Getting Cows to Work my Farm, then Urgent Care :(

You know, I have to admit, I don't always get overly motivated about getting up and doing the chores every single day. So on days like today where I'm not feeling overly motivated, I look for hope. Not like this crazy significant hope, but something fun to look forward to. Like we're getting quartz today in our kitchen. It's looking good, guys. Like tonight is Friday night. That's movie, dinner and a movie with the kids. And we've got homemade ice cream from our cream, cultured cream. Oh my. So today what motivates me is at the end of it all, when we get it all done, sit down with satisfaction, take a time and enjoy the family. Guys, you gonna have to wait on your swill. I got you a load of kale. Boom. As you can see, that kale is finished, bugged up. We got to clear it to cover it to get it ready for a winter garden. Let's get what's left over here, Josiah, for our chickens. Wow, I picked it fast today. I think we have 40 minutes depending on how well this goes with Mr. Brown. We've got time.

We have to move the ICs.

I guess we don't have to. Totally forgot about that. No, we have to. We haven't moved them in 2, 3 days. All right, come on, Mr. Brown. How's he—

he's good.

Okay, Mr. Brown, I'm gonna go move the ICs and I'll come get you to go to the forest. Okay, or you come out. Okay, is that fine?

There's your—

I made you a snack right there.

Goodness, the flies are so bad.

I didn't see his shoes though. We had them last night. Yes. Okay, get you— hey, there's your shoes. I see them. All right, come on, we're in a hurry. Do you know hurry? You want to see what we're trying to do? We're going to put Bear and Stud Muffin, our bull and our steer, in this paddock. Okay, do you see how wild and woolly? Now look over here. You see how not wild and woolly? So that's before and after cows and pigs. First you got to get the cows in here to get the bigger, taller stuff, make way so that the pigs can get in there. And then eventually we're going to go in behind them and get— clear out a lot of those trees. You think we can get a temporary lane? We tried herding them in here, that wasn't going to happen. So we're going to make a temporary lane from here to our existing lane. Okay, let's do it. Besides, we filled this up yesterday with water. Why is it gone of water? All right, will you go turn our water on? The reason I want to pasture our forest is it's more productive. We're going to get more— the reason I want to do this is it creates a more productive system. Grass on the ground growing feeds the ruminants, shade for them, makes them happier, makes the animal— makes the animals happier. Okay, it's proving impossible to try to vlog while I put up these fences, so just hang tight. Just Trust me, I'm gonna get it done, and then I'll bring you in the loop. I got my— can't see him from here, I don't think, but I got my hose up. Why am I clearing this with animals? Well, one, they need a place to live and be and eat. And two, you gotta ask the permaculture question: why should I have to clear this when I could get an animal to do it? Good job bringing the line up. Uh, do you have another spool? Okay, how about you get that one? I'll connect this one and go to the end. It's 9 o'clock, but I realized I only got milk one cow. Day 1 of completely drying off Phyllis. We've weaned the calf from Phyllis. Cut her rations for a week. Now it's time to completely stop milking her. So we could start at 9:30, Jonah. All right, you're gonna make it with that line, aren't you?

Watch this. This is how you cut wire without wire cutters.

Nice. So water filling up now, Jonah? See how it's moving? Okay, good. Now it's about how to get Stud Muffin over here. Just Stud Muffin, then getting Bear, not getting the mama cows over here. So see what I'm doing here? After pigs, before pigs. And there, and then after them will be grass, and then we'll be humans clearing these forests, and we'll have a nice little silvopasture. I dumped this where they need to disturb. See, they need to be disturbing. See the brand new grass that wasn't here before, guys? Making our farm that much more productive. We just connected a line from our pig fence to now our cow fence. You want to hold that? Let's test it. Oh, it's hitting hard. 12.5. That'll keep anything in. That'll keep a Sasquatch in. I wonder if we take everybody down for milking. I don't know if that's gonna work. No, that's not gonna work. All right, Jonah, let's do it like this. Let's herd Flossie back. Let's somehow get Phyllis and Stud Muffin here. All right, come on. We'll get Phyllis and Stud Muffin in the front. I'll herd Stud Muffin, you'll herd Phyllis, and when I get Stud Muffin in, I can stop Phyllis from going in. All right, come on, come on. Here, get me a, uh, staff. She gets something in her head, she ain't— she's not going. Sometimes just a little, little staff. Yeah, if we can get Flossie past Stud right here, we'd be doing good. This is good. There we go, there we go. That was smooth. This is going incredibly smooth. The reason I don't want to put Phyllis in there is she's about to give birth. She needs— she's used to eating grass. I mean, so is everybody else, but I'm just not gonna mess with her diet at this point. Let's just keep it steady. I can do this with Stud. He's an American Milking Devon, very hardy breed. A bull, you can do it with, uh, Bear. He's a steer raising up for meat, doesn't need quite the consistency in feed. They'll eat the things in the forest. It's going to be mineral rich, but it's just different. So I'm just going to keep Phyllis on her, doing her thing. New lane right here, stud. This would actually not be a bad— hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! He about went through that. This is not on, so there's really nothing stopping— hey, there's really nothing stopping. I'm going to keep— hey, hey, keep focused! Hey, hey, hey! Hey, there you go, there you go. Okay, there he goes. Let me put this up. She's trying to get in. Hang on, we could just get this down here. That's fine if she's leaving. Just start rolling up this lane so then she can get in there. There. Okay, Stud Muffin is already munching away. All right, clear it for us, Stud. Let's stand, say, at this pole, get a good shot here, and then let's come back later and see how much they've done. Now we'll lead Bear hopefully out here on a rope halter. Don't need the lane. Okay, now Flossie's trying to get over here. They really hate to be isolated. Hopefully I can turn her around in this lane and get her back to milking. Come on, honey. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Yeah, it is. Oh good, she turned around nice. I am back for milking. Randolph's here. They're going over things. Sure, how's that?

