07/13/2008
Farm Chores

Been quite busy here of late. We have had a handful of large tasks building up, including spreading a several-ton pile of gravel, cleaning out the goat shed, and putting up round bales of hay for next winter. Our tractor is an old and small, but cheap and useful, Yanmar 1300D 16HP 4WD. It has served us well for mowing, post-hole digging, and lime spreading, but there have been times when it's power was somewhat lacking, and it does not seem worth it to get a front end loader put on it. We briefly looked at buying a new, somewhat bigger compact tractor with a front end loader, but the price tag scared us off -- it is around $15K-$16K for either a new 24HP HP Mahindra 2415 HST with ML105 Loader, or a new Kubota 26HP 2630HSD with a LA403 Front Loader.

Fortunately, we were able to borrow a tractor from our neighbor Stan -- a 30HP Kubota 7800 HSD with a Woods 1008 Loader, pictured here.

[Just a quick note on tractor specs: the engine horsepower is only vaguely related to the HP available at the rear PTO, the lift capacity at the rear 3-point hitch, or the lift of the front end loader. All three of these tractors/loaders have pretty similar specs in these categories.]

[Continued next picture ...]

 
Farm Chores [Continued]

The first, long overdue task was cleaning out the goat shed. There was over 2 years worth of bedding and goat berries in varying states of compost to haul out.

In the foreground is a pile in our side garden -- should be ready to till in next spring. In the background is a pile that Eric simply pushed out the back of the goat shed -- it will continue to compost and what with the goats playing on it constantly, it should spread out rather nicely to help even out the somewhat steep slope there.

This picture does not do justice to size of these piles -- there was about a foot of bedding in the 14 by 30 foot goat shed, so that's roughly 420 cubic feet of material, which is the equivalent of over 3,000 gallon milk jugs!

We are, though, VERY happy to have all of this black gold, though, especially in light of a recent story out of the UK about gardens dying due a herbicide that was applied to cow pastures, and was still active 12 months later, after having passed through the cow, been composted, bagged, stored, an=then sold to gardeners at their local home center. We know what is in our compost!

[Continued next picture ...]

 
Farm Chores [Continued]

Next up, we had to deal with 15 round bales of hay that we had delivered (for a decent price of $35 each.) Now, in this case, "delivered" means "pushed off the trailer to gather willy-nilly in the low spot." These bales are 4-foot diameter by 5-foot length (called "4x5" ) and weigh about 600 pounds each. Last year we got "5x4" bales (5-foot diameter by 4-foot length) which weighed about 800 pounds, but the guy we bought from had a nifty extension trailer so he was able to place the bales where we wanted them for storage. We store at the high end of the back driveway and are able to roll them by hand -- well by body, really, there's a bit o' rasslin' involved -- down to the goat shed one by one as we need them. But this year we wanted to get the bales up on wood rails off the ground so they will stay drier, and our little Yanmar is not powerful enough to lift these bales -- it probably maxes out at around 500 pounds at the 3-point hitch, so we were delighted to borrow this tractor (loader rated at 950 pounds, 3-point hitch rated at 1600 pounds).

Anyway, (sorry to ramble!) with a little trial and error(and initial inspiration and guidance from Walter Jeffries and one of his SugarMtnFarm blog post on how he rangles hay bales), Eric came up with a system using two chains, one looped around the bottom of the far end of the bale (right half of the picture) looped through a second chain that is in turn looped around the loader mounting frame -- would have been easier with one longer chain!

[Continued next picture ...]

 
Farm Chores [Continued]

Since these bales are longer than they are round, they stack well in a simple two-on-the-bottom, one-on-the-top pyramid. Was very careful when lifting the top ones into place as shown here -- that 600 pounds up above the hood of the tractor really raises your center of gravity and makes you more prone to tipping over, which would be very bad!

[Continued next picture ...]

 
Farm Chores [Continued]

Behold the finished Hay Storage Project, all tarped up and ready to stay snug until we start feeding it to the goats this winter.

Don't have any pictures of the Gravel Pile Project, but that loader sure was handy! Eric now officially has Tractor Envy!

04/24/2008
2008 Kidding About Done

Apologies for being so far behind in posting kid pix. Until I get it all together, here is a shot of Artemis with her two kids from yesterday. An interesting two-tone coloration on one of them.

03/13/2008
2008 Third Kidding

2nd doe to pop today was Nellie, around 4 pm. Two boys this time. About an hour and a half old in this pic. Nellie is Samanta's mother.