Bad to Worse | How I Watered Pigs 1,000 Feet Away

Okay, food scraps. Looks like we got broccoli stems, banana peels, some old rice, kale stems. 13 pounds. The big pigs need 16 pounds of food. I'm counting food scraps as half its weight because it's not, you know, perfectly balanced pig diet, I guess. So let's say that's— I know it's half of 10 is— or half of 11 is 5 and a half, but let's just say 5.

That one piece of cheese, asked Mother with a smile. I think she knew.

Hey, speaking of cheese, here's your apples and cheese.

Mama, pig party!

Are they having a big party?

Cherry party.

Here, right? Oh, oh, that's not gonna work out. All right, you get this when you're ready.

Well, or Teddy can— you can take Teddy with you.

All right, who else? You gonna perk up and come with me now, aren't you? No, I want to know about that.

He's excited about what was in that bowl.

Oh, I know. I want to know who else. A fan. Hey, Mr. Brown, a fan said they now eat apples and cheese because of you. Good snack. You motivate and inspire people in, in ways you might not even imagine. So who else out there is eating apples and cheese because of Mr. Brown? You filling up Mr. Brown's love tank? I am. All right, you send him out when he's ready, when it's— when his tank is full. Oh my, oh my, but I'm not complaining, I'm dancing.

You want to dance with me, Lily?

Now can you guys do the bobble head? All right, let's go work in the rain again. I said we needed rain, but I don't know if we needed 4 days of rain. It's actually supposed to stop later today. Okay, what'd you boys pack? We got the piglet food, sea monster food. Let's put that up here so it doesn't get wet. We got some water, we got fat hens, we got more water, we got a hay bale. I think we're good. We got to get the big— hey, let's go mix that with the, the skim and the grain for the big pigs. Okay, here, let's do this. Let's start socking it to them tomorrow. We, you know, they're getting a little older so they can do more than 16 pounds. Hold on. And we have all this skill. Can you hold on? And then we'll, uh, let's get— let's divide this skim up because we're gonna have brand new skim tomorrow. So basically, let's give them a whole bucket of skim. Okay, probably that one because it's older.

Let me pour this back in because there's no Oh, that's fine.

Yeah, I hate— I cannot stand that bucket. Oh, you're dripping milk everywhere, honey. All right, we gotta go wipe that up. You know what, we might want to just scrape off that, not force them to eat that mold. Well, that's mold on the top.

That's all cream.

All right, I hate to do it, but just in case, go ahead and pour our food scraps into there. Don't spill! There you go, good catch. All right, and now let's wash that out and get it back upstairs. All right, Lily has gone inside to clean up. It's just us. Just the boys, including Teddy. Let's get it done. So I gave the Luchadors one strip of short grass, kind of see if they prefer it, but they're going right for the— they're going right for the big stuff. The bramble in this gnarly grass. It's difficult because this, this, this grass is near its peak and should be grazed, and we're going here next. But what are you gonna do? You can't really cut it. I guess I could skip it, but I don't want to skip it because I could skip it and mow it down. But up, up there where we return, it's not quite ready yet. Let's go look. That's one thing you can do in the spring if you have too much grass is skip a section and mow it down. Uh, so skip it, mow it, because sometimes you can't cut— you don't need to cover the whole field before your first spot is ready. This is our first spot right here. Let's take a look. I'd like to see this grass a little more recovered. See how that's shredded still? I'd like to see it pointed more like that. Okay, and we could test— we could test some of this. Let's pull— let's pull some of this and test it another way. It's hard to kind of pull grass when it's this thick. All right, there's one. Okay, that's, that's a horrible sample. All right, here, let's follow this one. What we're doing is looking at the leaves. That's better. Okay, 1, 2, 3. That's fine. I'd like to see these leaves a little more recovered. This one's still chopped and it's not too mature because it's not going to go yet to seed. Yeah, so this, this grass here has got some recovering to do. We got about a week-ish left till we need to come back. It would be okay to come back a little before it's prime because all this is going to be ready all at once. We're gonna move the fat hens from there to there. That's where the sheep were yesterday. And then we pick up the, uh, the net. Pick up the net and mow what everybody didn't get, what the cows, sheep, and chickens didn't get, which is not much. Free the birds! By the way, we eliminated individual fence chargers for individual nets because we have the chickens in one— well, we have the sheep in one and then the chickens following one. That would be two different energizer systems for a big net. We've tied it in. We've got a mega beast energizer at the barn powered by the grid. Power running through there, and we just hook it up with alligator clips, and this is stinking hot. You guys ready? Are you ready, Teddy? You're not into this. Come on, get into it with us, buddy. We're out here, it's just us guys. I think he's fine when we're all in here riding together, but when we go out to do work and he stays— you'd rather be with Mama. They can. Look, this road is crooked. We are sliding. We need to get Fred the excavator guy to maybe look at this, leveling it for us. I can't tell. The Shaw's way up there. Well, Jonas managed to get over somehow. How'd you get over?

