The Barn Addition and Rain Barrels

The contractor finished up the work on the barn Thursday. This weekend Alan put the gutter back up, raked out the dirt and seeded.

Then the rain barrels needed to get placed. The two barrels on the other side of the barn weren't touched, but the side with the addition needed major work to get the barrels working properly. We nearly doubled the catchment area of rain water on the south side roof. We used to have two 50 gallon rain barrels, one at each corner, on this side of the barn. The corner closest to the house is now too low for a barrel so Alan pitched the gutter to the southwest corner and placed the barrel there. Last year the barrel in each corner would fill up with about one inch of rain. Tonight we finally had a good rain storm and this is what happened.

The barrels are all linked together with hoses and will seek their equilibrium, but there was a lot of air in the lines since Alan had just reconnected everything. And it was a very hard downpour. We were going to use three of the 50 gallon rain barrels and a 240 gallon tote as overflow, but the water doesn't move that quickly between barrels.  I think we need to use the 240 gallon tote on the southwest corner.
It was great using this rainwater to water the garden last year. Our well is not very deep and will run dry if I water everything in the garden, or less if I just washed a load of laundry.

Harvesting the Cover Crop

Sickle v scythe. The Austrian Winter Peas, approximately 12x12 feet, were harvested using a sickle I have had for years. The pea stem was pretty soft and cut well with the sickle. The main problem was the length of the sickle handle. I had to either bend way over or kneel to get a good angle on the cutting.

Then I tried a patch of winter rye, slightly larger than the patch of pea cover crop. The stems were much tougher and required a smaller "bite" with each swipe of the sickle. And I had to kneel for the entire patch.

Altogether it took me about 40 minutes to cut those two patches of cover crop using the sickle.

Then I cut the remaining patch of winter rye using the scythe. That patch was about 12x25 feet and took about seven minutes to cut down with the scythe. And I was able to stand the whole time! The definite winner is the scythe.

The sheep think the Austrian Winter Peas dried in the sun make a mighty tasty hay too.

Scything

I have wanted a scythe for a long time. I have a real aversion to loud equipment, especially if it vibrates a lot too. I like the idea of a gas powered trimmer but the noise and the vibration tire me out and just listening to it is annoying. Same goes for vacuum cleaners, dish washers, snow blowers, etc. If there is a hand tool to do the job I would rather use it. My husband is the exact opposite. He loves his power tools and motors!

Enter the scythe and snath. So you can't just use a scythe, that is only the blade. The snath is the wooden part you hold. This is the european snath from Lehman's. It is much lighter than it looks and is not tiring to use at all.

It makes a lovely quiet "swish" when it cuts. And no vibration! The rhythmic motion of scything is almost relaxing. My daughter likes using it too.

She scythed almost the whole orchard. Now we need to learn how to sharpen and peen it. There are great videos of the sharpening and peening processes on-line. This video is very informative on peening.  Scythe Supply appears to have the best selection of sharpening and peening supplies.

Barn Work

Thursday this pile of wood showed up. And yesterday the equipment arrived.

That could only mean one thing. We had moved up on the list of projects for our contractor. Sure enough, this was what I saw today when I got home from work.

This is just a simple shed roof on posts. It will be so nice to have a dry space outside the stalls for the winter. We will be able to keep the top stall doors open for ventilation and not have snow or rain come into the stalls. And the sheep and goats will have a dry place to hang out in the rain. But the best part will be not having to shovel the snow that slid off the roof before I can open the doors!

Hay Auction

Every Saturday while we are out running errands we see large loads of hay coming out of the hay auction. We finally had a chance to go check it out. It would be nice to buy up a load of hay at wholesale prices in the fall.

The hay is brought in loaded onto pickup trucks and/or trailers and sold by the lot. It is listed as either number of bales or weight. We saw loads between 50-75 bales and 2000-3000 pounds. There appears to be a delivery charge of $1/mile and we aren't sure if that is from the auction or the farm the hay came from.  Some sellers had an increase in delivery charge to $2/mile over ten miles. We didn't talk to anyone in the office about buyer's premiums and other business. This is definitely something worth checking out next fall when we are looking to load up the barn with hay for the winter.

What's Blooming Now

The flowers are going crazy right now. So many blossoms! The plants around the front porch are a riot of color.

The bleeding hearts of going crazy! And I dug out quite a few last year.

The salvia is covered in flowers.

The rhododendron is also covered in flowers.

The comfrey and austrian winter peas are also getting in on the act.

If even half of the raspberry flowers turn into fruit it will be a very good year for the raspberry harvest.

Learning More About Rotational Grazing

The rams have done a pretty good job eating down their pasture, so it was time to move them again.

On the left in the photo above is the area they have been grazing for the past 5 days. Even though Alan was able to take a vacation day Wednesday I wanted to move the sheep without him. I need to be able to do this myself and always having him help me is not making me learn.
Anyway, Mackenzie, our youngest child is home from college for the summer and was a willing helper. Good thing too, since we had to move a calf hutch about 250 feet down the meadow. I wanted to start grazing the area at the other end of this pasture where it tends to get very wet. We have been seriously lacking in rainfall recently and this area is perfect for grazing right now. If we suddenly start getting a lot of rain this area will become off limits. Alan actually reclaimed this area last fall. It had been totally overgrown.

I actually set up two grazing areas. I want to try to always have the area they will be moving into next ready to go.
So what did the silly rams do first? They check out the calf hutch and ate some hay. I am still giving them a flake of hay daily until their rumens have totally adjusted to the grass diet.

After they ate some hay and the grass in their calf hutch they got to work on the good stuff!

I am learning how to make the electric rope fence work for me and the sheep have really learned to respect it. They won't get closer than a foot or two. I suspect I will be fairly proficient in fencing once I move the rams another three or four more times.