Baymule
Herd Master
SSHHHHHH!!!! Don’t let them know!
Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along
- Thread starter Ridgetop
- Start date
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- #2,402
Ridgetop
Herd Master
DS1 came in this morning and told me that we have to sort out sheep. The older ewe lambs will remain in the barn/ creep pen and their mamas will go onto the field. The youngest lambs will get their second vaccinations, get tagged, and they and their mamas will move into the barn/creep pen leaving the jugs to be cleaned out and limed. The other ewes will be sorted as to who needs to be bred and who are already bred. Knowing that DD2 and SIL2 wouldn't bother keeping track of the ear numbers if they were in a breeding situation, DS1 pulled the ram from the breeding pen before he left for Texas. All those ewes now need to be sorted as to when they will lamb and who needs to go into the breeding pen.
In addition, Raphael called and said that he finally got his fencing up for the sheep he bought from us. He bought them the second week in July and left them here until he got his fencing. I told him that we would have to charge him for the extra feed while he kept them here and he agreed. They have been here for 3 extra months now, and I gave him a low price when he bought them since I wanted them off the feed bill. LOL He will pick them up on Tuesday.
Finally finished the laundry from the trip. Everything has been put away. We are all exhausted.
In addition, Raphael called and said that he finally got his fencing up for the sheep he bought from us. He bought them the second week in July and left them here until he got his fencing. I told him that we would have to charge him for the extra feed while he kept them here and he agreed. They have been here for 3 extra months now, and I gave him a low price when he bought them since I wanted them off the feed bill. LOL He will pick them up on Tuesday.
Finally finished the laundry from the trip. Everything has been put away. We are all exhausted.
- Thread starter
- #2,403
Ridgetop
Herd Master
Found the picture of the antique school desk! Here it is. Once I sand it off and varnish it with exterior grade urethane it will look great. I have just the spot for it on one end of the front porch. 
Now I just have to figure out what cool project to do with the cow stanchions I brought home from the old barn in Yelm. There is one in the barn in Yantis too.
Desk will go on far right end of porch along with antique milk can. 2 white outdoor rockers will go on left side of porch. Change of paint color on trim, power wash of exterior, and some pretty flowering shrubs around base of porch. Maybe hanging plant baskets on porch overhang too. The tenant has a gardener who mows the lawn. I think we will hire him too since we will be pretty busy renovating the house after we finish fencing the pastures. Eventually I would like to have some sort of fence in the front of the house as well. Then the sheep can mow and fertilize for us. 
Now I just have to figure out what cool project to do with the cow stanchions I brought home from the old barn in Yelm. There is one in the barn in Yantis too.
Baymule
Herd Master
That low price to get ‘em off the feed bill backfired. LOL Sure you can charge for feeding them, but you can’t rip his head off for it. Nice of you to keep them for him, he’ll be back for more because y’all treated him so good.
Laundry! That’s a chore!
Laundry! That’s a chore!
SageHill
Herd Master
The desk will be a fun project, it's going to look great on the porch. Beautiful home too.
- Thread starter
- #2,406
Ridgetop
Herd Master
He bought the sheep July 16, 2022. That is almost 4 months ago! According to when the younger ewe was exposed she can lamb as early as the end of this month! I had DS1 figure out the amount of hay they were eating. 28 bales at $25.00 per bale. I knocked off a couple bales and am only charging for 25 bales. I don't think that is exorbitant since we are paying $25.00 a bale buying our alfalfa from him. On the other hand if I had known he was not going to pick them up for 4 months, I would have taken them to the auction and not bothered breeding them for him. LOL "No good deed goes unpunished" as they say. He is picking them up today. We still have to dock, tag, and vaccinate and move the jugged ewes into the barn/creep pen with their lambs. Then we start cleaning the jugs and getting ready for the next crop. Th first one - 7088 - is due to lamb 10/30! These are my money crop of January/February auction lambs. 12 due to lamb.
My cold has almost finished up. I have not taken any cough syrup today and have hardly coughed at all.Got the porta crib packed up and ready to go into the shed. It was not being used for the past 5 months but couldn't seem to find time to package it up and remove it. The highchair can go to the shed too since Robert now sits on a booster seat and chair. New baby due in 2 months!