I jumped over like that.

All right. Does it need it?

Fine.

Okay, good. Hey, is this cow fence hooked up, Jonah? Can you go unhook it please? That's hot. We need to move you guys. It's only been 5 days, but you're done. And we're coming into the harvest next Thursday. Let's keep them on clean stuff. Let's get them on, you know, acorns or whatever is falling. Let's keep them moving. Let's give you some wonderful last few days. All right, guys, it's pretty muddy up there. It's gonna be just fine for planting pasture seed into. What's wrong? Oh shoot, we're gonna have to move the water and everything, and I don't know if we have enough line— water hose. I'm pretty sure it's maxed out right there. Yes, see, that's not going to reach. That's going to not go way over there, and they're going to move over too. So we have this black supply line that we just need to— here it is— we just need to extend it from here. So what do we need? We'll need a A male to female. Let's see what's at the end of our hose. Uh, a male to male. Let's clean this out real quick. Might as well. All right, we're gonna get them— we're gonna go ahead and move them and they'll be okay without water for— hopefully it won't be more than an hour-ish.

Can you see all the skin they'll eat? They can eat.

All right, we got their skim bucket in. They're eager and ready to go. Tell us when you've turned it off, Josiah. All right, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. So easy. Jonah's gonna start picking up their net. Josiah, you can bring the Energizer— well, the Energizer stays. Well, they only ate a little bit of that skim and wandered off before we could get the net in. Call the Inquirer, they left their skim. Boys are trying to herd them. Have you ever tried to herd pigs? Here you go, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig! Oh, they're looking for the scraps. Here we go, pig, pig, pig, pig! Good job, guys. Shoot. Okay, I can feed it on the ground because there's no manure here. All right, y'all get the net up real quick. Hey, leave enough so you can get over there. Here, got you some in a pan. Sausage is back on the scam. You just opportunist, aren't you? Do we have enough to go across? Nope, we're gonna have to come down one more. I can just tell you that right now. Pick it up right there and come right through here. Cut the corner there. This time you guys are gonna make it. Oh, oh, oh, come on guys, plenty of food right there. Hey, Lily's coming. Is everything okay? Okay. Oh no, that could have been real bad. I came that close to hitting the Energizer.

All right, ready? That's gonna be a big flood.

Yay!

Not too dramatic.

Pig got its head stuck in the bucket again. Bubba, look!

That's funny.

It's a perfect time to catch it now. Why do you ride around with a bucket on your head?

I mean, you guys have drinking so much— almost 4 gallons of skim. You're probably drinking 3 of it. Lift that up for me. Thank you. Okay, well, moving them was the easy part. It's going to be the water that's going to be tricky. I will give everybody a big old kiss on the forehead if we have all the parts.

We'll be back, ladies.

All right, where you going? Let's do this. It's where it all is, right here. Oh, we got one of these. Okay, good. Male, male to male. But we need a— we need one of these, but a smaller nipple.

The thing that you make the flame with, like the flame weeder with, that's what we need to light the blowtorch.

Yeah, get that, get that, and a lot tighter. Well, we have two of these. We need— we actually need this more than we need anything else. We got the hose clamps there. No, shoot, that's where it would be. We, we must be out, but I will check a few other possible places. Holy smokes, I was digging through this and we got one! We have one! Oh my, do we have more? Let's see. This was just junk brought up, collected upstairs that we brought down. I found it. Well, I think we might need two to be able to do this, but we can go from the one we have. Did you guys get me a lighter? Yeah, I don't want to lose that. Come here. That thing lights that?

