Dealing with Our Ornery Bull “Teenager”

Happy Sunday, seed day, day 10 of Grow 30. We're challenging ourselves to see just how much we can eat from our land and from within 100 miles. We've been doing this so long, something about this 30 days has helped me learn to appreciate and recognize just how much we are— we have right in front of us. We've got to guard it. We got to make sure we get those eggs. We got to make sure we keep the cows in the Speaking of cattle in the fence, we've been having a huge problem with He-Man. Austin, roll back our iPhone footage of yesterday, our latest attempt with him. He's been hooking his horns in the net and lifting it up. At first he was stepping in the water, and then he was tipping the water, and now he's lifting the fence and getting everybody— himself and everybody else out. How do you know lies? It's so bad we're thinking we might have to eat him. We need beef anyway and replace him. It's an ornery trait. The net is leaned over in there. Oh my gosh, I saw this! Let me show you. This is classic. It's what I saw from the corner of the house. I thought he's done it. We have this hitting at like 7. You just need a good 4 to keep a cow in. So this is, this is our idea: put this net close to the very extremely powerful Energizer. This is a poultry net, so there's more webbing on it. So we're hoping he'll lift this with his horn and it'll— it's not shocking through his horns, but maybe if this touches any other part of his body, it'll keep him in. Well, There he is. This means he still pulled it up, but if he tried, he's gotten shocked because he's still in there. It's hitting so hard. Or he got shocked when he pulled it up. We're retraining him to respect an electric fence. You are this close to being hamburger. Problem is, we, we need an A2, A2 bull, calm. Hardy. He's all those. He lacks the ornery one, and that is a reason for culling. It's the 3 O's of culling: open, meaning they're not getting pregnant, or in his case, getting people pregnant, getting cows pregnant. Open, ornery— it is a stage. He is a teenager right now, young 20s. Open, ornery, and old. He's not old. The problem is it's hard to get another bull like him. We like that American Milking Devon and producers of milk, but also meaty and hearty. And we've heard Jersey bulls can be kind of rough. So the next American Milking Devon bull we found is in New Hampshire. That's almost 20 hours away. Respecting that fence. This is telling me if a fence is tight enough that when he lifts it it doesn't fall over and the fence is hot, he's not getting out. It'd be nice if we could see if he could train completely against lifting it up in the first place. Today during the day we can check up on him quite a bit. If you can't give it a few more tries with some negative consequences, maybe he'll give up. Oh shoot, not a good idea to have that by the edge. He's just going to flip this. At least right here he won't flip it onto the fence. Now if this were the ornery type of coming after us, it'd for sure be gone. This is the ornery type that he's probably going to grow out of, or if there were enough times that that fence wasn't hot, he could have developed a bad habit. So it could be our fault. I mean, it's a mix. We had the same mistakes when we had Stud Muffin and these habits didn't develop, but still, maybe I can catch him being ornery. Be there when he's hooking his horns in that and help that fence make contact. It'd really seal the deal. That fence isn't contacting him when he's doing that with his horns. Could be unintentional horns in the net. He's being careful though, isn't he? He settled down. Maybe he's going to settle for some hay. He's got to, because— yep, we gotta go milk the cows. We're heading up there now. The question is, did the calf get to the cow and steal our morning milk? It's just coming to get the side-by-side. And look, okay, he's pushed his trough over. Normally we stake it down. This one doesn't have any stakes. Zero delayed gratification. Speaking of the calf, this is helping solve some of the mystery. If he's, if he's lifting up the fence between them and the calf and he's not getting through, the calf's going to be desperate enough because she's just wanting her mom, getting hungry. She's going to bust through that, or another steer or heifer or more rambunctious animal. So I'm thinking if we, instead of just building off the nets in between the animals where there's only one barrier between the two, the sheep and the cows, which sometimes the calf goes in with the sheep. We just make that two barriers, not build off of it. It's not that much more difficult to do, and that calf would have to get to out and then in with mama. And if he man lifted up the net on his side of things, it wouldn't affect the sheep sides of things. That makes sense. There's a little calf in with the cows. I can't tell right here if it's the calf or just one of our little heifers or steers. I'm a little later than usual having to deal with He-Man. I don't think the calf's in there. Yes, yes, the calf's exactly where she's supposed to be. It's much calmer down over here. Here's a chore that never gets over. This last batch of yogurt turned out terrible. Tastes like barnyard. It's extra runny and extra whey than usual. Hmm, maybe this one would be okay. Try it in a second. The other one was terrible. I did skim some of the cream off of that, and I'm wondering if that's it. So we're just gonna do straight up milk from this morning for our yogurt today and see what happens. I could have also had it on a wrong setting. 100 degrees, 24 hours. Can't take any chances on this next one, so no experiments. And we got more milk upstairs. Stairs. But pour the whey off of this. That's the carbs anyway. Pour some more whey off and we'll put it back in if we need to. These don't taste like barnyard. Please don't taste like barnyard. Maybe it was just a bad jar. It doesn't taste like barnyard, but it sure is sour. Put the whey back in. I think it's okay. It might just not be as tasty without the cream. Full disclosure, I don't have to show you this, but I'm going to show you this. We took off vlogging yesterday. Uh, we still lived off the land except for supper. Alaskan salmon, rice. What'd we eat for the side? Yeah, we didn't get it from the grocery store, that's true. So we're still within our long-term goals. That's in this 30 days, it's a challenge and an awareness. But I don't know, I had to. We were tired, we just needed a break. Uh, it's our first weekend of this challenge, this reset. And here's the thing, after this 30 days are over, we're still gonna go, we're still gonna keep doing this. Realistic goal is quit the grocery store. None of this stuff is coming from the grocery store, and we're gonna— we're still gonna see how much we can eat off our land or within 100 miles. We picked up these peaches yesterday from the one local organic peach, and then he'll have apples pretty soon. So it's peach season. We're gonna preserve those. What'd you make us for breakfast this morning? Thank you.

