Baby Lambs on the Way | Why I’m Getting the Ram OUT

Here we go, here we go, come on. This one is so wild, he's so ready to go, but this one's just throwing him off. Crazy. Oh, you're gonna take care of Henry this morning? It's your turn. Yep, come on, Gideon, you ready? You got two set of earmuffins on. What are you up to? Ouch. Mr. Brown, you have your shoes! Call the enquirer. But Lily doesn't. Well, you've got one. They light up. Too bad they don't light up when they're off so we could better find them. We need a Find My Boots app on those. You found them? Let's go start the tractor. Guys, let's, uh, move all the fence. Good morning, Arun. Okay, so we're gonna move— let's get the cows in and then we can get this fence out of the way and back up. All right, this gate swings open, guys. That opens, but the door opens that way. Kind of wish the door were over here opening that way. It'd be perfect. So what we're gonna do is is get all the sheep out except for the ones we want. That's step one. Right now we got the fence back up. We're gonna take these— we're gonna herd everybody out but the Luchadors, and only the Luchadors are going to be in here. And then we'll get all the sheep over there and we'll block it off over there, and then we'll be able to back right up to this. I just had a crazy thought. Paulie Phyllis's calf is ready to be weaned. We haven't done it because it's just too hard to do in the pole barn configuration. Hey Beck, what do you think about putting Polly in with the luchadors to wean her? Rebecca's doing some calculations when we're going to dry off Phyllis. We don't want to wean— just making sure it's the right time to wean. Does she need changed? All right, I'll do that. Is that better? That's better. Phyllis is due middle of July. We could, uh, wean Polly right now. She's over— she's 6 months old. But since we're gonna eat her, we're gonna let her keep milking. But we do want to dry them off at 2 months old, or 2 months before she's due. Hey, come on, let's go back out. So I think we'll just wean her when we dry Phyllis off. That means we're gonna stop milking. That means the calf won't be on her. Uh, by that time everybody will be out in the pasture and Polly can just go in with the sheep. All right, everybody out but the luchadors. There we go, guys, there we go. We got Nacho accidentally let Escalito out somehow. If we can herd him and get him ahead, I can open this gate and he won't be able to go back, but he'll have to come into here. Here he comes. Okay, we got Escalito back in here, but we also got Who— which one's this? Ryder. The trick is to get her to run but not them. Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go. They're so afraid of leaving her flock, they can't— they can't see it. If I just walk them, maybe she'll come. Hey, shut the gate, Arun. We'll get them closer. If we can get them all closer and then just her out. Let's see if we can walk her out gentle. Now what we're going to do, guys, is back the trailer up. The, the, the gate will sit right there. We can lift that up and get them in. Now it's easy. I think that was the hard part. We're going to block the ewes in down here so we have plenty of room. That'll work good. Arun, come on, come on. Good. If you put some alfalfa That's a really good idea, actually. Arun's getting the alfalfa. This door will shut to here. I can lift that gate off and herd them in, and then I can use that gate— somebody can kind of spot it holding that gate so they don't get out, and then we can pull forward and shut this. This is a little tense because if these— if these rams, these luchadors, get out, I mean, that's going to be a big pain. Put a little alfalfa in there for them. Put that gate right there. Well, that's so convenient that that gate comes off off like that. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. There you go. Still. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. They were coming to me when I was calling them, so let's see if they'll just come. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Shape, shape. All other sheeps are going to come. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Come on. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Now I wonder if I get out, they'll come in. Lily, can you open that for me? Thank you. Wonder if you might tie that and you can come help me hurt him. Oh, we have another child. He can hold it. We'll get him ahead of us. Give him slight pressure. There we go, there we go, there we go. We need to create a funnel or put the alfalfa— oh, that's a good idea— and then we can pressure them in because then we've trapped them. Yep, he's definitely walking. All right, we need this gate. Get in, hop off the gate. All right, good. I'm gonna pull forward, you guys just walk with me a little bit, just enough to shut that gate. All right, all we should have to do, guys, is open the gate. Those two gates will get touched and they should go right in. Turn my back on them so they aren't as threatened. It worked! It worked! They're already eating. All right, look, they're already getting some of their manure rolls. Just like that, we're back at it. Check it out. Oh, looks like we need a male quick connect. That'll get this connected to our water line near the ring. Listen to this. I'm surprised at how, how upset it has made the ewes. We're separating them because the ewes are about to have their babies. We just want to make more room for them. We don't want anybody to get bred back right away. We're going to time our breedings. Sometimes I have one in here. Nope. I guess I could take the one off of this and then just screw that hose into this 4-way. We don't really need a quick connect there. Got it. We don't need a quick connect there right now, but buys us some time to order another one. It's kind of cute, they're missing their buddies. Who would have known? They weren't interested in them when we first got them, but we did keep them separated right off the bat. Let's see if our water is even coming out here. You, you never know why I do that. You never know what could happen over the winter. Well, still working good. We did have it shut off to the winter. I just turned it on, but you just never know. I think that's a good example of benefiting from 1% change every day. Last year, it was last year we finally got around to putting that in. It's coming. Okay, good. And now we're benefiting from that effort we put in. We threw him some roughage, some hay bales, just in case the green, green grass is too much too quick. But they don't care, they're going right for the green grass. Actually, they're going for the brown leaves. And I think we can take this a step further in due time after kind of proofing Joel Salatin's newest book, gonna come out soon, on animal happiness at the homestead level. I'm thinking pond, spring catchment, up higher up and gravity feed water. Because right now we, we are using the pump, so I think it would be wise in the long run to capture water that's already automatically there, no power required, no pump required, to feed our livestock. Oh my word, Randolph, look what she's had you do! He's been putting this one off, put it off for 15 years now, but she got her map on the roof. Yep, look at that. Is it going all right?

