn so when the cows and sheep are in the yard around the barn, they are not eating all the alfalfa.

Then I installed the hydraulic hoist. To slaughter the last sheep I had it attached to the hitch of the pickup truck, which is what it is designed for, but I did not like how unstable that was, and wanted the option for a few feet more height. So I figured out a way to mount it to the fence panel behind the shop, conveniently close to the pig pen and the barn. Seems sturdy enough to lift anything we are likely to butcher.

The last project was installing the livestock scale. Ideally this would sit on a flat cement pad, but we don’t have time or money to put one in right now. Instead, I set it on four footer stones.

These are heavy, thick pavers that we found lying around when we bought the farm, so they have the added advantage of being free.

Measured and leveled each one, on x and y axes.

And diagonally.

Then backfilled the dirt around them to prevent them shifting laterally.

The hard part was moving the scale. It only weighs 185 Lbs, but it is big and unwieldy, without a convenient place to grip. I was able to slide it on the wagon for the trip from the shop to the barn (my wife is a Very Wise Woman. She saw at once how useful this wagon would be!) and from there slid it onto the feed tank.

From there, however, nothing for it but to grip it and carry it the rest of the way by hand. And that is why we train: so we can be useful.

Level on the x.

Level on the y.

Then I installed a horse panel to funnel the critters onto the scale.

It was not very sturdy by itself, so I put on a quick 2×4 cross brace. Short enough that most adult humans would have to duck to go underneath, but tall enough that Iris shouldn’t have any issues with it. I say “should” because who knows.

Didn’t get time to plug it in and calibrate it because I had to do chores and then go bring the kids home, so that will have to wait for another day.

Newly established hierarchy. We don’t like the berkshires as much as the Meishans. The Meishans are much friendlier and more docile pig, but I wouldn’t want to turn my back on the Berkshires if they were really hungry.