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House is ON the Market!

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

Wow, we have been busy lately. Last weekend was the third full weekend we spent working on getting Kirk’s house ready to (try to) sell. Our goal was to get it on the market the first week of November. And we did it. I wasn’t so sure a week ago, there were so many messes, tools, cleaning stuff, paint stuff, boxes. And Kirk still has SO many things he wishes to improve or fix on this house.

We painted a bedroom, the bathroom, hall/staircase and the back porch area. We cleaned the carpets and replaced the algae-growing kitchen faucet. We weeded the backyard, re-seeded the lawn, mowed, cleaned up a firewood pile, put down bark, new rock on the pathways, and a brick border. We took down the ugly front storm door. We carried off a lot of stuff (which is now cluttering up the farmhouse instead!). And then we photographed, with my dad’s wide-angle lens, every angle of every room.

So, it’s ready, I faxed the final listing paperwork today to the flat listing agent we’re using. Now, here’s hoping we have three good weeks before people flake off the housing market for the holidays and the rest of the year. Now is, arguably, a terrible time to sell. But, it’s also a terrible time to hold– we’re betting this house won’t gain in value in the next five years if there is a serious recession, so why keep dumping money into it? It’s an historic home, so not a great rental investment choice, we’d probably spend more money maintaining it than it would bring in. And we’d rather spend that money on a barn/shop building at the farm.

So, we’re just going to hope there are still a few people out there needing or wanting to buy a different house; people who aren’t worried about a recession or falling housing prices and are going about business as usual. If just one of them likes this house, and can find a bank to lend them money, it’ll be out of our hair! Here’s to incredible good luck, we’ll need it! 🙂

Rearranging my “Dog Van”

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

I have had a nagging chore waiting for a long time- rearranging my dog show van. This van exists mostly to drive the dogs around to shows and training, but I also use it a lot to haul other things-lumber, furniture, and now this last weekend, the llama. I anticipate I’ll be hauling sheep in it now too.

Probably a year before Chessie died, he stopped being willing to ride in his crate, so I’ve long owed the van a good cleanout and the removal of one dog crate. Hauling the llama was the final reason I needed, as I had to remove a lot of stuff to make room for her.

 To the left is the configuration I’d had for a very long time, to fit four dogs, a lot of show gear. Behind the lefthand crates, I had excercise pens and a dolly. I realliy liked this setup, and it was important to have it efficient in the days when I was competing every other weekend. I have been struggling with how to change it now that I’m down to three dogs, and also not showing very much. It is obviously a mess, too, I hadn’t cleaned it in a LONG time, even after hauling bales of straw and hay in it!

Tonight I took almost everything out, swept it, and came up with a way to fit three crates along the side wall. This will be nice, leaving me more room for lumber. But, I have yet to figure out what to do with all the rest of the gear. Some of it is piled back into the back of the van, and the rest is in the usual place for dumping projects-the living room!

In my van, safety for the dogs and me is aprimary concern. All of my crates are held down by cargo straps that hook to eye bolts, attached to 1x4s in the floor. If I got in a catastrophic accident, I wouldn’t want things flying around hitting me,  nor the dogs getting injured. On each crate, there is a laminated info tag on a clip, and an extra leash. So, heaven forbid I ever get in an accident and am incapacitated, a good samaritan could leash all my dogs, and take them, with instructions, to the nearest vet for care. The cards have guarantees that I’ll pay for care, the dogs’ tattoo and microchip info, and emergency contacts.

I came up with this after hearing accounts of several dog show friends who were in car accidents. I’ve heard of loose-in-the-car dogs flying through the windshield, other dogs running loose on the highway in a panic, and one person’s dogs got stuck in an out-of-town shelter in limbo for 48 hours until they were “put up for adoption” and her friend could go buy them back! Everyone I know who’s gotten in an accident with crated dogs reported that the dogs were unscathed. So, I’m pretty religious about dogs riding in crates. They prefer it too, they feel much safer when they are not sliding around in an open vehicle.

Here are the three remaining crates along the side wall, behind the driver’s seat. And  clean floor!

 

Welcome Dolly Llama

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a llama to use as a livestock guardian for the sheep. I found this one nearby, from a man who had her to keep his horse company, but his horse had passed away.

Her name is “Maggie” but since we already have a dog named Maggie, we think we’ll call her the Dolly Llama. The name isn’t so important, since I don’t expect we’ll interact with her enough that she’ll learn it. But I guess it’s convention to name the permanent residents of the farm, anyway.

She is around 13 years old. I was able to speak with her breeder, who offered to breed her in the future for me, so I can have a replacement for her (since she’s “getting up there” in age).