Yeah, going way better than I thought.

Okay, good.

Now that's going to be in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

Yeah, how'd you get the stick up there?

She ordered us some good wallpaper glue.

Okay, nice.

And it worked.

Randolph is done. Oh man, that looks good. Great vision with the map on the roof, Rebecca. I wasn't sure, but it looks good. Thanks. Um, Tomorrow, are you ready for the big day? Filming another episode of Rooted, actually knocking out 2 episodes over 4 days. I'm not— this next one's about you. You're representing the brave women that give birth to the world. You're funny. Despite all the fears, we do— women do give birth. I know. Hooray for women. What'd you say? I said, are you interviewing your baby's mama? Yep, I'm putting her in the spotlight. She doesn't like the spotlight, interesting enough. No, I don't. She hates being the center of attention. When we got married, she was completely embarrassed when everybody's waiting at the reception and then we come in and everybody stands up and claps. She's getting embarrassed now talking about it. All right, well, that'll be, that'll be Monday's show. Good behind the scenes of a real legit film shoot. 3 people in the crew, they got a movie, which is like a big contraption you set on you which is like keeps the camera still. It's gonna be super interesting. Yeah, I was looking at the shot list. I'm like, there's like some contemplative. Oh, you gotta contemplate, Becky.

And I'm so bad at that, I feel like.

Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Oh, they're interviewing people this time. Yeah, there's your mom, dad, Amy, uh, Brianna, and for the third episode that we're filming. It's about permaculture and hard work. Jason's going to be interviewed for that. Arthur's going to be interviewed for that. Yep, that's going to take it to a whole nother level. So anyway, that, that'll be behind the scenes Monday on the vlog. I— what do you want to watch this weekend, guys? I got something. I got 3 free videos from Joel Salatin's new course. His course is not open yet. They've got a waiting list for that though. Once you join the waiting list, I arranged to get you guys 3 free videos just for joining the waiting list. There's no obligation to buy, of course. This time, this lesson, I'll give you a little, I'll give you a little sample right here to close out the vlog, but you can catch the rest of that free video from the link down in the description. Joel continues talking about determining location, and there's 2 videos of the 3 are on that. In this, these 3 videos, but it's a— that's just touching the surface of what's in the course. So guys, just go enjoy that free content on me this weekend, link in the description.

You want to think also about geopolitical considerations. When I talk about geopolitical, I'm thinking about, for example, regulations. Regulations vary a lot, and I mean, look, if we're trying to build resiliency, and get control of our lives. We don't want to go to a place where everybody is wanting to control our lives. And so a lot of times this can change literally from a county to a city, from one county to another. I mean, think about, you know, think about the wet-dry counties down in South, you know, the ones that can sell alcohol, the ones that can't. That's just, you know, that's just an arbitrary local line. The same things can happen with things that you can build. For example, you know, in Massachusetts you can build a structure on your, on your place if it's smaller than a few hundred square feet. You don't have to get a building permit. Other places, you know, California, you can't build a doghouse without a building permit. Think about water regulations. For example, in Virginia here, as long as our pond dam is 20 feet or lower, we don't need a regulation to build a pond. In California, you can't build a pond the size of a bathtub without a permit. Colorado, same kind of situation. A lot of, you know, as you go west, there's a lot of water, you know, water regulations, you know, building regulations. I mean, Missouri, for example, has, to my knowledge, has no building requirements if you're building on your own land. If you're building something on your own land, they don't care. When Daniel built his house here on the farm, we had this next generation coming on. By that time we had a sawmill, so we could mill our own lumber. So we wanted to build our own house, and we, you know, we got a building permit because you have to get a building permit here to build a, you know, house you're going to live in. And I don't like that regulation, but that's where it is, the way it is here. But fortunately they let us build whatever we wanted to as long as we built a size bigger than the code required. So if the code required like a 2x8, you know, floor joist, we just made a 2x10. Well, that was fine. We had the lumber, we had the sawmill, so it was an easy thing to comply with. So these regulations are, you know, are really different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Zoning is a huge one. How strict or how lenient are zoning requirements? Taxes is another one. The tax situation. For example, here where we are in Virginia, We have very, very low property taxes, but our land then sells for, you know, $6,000 an acre. In New York, land sells for $1,200 an acre. Good, good farmland for $1,200 an acre, but the taxes are about 10 times as high. If our farm were in New York State, our annual tax bill, instead of being $4,000, would be about $40,000. Yeah, you can buy the land cheaply up there, But then you have annual taxes, which then increase your need for cash flow in perpetuity. These are the kind of things that you want to think about as you begin looking at locating, because they have long tails of ramifications.