SOOOOOO TIRED!!

Ok, so the week started out sunday night with me taking back the machine after we finished the wall.

Here is the concept.  We are building a stone wall, the green scribble.  Then we are gonna build a little deck/walkway over the top to cover it.  The stone wall will hold the grade and the barn foundation stones.  The walkway will provide us access to check on the pigs, add bedding, give them feed, and hand the out of pen for vet to check as babies all without having to get in the pen.  The floor is also gonna slope slightly toward the cow shed, the left on drawing, to get any pee or other liquids to flow away from the bedding area helping keep it clean.

 A pic of the barn with the old rotten corn crib removed.  The new roof for over the pig pens will tie into the old barn roof right above where the existing barn wall is.  The walkway will be approx. 4'-5' wide. 

 Picture of the future pen area.  That is Steven in the pic, he is the co-owner of the pigs.  And that is my daughter standing by the excavator Supervising the work and making sure no one is goofing off or doing the wrong thing. 

The excavator belongs to a gentleman who does snow removal with me as a subcontractor.  His company name is T&N Excavating.  He is a great guy, does excellent work, and I want to say thank you to him for letting me use his machine!!  If you ever need excavating done in the Canton, Alliance, or surrounding areas of Ohio, look him up and give him a call. 

 Another angle to see the start of the wall.  We were not really concerned with the look of this wall only its functionality.  I need it to be strong and hold the grade without failing as we will not be able to access to fix once the pens are built without a lot of extra work.

 We are getting close to done here.  As you can see Lisa is inspecting the work as Stevens brother Josh is waiting for her approval! 

 We are finished building the wall here.  We built the wall till we reached the grade of the existing barn floor.  We then covered the entire soil area above the wall with 6"-12" of rock.  It was a mix of very large to very small pieces.  This will keep animals such as rats and ground hogs from digging in there to make a home.  They will not be able to move the big ones and the little ones will fall done and block them if they try to dig in between. 

 Pic from the front.

 The new roof will be built a foot or so above the existing cow shed roof.  This will hopefully give me enough room to get my tractor or a stock trailer in the alley to clean, load, and unload animals.  Eventually I plan on taking down the corn crib/shed that is behind where I am standing to take this picture.  This will give me a large parking and work area in front of the barns.  Some day in the distant future I would like to build a workshop/shed somewhere down in the area to work on the equipment inside as well as store stuff for the winter, including feed items for the animals. 

After this was done I went over to Steven's place to clean a stream bed out to unplug a culvert pipe then took the machine back.  I got done and home to bed and had a decent nights sleep.

I got called in to do Ice Control at 5:30am.  Was out for a few hours and came home till 3pm.  That was when the snow started.  The snow, which was supposed to total two inches, didn't stop till 1am.  By that time we had an average of 7.5" on the ground.  I was up from Monday morning till Tuesday at noon.

What you are looking at above is a picture of what happens when you think you are clearing the parking lot and are actually cutting back the day lillies!  The property I was on was not staked and I usually don't plow here.  The previous snows had melted and I couldn't see where they had plowed before and I thought the lot went in a nice smooth curve...it didn't.  I neatly trimmed off all the daylillies at the crown and removed all the excess mulch.

And before you ask me "Why didn't you see it before you went that far....here is my point of view.

 

You cannot see the plow from the drivers seat.  You have a marker stick on each end and you have to have a sixth sense of where it is at.  And when you have 5500lbs of salt in the spreader on the back of a 7500lb truck you don't feel it when you hit anything softer than concrete or large stones!  I noticed the damage after I got out to shovel off the sidewalk.

We then had to haul some snow off one of our downtown accounts so I was back out at midnight.  Sales call after that.  Got home at about 1pm.  Passed out on the couch and basically went into a coma till 3am this morning when I got called out for Ice Control again.

Now they are calling for 2-5 inches again tonight through tomorrow.  UGH......what happened to the 65 degrees we had on Friday!?  I am so ready for spring!!

I am now going to head to bed as it is 7:30pm as I am writing this and I am sure I will be called out around midnight.  Hope everyone has a great Friday!


Goodnight,


Kenny

Started work on pig shed.

Well, given the good weather I decided to start working on the pig shed as good weather is just around the bend.  So I borrowed an excavator from a guy I work with and started cleaning.

When I got down to the shed I noticed Pig sound asleep in a nest she built herself.  She must have decided it was quieter to sleep with the cows than with all the little ones!

 So first I lifted roof enough to let post fall out and let it go and it fell right off the barn....not supposed to do that.  So I picked it up with the forks on the tractor and put it on the burn pile. 

 I made a lot of noise doing this and the cows got spooked and ran out of the shed.  Pig didn't seem to care as she didn't even open her eyes to see what the noise was.

 So next I knocked the post out of the next section with the excavator and hit the wall on the back and the entire rest of the roof fell off.  So I folded it all up and lifted it up with the forks and put it all on the burn pile as well.

 Pig......still sleeping.  The cows you will notice are not in the pic....that is because they were spooked so bad from the noise that they ran to the other end of the pasture and stayed there till I was done.

