Bad Day For the Sheep | Castration Day

Hey, will somebody come with me to do the lambs? My goal is to castrate those lambs, put an instructional in Abundance Plus. That means capturing the light before it gets too harsh. I could really use some help. Lily's doing breakfast. Coming? You want to come help me? Come on, you can come help me. I'm not getting Gideon or Henry when the cold weather's starting to set in. Lily, how long till breakfast? 4 minutes. Oh, should probably eat breakfast real quick, right?

Your breakfast is ready.

Oh, mine is? Okay, boys, breakfast is ready. Come on. Breakfast of champions: sausage and eggs every day. Maybe if I take time out for breakfast, I can recruit somebody. We do have a guest this weekend and they want to come experience chores by 8:30, so I was kind of hoping to get done with this before then. It's 7:40. That's kind of unrealistically hopeful. Justin Rhodes special. You want to go with me to castrate lambs? Savage. Y'all seen my apron? No, I'm not kidding. Sometimes I actually do go back and look at old footage and see when I was last wearing or had something, and I track it down that way. Austin, when was the last time I had my apron? Boys are working on the crooked cat. Look at this light. That's what I'm talking about. So nice and smooth and gentle. The sun will come up over the mountain and just start being really harsh in here. And then this pole barn, it has so many poles, you start getting this spotted light too. You get shade and then it's really harsh, and it's just, uh, okay. It's nice and pleasant and quiet out here. Hey, I'm sorry, it ain't milking time yet. You're so confused. You're so confused. She says I'm ready. You ready too? You're ready to get your mama back, aren't you? I really need somebody. I really need somebody because I'm gonna have to castrate a lamb, put it out so we know who we've got. They say there's one bad day for the animal on the regenerative farm, and that's harvest day. Now granted, that's a bad day, but the way we do it It's soon, it's soon. But the way we do it, it's so quick they don't even know that's coming, so they don't even feel it. I don't know, technically that's a graduation day, I'm hoping, and that's not a bad day. This is a bad day. It's gonna be a bad day if they get caught up in all these hay strings. What's going on? Hey, there we are. Okay, that's one way to get in here. All right, so once, once we castrate a lamb, we put it out so that we know we've done it. Okay, and do you want to catch them? We did get a female. Wait, wait, keep going, keep going. Let's double check. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, we thought— all right, we thought we had all boys. You thought that they heard us, that we need replacements? Whoa, whoa, hold the baby down. Yeah, let's get it on its vigorous— get up, get off its legs, and you lose its flight. All right, okay, so that is definitely a girl. We've got one replacement lamb.

Let's put it out.

Let's make our instructional video first before we put anybody out, because as soon as we put somebody out, they're gonna start bleating. We got the first one down. Now they're going to start bleating. I can't show this on YouTube, so we've made an instructional video on how to castrate lamb with banding tool in Abundance Plus. Check that out, free trial. All right, is that a male? Yeah. Okay, that's the patchy one.

Come on, buddy. Come on, Beans.

Okay, his name is Beans. All right, Beans. Hey, you guys get the hay strings up and then let's put the sheep back in. Sheep would rather die than be alone. And our special guest has arrived. Hey, holistic Hilda! That's your first farm experience this year. You come down and we're castrating sheep.

I know, literally Rebecca was on the porch being like, hey, they're castrating sheep, you want to see? I was like, totally, you're missing out.

I know, you're like Lily, you're savage, you're a savage woman. Okay, so what do you want to see on the farm?

What do you want to show me?

I want to show you the Everflow Waterer for sure, and I want to show you the pig tractor restoring our hurricane land.

Oh yeah, so the last time I came here was like about 4 years ago. Yeah, your kids, Justin, have grown from like little kids to like, I don't know, they're so mature, they're so adult, they're like doing so much more than before, and I just see The young men that you've raised, it's amazing. Even Henry, you had him on your back before and now he's like riding a bike. No training wheels, no nothing.

I'm learning a lot changes in 4 years when you're about to have teenagers.

Yeah, I see that.

They're running the farm. We're leaving next year, next week for an event, Rebecca and I, and they'll run the farm.

Oh, I thought they were coming with you.

No, no.

Oh my gosh.

They're gonna run it, no problem.