Yeah, watch.

That's for starting our, uh, flame reader. It's not working.

Not enough air.

I thought you said it worked.

It did. Okay, it worked. Ready?

No, try to turn the propane down. Go ahead, go ahead. Oh yeah, that worked real nice. Okay, bring that. You guys bring our torch. Here, I put a little toolkit together. Here, take that. Oh, we could put it in that nice bag. You want to do that? There you go. Perfect. Hey, beautiful one, you haven't been in the vlog much. I know. Well, it's been rainy and I I haven't really been out here. Well, what are you gonna do? You're gonna water your plants? I already watered them. Here, Jonah, will you go switch out our water real quick? Thank you, my man. We're gonna turn on the pigs' water here. We have a way to— we have that valve out there to shut it off so that we can work and then turn it back on. That way we don't have to take two trips. Good work, my man. I've turned the water off, so now we have something to work with. Uh, we're gonna keep our quick connect on here, and then this just needs that one piece that we found, and then we can go all the way to the end. We'll need another one to attach this to it on the end to have a shutoff, but we'll be all right for a pinch. Got the old piece off. We could actually take those hose clamps off and reuse them. I'm gonna put my hose clamp on my hose first. Don't make the mistake of putting your end on before because then you can't get your hose clamp on without completely undoing it. All right, let's get our lighter lit. Nice, I like it. All right, yes. So just do it. Watch this. Hold it out here because you don't want to point your gas down or blow itself out. And then just do like that evenly all the way around.

Okay, okay, back up.

Let's try it. Let's see if that's enough. Usually it doesn't take that much. Yep, that's all we needed. Just, uh, tightening this on, screwing that on. I just realized we're only gonna have as long as it has this black hose because we don't have a way to connect our— this without another one of these pieces. Shoot. Let's see if the black line is longer than the hose. Oh yeah, it might be. You know what? I bet it's— I don't know if it is, Jonah.

I think it is.

All right, let's try it. We went further. We went further with our— we went further with our hose. Papa, see, we need to—

we have more of this other black hose. We can go get that and connect it and run it all the way to there.

Yeah, I know, but then we'd have to— I know. Yeah, we could. I mean, we could, we could do that with our black line and get over there. Yeah, I mean, I guess, but then we'd have to cut this to put a shutoffs at every place so that we can, you know, connect the hose at every 100 feet. We need a T. We have some Ts, and then out here is a shutoff. You know, we got lucky once finding one of those adapters. I don't think we'll get lucky again. You think we have another one somewhere?

Stainless steel?

Where?

It's like metal.

Where? Come on, we gotta go home. No, is it— is it— is it— but is it the male to female? Or actually, it's the male to male.

I think it's like what you want, 1/2 to 3/4 inch. I don't know, but I think it— we might have something there.

Well, let's feed the little pigs. I was hoping— I was hoping this wasn't going to be so dramatic. But let's feed the little pigs. We're gonna have to, uh, we're gonna have to do something. I think we might have to do your idea, Jonah, and get the longer hose because we're gonna have to cut anyway to put the tees in. I was hesitating to have to, you know, put that together and then cut it. It's a little bit of rework, guys. We'll get you moved soon too, okay? We're gonna get our water figured out, all right? You got a few more days. Whoa, this grass is jamming underneath this hay we just planted. That's what this rain will do. That's what this rain will do.

He's doing it.

He's doing the chicken dance. He's doing the chicken rain dance. I hate that we're having to go back and forth so many times on this rainy, muddy day. Tearing up our road. They're gonna get the hose line. I'm gonna just double-check, see if we don't have one of those connections upstairs. Yeah, I didn't think I was gonna get that lucky twice. Hey, what are you doing? Oh my.

Is this the pieces we need?

Nope, they're too big. The nipple is too big. And we need the male end too. All right, you got our line? What about the male connectors? We need one of these. Uh, yeah, that's— that nipple's too big. You think that'll get us there? Is it two pieces? Look, it's cut so much. Oh no.

Oh, this is just a chunk.

Oh, there's a short piece.

It looks like there might be just a short piece.

All right, bring the long piece. Oh yeah, it's just It's gonna be enough. You going with my man? Leave that behind. All that. Come on. If you insist. Oh my goodness, what are we gonna do with a 7-foot bamboo pole?