 The barn minus the old broken down shed roof. 

 Next step was to dig out all of the soil in the area to get ready for the base material.  I am going to install #4 slag about 18" deep and then top dress that with about 4" of 8x slag.  Slag is the material they pull off the top of the melting pot when making steel.  It is all the junk out of the steel.  It is kinda like taking the grease off the top of a crock pot full of fatty meat.  They then break it up and screen it to size.  When installed properly it will set up like concrete but doesn't crack and will flex with freeze and thaw.  It is also much much cheaper than concrete!

 

After getting it all dug out I was examined the corn crib that was built into the side of the barn.  I realized it had extensive insect and water damage and was not able to be repaired like I previously hoped.  So we removed it as well.  Not I had to address the issue of the grade change and how to hold soil up under existing barn while lowering the pig pen area.  

I was discussing this with my father when he suggested using a naturally stacked stone wall instead of stacking block.  It was an excellent idea.  I already have a bunch of stone from a foundation I took out of the lawn and I am a professional at stacking stone.  Furthermore, once properly installed, the wall will move with freeze and thaw and allow me to compensate for grade change without adding any more to the budget.

   

 This is a pic from the guy dumping gravel yesterday.  With the quick early thaw I had some very large holes open up in the driveway.  It took three truck loads to fix all the problems.  I will take some pics of the drive tomorrow.

 Thought you might want to know that the pigs and cows now get along great.  They play together and sleep together from time to time.  This was also their first journey out since winter started.  It was 65 degrees and sunny all day yesterday!  Absolutely beautiful!  I wish it stayed that way all winter.  We even had our first cookout of the year Thursday night!!

I will try to get updated photos of everyone soon.  The camera on my blackberry is not very good.  However they are getting us new phones at work and I am getting a droid which will give me a phenomenally better camera! 

I will still take pics of the wall process tomorrow and better pictures of the barn with the junk torn off.  Hope the rain holds off till we are done.  I hate working in the rain when it is in the 30's!

Have a great day!

Kenny

Come on spring!!!!!

Well, I can see some of the ground again!!  I have cabin fever to the max.  I just wanna go out and get stuff done that has been sitting all winter.  I can't wait for warm weather any longer.

To kick off the start of the spring thaw my daughter and I built a fire tonight and cooked some all beef hot dogs and a tenderloin steak on it!  Tasted soooooo good!  I am going to install a natural gas log starter in the fire pit this spring so I can light the wood a lot easier.  They are only about $20 and I can get all the stuff I need through work and I have installed them before so it won't cost me much at all to do!

Since I had the fire lit and I had a torch in my hand I decided to go see if the grasses would burn out front to start cleaning them up. 

These were the smaller ones, they are about six feet tall and three feet in diameter.  The rest are much bigger at 6'-7' x 6'.  The ones I tried tonight burnt ok but still need to dry a little more.  It it going to be in the upper 50's tomorrow all day so I will burn the rest when I get home tomorrow!  Should be fun!

This way of removing the grasses is actually better than cutting them off.  This is the way nature does it and is much quicker and more efficient.  When you simply cut the grasses back and do not burn them they build up debris in the center and will actually kill the center out of themselves.  Over the long run they will begin to rot in the center and weeds and trees can sprout there.  When you burn them they will burn all the excess dead material from the entire plant.  The ashes then fertilize the plant and there is nothing there to rot so the new growth shoots up much quicker in the spring. This also allows the suns warmth to get to the crown faster giving a quicker jump on the year.  Unfortunately they will not let us do this at work for safety reasons and city code.  I would like to look into some form of this however that we could safely do in town or near a house.  I can do these without cutting them down because they are out by themselves by the road.  The ones near the house I cut down first and then light the base with the hose in hand to keep the house wet and free of flame.  The grasses will burn entirely in less than sixty seconds so you gotta be ready before you light it or you could be in quite a mess in a hurry!!

On another topic........it is really really muddy!!!  The frost is still in the ground a most everywhere and the snow melt is just saturating the surface.  After another day or two of really nice weather the frost should thaw and the water will start to dissipate and the mud will begin to lessen.

I can't wait!!  I am so ready for an early spring with a perfect summer!

Kenny

We humans aren't the only ones who have traffic jams!!

Went out to get the tractor the other day and noticed there was a blockade in the pasture!

That is Sally in the front.  She was just relaxing, chewing her cud, enjoying the breeze.  Everyone else was standing behind her looking around each other trying to see what the hold up was.  They stood there for almost an hour without going around.  Eventually she chose to head on up to the barn and the beef highway congestion cleared up. 

The cattle have paths that they follow around the pasture and if they are heading somewhere on the path and someone stops they will not go around.  Especially in the winter!  When I was young and had to chase cows into the barn to milk I would see the same thing.  The cows had about 50 acres of pasture they grazed on and would have established roads they used to go from area to area.  Cattle are near sighted and I often wonder if that has something to do with it.  I think they remember where the path ends up but can't really see the other end.  Kinda like us driving cross country.  There is usually a shorter more direct route but we follow the established ones to go from place to place.  And just like above, when the head cow stops to look at something every one behind them has to wait!!