Made 60 chicken enchiladas yesterday and froze them. I will go out today and pack them up in freezer bags. I freeze them without sauce and then can remove however many I need for dinners, add the sauce and bake them. They take up less space in the freezer that way. My back was killing me after a whole day on my feet, deboning the chicken, chopping the green onions, filling and rolling the enchiladas. Hurt so bad that I couldn't stay up for dinner. They are done now. I guess I need to watch for sales on ground meat - beef, chicken or turkey, pork, etc. to make meatloaves. I like to make about 40-50 lbs. of meatloaves and freeze them. I used to shop for all this stuff and spend 3 days making meatloaf, chicken enchiladas, spaghetti sauce, chicken divan, etc. for the freezer. I guess I can't manage that type of cooking marathon anymore. When we move to Texas I can make smaller portions to freeze since there will only be 3 of us. Making vast quantities of food comes from cooking for 6, and when I did licensed daycare I cooked for 4 extra children that stayed for supper. Moving into my "prime" is difficult!
Surprise! Overcast today and now it is sprinkling - not exactly raining yet - just getting the ground wet. I wonder if we are going to have a wet winter. That would be wonderful.
Got the heating replaced in Yantis. Apparently, there was good AC but no heat pump. The electric heat the tenant said was costing a fortune and did not warm up the house. He was running electric heaters in all the rooms. This will be warmer and cheaper. He also said that the fireplace worked great to warm up the main room and kitchen so we might use that more when we move back there. There is a lot of dead wood and some dead trees to take down. Hopefully it will be good wood to use to heat with. Some wood is too oily and some burns too fast to make a good fire for heating. Either way, we will cut a lot of the dead stuff up and rent a log splitter to get the usable stuff set aside next year.
My cold has almost finished up. I have not taken any cough syrup today and have hardly coughed at all.
Got the porta crib packed up and ready to go into the shed. It was not being used for the past 5 months but couldn't seem to find time to package it up and remove it. The highchair can go to the shed too since Robert now sits on a booster seat and chair. New baby due in 2 months! Made 60 chicken enchiladas yesterday and froze them. I will go out today and pack them up in freezer bags. I freeze them without sauce and then can remove however many I need for dinners, add the sauce and bake them. They take up less space in the freezer that way. My back was killing me after a whole day on my feet, deboning the chicken, chopping the green onions, filling and rolling the enchiladas. Hurt so bad that I couldn't stay up for dinner. They are done now. I guess I need to watch for sales on ground meat - beef, chicken or turkey, pork, etc. to make meatloaves. I like to make about 40-50 lbs. of meatloaves and freeze them. I used to shop for all this stuff and spend 3 days making meatloaf, chicken enchiladas, spaghetti sauce, chicken divan, etc. for the freezer. I guess I can't manage that type of cooking marathon anymore.
When we move to Texas I can make smaller portions to freeze since there will only be 3 of us. Making vast quantities of food comes from cooking for 6, and when I did licensed daycare I cooked for 4 extra children that stayed for supper. Moving into my "prime" is difficult!Surprise! Overcast today and now it is sprinkling - not exactly raining yet - just getting the ground wet. I wonder if we are going to have a wet winter. That would be wonderful.
Got the heating replaced in Yantis. Apparently, there was good AC but no heat pump. The electric heat the tenant said was costing a fortune and did not warm up the house. He was running electric heaters in all the rooms. This will be warmer and cheaper. He also said that the fireplace worked great to warm up the main room and kitchen so we might use that more when we move back there. There is a lot of dead wood and some dead trees to take down. Hopefully it will be good wood to use to heat with. Some wood is too oily and some burns too fast to make a good fire for heating. Either way, we will cut a lot of the dead stuff up and rent a log splitter to get the usable stuff set aside next year.
Baymule
Herd Master
I know where you could get a lot of free firewood……….. LOL
You did good cooking up all those enchiladas!
You did good cooking up all those enchiladas!
SageHill
Herd Master
Oh man - now I'm hungry after that post!!!
We got some wet stuff from the sky down here too. I had to use the wipers coming home from TS. Slow going on the twisty roads - not complaining at all - slow is good for the mpg. Of course the ranch got all of 10 drops
. A wet winter would be a good thing 
.
We got some wet stuff from the sky down here too. I had to use the wipers coming home from TS. Slow going on the twisty roads - not complaining at all - slow is good for the mpg. Of course the ranch got all of 10 drops
. A wet winter would be a good thing .- Thread starter
- #2,409
Ridgetop
Herd Master
Thunder and lightning right overhead today and heavy rain - for about 10 minutes! Then blue skies and sunshine. Heavy clouds to the northeast though so
last week. Rafael came today to pick up the sheep. Typical Ridgetop mess.
Last week I asked DS1 PLEASE let's dock, vac, tag, and move ewes and lambs out of jugs and into the large creep pen. All I got was tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
I wanted to empty the jugs and sort Rafael's sheep into them so we could just run them up the ramp and into his trailer. But NOOOO let's not do that the easy way, because SOMEONE knew exactly what pens they were in and would be able to sort and load them easily straight into Rafael's trailer. 