Right outside.

Jonah, let's see if this is even gonna reach. It reached. It just reached. I mean, we have a few feet to spare too. You guys want to start it?

And you want backwards.

Good job, guys. There you go. Don't have to do it much. You saw how little we had to do it last time.

Oh my God, that's hot.

Okay, let's try it. Oh wow, that's perfect. Perfect, Josiah. Good job. We have it connected. Go turn us on down there. We'll see what we got. Tell us when. Yeah, go. All right, we're gonna hope, hope it's got enough pressure because we're going up even higher this time. Did you— we turn the water on for sure? Okay, there's no water in that. Look, there's water coming through. That's sagging. That just dropped down. Here, watch. It should be right here, guys. Look, look, we got water! Johnny, you want to go see if we got water at the end yet? I can see the water weighing this down. Yeah, I can feel it in there. Is it?

Look how much!

All right, good. See if you can keep it propped up high. Don't put it all the way in because if it goes all the way in and we turn it off, it's going to siphon out.

Okay, let's try sticking it on there.

See, that's why we need our connection so we can do that. Yeah. All right, now just, just wedge it. It should, it should be able to weigh— the weight of it should hold it right there. Okay, we finished just in time too, guys. Just in time for milking. Everybody gets a kiss on the forehead. You want one? Jonah's getting the cows down. I'm gonna look at their grazing job. They're definitely done in here. We're getting them out. This is their next day, so I think that's 2 days, day and a half-ish. So yeah, split this in half, Jonah, with a temp fence. Well, that's a nice sight right there with the fog. Little boy, big animals going to the barn. Look, she's eating that weed. She's digging, eating that weed. That's why I wanted to move them, keep them happy. That was worth it even though it's a lot of trouble with the water.

Oh, how'd you kill it? What bite did you hit? Ready?

Yep, hit that. It's milking time, but we got one more thing to do.

What?

Sea monsters.

Very happy with the sea monsters and the meat shawl so far. Oh, so far only 2 people got caught, some aerial attack early on. And I think, I think Rosie, you've nipped it in the bud. I'm liking the tray, the feed tray underneath. The shaw keeps it dry, keeps them close. I don't want to— I want them to exercise, but not too much. I don't want to burn too many calories if you can't put on any weight. But it looks like we're doing good. And look at that manure load! Holy smokes, this is going to be precious ground after this. Flossie, it's almost like this is going to be a break now. After all that, it's going to be a winding down into milk. Boom! 2 gallons. That's great. Now pretty soon, because we're drying off one cow, that's gonna be it. Still 14 gallons a week, that's gonna be pretty good. Thank you, my man, for cleaning the buckets. With Aunt Phyllis, I'm drying her off. She's, uh, due with a calf in about 2 months, so we're gonna let her focus all her energy energy on finishing out this calf. And that's why we timed this pig butchering, because we have a lot less skim milk. So I'm gonna start the weaning— no, weaning— no, drying off process now, which includes washing her before we give her her alfalfa, which you can see she does not like.

Poop on this side.

Are you serious?

Oh, she must have laid down on the couch.

All right, whoops. Okay, so I've got to clean her off better. Just a little cloth ain't gonna do. Oh shoot, I shouldn't be getting her tail wet. Dang it. We're gonna have to wash her again. That's funny, it brought them— that cold water brought the milk down. That's weird. Okay, hang on, honey. So Rebecca, I need you to— I need to sit down and you'll give her her scoops and I'll start milking right away because the first step in drying her off is cutting her alfalfa ration in half. High in protein. It's helping that milk production, and we're gonna cut it in half, honey.

We're cutting you down, okay? You're gonna get a break.

You want a break?

She's like, I don't know, I like that alfalfa.

So I need you to—

okay, I'll, I'll let you sit down, get all ready, and then I'll scoop it in right before you squeeze.