I think she’s a reasonable quality llama, she’s a little cow-hocked in the rear, and her teeth are a little crooked. But her fiber looks really nice. She is pretty well behaved, we were able to catch and lead her without much difficulty. I transported her in my cargo van, and she rode calmly.

Here is a photo of her meeting the sheep. They pondered each other from a distance for an hour or two. But she seemed anxious to be close to a herd, and kept tailing the sheep. By the end of the day, it looked like they had mostly joined up. Hopefully she’ll be well-bonded to them by spring, such that she is motivated to defend the lambs.

Another llama seller I corresponded with on craigslist told me an interesting tale- she had a llama injure some of her lambs. She learned, in retrospect, that it’s not good to introduce a few sheep to multiple llamas in the llamas’ pasture, as they may perceive the sheep as intruders and drive them out. Instead, it works better to leverage a single llama’s lonliness in a pasture that’s new to them– they’ll be more likely to behave in a solicitous manner to the sheep herd in hopes of joining up.

Farmer Tax Breaks

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

This next tax return I’ll need to start writing off farm expenses. I have a lot to learn and read up on in this regard. I know there are many tax advantages to being a farmer (which still hardly offset all of the financial disadvantages… but hey, you take what you can get!).

 

We are already enjoying one advantage, and that is the “open space agriculture” tax break that is available in our state and county. The rule here is, if you show an agricultural gross income of $200/acre/year every three out of five years, the county will calculate your property’s taxable value based on its “current use” and not its “best use.”

 

This is intended to help offset the fact that (at least until now) property values were skyrocketing, such that farmers could not justify keeping the land in agricultural use and paying high property taxes when the land was worth so much for residential development purposes. Add to that the falling profitability of traditional family farms and farmers’ kids not wanting to carry on their family’s legacy, farmers were selling land like crazy to developers in the last two decades.

 

The state and county realized they had to stop this trend, or there would be no farmland left! So, this tax break was invented-no matter how much your land would appraise for as commercial or residential real estate, it is taxed as if it’s only value is as cropland or graze.

 

Now that the farm is up and running, I think we’ll be able to meet the $200/acre/year rule with little difficulty. We have 12 acres in open space, so we have to bring in $2400 a year—if we have a good lamb crop, that will do it right there. Note that this is gross profit, not net, so you don’t even have to show that you are making money on your farm. But I had been starting to feel some pressure, as it has taken two years just to get the place back into farming condition, so technically we must show this profit in the next three years. But I also don’t think anyone checks real often, as I’ve seen many farms in open space status where clearly no farming has been done recently. It’s probably one of those laws where unless someone turns you in, like a nasty neighbor, it does not get noticed….

 

So, anyway, back to income taxes. I believe that I can start writing off the tractor, tractor fuel, fencing expenses, feed for the ducks and sheep, and many other expenses. I’m also wondering whether I can write off the dog and cat food, since the dogs work on the farm, and the cat is a mouser. I’ve started keeping better categories in my Quicken records to break down all the various farm expenses, to make for easier reporting in the long run. But I feel as though I probably have a lot of reading to do, to master the subject of tax write-offs available to farmers.  

Farm Early

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Today, I got up early so I could feed animals before work. I think I’m going to have to shift to these “farm hours” for the winter. This will enable me to make sure the animals have thawed water in the morning, and that the sheep have all day to eat their grain. I’ve been getting by with feeding them after work, but now it’s getting dark, and the sheep won’t eat then.

It felt good to be up and about; knock on wood, hopefully I’ll keep thinking that. Normally I’m not a morning person, and get up at the last possible moment. This is turning over a new leaf for me.

On the subject of grain; I’ve sure been pondering how I want to feed the sheep. It’s working out well feeding them grain now, they are acclimating to my presence, and I can take a look at them up close while they’re eating. They are about at the end of their flushing phase, and the bag of grain is running out. So, I may let them go without for a little while. It seems the cost of grain can quickly add up to the cost of a lamb or two, so I feel that I want to be conservative on how much I utilize.

Some sources say to start adding grain in the last two months of pregnancy. That would be in the November time frame for the ewes that came already bred. Yet, the ones that were bred this month shouldn’t be allowed to get too fat during the early stages of their pregnancy. So, I don’t know what I’ll do.

I’d so far been feeding a bagged sheep ration, but I don’t like the idea of all those processed grains. I think I’ll switch to dry COB (corn, oats, barley) when I buy the next bag.

House Sale Prep Weekend

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

Phew, we got a lot of work done this weekend! We spent the whole weekend working on Kirk’s house, getting it ready for sale. We are really hoping to have it on the market by the end of the month. This weekend, I painted the entry, stair, and upstairs hallway; those areas had really dirty yellow paint that HAD to be fixed. Kirk refinished the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. Now we are both tired!