Pigs are doing well.  They made it through the cold.  I am finding that Steven cannot remember to lock the gate in the barn and Pig Pig got out of the pen into the area where we keep the bales of straw and all the feed.  She tore up the two bales of straw and made herself an awesome nest.  Then shoved the sled riding sled over by the feed and knocked down one of the bags into the sled and emptied it out.  She ate her full, pushed the sled out of the way, and bedded down for a nice solitary winters nap!

On another note, Steven will be cleaning the barn again this weekend!!

We are currently working on getting timber down to have the sawmill guy cut ruff cut lumber for the pig shed and barn.  I am definitely going to take pictures of that process!!  Only cost $.26/board ft.  You cannot buy the cheapest lumber at Lowes less than $1.50/bd. ft.

Lastly, they are calling for a thaw this week, temps as high as 50 degrees!!!  I can't wait!

Have a great weekend!

Kenny

Exhausted!!

Well, this week was not fun at all.  Some little snow to start the week and then a mother of an ice storm.  Only lost power at home for about thirty minutes.  Only reason I know this is because my wife told me about it.  I spent 40 hours strait in the plow truck trying to keep our main customers' businesses open.  Then home for a three hour nap and out for another eight hours. 

I am manager of the canton snow region for the landscape company I work for and we maintain most of the AEP properties in this part of the state.  It was a struggle keeping everything open and safe for them to get their equipment in and out to get and keep the power on for everyone.  I am just glad that is over.  I would have taken three feet of snow over the ice any day of the year!!  At least with that much snow they close the roads and shut the doors at wal-mart so we can plow without the cars there!

A pic of the trucks at the Stark County Fairgrounds.  These guy were working round the clock in shifts to get everything back up and running.  Pretty awesome sight to see a few hundred trucks roll in and out the drive at breakfast!

Anyway, I still do not know what day it is without looking at my phone or my watch.  It will probably be the middle of the week before I can function mentally normal again!

Anyway, yesterday was spent picking up the processed beef at the butcher and making as many deliveries as we could get in a day. 

This is a pic of one of the carts that the beef is stored on in the freezer at the butcher.  A cart will hold one steer with a hanging weight of 650-700 lbs.  They label each cart and each tray for who they belong too.  All the meat that is processed here is 100% USDA inspected.  We have 6 - 128qt. coolers to put the meat into.  One cooler will hold a quarter comfortably.  To pick up two full steers we had to make a delivery and then come back for the rest though.  I would like to have two more coolers but we will have to wait till Wal-mart gets them in stock again.

We got most of the meat delivered Friday.  Took the entire day!  All we have left are the family packs that we are selling.  We have three yet to deliver that are sold and five more to sell. 

Today was spent dealing with all the stuff in the barn that got let go all week.  Apparently Steven left the gate open on the pig pen the night of the storm and no one found it till the next day when his brother brought over the milk water for them.  The pigs made a mess of everything, knocking down boards, tearing up bedding bales, flipping over the tubs we store the feed in!  Then after finding the mess they simply put the pigs back and left the mess and just told me not to look ... I looked.  Yea, not happy! 

So today we started with grinding the feed.  Same mix as last time.  Went a lot quicker as this time as the mixer was ready to go.  Got the feed ready and they brought it over here to unload.  That was when I told them we weren't unloading anything till the barn AND pen were both cleaned.  So we all went to work.  Bedded down cow shed first so the pigs would go down there and mess around while we worked in the barn.  Got the pen cleaned and rearranged the barn more neatly and unloaded the feed. 

That is about 1700lbs. of feed there.  Should last us another three weeks.  Hopefully a little longer if they don't waste much. 

After we got done and Steven and his brothers left I decided to go for a walk in the pasture as I haven't done this since winter set in.  I wanted to check the condition of the ice on the creek where the cows drink.  If it gets covered completely the cows will walk out on it to get a drink and can slip and fall and either die or be terminally injured.  So when it gets bad I take the tractor down and clear a spot out for them to drink.  As I started for the creek I hollered at the cows to come with me and this is a pic of them following me.

If you look you will notice pig is coming to see just what is going on.  After we all got down there they realized pig came down and they started an argument with her and they all headed back to the barn.  Funny part about that is when I checked on them a little bit ago she was sleeping with them in their shed! 

Anyway, the creek had about 2-5 inches of ice covering most of it so I took the tractor back down and broke up what I could to open the area back up.  They should be fine till later in the week when it goes down into the single digits.  After that it is supposed to warm up quite a bit which will let the ice thaw and open the creek back up.

Anyway, if you are reading this you have power so enjoy and stay warm!! 

I wanted to throw a pic of the sunrise on my way home the other day.  Kind of reminds you that no matter how bad it gets another beautiful day is just a sunrise away!

Goodnight all, I am going to go get some much needed rest!!

Kenny