All right, Mom, 2 and a half scoops plus the regular, um, apple cider, and there she goes. All right, we're good. You're not gonna like this. She ran out alfalfa. Thankfully I poured it all into the reservoir and then she kicked the bucket. Rebecca's gonna get some hay, but That's not really worked in the past. We'll try. I'm back. She does look like she's eating that hay. She has a cut on her teeth, that's not helping. She already knocked her hay off. Lily, will you get her hay out? Let's do this. You got her on hay? Yeah, I'm just gonna hold— wow, wow, okay. I might just have to hold it with one hand and milk with the other. I don't know, she's letting me now. All right, will she let me? Two hands. Oh yeah, back in business. Hey, he's helping. Look at that, 2 gallons. Phyllis too. That's a Festivus miracle because she's got flies, so she's picking for the flies. We gotta make up our fly spray. She has a sore teat and she ran out of alfalfa. Yes, you did good given the situation. So that's it, that's our life for the next 5-6 days. Uh, you'll— and then we'll complete— we just won't milk you on Thursday, which will be handy because that's the day we're butchering, so we're gonna be very busy anyway. We'll go 3 days and then we'll milk you out again, and then it'll be done. Okay, she says enough, enough talking, just let me out. All right, let's go. Oh no! Hey, hey, hey, come on, come on! Oh, come on, let's go! Oh, come on, come on! So let's go. We're slowing you down, slowing down your milk. She's coming back. All right, I bet you won't come back when boss lady comes out. Come on, boss lady, come on, let's go! Come on, come on, what's the deal? Come on, you got some, you got some out there. Where are you going, honey? Your lane's right there. There you go. Thank you. Come on, Miss Thing. There we go. Oh look, our tape measure came, our Flex Tape. Whatever you call this. Hey, will you go put that in our garden stall, please? Oh, some of these are not draining good. That one and that one did not drain well.

That's because here there are—

there are— did they get clogged up? Yeah, there are— there are a few holes. Hmm, they've gotten clogged up. This one drained. This one drained. Most of them drained. Hey, let's see if we can poke a hole up in there, if that helps.

Oh yeah, what in the—

that's not a hole. It shouldn't be that. Were we supposed to drill a hole? Oh, it says that. Drill. Okay, for optional drainage. Why wouldn't we want drainage? We want drainage. But what's the problem with this one? These have holes. Is it optional too? No. Yeah, there you go. Looks like I'm gonna poke them, get some flow going. They've obviously gotten clogged up, and this is literally a floating island. Here we go.

I'll see you soon. It drains.

Whoa, that'll do it. That looks about right. Yeah, we just Saved our lettuce. Keep going. Now look, this, this has got holes, but it's not— they're getting clogged up. Let's see if we can make them a bit bigger, if that helps. Oh yeah, that helps. Let's do, let's do 4 of those.

Okay, okay, where?

Okay, here's another floating island one. Uh, see? Okay, there it is. This one's on the out side. Makes sense that you put it in the very bottom. Whoa! Okay, that's very satisfying. Just a real— and we saved these plants. We're gonna wait on Josiah to get back, and we got something the kids want to show me and you guys. Oh, fun, fun! Everybody's hurrying, everybody's hurrying over there, and Mr. Brown's shoes are lighting up. Mr. Brown's shoes are lighting up. Okay, what are we gonna do? Watch Oh, oh, you got a metal pole in there. Okay, yeah. Oh, oh, let's see it. Even Mr. Brown can do it. Don't hit that wire. Here you go. Whoa, hey, even Lily did it. All right, they want me to come up there and see it. All right, whoa, you climbed up it. Man, that's nice. So you use the rail fence. Okay, how'd you secure it in there?

Uh, there's—

oh, okay, nice, nice. Let's see you go, Mr. Brown.

It's my fault. Hey, go slow.

That's okay, go slow. Don't anybody get hurt. All right, good deal, Lily. Even Lily does it. You think it'll hold Big Papa?

Go down the other way.

Nope, my big butt's gonna have to go over on this side.

Yeah, that's how I do it.

Okay, ready? I've never done a sliding pole. All right, I sat down to get today's vlogs files to Dan Oman, Grass Fed Homestead. He's helping me out with some editing sometimes. I'm working on other projects. Thank you, Dan, Grass Fed Homestead. I always link link that channel down in the description. It's worth checking out. But anyway, look at what I got here. There's a fitting. I must have brought it up to order it and I never did order them. So let's do that now and we can fix that now and we can have a shutoff down there and we'll order some more and we can get some legit water lines going.