I did manage to squeeze in some baking tonight-snicker doodles! But, most of my other weekend chores were left undone-vacuuming, cleaning the dog’s fenced area, and the like. It’s just hard to fit everything in sometimes.

Quick Shelter Using Wedge-Loc & T-Post Construction

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Goal: a quick-to-construct, non-permanent rain shelter for the sheep.

Rationale: I’m not sure yet if I want permanent structures down in the fields, and where I’d want them.

Concerns: shelters are, by nature, hangouts. The soil around them gets muddy. Mud is bad for livestock feet, besides being unpleasant for everyone to walk in, and unsightly. Adding bedding to shelter areas to dry them out is costly and a lot of work.

Potential Solution I’m trying: creating temporary structures from T-posts, which I can hopefully move without too much effort. The Wedge-Loc hardware caught my attention, as it promises easily built structures. Unfortunately, their marketing materials are poor– just a pamphlet with hand-drawn sketches. They leave a lot to your imagination (and maybe on purpose?). But, lacking other ideas, I decided to give them a chance. The first picture you see is the finished product, a very simple shed roof, 4’x8′.

The first Wedge-Loc widget I bought was the all-purpose angle bracket. The pamphlet suggests you can use this for a roof. But, I found that these are very flexible, intended to be bent to the desired angle just with your hand. So, not strong enough to hold up a shed roof. I think wind forces would bend and mangle them. So I set those aside for some other project.

The next bracket I tried and stuck with was the 2×4 holder. I just ran two 10′ treated 2x4s across four T-posts set to accommodate a 4×8′ sheet of plywood. I found the 2×4 brackets were also very flexible, so I had to put screws and washers through them on both sides to make sure they’d stay formed around the board.

So, here is how the Wedge-Loc brackets work. There is a main piece that slides over the top of the T-post like thus:

 

Then, a “wedge” slides in on the back part of the T-post, holding the bracket in place. It sort of wedges around one of the nodules on the post, so that it cannot slide down or up.

 

Once this is in place, you can attach a variety of other brackets to this to hold things. Here is a U-shaped bracket inserted, that holds a 2×4:

 

Here is the trouble with these, they bend:

But, with some extra screws, it seems to hold well, like this:

Here is a side view of the finished roof. I put corrugated roofing on top of the plywood, which now leads me to realize I can probably skip they plywood and just screw roofing into the 2×4 cross-pieces.

It seems to have worked; though it appears it may wiggle in the wind, I think it’s strong enough to stay put. And, it should be easy to un-wedge the brackets, lift off the roof, and move the shelter with minimal effort. The one thing is cost- the brackets are fairly expensive. So I don’t think this is any cheaper than builing a “real” shed from wood; the only advantage is the quick assembly and portability. Not to mention, it’s not terribly attractive. But I think I may make a few more of these, because we are just not firm yet on where we want permament buildings.

Gate Hanging Part 2

Posted on by fourfarmdogs

Here are a few more pictures of my recent gate-hanging lessons. The gates I buy are labled for the gate opening size, if you plan to have the gate fit that opening exactly. But the gate frames are actually about 4″ narrower; this allows room for the hinges on one side, and a little bit of clearance on the other so that the gate can swing freely in both directions. For most of my big gates, I had planned on using interior latches, which require a very specific amount of extra space allowed for  them– I think between 2-2 3/4″, or something like that.

I tried very hard to place the posts exactly right to get the opening within the tolerance allowed. But, I didn’t always succeed, so I had one opening that was a little too narrow. So, the gate only swings in one direction here, and has a latch that can accommodate one-hand operation. This latch also holds the weight of the gate up, to help minimize sagging (upper left photo). And, it accepts a padlock, which I may choose to use since this borders neighboring property.

This gate opening also had the problem of too much slope under the gate. It would have been wiser to have placed this gate further down the fenceline where the ground was level. But doing gates mid-fence instead of along the corners requires H-braces on either side, so costs a lot more in extra posts and work. So, I made do with this corner gate and back-filled some soil at the low point. It can now keep in livestock, but not the dogs (or coyotes)-they scoot underneath. I may need to do some more work with it in the future.

Here is what it looks like now.

 The opposite problem I had was with openings that ended up a little too wide. I just filled in the extra space with treated 2×6″ boards, as needed, so that there aren’t tempting openings for lambs and dogs to try to squeeze through.

Here is one opening that ended up too wide- the gate swings nicely in both directions, but there is a good 4″ of extra clearance I didn’t intend to have!