It's still very dark. I can't wait to get my new light in.

It's going to What's today, Randolph?

Friday.

Hey, you got no coffee.

I know he doesn't have any coffee.

Must not be stressing you out too bad. I done drunk it. I went shopping and got us some newborns. Oh, okay.

Randolph, I can just see you drinking your coffee, walking down the aisle shopping.

That's so funny.

Okay, um, another thing.

Yeah.

I keep adding stuff. Did I—

did I—

are you gonna put in separations here right now? Yeah, because I'm wondering if we should, because that might be better. Do you think we should do that, Justin? The only reason I say that is because I don't know.

No, if you want them, go for it. Now's the time.

Well, this one I want to keep all the way up because my cream separator goes in there. Yeah, and it fits real nice with it all the way up. Okay, so there's that one.

This one keeps your tools off of it. So this one is a completely—

and then this can be completely separate.

That's a good idea because then it's only— yeah, because all your stuff started getting mixed.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Is that your duty?

Yes, I want a new duty.

I didn't have to ask you, huh? You want a new duty?

Yeah, I don't like—

you don't like black on duty?

No, it's gross.

Okay, you want milk Flossie duty?

Are you not milking Phyllis?

No, remember?

I know, but I'm like that cream line.

But we have to wean, uh, Bessie earlier.

Yeah, we are weaning Bessie earlier.

All right, you're all we got, Flossie. You're all we got. Well, that's it. Not that that's not a lot, but that's it. You're it. You're the one cow we got right now for milk, huh? About a gallon and three-quarters, I would say. It's time to get the calves and Flossy back out. Calf are in this field. I hope they're in this field. The gate's not shut. They're normally here because they— the mamas are here. Oh my, I hope they didn't escape. All right, my hope is that they're at the corner of this pasture. They have been spending time over here because it's as close as they can get to the rest of the herd. See the little path here? I don't hear anything. Shoot, look at there! I found them, you little rascal! Scared me to death. Come on, let's go. Gosh, you're getting big. You think I'm gonna be able to rope halter you? All right, come on, let's go. Where's Bessie? Let's go, guys. Come on. Hey, hey, hey, there's Bessie. Come on. The plan is to get Bear on a rope halter so I can walk him through there. You got huge, buddy. We gotta get just Bessie out now. There you go. Or your mom. You did that. Now get Flossie going and come back for Bear. What is your deal hanging around at the stanchion? Come on, what are we waiting on? Let's go, honey. You can drop that if you want. Yeah, would you drop them for me? Thanks. Grandma's here. The quartz is coming any minute. She's gonna help direct that. The quartz for our kitchen countertop. Let's keep moving. It's going really good so far, actually. This is when that halter training when he was young is coming in value, even though he's just a steer and will actually be harvested September 19th. I hear a vehicle. It looks like somebody carrying quartz. Yeehaw! It is. We made it over here. I don't see Phyllis. Is that water leaking? That's empty again. Almost empty. All right, Phyllis came down off the mountain and I see Stud Muffin in there where he's supposed to be. Everybody happy? Look at you cooking breakfast on the grill.

That's right, the cobbler, the berry cobbler.

Berry baked, very delicious. Hey, your quartz is here. Yes, you excited? Yeah, how excited?

It looks great.

