Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 68

Pigs have to have water and grain until I get back. Piglets, is that all your chores? Yeah. Good luck at PT. Got a little haircut. A little cold out here now. Maybe I shouldn't have cut my beard so short. Happy day, everyone! Thanks again for tuning into another vlog. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. There's a lot you could be doing with your time and you choose to hang out with us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, where you been? How are they?

Good.

Oh good, tension divided on the homestead today. Isn't that the case always for a homestead? Well, today the divide is getting ready for the single-digit cold starting tomorrow and continuing our clearing project for this 100-day challenge. I told you I had a cow! One cow down. One to go. The other one's in the field, which today it's coincident we've done our grass rotations. We're in an end of our paddocks for the winter and they must come in. It's coincident too because the cold has set in and it's going to be a lot easier on us to do the chores. Go say goodbye to Mom real quick. Hi y'all. Bye Jenna. Bye Mom.

At the house to get the, um, get ready for the big move.

Okay, what did you set up? Flossie and Maple— uh, why am I calling her Maple? Uh, Honey's water. Okay, here, you could do this. The lane to the stalls has been knocked down. Can you put it back up?

How do I get it to go to the pole barn?

Because don't worry about the pole barn yet, we'll put Honey up first since it's already set up for the stalls. We'll do honey. There you go.

We can move Stud Muffin back into here.

Well, this is normally the part where we move Stud over to the next day's paddock, and then we can peacefully milk the cows. Gideon's idea is to move Stud into the— well, into yesterday's paddock. We have this huge overlap of net, comes all the way around here. I do this, I gotta lift this up to get it all the way over there to where he can have an opening. Prayed he might think he needs to get out over here. What we're gonna try to do here is see if we can't cut this corner. Hey, nope. I know, I know, I know, I know. You're just being a good boy. Not this way. Not yet. That's enough. That should hold him from getting out that way. Hey, look who's here! Enjoy this reasonable morning, guys. Now we'll see if we'll get Stud to go back. Let's go. There we go. Here he comes. He'll probably be a little restless. Sally over. We shut the gate back. All right, Vanilla went over. I would have rather trained her. I get it, we're gonna have all winter to train her. I wonder why they've rioted and turned their water over. I'm wondering why they don't have a full water. Gideon, go see if that water over there is full, and if it's not, fill it up please. Wow, this is going to be kind of crazy. You think they're all going to fit nicely into that pole barn, all these guys? All these guys, the cows, and all those sheep. Okay, that's good. If you're really thirsty, you'll go over there and get something to drink, which you must not be. Now we're done milking. We want to get her through. Problem is she's got to go right through here and then down to a— we have a lane over there, but Stud and Vanilla are now in the way. Thankfully we do have this paddock over here. Hey, maybe that's how we get Stud over. I want to do that to get Stud over. Put it over here, Gideon. Gideon was gonna feed the sheep the alfalfa instead. Really perked his interest. Honey got it from you. Well, Vanilla's getting the memo. Forget the pan, we'll just move them over. They're so used to moving, they just go easy. This is going smooth. Of course it does when you have management set up. It takes time to set up this management.

There's a huge gap over there.

Oh shoot, yeah. Can you go mend it? Yes or no? Sure. Now to get Honey through here and down into the lane. I'm kind of thinking maybe we should go put up the milk first and then come get Honey. No, him. Did he If she goes into this paddock, it's okay. What's the mood here? I don't know. It's their last time to milk on pasture. Melancholy, somber, maybe some excitement. It's like the last day of a job that you love, that before rest day, you know, that you know you're gonna come back to the job. A bit of a Friday feeling here. We love milking on pasture, but we also love the break. We'll be able to milk on pasture again come spring. You think this is gonna work? Yeah, I think it's pretty good. You think it's a low impact area as far as manure goes? We might put it in that corner sideways. Should we do that? What if when it gets a little lower we put it over in that corner? And I think we'll still be able to walk through our man gate. Look, this is handy, guys. Cows can't get out of this, but we can. All right, the kids want to keep the milking cows in the stall because we got to keep them separate from their calves anyway. So it's the milking calves or the calves. Oh wait, wait, she thinks we're gonna Milk. All right, go in there. The reason we got to get her into a stall is we got to bring Honey in, and we're gonna have to leave this gate open. We could leave somebody here to open that gate when we got here, but guarantee you she'll stand there and bully Honey and won't let Honey in. You stay safe behind the stall, and I'm gonna try to herd her in. Come on. All right, we don't want our bedding to go any deeper than this, okay? If our bedding goes any deeper than this we won't be able to shut our door. Now let's go get Honey. Honey's never been over here before. It's not going to be as easy as when we got Flossie. What you got, Dar? Is that the extension mat? I'm thankful for all these things we've done in the past, like set up a mat, build a stanchion. Our progress just builds upon progress. Now getting Honey over here is gonna be a little tricky. She's never been here before, but she's a very— I won't say tame, I won't say timid, I won't say happy-go-lucky. I don't know what the word far here. But compliable, is that a word?