RIGHT.
My cold is much worse and I had to cancel several doctor appointments that I had been waiting for due to my horrific coughing. Naturally when Rafael arrived I had to get up and come out to give him the paperwork. He wants more sheep if I have any more for sale so I tell him about the ewe with matitis that has half her udder and has a ram lamb at side. He wants to buy her so ok I put a cheap price on her and warn him about the mastitis means that he will have to make sure she can raise twins on half her udder, He says he is fine with that. It saves me a trip to the auction yard and I give him a couple tubes of mastitis treatment.
Then DS1 can't find one of the ewes. I tell him she is in the breeding pen but he insists that she is not. So much for DS1 knowing exactly where each sheep is. DS1 insisted that he had put 0439 in the breeding pen "just a couple days ago" because she had a lamb with her in the creep. WRONG. We had separated 0439 and O5 in July and moved them into the breeding pen back then. Their lambs are over 6 months old now. I don't argue since my head is pounding and DS1 is now complaining that I don't know where my sheep are.
After a bunch of messing around for an hour they still can't t find O5. Was she a retag? I told Rick she would be the one without a red or blue tag in her ear. WHY? Because she was not a grade 4(red tag) or 5(blue tag) which are the only ones that get tagged during the inspection! And that is why I am selling them, thy r Grade 3 Commercials. DUH! Doesn't he listen? why NO!!! I am his mother so naturally I don't know anything. GRRRRR! I walked out to the sorting chute and pointed her out to him. Just about then one of the younger ewes takes a flying leap in the pen, gets tangled in the hose and BREAKS OFF THE WATER PIPE! Not just a small water pipe but the large reducer from the 2" farm feeder pipe coming up the hill. Now we have a huge gusher in the yard.
No need to go to Yellowstone - we have our own Old Faithful. Much yelling and screaming with many people running back and forth hysterically trying to decide what to do about this catastrophe. Raphael and his buddy have a front row seat for the confusion that is Ridgetop. 
We should have charged admission.
DH rushes to the car to drive 1/2 mile down the hill to the street to the main shutoff. I keep yelling at the boys that there is a shut off at that pipe connection but they inform me that I am WRONG. I keep insisting that there is a shutoff there since it was installed for this very reason - to avoid having to drive down to the street to turn the water off at the main. I am ignored. Finally, DS2 goes to look and OH WOW! MOM IS RIGHT! THERE IS A SHUT OFF AT THE CONNECTION! About then DS1 remembers that he installed one. Just shoot me now! The shut off connection is right at the gushing geyser.
Big discussion between DS1, DS2, DGS1, DGS2, etc. about how to reach in and shut off the valve without getting wet from the Old Faithful geyser. Really?
DS1 grabs a bucket and hands it to DS2 to try to put it over the gusher from the other side of the fence. No go, the bucket is catapulted away by the force of the water pressure. By now I can barely stand up, my head is pounding, my nose is running and I am out of Kleenex and patience. I grab the bucket, ignoring cries from my children that I "will get hurt", wade into the water and cap the spray. DS1 and DS2 are mad that I have gotten all wet so DS1 pushes me aside to take over which immediately causes the bucket to fly off the gushing fountain. Now I am completely soaked. The weather has turned chilly. Disgusted I go inside to dry off and change. I no longer care about turning off the water. I hope they all drown. By the time I change and return outside DH has come back up the hill to say that DWP has changed the water meters and his old water main tool won't fit to turn off the main. DS1 has managed to turn off the shut off and he and his father shout at each other for a while. DH insisting they need to call the utility to turn off the water and DS1 trying to make his father understand that he has turned it off at the shutoff. Finally, things calm down and they are again looking for O5. I point her out again and this time they load her up.
Finally all the sheep are loaded in the trailer. The month old lamb is in a box in the cab to avoid getting trampled. Rafael and his friend pull out - but OOPS! DD1 is blocking the driveway with her car while she complains about her sister with whom she is having another of their usual spats. I go in the house and get dinner out of the oven. DS1 and DS2 go to the hardware store to get the plumbing parts to repair the broken water main so they can take a hot shower. DD1 takes her children and dog home.
I go into my room and collapse. Another Ridgetop day is ending. But we still have to dock vacc, and tag. Oh right, that is for tomorrow . . . .
last week. Rafael came today to pick up the sheep. Typical Ridgetop mess.
