Fall 2014 Farm Pics





Fall On The Farm

Colors Of Corn Creek Canyon

Hills And Horses

Cows In Kanosh

Light Layer On The Lawn

Cora In The Country

Fall Chores

One of the first fall chores is to locate and bring something like this big boy to the farm.






The expression on the faces of the girls says it all.

The plan this year is to leave the goats at the farm for most of the winter. I had some metal panels that I had recovered from a house. Along with a few cedar posts and some 2x4s we have the beginnings of a nice shelter.

I had enough shorter metal panel pieces to add two side walls. I extended the roof over the fence for hay storage, the hay doubles as a good wind break and makes a cozy three sided enclosure.

 These pictures taken in November, show that the plan worked quite well.

 I have been trying to decide what to do with this 100 plus year old structure.  As a builder, I just can't tear it down. A winter of heavy snow and I may not need to make the decision.  I decided that a good fall project would be to dig out the approx. 2 feet of debris from the inside and begin to rebuild the roof.

I used rough sawn material and matched the existing construction practices. It needs a lot more work but at least now the roof won't completely collapse.  The other side of the metal roof is completely brown with rust. On this new side I tried an experiment. I used phosphoric acid to remove some of the galvanizing to chemically age the corrugated metal panels. It took off the shine and it is starting to rust already.

This portion of the project completed just in time.

Wrapping Up Summer

I try to do mostly outside projects when the weather is good, but the bathroom window trim has been needing to be done for a while now.  I finally got her done.

The September weather is wonderful, so we had to get a four wheeler ride in. Grandma and Joe got tired and are taking a nap.

Late summer, early fall is a good time to get some planting done.  The front city lot / orchard area has been in need of some TLC.

So we tilled everything that was dry grass and weeds to prepare for a little more lawn and some pasture grass.

Unfortunately, after tilling comes a lot of raking.

"A picture is worth a thousand rocks."

We also tilled and planted a small area around the round-about with a wheat, barley, hay mixture.

With the help of rain and sprinklers the pasture grass came up pretty fast.

Goats enjoying the new pastures. Joe enjoying his job of keeping the goats in the new pastures.

Pioneer Day 2014

We love the Kanosh 24th of July parade. It's not too crowded and they throw lots of candy.

The crowd favorite is the Kanosh Town fire trucks that wrap-up the parade.

This year we added a few of our own activities back at the R-N-R.  As pictured we put together a pretty sweet redneck water slide. All meals were cooked outside pioneer style. We had the 1st annual farm implement race (see attached video).  Next year along with the race, we plan on adding the annual family rodeo.

A Little Progress

We didn't get to the farm as much as we wanted to this spring and when we did our time was mostly filled with yard work. Remember the new lawn I planted last fall?

I did manage to get a few small projects done, like the cabinet doors and drawers. I even got a bathroom door installed.  The barn door I've always wanted.



A rusty bent horse shoe I found works great for a door handle / pull.


I had just enough left over pine to build a ladder to the loft. I still need to build a closet door.

After deciding to sell most of the goats, we moved the remaining select six to the farm to graze in happiness.

 

 The project I have been trying to get done all spring was to complete the siding by placing the 1x4 batts.  Cora came to the farm for a few days and helped me complete this project.

Now we have a barn.

And even a drinking fountain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with clouds and sunsets. What more do we need?

 



Winter / Early Spring

In January or February I installed a roll-up door on the barn.  I had planned on building a pair of traditional exterior sliding doors, but changed plans to get a better weather-tight seal. I installed interior and exterior weather stripping.












As mentioned in the previous blog, kidding season started early (January).  The problem was unlike last year when we had all 25 new kids in 9 days, this year it lasted 3 months. Checking on expecting does (heavies) a couple of times a night became quite a chore. But we got through it and boy are they cute.

This is a portion of the 35 new kids. With one big buck, does and kids we had a total of close to 60 goats for a short time before we began to sell many of them.









One yearling doe turned out to not be pregnant.  Remember these are livestock farm animals raised for one purpose. We made a tasty batch of goat meat snack sticks.  

Fall and Winter

The fall projects included getting the barn side of the "Cabarn" enclosed, (Kevin helped get the high sheets up)

brush piles to clean up, (thanks Janna and Joe)

and wood to split and stack.  (thanks Ember)

The leaves are starting to turn, and the barn is getting closer to being weathered in.

We had to take time for a fall colors excursion up the canyon.

Except for the 1x4 batts and the barn door we got her enclosed before the snow flew.








Santa brought us a new high efficient wood stove.

The goats had been moved to St George for the winter.  But, with a freak December snow storm of about 6 to 8 inches we all got to enjoy a white Christmas.

In January we made a weekend trip to Kanosh to install the garage / barn door. Sorry,  I forgot to take a picture of the new door, but we did get a picture form a Saturday morning fishing trip.  No luck this time with the fish, but the scenery was awesome.

Back in St George the weather has warmed up a little and we had some unplanned January kids.  "Come on Mom lets play.  You could be happy if you wanted to."