They're so capable.

Oh, very capable.

That's amazing.

Yeah, more than a farm sitter even. You did the Weston A. Price, uh, podcast for 10 years. Yeah, you're, you're on 10 years, right? Yes. And they're all about soaking your grains, right?

Yeah, because otherwise you can't get the nutrients that are in there. They're not stuck, they're protected by their coating, but when you soak them, they open up and everything— yeah, bioavailable.

Man, that's a great way to put it. Okay, will you protect her from the goose? Wait, wait, wait, no, take the, take the pig board. Just spot her. This is how we keep our chickens safe. I see. But when you have a good guard goose, they're pretty, it's pretty aggressive.

I see, she's like wanting to come out. Lily's showing me the ropes and she's putting you to work.

I see.

We were like giving the pigs their natural diaper, you know.

Yeah. Uh, Peppa would be proud. Hella, can you see what's going on here?

I have no idea.

So the hurricane waters— there's our creek. The hurricane waters were all the way to that bank. Actually, our creek used to be over there. It's still kind of wet over there. The creek bent there and did a 90-degree turn and went to the woods and away.

How long ago was it like that?

The hurricane straightened it out a year and a half for the hurricane. Do you—

it does look different. Well, now that you're telling me, yes, but I didn't remember the shape.

It's wider. We didn't have a creek in the middle of our field right here. Whoa, okay, there was no creek here.

So the hurricane changed the landscape.

Yeah, because it made such a 90-degree turn, the hurricane just said blew it out. So we had the cows come through, and you can see the cows Yeah, right here. It's what you call hay bombing. We feed hay in different spots. Yeah, these are cows that need to be separated so they, they manure intensely. In the winter, you don't have to rotationally graze because grass isn't growing, right? The harm of leaving a cow in the same spot is they keep eating the same grass and they kill it. But in the winter, nothing's growing, so you can feed in a different spot here every day. And you see all that concentration of manure and wasted hay. Then we bring the cat pigs behind them. The pigs were right here, so they added their manure. They stirred up that— we layered this with wood chips to add carbon. The pigs stirred it, and we smoothed it out behind them because, see, they make it kind of rough, right? So see how they're tilling in the hay, which will help retain moisture when it rains because it's sand. And, uh, we plant cover crop that will grow in wood chips and in sand.

What are you gonna plant?

Uh, it's a mix of, uh, rye, uh, vetch, grass seed. I don't think there's any grass seed in it, but it's built so that they, they just go really deep. They don't need really nutrient-dense soil, and it'll just help us restore the land.

Exactly.

Plants and animals. This will move every week. They've been in there a few days. We'll go back down the line. You can see where we've been. See, see this darker? Oh yeah, that's the pigs. And this is where we haven't been, so we'll keep going down that line.

You're revitalizing the soil. You're actually improving the environment.

People don't even know it. No, I know, with pigs of all things, who are really destructive, but we're using it for our advantage. We're having them stir in the hay and the wood chips into the sand, and then we'll retain moisture and they'll have organic matter.

See, like this dirt?

Yeah, yeah, look at that. Pigs did that.

Oh my gosh, it's not dirt, it's more like— that's like— it's gonna turn into dirt. Yeah, under there I can see that.

Yeah, but over time it'll be, what, a half foot of topsoil? Yeah, he's fishing from up there. What's the advantage of fishing from up there, Josiah? You can see all the fish. Sheeps are banded. Let's do a little bit of a burning up cooking show. I think I'm learning something. I cubed it, I cubed the roast, already did one batch, and now it's all in this runny juice. I don't think it's worth the trouble. This is just too much work. I think next time I'm just going to sear the roast on each side and just cut it up when I'm done. So now I have all this runoff. No wonder I hate cooking. You're gonna make it easier. Every Sunday I like to make a meal beforehand. We have a gathering in the evening. Get this out of the way, take the pressure off. A little tallow in that since I poured all the juices over in there. That would have been part of the point. I would have fried in our pan onions and carrots. You come pour this the veggies out. Yep, don't have to think about it. You like collards in it? I like collards in it. Weird, I didn't like collards until after I fasted for 30 days. Some broth, beef broth. Gonna be kind of a soup. Okay.