The cows are probably wondering why they aren't in a fresh paddock and they're in different pens.

It's different for them, that's for sure. I'll grab this one, you grab the one across the street. And you have a lane across the street. Just laying it across is enough, I think. It's like she knows what to do. Oh, never mind. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! Good, good. Going right down the lane. Glad I built this a couple of days ago, albeit it was so painful. Wanting to go in there, it's crazy. Wow, okay, this is crazy. She just wants to go in there. Flossie is glad to have somebody. I'm gonna open this stall so Honey has somewhere to run because Flossie's gonna come out and headbutt her, I guarantee you.

If Honey starts getting like seriously hurt, we can get Flossie out of there, we can put her in there and put hay in that feeder and put water.

Let's hope not. We've put her in here fill us before. Okay, we could do that if we have to. Now let's see what happens. All right, good deal. Good job, Flossie. Way to be nice. Now Honey's stuck. Is there hay on the inside stall too? Yeah, it's got hay too. Okay, good. We have this net leading people into the shed, but now we don't need any more people over there. We actually need to get them into the pole barn. So we rigged this gate shut, Lily. Then we'll just need a short little net from there to the pole barn. Hey, Lily, this time you'll have to stay here because you'll have to open this gate when I get close. Cows are going to be led right into here. Problem is we got to open up the gate for them, but if we do that now, the sheep will get out. And this lane is not secure enough for sheep. Hey, piggies! And we're gonna have to get them out into the field because eventually it's better if we have the sheep over here and the cows over there because we're gonna start having lamb babies into December. Now, now it's January. I'm afraid of the sheep. Come on. Hey, hey, hey! They do not like surface change. There you go, sheep. What now, Lily? Some hay? Yeah, chores are about to get super easy. It's going to allow us to focus as we narrow in on the end of this 100-day challenge.

It's just a long way thing though. I'll get that.

Now let's winterize the piglets real quick. Should we go clear this morning, Lily, or should we—

oh, I was hoping to bake for us.

You can bake. What you gonna bake?

Probably Rice Krispie treats or something.

Josiah, you want to switch with Lily? Let her watch the baby and you come clear. Your saw's fixed. Oh wait, we don't need anybody to watch the baby. Mom's back. How was PT? Good. Here's your rib eyes. Did you do anything new in PT? Did he open up any new possibilities to you? No. No. What? What'd he say?

I think that will be one of the last times I go to PT.

I think I'll go to PT like 3 Only 2 or 3 more times. Yeah, well, Jonah talked me out of it. He wants to get ready for the cold. That's fine. I think we're— I think we're ahead enough on the 100-day project that we're good. It's gonna be real cold and we might have some problems setting up. Who knows? Really, all we got to do, we got to get the submersible heaters in every trough, and then we need to make sure we have enough water hoses. I want to reach around the high tunnel. Currently the hose is going through the high tunnel. It gets nasty going through there. You need more length to make that happen or what? I don't think so.

Lay it out straight.

