Chickens Set to Work this Giant Compost Pile

First thing we gotta do is move these guys out. Those guys are our spring gardening plan, that and Arun's garden. Where are they going? Well, we're gonna try a little experiment. We're gonna put them on this gigantic compost pile, trying this— converting this pig port into a chicken port to see the chickens help us do this compost. I think I'll put the coop right here, right here. Because when we're done, when they're done turning that, we'll put the coop over there. Where will we put the coop while we turn it anyway? The manure will be right here and we're throwing the poop on, uh, we're throwing the pile on it. This would be some nitrogen, but where are we gonna put the coop when we come out to turn that? So no, I don't think that's gonna work. So I think the coop needs to be out here as far as it can. That net probably just needs to come a little over, put the coop right on the edge. I think we could put something underneath this to catch the manure and put it on the turning compost daily. It needs more nitrogen. And you know, if this works, maybe one day we'll enclose it in good enough for chickens and won't need to have a net. But right now, let's just do a net around it enough so they can't jump up on that and jump over it. Good morning to you.

Thank you.

Good morning to you. Good morning. Good morning to you. Good morning to you.

Good morning.

Sunday seed day, y'all. That means for this family, that's a day we don't have to edit. Nobody's calling. It's the first day of the week. We get a jump start on the week. We work all day on the farm. Time out for a second. Josiah just came out here, wanted to show me a text. Thinking, uh-oh, Gideon got a hold of my phone. This is what Gideon sent. He sent a, uh-oh, right? A unicorn having a brain explosion and just a bunch of craziness. Oh my gosh. Help us, I pray. And he didn't just send it to one person, he sent it to 11. Who are these poor people? He sent it to Al. Good morning, Modern Stutters. Sent it to Jordan Green with Farm Builder. He sent it to Jill Winger. Okay, and then just a bunch of crazy names. So okay. Oh my gosh, I think I've already gotten some replies. I'm guessing someone got a hold of your phone. Jordan Gray. Yeah, I hope somebody got a hold of my phone, Jordan. Or, uh, that, or I'm going crazy. I went inside to try to get Gideon. I'd already dressed him. No lie, he's in the bathtub. Lily, will you grab the kickstand after I move this? Think that's far enough over? Yeah. Maybe come here with our net. All right, we got the fence up. We still need to electrify it and everything, but we can get the— we can release the hounds. You let them out while I start getting this tarp off. Nobody hurrying to get on the compost pile? They will. I've just spooked them. I was hoping it would heat up some. It's 30 degrees out here. We watered it down, put in some manure, and it's going up to It's going to be up to 60. Come on, you guys are going to help us. Come on. Now let's tidy up this fence, put corners up, put some supports in. Well, it didn't take them long to find it. Oh yeah, look, they're already pecking in the compost. This is fun. We gotta put plastic under the chick shaw, okay, honey? I'm gonna do the Everflow waterer. But I need a line. I'm gonna try a more flexible line, but we need a male and a female quick connect so we can hook up one of these hoses. Did you find one? Yeah, but I think we only have males. Okay, let's double check. No, there's a female right there. And then could you order us some more females? Now we just need a hose. I'm gonna show you guys in a second what I'm trying to do to make our life a little bit easier. Okay, sure, I'm gonna be a little late milking, but I'm gonna grab one of these hoses. Can we grab one hose from that? Looks like they might be kind of tangled together. Grab one in just how we took out that—

wait, how do I—

I'll just start walking out.

Yeah, let's start walking out.

Still much better than trying to find— see, we would normally do this connection because we moved the water from over there to here. We had to make an extension tension. And when we have plastic, that's great supply line, but it's not great for flexibility. And this goes under here a lot better. Wow, I love it! Mom's gonna go turn it on. We're gonna make sure nothing's clogging this line. I'm so excited about this, Josiah. I dread moving these chickens around on the gardens because of this, but now, now I know. I hear it.

Woo!

All's going good, Becky. Let's fill this up and maybe we can get it to draw without having to go turn it off. Okay, we can put enough weight in here, just turn that on. We're gonna hope that we can get it to draw. Looks like it's gonna do it, Mom.

Yep.

Yes! Besides, you're gonna start them. Yeah, that'll work.

Okay, so I'm just gonna put this underneath it.

Yeah, and we'll clean it out every night and put it on the compost. Hey Lily, hey, get in. You should maybe come with and stop texting people craziness. Yes you did, you texted 11 people. Some of you want to know why I'm such a hurry to milk the cows. It takes longer than the 5 minutes you usually see. If you don't, if you don't believe me, go watch, uh, the video Milking Cows. In real time because it takes like an hour and a half and I got other stuff to do. Oh, you— your water doesn't look half bad. Oh honey, you gotta point it up downhill though. Gonna be empty besides what this is. Yeah, okay, see this where the water comes out? You gotta make sure that's downhill, okay? What are you getting out of the Suburban?

The stuff I got yesterday on my date.

For what?

Crates and some swords.

Oh, okay. It's jammed.

You gonna help?

