Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Baymule]

Those sheep sure look confused! It really looks good, your hard work is showing. It sure is a nice thing you and the neighbor are doing, hatching out a batch of chicks. That's what neighbors do.

Bullet=SSS

 

[Mike CHS]

They are stubborn and were doing their afternoon chew sitting against the wire but finally broke down and went to the cattle panel shelters when it started pouring down awhile ago.

We set the corner posts for the next project this morning and they all had a lot of rock all the way down. We need a break and are going to take a weekend off except for the mandatory things. This pen will be adjacent to the boys pen and only 40' by 70'. The relatively small size will let us use it for beginner dog herding training. Sassy is going on 3 and Lance just went past 2 years old so it's time to start a replacement or more likely a backup for Lance.

It can also be a quarantine pen or just a convenience to have a small pen close to the house. It can even double as a dog run since it's close to the kennel.

 

[Mike CHS]

The training pen got worked on today. It wound up being 100' x 40' one one end and 30' on the other. The reason being that once I started driving T-posts I found even more rock than expected, I had planned on one leg of the fence being about 20' from the garden but still give some room to expand the garden a bit. Once I saw how much rock there was I decided that the garden wasn't expanding that way so used it for the pen. Got all of the T-posts set and the wire ran on the 100' leg and the 40' legs Still have to do the other end and hang gates but it should get done tomorrow. There is a big farm auction Saturday so I want to get it done before that.

 

[Bruce]

Given your land, I would think it impossible to find MORE rock than expected. LESS would be a surprise.

 

[Mike CHS]

I need to post a terrain map that I have if I can find it but where we started the pen is where I thought we were past the rock circle. Our house is built on a circular set of slabs where the center is just south of the house and emanates outward in layers in circles going out about 150' feet. Once you get past the last ledge it is zero rock and completely flat.

I built the garden on a lot of loose rock but spent many hours working the area till I got rid of the biggest stones and many many slabs in the 3-400 pound range. Just past the garden is dirt that I can use the auger in but this little pen was all hand work for the wood posts but there was only 4 of them.

 

[CntryBoy777]

I know I say this everytime the subjects of rocks come up, but sure wished I could see my way to get some of that even if I helped to dig and load.........I want ya to know that I'm raising my Hand and Jumping on 1 leg here screaming that I'll take them.....but, guess the echo doesn't carry quite that Far.......

 

[Baymule]

With all that rock, you could have built scenic rock fences........Mike smacks his forehead--why didn't I think of that before stringing all this WIRE???

then Mike sends Baymule a message........

 

[Bruce]

There are some really nice stone wall fences for sheep in England. Can you imagine the work that went into moving all those rocks from the ground to the edge of the fields, then building the walls? Big difference from the "pile them up" stone walls here in New England.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Yeh, but they have had milleniums and indentured servants and peasants to build those walls....we've only had a few centuries here and no "Royalty"....

 

[Mike CHS]

I have enough erosion to take care of that every rock I pick up has a place that better fits my needs. I've even tried incorporating some into the edges of some raised beds and wound up moving them to a better spot when they caused more labor.

I'm trying to keep my weed eating to under 8 hours a week and it's getting harder to do the more I build.

I think I'll be using my sprayer on the tractor more and more as time goes on.