One hand woohoo or two? Woo! Randolph, what you got you doing down here? Well, I'm running a water line over here for the ice maker on the fridge. Okay, nice. The kids will love you for that. I think our swill is— our swill is cool. Cool enough. Looking good, guys. It's kind of like eating dessert for breakfast. Put a little cultured cream on top and then fresh glass of milk. It's not a glass, fresh paper cup. Have milk. What do you think, Beck? Look at that sink. Oh yeah, Grandma's excited because she spends a lot of time on those things too.

It's as big as the window. Can't wait to do dishes.

Oh, oh, Jonas says he can't wait to do dishes, but we got it on tape too, buddy. It's so deep.

Yeah, it's a bathtub.

That is a bathtub for a baby. Gideon, you want to take a bath in there? No, so I'd probably give it a couple of hours for it to dry.

The—

I don't think I'm not— Took a little break from editing, trying to find a trailer. We got to go get sheep in September. There's no rentals. I called the local farm store and he said, I don't know anybody in the country who's going to rent you a bumper pool trailer. I mean, maybe it's out there. I've called all the trailers that nobody— nobody's renting them. So did find one on Facebook Marketplace. Thank you guys for telling me about that. May go get it this weekend. They need it gone this weekend. They're cutting a deal. Rebecca, when can we go get a trailer? Saturday or Sunday?

Um, either one, because you're probably gonna go alone because I'm gonna be painting. Because Randolph's gonna be out of here, I'm gonna paint while he's not.

Interesting. Now, and Anne's coming Saturday.

The kids— and well, I think she's just gonna spend time with us in the morning. Oh, I don't know what she's doing. Okay, we're gonna eat dinner with them in the evening. Okay, but I don't know if she's gonna hang out with us like all day. Okay, and then Sunday we're completely available. It's looking good.

He's done for the day, for the week. Yeah, what'd you do?

You did the drawers?

Oh, your doors and the demis and the good ones and the—

oh good, this is the dummy door right here.

Whoa. It's gonna look so good, Beck. Now that's gonna be painted, but yeah, yep, yeah, it's gonna look great.

There you go, it's my drawers!

What would you choose? What, Becky?

Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, because this is where all my stuff will go, all my cooking utensils. I'm very excited.

Good job, Randolph. Looks really good.

Made us a Hope chair.

Yeah, we put hinges on it and just make a chest if you want.

There you go.

All right, thank you, Randolph. We'll see you again on Monday. Yeah, get strapped in, everybody. Okay, that was a whirlwind. We were not planning on buying a trailer today, but we're gonna buy a trailer today. Papaw's in town with his truck. This person is in the same town Papaw's in. We got to get there before the notary closed, the bank notary for switching title, for getting cash, all that. It's 4:51. Thankfully though, Friday banks are open till— our bank's open till 6. All right, that's a good looking trailer. She's here. He is. Papaw's meeting us here. Well, there it is. How do you like it, Gideon? It's good. It's pretty good shape. Real good shape, Matt. Pretty happy about this. The lights work, the lights work, it's waterproof. Matt's ready to go to Missouri in September. I don't see good. Got it hooked up to Pop's truck. How you like that? Looks— hey, this is gonna be my rig to Missouri. Looking good. Okay, have you— I'm limping now. No, the kids are going home. I'm actually going to the urgent care. It's not one thing, it's another. I dropped something on my foot the other day and it didn't hurt at first, and then it just started slowly hurting and it feel better and I move, and now it doesn't even feel better when I move and get moving. So I'm thinking I might have fractured it or something. Okay, it actually doesn't look very crowded. So that's good. I don't want to cut into our Friday night movie night. So it's 5:30, maybe it won't. Kids have gone home. They're gonna start eating. I am literally the only person here. It's absolutely crazy. See? Swelling now. There's like a red streak going up from my toes, which have athlete's foot there. You think there might actually be an infection there. That might be what this is. We got the x-ray, just did the x-ray. We'll find out if it's bone hurting me or an infection. Just got out. I do not have broken bones. Almost rather it be that. I have a skin infection. We haven't eaten.

I need to make dinner. I'm gonna, um, so I'm gonna get you on an Epsom salt bath.

Okay.

There's a ginger tea that Ashley's got me gonna make you.

Okay. I got my foot propped up, did the Epsom salt bath thing. Feels like the swelling's already going down a little bit. Nuka Honey on there. And we didn't get to watch our movie, but we're gonna have the ice cream.

Where is the ice cream?

So we're making a— we're heating us hot fudge. Oh my. Cultured cream ice cream, a little bit of strawberry flair. It's quiet, it's fun because they've never had hot fudge. This is honey sweetened, cacao powder too, probably.

Papa, Papa, you have—

oh good, from our cow. Cultured cream, honey. Oh my gosh.