Yeah. I'm so happy. You had no idea how happy that makes me. I was gonna go find one of you to be with me. So boring without you guys. Do you know how to trick her? Good job. Better clean. You ready? Yeah, look at this, 2 gallons and we're still going. Lily's doing it, she insists. I did say since she helped me, she got to listen to her audiobook. What audiobook you listen to, Lily? You want to process this for me, Rebecca, and then I'll go back down? Yeah. Mr. Brown, you going with?

Yeah.

Okay.

Papa, I miss you.

You miss me? That's good. I missed you. Where are your boots? Here's your cowboy boots.

Papa! Yes, come here.

Right here. Come here.

This.

Let's wear this. Come on. Oh my gosh, we just pulled up. You were red as a beet. You did 3 minutes though.

I did 3 minutes and I dunked and I went deeper. I went deeper, but I got it.

Good job. That's nice, Lily making breakfast while we were gone. Hey, will you make us some tea? Oh sweet, you're awesome. You're back. Oh my gosh. That looks like we bought it from the store. Good. Except that's beefier. Wow, that's like held together with real screws. Oh my gosh. Wow, good job. You put handles in it? Look how rugged this thing is, man.

That is—

I'm so proud of you, Jonah. You're carrying Gideon in it. Well, so this is for hauling wood. We'll go get some wood. Let's try it out. Wow, that's That's for real, man. Good job. We're gonna do a lot of gardening today, Jonah. If you— if you want— I figured you might say that. If you want out some of that, you want to go get the sheep fence over and stuff?

Yeah, probably do that.

Okay, we're going to build those garden beds right there. Well, we've decided we kind of need these lines, we need these posts, so let's just finish this bed. And then we'll go work on that one. Along goes on in the morning and the cycle's complete. Work, sleep, repeat. So I'm gonna get up here, Art, and tell you to go that way with it or this way. I'll be able to look here. Let's look together. All right. Whoa, no, no, drop that. Pick up the post. Okay, you need to go that way a foot. Towards the tarp. You can pick up the tarp because you're gonna have to. Okay, look, hair towards you, hair back. Okay, I'm gonna call it right there. Art and I are figuring out where these corners are. Uh, hopefully we won't lose our corners this time. Rebecca's been picking up sandbags to cover this other garden. You ready? All right, Rebecca says the wind comes out when we want to move these tarps. There's some truth to that. We lay this down and we can see sticks poking up. It's going to pierce the cart, it's going to pierce the plastic, so we're going to undo it, push those sticks down. We just had a break. Smoothies. You feel refreshed?

Yes.

One more hour. You think we can knock this out in one hour? That would be a record.

It would be awesome if we could.

I don't want to say we can't because we'll just keep going at it tomorrow if we don't, I guess. Yeah, we only got one hour because we got to start doing afternoon chores. Of course, we could get done with those and have some extra time, but Probably not. All right, well, we got 2 complete rows done. One, you guys will broadfork it, uh, 6, I think 6. Rebecca got a little on a side project here, but we'll take it. That was a big briar patch. How much to pick it up? It's 3 o'clock too, so after this load we'll go see the animals.

So awful, Justin.

Well, I'm just gonna gird up my loins and do it. Ready? 1, 2, 3. Yeah, it does work better with eyeballs. Oh, I should be having my glasses on.

Hopefully it's someone with a dog.

Can I get your These are thin gloves.

Well, you can't put my gloves on. Justin's gonna go drop me off at the, uh, house. What are you gonna do then? Are you gonna get the trailer?

Get the tractor and go pick up the sheep. Okay, tractor in the trailer.

And I wanna— I'll come out and meet you at whatever point because I want to pet the sheep.

Oh my word, what kind of party is blocking my tractor? 50/50 chance getting this thing started.

Yes!

Really, people, it's not even budging. There's no new moving the sheep without the tractor. I mean, you can't move the tractor, you can't get to the trailer, huh? Oh, I don't know if it's dead or just not engaged. Battery up. Battery's firm. They disengage the They're ready to go.

They are.

I want you to walk them in. Hey, why don't you open that door so you can get out easier? You just tell me when you're ready. It's like they want to get in this trailer. I guess hold the gate. Everybody's gonna follow.

Look at that, we got one slack.

Oh, oh, oh, come on, come on, good girl. All right, you want to get in there, Mom, and pet him? See, want to get in there and pet him? We take advantage of this time to pet The ones we normally can't pet and look at. They all look good.

Yeah, they do.

Hey girl, you need help? All right, why don't you guys push?

Thank you. Pull, Papa!

You want to get these sheep out?

Yeah, I do.

Beautiful. Eating everything you guys didn't eat. How you guys like this warm weather?

I love it. I said that. I don't want to play. I'm gonna park Sally in the garage and then go do dinner. All right, that is done. Make sure I didn't leave anything in here. I don't think I did. I've been good about putting things away, so it's just— we are actually going to be eating green beans that I put away this summer, so that's exciting. This one came unvacuumed, but I think everything looks good in it, so We're still gonna eat that.

And there goes life, looks like that ain't slowing down for me. All I ever do is work, sleep, repeat.