New Baby Lambs

The ewes delivered three lambs. The ewes have names now since they live in the barn. Tilly and Bess.

This is Tilly’s single lamb. She’s a little girl sheep.

Bess had two. We think they are boys. There was a lot of birth debris so their junk was lost in all the other junk. They were born tonight around 6pm.

This is one of the boys at less than an hour old.

Getting born is exhausting.

Next Project Underway

We got the auger back from the mechanic. It was a warranty job so we had to wait on the parts from the manufacturer. During the weeks it was gone the weather got hot and the ground hardened. The good news was that the repair was free.

The auger would only cut into the clay a few inches. Then it would just rotate and polish the hard clay. To soften it up we filled the holes with water. There was little seepage so the water stayed in the holes for a long time.

We discovered a new way to catch voles. Voles can’t swim or climb very well. It took a few days for us to get the holes to the right depth. Each day we would get a little deeper and add more water. Each morning we would collect all of the dead voles. Lisa caught a frog one morning. It survived and since they eat bugs she rescued it and released it in the pond.

The hen house will be 8’x8’ and the yard will be about 16’x16’. They’ll love it. All the posts have concrete now. This weekend I’ll box in the roof and add lag bolts to fasten everything solidly.

We’re using pole shed style construction. The roof weight will bear on the poles instead of the walls. The roof will slope with the low side to the west which is the direction of the prevailing winds. We plan to use the metal roofing from Mansea Metals like we used on the tractor port. The roof will be brown with white trim like the barn and the walls will be the same “clay” color.

The entry into the yard will be between the near post on the left and the building on the right.

Ewes in the Yard

Andy bought 2010 ewe lamb #24 from Edith. He’s going to use her for breeding his future lamb stock. Edith said she is well built for breeding. She’ll be the black sheep in the flock.

Andy opening the cage.

Lisa and Andy picking up the lamb.

The black lamb.

Lamb #24 standing next to the sheep enclosure.

The bred ewes are up in the barnyard. They are due to deliver any time.

They are getting wide and their udders are filling. They have some grazing in the barnyard and we let them have access to behind the chain link. We hope they’ll eat up some of the weeds there.

Tractor Port - Complete

After a lot of work, sweat, money, time, and even a little blood, the tractor port is finished.

The finished product. I’ll take the rafter braces down after the crooked ones relax a little longer. I still want to laminate some plywood on them to keep them rigid.

Lisa painted the beams and rafters white. The posts and braces are “clay” to match the garage siding. Rosie got to come back to the tractor port too.

All the equipment is parked under cover now.

Tractor Port Purlins

I got forced into working on the tractor port again. The tarp blew off in two back to back wind storms. We had been putting it off since we found out how much the roofing materials were going to cost. After all the research and calculations we decided to go with metal roofing from Mansea Metals in Winchester. They knew just how much we would need and the price included the color and screws.

The color is “clay”. It was the closest match to the siding on the garage. The roof is 15’ 10” and we got the material in 8’ and 8’ 2” pieces. We could have got it all in long pieces but this way I can lift them up onto the roof by myself. The upper piece will overlap the lower.

The underside is white.

The edge hangs over about 1/2”. We didn’t get an eve drip. The rafter ends weren’t square enough for a fascia so I used the pressure treated 1x6s for the end purlin.  Lisa is going to paint the ends of the rafters.

The trim is going to be painted white like the garage trim and the posts and braces will be the clay color. There is an end molding that goes along the rake edge, it will be white too.

I had to do some field engineering. Two of the rafter boards warped. Either I installed them crowned the wrong way or they got twisted. Some of the 16’ boards looked like they had two crowns so it was difficult to tell which way they would settle. I made these jack beams out of some 2x3s I had on hand. I braced the two adjoining rafters on both sides of the offenders with 2x6 blocks. I hung the jacks up with ropes and then fastened one end with 3 1/2” deck screws. Then I used a ratchet strap to lift the warped board up to the other board’s elevation and added more screws. It seemed to do the trick. I intend to laminate some heavy plywood on either side of the rafters and glue and screw them in place. The plywood should keep them from buckling back to the warped shape.

 

We had to move Gene. He wasn’t scaring the crows away where he was. Hopefully he’ll do better now. The cucumbers are about done but we are still getting tons of tomatoes. Lisa has been canning a lot of tomato sauce. She made some spaghetti sauce and salsa as well.

 

We let the chicks out even though we don’t have the chicken coop ready. We hope they survive, they were getting too big for the little cage and it has been so hot they have needed to get out to find cool spots and wallow in the dust.