Calf Separating was Hard Until This

Hey, let's go, let's go! Wow, come on, come on! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! She ain't letting me get in between her. You guys playing chess? Okay, well, you gonna go with us on chores?

I am, I'm gonna go with you all.

Okay, that's good. Let's go! Sam and John are back, your good neighbors visiting their grandparents down the street. Y'all can't act fool though. One boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain. Four boys, no brain. Let's get a brain. Why do you say that? It did. What happens? What happens when boys get together?

Everything happens.

Kenny, we gotta get you a coat. Okay, good, that was easy. What about shoes? You got shoes? Yup. They're not in here. Are they out there?

Mm-hmm.

All right, for me, I'm gonna choose to be a little cold. I'm reading Wim Hof's book. He's a cold exposure guy. Talks about, you know, some cold exposure, 15 minutes, really open up the cardiovascular system and just boost your overall health. We got lucky. All right, I'm putting the timer on. I'm gonna test this because it's, it's kind of cold out here. Oh, my gloves are 7:30, 7:45, we'll see how I feel.

All right, ready?

I'm willing to try it because lately I've been feeling like crap. See, periodically with my Lyme disease, I go through what you call a crash. I mean, we're thankful it's not debilitating. I'm still able to function, just feel like crap. I'm coming. Been sleeping 9 hours at night, needed a nap yesterday. Insane. Hey everybody, good morning! Good morning! All right, Aruna, I gotta go get us two more helpers. Oh, we're getting her done today. Hey, where's John? I don't know. Well, he—

I don't think he wanted to come today. I don't know why. Really? I know. All right, well, come on.

Well, we're back. We're gonna start chores. It's 7:50. I've been 20 minutes without a coat. It's not that bad.

It's not the most comfortable thing in the world.

But it's not that bad. All right, Josiah, if you'll get the pig scraps, put some, uh— oh, here it is. I bet that's it. And then, okay, put the rest of that milk in there, put a little bit of grain in there, and then we're good. All right, let's go build the shelves. Well, somebody should go with, with Josiah though. Jonah, Sam, Jonah and Sam. Arun, we still have everything over here. Doesn't that look so much better? We have a junky pile of wood or a nice little stack of wood. And that looks good. An even wider area. Definitely should be able to get the rest of this. We have more wood way up top. Jonah man, thank you for filling this in. We decided instead of having to use these for vertical posts, I don't think we need to. I think that we can just stack against this current wall, this mulch retaining wall. I've been up prepping for the milk. Let's check on these boys. You guys got it stacked? Oh yeah, I hear a lot of noise. That's not stacked.

It is.

Well, you didn't stop, did you? Or do you think you got everything?

Got a lot of it.

No, let's get it all. We gotta unbury it there. Yeah, big. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a way to look at it, Sam. You're at least halfway done. No, you guys, how long you been down here fooling around?

1 minute.

I heard it longer than a minute. Didn't you hear it around? If you guys could put that energy towards stacking wood, you'd already be done. Come on, big guy. I know. Good job. Everyone's got it. It's gonna be all you, buddy, next week. I'm gonna get Arun on milking her because— well, have you ever milked her before? No, because, you know, if she was kicking us out the door— yeah, I mean, she takes, she takes some warming up. But listen, once— Brianna used to help me milk, and we always milk Flossy first. And I would tease Brianna sometimes if she were late, and she ended up saying, 'The early bird gets the milk, Flossy,' because Flossy's easier to milk. So how long has she been here then, in your farm? Oh, she's been here just as long as Phyllis. It's just that she, she doesn't hold back. Like, it flows easier, and, and once she's used to it, she really— she doesn't move while you're milking her like Phyllis does.

Yeah.

All right, got Flossy out. Better get back to calf. Let's get him over with you. Let's get you over with the other cows. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, let's go. Here we go. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. There we go.

There you go.

Okay, come and bring it this way because we gotta think for the next day. We're gonna have to swing and go that way, so come this way. Come on, slow, slow. What's wrong, dweebs? How y'all gonna get up?

We didn't think about that.

So yeah, we had to take a minute here, actually. This actually came undone.

Swing out.

Had our hose clamps— we had to redo our hose clamps. All right, come on, guys. And we just got a call that our feed's coming. Well, not our feet. Well, our alfalfa. Yeah. Okay, guys, come on, come on, we gotta go. They're gonna be here in like 20 minutes less. Okay, the problem is I don't know if the tractor starts. It's always a gamble. Cold morning. Okay, well, I have to reposition.

Yeah.

