Chickens Help Compost + Get FREE food

Okay, compost pile, we're coming at you in just a little bit. You guys ready to work today? Ready to help turn compost? In a little bit. I gotta do chores first. In a little bit, we're gonna make this so that the chickens can begin helping us break down this compost. Well, look, they're already helping us on the wall. I guess we're gonna make it a little easier for them. What do you see in there? Plus, there's microbial life that we can't even see that they're eating. This will curb their diet. They'll get much of their food from this compost. Pinch me, pinch me! Is this for real? Hope turning the compost food for the chickens. Just wait and see. First, chores. Okay, Mr. Brown, your boots are by the door when you're ready. Come on, Jesse. Did you take Laura out yet? Will you please do that and then come help me with the ices? The bromance continues. They are where they're supposed to be though. Let's move these guys from here to over there by that pine tree. Got them moved. Look at this sight. Jonah completely taking ownership of the sea monsters down there. I think he likes it. There's certain chores I like, like the pig port, the pigs in the forest. It's okay, uh, Icelandics, nobody likes moving them. But then I walk through a pasture like this where they've spread the cow manure, spread that love, ate your fly larva, reminds me why I'm doing this, because it is probably a 20-minute, 30-minute chore every day moving these chickens behind the cows. Get your stuff out of the way. There you go. Come on. These Icelandic have turned out really nice. They're so little, but they still give you about the same size egg. They don't need as much feed, and they're really scrappy. They've been tearing up these Patty's really good. Let's actually look and see why these chickens like these patties so much and why we have to hit it so good. So, right, okay, this is a 3-ish day old paddock. I don't know if you caught that. There it is, there it is, a couple of them. You guys see that? That's fly larva. You can see their holes through here, and that's about how we know we've hit it right. Yes, I'm digging around in poop. So there, you guys see it? You see what we're after? See how it's still kind of wet and fresh and there's holes in it? That means holes in it— the, the fly has deposited their larva. And, uh, so there's a few of those. See, we just put grain on it. Now look, if you hit it too late, like right here, see how it's dried up? You can't even see any holes in it anymore. You don't see any holes in it because it's dried over. Let's see if there's actually any life in there. Okay, there's some little tiny, tiny life, but see, they're not going to spread this. It's actually not even spreadable. It's like more a chunk. That's chunky. So even if I put grain on top of this, it's probably not even gonna— maybe now that I've opened it, it might get spread a little bit. But putting it on top right here isn't going to help much because they're just going to eat off of it. I am feeding 15 pounds of feed a day. That's 5 pounds each They are only 4 months old. The rule of thumb is a pound of feed a day per how old they are, but I just want to be sure. I mean, they're eating all this. Two schools of thought: give them all they can eat, ration it. So I'm giving them like as if they were a month older. So 4 months old, 5 pounds a day. Maybe we should look at the water. Does somebody want to go turn on the water and we'll move the waterer? All right, turn it off. That right there was all this, and now you guys can actually get through it. Okay, here we have till Friday, guys, to clear this. Hold this. Then it would have been 12 days.

I scared a pig one time and I saw the pig do this, Papa. Ran up the trail.

Look, guys, what if we put our water in here?

I don't think here.

Oh, look, that's their pig poop. That's their pig— pig poo area. So yeah, we don't want to put the water right there, but maybe we could put it like right there. But I think that's one way to—

oh, we can put it right there, right there.

Yeah, that's one way to encourage them to get different areas inside of the paddock. That's too big. This is by their waterer. I call that perfect disturbance. So we can move this waterer about in here. Heck, we could just move it right here. There they are, they're getting it. They're getting anything to get in there. Yeah, they are. Yeah, they don't care, they got really thick skin. Okay, who's gonna go turn the water on?

Uh, I will.