You're going through the field. We're some hoses, make sure they're empty. We'll have some backup hoses in case we forget to drain it and it freezes. Everything we need: hose cutters, socket, size 6 hose clamps, half-inch stainless steel barb. That's what it's going to look like. Looks like this hose has been mended already. It's like we had accidentally burned this when we were filling up the wood boiler with its water. Cut generously to either side. Oh shoot, I just realized I'm probably not gonna get this on here. Without heat. Never mind, I think I can do it. Something hard in my pocket and I'm able to put it on there. Should have put a little soap on there. All right, I fixed it. Could have been a little tighter, but maybe until I get some heat on there, it's going to have to do. All right, now you're going to lift— you're going to put this up. I want this folded and we got to put away for the night, right? Figure it'd be easier to fold this tarp out in the field. This is a sacrifice area for the cows and the sheep. They can come out here, and the idea is to give us some nutrients, build some soil, and it looks like we have. And we'll put down some wood chips, absorb manure and urine. In the spring, the idea is once they move out, big old squash garden here. 2 years in a row we haven't had enough soil because we filled this in to make it level. Look how the rock wall brings it up to so much. Well, that's just a bunch of field dirt, and so we're trying to build topsoil, I guess. R&L's here. That would be R&L delivering our feed. The small truck, which is what I ordered with the liftgate, could not make it yesterday. It broke down. We were gonna have the small truck back up to the people barn because it can— an 18-wheeler can't— so we could just unload it directly and not need a tractor. Lucky is— well, lucky if it starts, and certainly will not pick up 2,000 pounds. Hopefully there's not one one bag, that's 2,000 pounds. Hopefully they divided them up. Okay, if they stacked them on top of each other, we can get them off each other. Lucky will not lift 2,000 pounds. It looks like this is the pellets. Those will be broken down in 40-pound bags. Yeah, because they're all stacked, 2,000 pounds of them. We're gonna have to lift them off one by one. The next one, well, looks like one big sack. We might be out here with a bucket transferring from one sack to an empty sack, 10, 20 pounds at a time. I am super excited to see this. So alfalfa pellets instead of that meal, so much easier. Well, let's see if Lucky will start. I'm gonna try to lift these anyway. It would be worthless. We're looking at an hour and a half— hour probably of hard labor. It's working! Oh my gosh, I'm just keeping it low because it feels really top-heavy. I think because we're putting 2,000 pounds way out there. I mean, the hook— the hook on the end of this bucket, way out at the end of the tractor. If you don't know, it can flip a lot easier than not. It just gets top-heavy. We're gonna back down this driveway. We went down it forwards before. I slid. I just found you go out down it backwards is better. Oh my gosh, look what— look what Lucky did! Oh, my dad would be smiling so big right now. Another problem with is if we would had to take all these off by hand and put them halfway on another, we only have so much room in the garage. We could put the alfalfa here and the, uh, grain over there. Actually, we can put the old alfalfa on pop into the grain here. Couple of things with this thing. I noticed the front tires got really flat hauling that, and this bucket, it'll lift but it won't tilt, so have to be careful that it doesn't slide off. Hey, I guess we don't have to get the track loader now. Oh, whatever. We can cancel the order.

But there's other reasons you got the track loader.

Lots of other reasons. Searing our lamb. This is our lamb that we harvested just what, last week? Two weeks ago? This weekend? Yeah, oh, two weeks ago. Put it in there. We had some frozen chicken broth. What'd you make us for lunch, Beck? Leftovers from last night, which is short ribs. Well, she made some burgers. Burgers are the go-to. You tired? Henry's cold getting to you? It's a long day. And some acorn squash. Uh-oh, they're building an ice skating rink and you used a brand new silage tarp. Did you put any puncture holes in it?

That's why I didn't do any staples or nothing.

Okay, when this hose is done, you have to unhook it from the spigot and walk all the water out of it. You understand? Because it's not going to warm up tomorrow afternoon. We're not going to be able to thaw out the hose. Yeah, you guys thought it was level, bless your heart. I thought you were gonna do like you did a long time ago and have a little ice skating rink over there. We need to put heat in all the tanks, guys. Oh boy. Well, we did all we could this morning. Wow, Jonah cleaned our our pole barn concrete looks so good. Uh-huh. And the submersible is working. We disconnect the hoses. Okay, we're gonna put this here. Everything looks good, my man. Did you put an Energizer on this fence? Yeah. Okay, well, we haven't put them in there yet. We're gonna be able to put them in there tomorrow though, so if you want to get it— we don't want to put them in there when it's soft like this and just muck it up, but tomorrow it's going to be frozen. You guys happy? You look so happy. Jonah had a good idea. We have two hoses one to the cows and one to the pigs. Now they're in the same area, let's just do one hose until their troughs— it's not like we can keep the Everflow water on, so I'm gonna drain the water out of this thing. I don't know if that's working. I think I'm running some of the water back. I think the only way I can be sure is put it on this hill. Hill is downhill the entire time, you know what I'm saying? We are not used to this. We are used to it getting 40 degrees or higher just about every afternoon. Boys must have got the de-icer. Here they are. What'd you decide to do with your skate ring? Give it up?

Yeah, even more of a pain to pick up.

Okay, is that the water of the pigs? Gosh, that's a pain. That's like 3 lengths. Thanks. Now this hose is full of water. There, there might be a better way to do this. Now you pick it up on that end and walk it like this. See what I'm saying? You walk it. Let me see if it comes out. Yeah, look, it's pushing it out. It's working. Did we top your pigs off? Please tell me we, we did, because we might not need this for a couple days. Last one to drain. Hopefully we won't have to fill the pigs up, and this might even be in vain. I think we're gonna have 3, 4 days Where it doesn't go above freezing. See if they put the submersibles in. He ran the drop cord through the chickens. I don't know about that, but we are in. We giving it up? Yeah. Well, you tried. Lamb from the land. Josiah, it's not Buddy, but you don't care if it was, do you? All right, all right.