Last week I asked DS1 PLEASE let's dock, vac, tag, and move ewes and lambs out of jugs and into the large creep pen. All I got was tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow
I wanted to empty the jugs and sort Rafael's sheep into them so we could just run them up the ramp and into his trailer. But NOOOO let's not do that the easy way, because SOMEONE knew exactly what pens they were in and would be able to sort and load them easily straight into Rafael's trailer. RIGHT.My cold is much worse and I had to cancel several doctor appointments that I had been waiting for due to my horrific coughing. Naturally when Rafael arrived I had to get up and come out to give him the paperwork. He wants more sheep if I have any more for sale so I tell him about the ewe with matitis that has half her udder and has a ram lamb at side. He wants to buy her so ok I put a cheap price on her and warn him about the mastitis means that he will have to make sure she can raise twins on half her udder, He says he is fine with that. It saves me a trip to the auction yard and I give him a couple tubes of mastitis treatment.
Then DS1 can't find one of the ewes. I tell him she is in the breeding pen but he insists that she is not. So much for DS1 knowing exactly where each sheep is. DS1 insisted that he had put 0439 in the breeding pen "just a couple days ago" because she had a lamb with her in the creep. WRONG. We had separated 0439 and O5 in July and moved them into the breeding pen back then. Their lambs are over 6 months old now. I don't argue since my head is pounding and DS1 is now complaining that I don't know where my sheep are.
After a bunch of messing around for an hour they still can't t find O5. Was she a retag? I told Rick she would be the one without a red or blue tag in her ear. WHY? Because she was not a grade 4(red tag) or 5(blue tag) which are the only ones that get tagged during the inspection! And that is why I am selling them, thy r Grade 3 Commercials. DUH! Doesn't he listen? why NO!!! I am his mother so naturally I don't know anything. GRRRRR! I walked out to the sorting chute and pointed her out to him. Just about then one of the younger ewes takes a flying leap in the pen, gets tangled in the hose and BREAKS OFF THE WATER PIPE! Not just a small water pipe but the large reducer from the 2" farm feeder pipe coming up the hill. Now we have a huge gusher in the yard.
No need to go to Yellowstone - we have our own Old Faithful. Much yelling and screaming with many people running back and forth hysterically trying to decide what to do about this catastrophe. Raphael and his buddy have a front row seat for the confusion that is Ridgetop. We should have charged admission.DH rushes to the car to drive 1/2 mile down the hill to the street to the main shutoff. I keep yelling at the boys that there is a shut off at that pipe connection but they inform me that I am WRONG. I keep insisting that there is a shutoff there since it was installed for this very reason - to avoid having to drive down to the street to turn the water off at the main. I am ignored. Finally, DS2 goes to look and OH WOW! MOM IS RIGHT! THERE IS A SHUT OFF AT THE CONNECTION! About then DS1 remembers that he installed one.
Just shoot me now! The shut off connection is right at the gushing geyser.Big discussion between DS1, DS2, DGS1, DGS2, etc. about how to reach in and shut off the valve without getting wet from the Old Faithful geyser. Really?
DS1 grabs a bucket and hands it to DS2 to try to put it over the gusher from the other side of the fence. No go, the bucket is catapulted away by the force of the water pressure. By now I can barely stand up, my head is pounding, my nose is running and I am out of Kleenex and patience. I grab the bucket, ignoring cries from my children that I "will get hurt", wade into the water and cap the spray. DS1 and DS2 are mad that I have gotten all wet so DS1 pushes me aside to take over which immediately causes the bucket to fly off the gushing fountain. Now I am completely soaked. The weather has turned chilly. Disgusted I go inside to dry off and change. I no longer care about turning off the water. I hope they all drown. By the time I change and return outside DH has come back up the hill to say that DWP has changed the water meters and his old water main tool won't fit to turn off the main. DS1 has managed to turn off the shut off and he and his father shout at each other for a while. DH insisting they need to call the utility to turn off the water and DS1 trying to make his father understand that he has turned it off at the shutoff. Finally, things calm down and they are again looking for O5. I point her out again and this time they load her up. Finally all the sheep are loaded in the trailer. The month old lamb is in a box in the cab to avoid getting trampled. Rafael and his friend pull out - but OOPS! DD1 is blocking the driveway with her car while she complains about her sister with whom she is having another of their usual spats. I go in the house and get dinner out of the oven. DS1 and DS2 go to the hardware store to get the plumbing parts to repair the broken water main so they can take a hot shower. DD1 takes her children and dog home.
I go into my room and collapse. Another Ridgetop day is ending. But we still have to dock vacc, and tag. Oh right, that is for tomorrow . . . .
Baymule
Herd Master
Your family should be on a reality show. You had ne howling with laughter. Your reality show wouldn't even have to be scripted, y'all have plenty of crisis and screw ups.