Okay, thank you, Josiah. All right, we've set up our water right there, and we want that to— it's a highly trafficked area wherever you put your water. All right, we got that hooked up, got the water going back at the house. I thought you wanted to carry the tripod. He said he wanted to carry it. Oh well. Okay, time for the morning workout. We'll grab that pitchfork, Mr. Brown. Here's another one. This is going to be the pitchfork feature at Earth's Gym, guys. I know you want it, I know you want it. I'm gonna make it a little easier for you in just one second. Look how much they've already gone just around it. These guys will help us. They just got to get access to it. Plus, we want to turn this at least every week to speed up the process. It will be a 4-week process turning it once a week. You ready, Mr. Brown? Yeah, I think I'm just delaying. It's gonna be— this is gonna be tough. It's 8:30. You think we can do this in 30 minutes? I think we can. This compost putting off a bit of a smell. Compost, if managed right, should not smell. Yeah, it's got an ammonia-ish smell. That's either from being too wet or too much nitrogen. In this case, I'm looking in here. I mean, water should drip when I squeeze it. Ain't happening, ain't happening. So it's not too wet. It needs more carbon, which means we need to mix in some wood chips, Mr. Brown, sort of as we go. And we're gonna need to add some water. Yeah, I know we're doing good. It's not taking much time. I'm throwing some wood chips over. Mr. Brown's wetting it down. Hey, can you put it on the spray how I had it? No, not the jet spray. There we go. Wet it down good. So we have some problems here. It's too dry, it's too nitrogen-ish, so I'm gonna have to put some wood chips in as we go. Just start piling, just start piling. Good to see you out here. Yeah, because I'm having to cross the fence to get wood chips, kind of complicates things. Yeah, so if you keep doing that, see waters, I'll help you do that and get wood chips. Okay, okay. You want a better pitchfork? Maybe.

Here, see what I pulled out.

Got it right into the belt hole, collar hole. All right, see, can you smell it?

No, apparently my smell is off.

You need me to spray? Yeah. You done? Yeah. You done with that duty? Okay. It's a little hard to keep him focused. Lily, boy, do I have a job for you. We got about 10 minutes. It's going better than I thought. If I didn't have to add the carbon, it'd be going real good. Oh no, I would have to, because Mr. Brown's occupied with the other pitchfork. I'll show you guys some of what they like in this stuff. Look, you see it, Lily? Yeah, soldier flies, all kinds of— there's all little stuff. Okay. Here, let's see. That's a good permaculture chicken. You found it.

I'm gonna put it back on.

That one's been around the block. Okay. Here it is. Before we know it, Rebecca, they're gonna be a pile of chickens on there helping us scratch this. It begins. These cucumbers from yesterday?

Yes, the kids picked them.

What are you gonna do with them?

I want to maybe look at, um, well, the big ones we're gonna— I'm gonna juice. The, the little ones, I'm thinking of maybe if they're little enough, I'm gonna look it up. But make pickles out of them. Fermented pickles.

Nice.

But I have to look that up and figure out what I want.

Next, step into my office. Coming for you in a second, Phyllis. Uh, Lily says there's a butternut squash ready. Not quite ready yet, Lily, but we're going to have a nice one. Not butternut, I meant I want to say spaghetti squash. That's a spaghetti squash, huh? Come on out, guys. Phyllis did good. She gave us probably— oh shoot, I didn't cover up the alfalfa. Oh, come on, bear. Very good. 4.5 feet tall now. Come on. Oh great, bird attack cow jam. All right, everybody go. All right, Josiah, you bring up the rear. I'm gonna come open the gate. How you been, Bear? How you been? We haven't talked in a while. How we been? How we been? This is a good sign. It's good grass when they start eating right away. Thank you. Look at that. Look at that. Bessie just loves that poison ivy. Hey, you guys want to run before the pigs? Should we run you guys before the pigs? Thank you, Jonah. Can you kind of scrub it out too? Oh yeah, it's filthy.

At least it doesn't look like manure.

No, it's not manure. It's just sat there for a while. Where's your overalls, Rebecca?

I had to take them off because they smelled like cow.

I think we had, uh, overripe compost. Yeah, didn't we?

I smelled you when you came in.

