Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Mike CHS]

We haven't had any rain for just about two weeks. It is just about a sure bet to have drought conditions in our area this time of year so you have to plan for it. The first couple years here I had not figured that out and had cut the paddocks assuming I was planning for follow on growth. I only cut two of our 10 paddocks now and there is enough tall growth to make the growth that the sheep want plentifully available. That minimal cutting lets me give them the max stock piled for most of the year. We only had to buy 10 round bales last winter vs 32 the winter before but we did have the cows then.

 

[Mike CHS]

The heat is officially here and it looks like some records will be set. I did a little over 3 hours of mowing and weed whacking until about noon. I was hot enough that I decided to take a cool shower to cool off and out of curiosity I stepped on the scale to find that I had sweat almost 5 pounds of liquid since I stepped on the scale this morning.

 

[Baymule]

Quick diet! It’s hot here too.

 

[Bruce]

I hope you then downed a gallon of water ... over time of course.

 

[Mike CHS]

We are going to move both the lamb ewes and the senior herd today. I have one small paddock that I was wanting to graze for a couple of days but it doesn't have any shade other than a fairly small tree so that plan got changed. 100 degree temps kind of take away some flexibility. We are going to pull Cooper toward the end of this week whether all of the ewes are bred or not. It got hot so fast this year that I'm really not sure how many of the ewes are bred. Most of the ewes are obviously carrying lambs but several are questionable and we don't want lambs being born past mid December.

 

[Mike CHS]

Temperatures right at 100 degrees is making it hard for our AC to keep up and processing canned goods in the house was making it ever worse so we broke out some camp gear and did tomatoes outside. It's still hot but we have a nice breeze most of the time.

 

[Bruce]

Temperatures right at 100 degrees

That is too dang hot!!
We've hit a cold spell, high today should be about 62°F, 50°F overnight. Makes the stupid pool quite useless.

 

[Mike CHS]

We have some heavy thunderstorms forecast for later tonight so we broke down the canopy and canning equipment just in case. Our old canopy was about wore out and it was a pain to put up and take down so we replaced it with a commercial grade canopy. It took us every bit of two minutes to take it down and put it away so we are happy we spent the little bit more dollars for it.

 

[Mike CHS]

We did get a little over an inch of rain in that front that came in from the northwest and it dropped the temps down to a comfortable low 80's at least for the next few days. We set up the canopy and canning stuff since we have about two bushels of tomatoes to process.

 

[Baymule]

That’s great on the rain, hurry and can the tomatoes before the heat comes back! We got 1 3/4” since 3 AM and it’s nice and cool right now. But when the sun comes out it’s going to be a steam bath.