We might just have to— well, what happened? Okay, this thing just pulled out. Yeah, it's lost its rubber, I guess. The rubber. Okay, that's not long enough, I don't think. He's got another cable, but I don't think that'll work. And we're gonna try to move the shed. So we can get the sheep over. I know it's insane to try the same thing twice, but maybe we did something weird. Maybe I didn't tighten it up tight enough. Ow! If this doesn't work, I don't know what we're gonna do.

No, let's just use the winch.

All right, where's your other, uh, cable? Pull it.

Let's see if that's the stuff.

It's a little longer. We ended up having another cable, so we just put one cable on one side, another cable on the other side. It was enough to get us through today. It's uneven, so it doesn't pull it straight, but enough for today.

I think there's a truck coming.

Oh, it is, it is. All right, let's go. Let's see if this thing starts. You got your on the clutch, you got in the brake, put it neutral. You got to push this knob in and then go for it. Keep going. Problem number 2. Right in our turnaround. We have a wet weather spring. It wasn't here in the summer, but it's here in the winter. I hope that's not in their way. I think it might be. Maybe it's, maybe it's not. Maybe it's a little high up. Truck's here.

He thought he could get by. There's the mark.

Oh, he's done it.

He's good, he's good, guys.

You know what this is? That's 1,000 pounds of alfalfa. So You guys remember this? We had some grain and alfalfa from New Country. Yeah, look at all that. Hey, there's no perfect person, there's no perfect company, no perfect farm. Mistakes happen. I figured maybe it was at the bottom of the chute, they're switching over from grain to alfalfa or something like that. That's exactly what happens, accident. What mattered is that they made it right, and they did. They made it right. New Country, I said, you know, I estimated maybe I lost 800 pounds They send me 1,000 pounds of feed, and I think we talked Friday— Thursday or Friday. It's Monday, and we got us a nice pallet of, uh, fresh new alfalfa. Thanks to New Country for making that right. Thanks to New Country for offering organic grain. Guys, I couldn't do what I do without them. Started New Country, gosh, over 10 years ago. When we first switched to organic from, uh, conventional feed. How's the hamburgers, guys? All right, been editing, had the mobile chiropractor here. All right, looks like the calf's nursing. So we're gonna just let her finish. We can get Phyllis. Tony, you go wide and get the calf. There you go. There we go, we got the calf. Okay, all right, all right, come on, get behind it, get behind it. I got it over here. Good. You know, first we're just letting her fill her belly up. There'll be many days where we get plenty of milk. For now, we're gonna get that calf strong. Let's see if we can be more successful than yesterday. I'll leave you guys here. Here, you know what, come with me. All right, I know this sounds crazy, Flossie. We got you over here and we just want you to get back, okay? All right, all right, so let's go.

Hey, let's go, let's go!

Wow, come on, Journey, you man the gate, okay? She's not gonna let me do what I did yesterday, get in between her and the calf. We can do this though. I got a crook. It's not gonna help me until we get over here closer. All right, come on. Hey, hey, got it!

Quick, quick!

Yay, the crook worked! The crooks work splendid. All right, all right, you lost your staff? It's right there. Okay, now we gotta get this turned on before they figure out it's off. All right, turn it on. Whoa, here, show them that. It's gonna be exciting. Holy moly, if it's up to me, family's gonna be eating kale because I mucho— we did good, we timed this right. It's almost busting out of the, the low tunnel. We have no— we have— we're at our lowest light level this week, and so this isn't growing barely anything, but we've gotten it to maturity, and all we gotta do is keep it covered all winter, and you've got—

well, anything— we can eat kale on Thanksgiving.

Absolutely, you could. Hey, how are the carrots doing?

Great.

Here, let's see them. Oh yeah.

Wow, Casey was right.

I think those will be ready in the spring though. It's gonna be a while. You know what will be ready enough? This lettuce. Oh yeah, look at that, a whole 100 feet. Yeah, we could reap this lettuce. What do you got in there?

A little cabbage.

You got any big ones? You got any kissables? And then I caught any kissables?

There's some little ones, but some of these—

How'd you get in there?

Oh, the leaves fell off of it.

All right, wow, that is— that's gonna be a crispy cabbage. All right, kiss it. The kale, guys, you could eat kale every day for the rest of the winter. You have so much out there. I'm starting to cook supper, so that means everybody needs to clean up. Okay, everybody needs to clean up.

Get in.

Let's shoot the knife. Show them this side. No, I was hoping you're gonna show them with a knife. Okay, all right, that's one way. I reckon I got this steak ready going. Grandma's got an assembly line going for the firewood. We've got the ice cream maker going. One of the easiest desserts to make, especially if you have your own cream.

You have to cook the potatoes longer.

So you cook them longer, you throw in your kale, then drain it, then mash it all up.

That's how I used to— I used to make mashed potatoes like that.