Yeah. What do we got? Pancakes, Brussels sprouts. Hey, how come we didn't grow any Brussels sprouts this year?

I want to this fall.

Okay.

I, I— it just got away from me. You know how things—

oh, I know, spring. We did grow eggs. We did grow eggs and broth and cultured cream. I think I'll give ourselves a break. And is that our butter? Could have been. Our butter's in the fridge.

Well, this is cultured cream.

Oh, okay. Oh yeah, there's your butter. And you've got our butter, huh?

Yeah.

Okay.

Can I tell you how I want my nails?

Sure.

I want it to be blue and then pink.

Okay.

And then blue.

So every other one. I told her if she ever— she asked, I would paint her nails. And then if you get married, I'll paint your nails on your wedding day. I'll be good at it by then. What's so funny? I'll have to— if I have to, Becky, I'll go get lessons. There you go. I got some work— I got some practice to do, but I'll get it. I'm plowing through the edit. Rebecca's about to be plowing through the cucumbers. Cucumbers. You're really making it happen. Looks like you have cucumbers, dill, garlic, and grape leaves. You got some of our wild grape leaves?

Yeah.

Okay, and that's supposed to help keep it crunchy. And these are the homemade pickles that I grew. These in a separate spot of my garden so that I would know which ones these are. So these are supposedly From what I read online, they're the best for fermenting pickles.

Okay.

So we're gonna— we're doing that. And then these are just the other varieties of pickling cucumbers that I got. Yes, and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and we're gonna experiment and see what we like the best.

Cool way to preserve the harvest.

This is Traditionally Fermented Foods by Sharon Strunger.

Okay, nice.

I'm also gonna do a different recipe that I found online. Bubbies is like our favorite pickles that we buy at the store. So we're gonna try— I'm gonna do these and we're just gonna do a bunch of different types of recipes, see what we like.

Okay, good deal. Is that the finished good, Becky?

That's what the directions said.

You're just gonna do one or two?

I'm gonna do two. I have one more that I'm gonna do. I'm gonna just put a paper towel over this.

How long's that gotta sit?

Um, a week to 4 weeks.

Wow, okay.

1 to 3 weeks, but I'm gonna keep checking it and we're gonna see.

I can't wait. Evening chore time. I gotta show you guys this. If I don't do anything else in this video, I'm going to show you this. Our cucumber trellis is in hot action right now. Hot action. Made it over. Jonah, go get the cows please. We're bringing everybody down. Stud Muffin's got a little bit of a cough. We're going to give him some XL7— been giving him some XL7000. Morning, evening. Uh, Flossie's got a little bit of an eye irritation, so same thing plus colloidal silver. Here come the cows. Let's get the calves in first. Bring the calves. We're putting Bear in too, just get him out of the way. Here they all are. Get back out. I put some Synergy in there, Beck. Now you're gonna put vitamin C. He didn't really go crazy for it this morning, so we'll see. Okay, he's already coughing less than he was.

Oh yeah, he's already doing much better.

Well, look at that, Rebecca, he's eating it. You are having to hold it down so he doesn't tip it with a rebar fence post. All right, let's let him out, Josiah. Come on, Phyllis, let me get her out. Come on. Good night, ladies. Hey man, at the end of the day, that's what this looks like. I couldn't be more pleased. Look how they've already scratched about shredding that hay. That hay takes a while to break down. The chickens help with that, finding all kinds of food. We can't even see. What a great relationship. Thank you guys very much. And it's heated back up. It cools off, you know, when you water it down again and turn it, but it's back up to 110. This is good. This is good. Hey there, are you queen of the hill right now? Getting something. What are they getting? Look, all their feet are just muddy. Well, it's not mud, but all their feet are just I'm a nerd going through this. You guys couldn't be any happier. Look, the rooster! Come on, give us a good crow on top of that hill. Come on, you can do it! Finish this movie off with a good crow on top of the hill. King of the hill! Come on, come on! No, no, no! Go back up there. It'd be such a good ending. The talent doesn't always listen, you know. Okay, close enough. You're midway up.