I made potatoes, onions, sausage, and eggs, peaches and cabbage.

Nice. I got a bit of local tea and honey. Let's get off the boob tubes and go.

Little face.

Oh, pictures and videos. What a face. Mom's fighting a sore throat, but I believe she'll be up in a minute. Lily and Mom will be doing some preservation— salsa, sauerkraut, and peaches. It's a lot.

Morning. It is actually late morning. I woke up with like a head cold thing. What are you doing? I am going to make the peach puree to go in the sweet tea. What I'm gonna do is use the peaches that have bruises on them and stuff. I'm gonna use the peaches that have like bruises on them and things of that nature, just kind of cut, cut that off of them. And then put the pieces in the blender. I have my puree. I have a fine mesh sieve, and I'm just going to pour it through it. Whoops. Going to— this is too fine. It's going to take forever for it to go through it. This is going to be much quicker. Stick this in the fridge. I probably have too much is what I'm guessing, so I'm thinking we can turn the rest of what we don't use into peach ice cream, and then I can just add some fresh peaches, peach pieces, um, to the ice cream as well. Not today, tomorrow. Or another day. But this is the beginnings of yumminess. I'm trying to figure out how to get it in that bowl.

What do y'all say for that compost? Is it done? What could we do with the chickens? These chickens and pigs on hurricane relief restoring our pastures are overdue for a move. They've already been fed today. They're having to leave that. We ought to get them some food. I have an idea if the chickens are savage enough. I guess they put their nose up to it. I believe this is a little lamb that got horned by Stun Muffin. That's been a couple of years ago. We froze it as is. We didn't have time to process it, and we thawed it out the other day to, to do, and it just stunk. It smelled bad. So when in doubt, throw it out is our rule. And especially we had another lamb fresh to compare it to, basically zero smell. All we got going on— I think we're going to take the Pasture Posse, she's doing hurricane relief, combine them with the Compost Posse, which in a roundabout way is helping the pasture because we're just going to put this finished compost on the pasture. Let's get any humps out of here. Leftover soup, cabbage, chicken tonight. I don't know how much is going to happen between now and tonight because we're gonna sort of chill. We will go check on Hema. It looks like they're actually laying down, which is a good sign. He goes through— we're gonna move in this afternoon in that little paddock. If he goes through the night only bothering that fence, I would say he's ready to go back out, which I hope is the case. They're laying down, they're calm down. He's not constantly testing it. This is a good sign. Let's leave you guys on time-lapse and let's see what he does this afternoon. Okay, we're gonna try this. Half a cup of— what do you call that?

This is just peach puree.

Peach puree? Yeah, into a half a gallon. We're gonna Let's try it. Yeah, all you did was cook it down, baby. Oh really? How'd you make it? Oh wow, we're trying so many new things this Grow 30.

It is. I think that's what it's about, is being like, what can we do that makes life different?

How can we enjoy the abundance right in front of us? That worked. I think I've heard a word on the street that tomorrow she's gonna do peach ice Vanilla peach. All right, shall we try it?

I think we might need more.

Is it the sweetener? No, there's already honey in there. Yeah, you can't really taste the peaches. Is that okay? Peach sweet tea.

Oh yeah, I can taste that. So there won't be any peach ice cream because we needed more.

All right, cheers.