And, below, is the solution: a “sandwich” of two 2×6’s. I’ve seen people correct even bigger gaps by building a box on the side of the post, so that the full width of a 2×6 can extent out and have another 2×6 capping on top of that, to provide a spot for the latch.

This is another one-hand latch, this one lets the gate go in either direction, and also supports its weight, when closed, to ease sagging. And, this one also accepts a padlock. I’ve installed brass combination locks on the gates by the road, just to discourage any “visitors.” I’m less worried about theft than rowdy teenagers being tempted to do any 4×4’ing in the pasture, or do any “cow tipping.” But, with the combo locks, I can give the combo to anyone who needs to get in, like my friends who want to use the field to train their dogs for tracking. 

Chicken in the Crockpot Today

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Sometimes I learn the most valuable things on other people’s blogs. This one is so simple, and yet mildly life-altering for me-how to cook a chicken in a crockpot in the most trivial fashion imaginable. I learned this from Wardeh’s blog post on crockpot chickens. It turns out, you just throw an entire chicken (or two, if they’ll fit in your crockpot), maybe go so far as to toss some salt and pepper in there, turn it on, and that’s it. Either cooking them overnight or all day renders ready-to-go chicken that can be used in anything. They create their own liquid, so there is nothing else to add.

When it’s done cooking, I take it out and let it cool for a bit. Then I quickly pick all the good meat off the bones and set aside for our uses. The cruddier meat I set aside for the dogs, I’ll get 1-2 meals’ worth of meat for them from one chicken! The oily stock that comes off the chicken I might save for soup base, or give it to the dogs. The bones get thrown away (cooked bones no good for dogs, they splinter and can puncture their intestines…). I would say there is, maybe, a 15-20 minute time investment in the whole thing.

This is so cool, before I read this, I had no idea it was so easy. I had visions of roasting the chicken in the oven, basting it, tending to it, keeping an eye on its temperature– a lot of work and being in the house all day just to get some chicken ready for a recipe. So, I’d steered clear of things that call for roasted, chopped chicken.

But, now, with this, I find there are lots of things I can do with the chicken, I can get several meals out of it. Like, chicken soup, chicken casserole, chicken salad, chicken sandwiches, chicken quesadillas, chicken chili, and chicken enchiladas. So, that’s what’s on the menu for today, and possibly tomorrow: something with chicken in it, as I have one in a crockpot this morning.

Good Cookin’

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One thing that Kirk and I have learned to enjoy together is cooking good food. This is of great help to me, because though I enjoy cooking, I never really liked doing it when I lived by myself. I had trouble knowing how to cook meat, and I’d get sick of all the leftovers. So, when I was single, I tended to live off of frozen dinners, cheese and crackers, other highly processed food, and also eating out way too much. I was impatient about sitting down to eat, and would tend to do it while working on the computer, thus compounding my bad health habits by not paying attention to how much I ate!

Now, we are getting into a pretty good groove of shopping ahead, and planning diverse, reasonably healthy meals. I say reasonably, because we probably need to make a few tweaks-less meat, more whole grain, increased fruits & veggies. But, we do pretty well, and definitely a lot better than I ever did living alone! And, we can enjoy some fine foods that would otherwise cost a fortune at a restaurant, and save money overall by eating leftovers for lunch the next day. We often end up with too many leftovers in general, but then those go into the dog food. So nothing is wasted.

Here is a favorite of ours, Salmon Moqueca, that we made last weekend. It is apparently derived from Brazilian food flair, though sometimes I take it more in a Thai direction, depending on what spices I happen to grab. I have made this enough now that I don’t often look at the recipe when choosing the spices.

Salmon Moqueca

-Make a batch of brown rice in a rice cooker. Brown rice goes with this recipe much better than white rice, IMO.

Marinate 1 pound salmon fillet, with skin, in:
1/2 tsp ground fenugreek seeds [I don’t have fenugreek, but make do without it…]
2 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
1 tsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
12/ tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp turmeric
You’re supposed to try to marinate for at least a half hour, sometimes I pull this off, sometimes not. I also don’t measure the spices, I just toss in whatever strikes my fancy, and often prefer to use a lot more vinegar to get a nice deep soak for the salmon. After marinating, pan-fry the salmon in olive oil or butter, peel of the skin, set aside.

Saute together:
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4 c chopped green onions
1/4 c chopped tomato
1/4 c chopped bell peppers
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp paprika

Mix in & simmer:
1/2 c. canned coconut milk
1/2 c. sour cream
[I often use more, I mix them together, and add salt, rice wine vinegar to taste; to get the right balance of sweet, tangy and salty.]

Serve salmon on top of rice, topped with vegetable stew sauce and a garnish of chopped cilantro.