I put a POLE BARN in my Backyard + Packed it with Animals

I built this huge pole barn, fully equipped with a run, barn, yard for cows and sheep in my backyard. Now to get to this point, first we had to come up with the design. Then we hired the guys to come build the pole barn. Then it was the concrete. Then It was configuring the setup. That actually worked very nice. Then it was getting wood chips in here. Then it was setting up the gates in the front. And finally, it was getting hay. Holy smokes!

What?

How many hay bales you got on there? Are they tied? Oh, they're tied. Tired. Oh, whoa, wow, look at that! And then the day of today, we set up our fence and went to get the cows and sheep over here. We've got alfalfa. Jonah's got a staff. He'll herd them. I'll try to lead them. They mosey. We'll get them on over there. And we're leading them. They're following me really good. I got one. Let's see if they'll all follow me. Oh, I'm coming. He's chill. Stud muffin's chill. Well, this is easier than I thought. And then all of a sudden, Flossie just started feeling frisky. Where's Flossie going? Right here, honey. I got your alfalfa right here. And ran all over the place. They're getting crazy. Why is she getting antsy? Hey, right here. Hey, come on. We did manage to get them all in. Here, look. Not too much drama. Here. And then Flossie just charged right out. Oh, oh, what in the world? And Jonah finally managed to get her back in, herding her around the house and back down in here. We were able to get everybody back in. This way, honey. This way. This way. There you go. There you go. Okay, Flossie found the water. This is good. Hey, this is a brand new habit to them. They're gonna be a little crazy at first, but then they're just gonna be old hat. Why did I do this? I first heard about Joel Salatin doing this. For his cows during the winter, giving him a rest. So I'm looking forward to a rest, not having to move the cows every day, but more importantly, capturing their holy cow poop. Because what happens in the winter is if they poop on the ground, yes, that's eventually organic matter, but it doesn't break down right then and it doesn't sink into the ground. There's the microbial activity in the ground doesn't eat it and consume it and improve the ground right then. What happens is it stays on top of the ground and rain and sun and snow end up what you call leaching that out, and you don't capture that rich manure or urine. And this is one way to do it: a deep bedding system. Capture that stuff in like wood chips, and that preserves it through the winter. And then in the spring, we bring pigs in to till and further turn that wood chips in with that manure, and then we spread it on the weaker parts of our pasture. I mean, That's all cool and stuff, but in farming when you have to do chores every single day, it's sometimes good to have a rest. My bedroom is right there, so it will be really good for a season just to become downstairs through the house, come out and do chores rain or shine, don't even have to get wet or snow, and cut our chore time significantly. This will prevent burnout. This will give us a much-needed rest for the season. The plan here is Lily will go into the trailer. We have an escape door, and hopefully everybody will go in. Lily, put down the feeder. We didn't bring the feeder. Nope. There's a feeding pan right there, Lily. Take it. We tried to get them in with the open fence. That didn't quite work because they could escape too easy and go off to the sides. The camera wasn't rolling. I forgot to push the camera to record. But anyway, you make this funnel where it's wide up here so it's easy to get them in, and then it gets more narrow, narrow, and there's— they don't feel like there's a way to escape us. And we, Josiah and I, gently gave them pressure and they walked right in. We shut the door. Dang, I wish we would have captured that. We are going to try what you call the flirt. We're going to put the herd and the flock together. Rebecca's a hair concerned about the flirt. What, what, what's— what do you think is going to happen, baby? Let's hear it. I know Flossie and the ram have had some moments, but I think they'll sort it out. I don't think they'll constantly be fighting. I think it'll be— I think the ram will be like, okay, you got me. Yeah, but you know, at night we're gonna separate them.

We're gonna kind of add the ram and stud together.

Oh, we haven't? I don't think so.

We have. They've gotten out and gotten together. Okay. I don't know. I, I'm— I will admit I don't, I don't 100% know.

Yeah. All right, I'm not saying that I don't either, but maybe we kind of want to see stud out here, but That'd be the only thing is if they got in a tuffle inside a stall.

In some ways I kind of wanted to put all of them in their stalls, respective stalls.

Yeah, I didn't.

And lock them.

They were excited because I was afraid that Phyllis might get horned.

Okay, well, because they don't know what they're gonna do tonight. It's gonna be a mess.

They don't.

That's what I was saying.

Well, I think what we'll do—

I know that this— I know when you let them out, I was watching from the window and it was insane. They were like running in circles and being kind of crazy.

All right, so what I was going to do for tonight was the cows are easier to herd than the sheep, so I would herd— if there's any sheep in their pen, I'm going to herd the sheep out and then I'm going to move the cows in because they're just— and then we're going to get the calves out and then we're gonna move everybody in there. Yeah, see this manure out here? I'm gonna take that manure every day and put it on their deep bedding. Yeah, just otherwise it's gonna get— I think it would get gross out here. All right, what we're gonna do is just shut Stud in. We really don't know what him and the ram will do, and if they have room, I'm not too worried about it because somebody has room to submit. It's when they don't have room to submit and maybe they get pinned against the wall, it can be dangerous. Are we gonna let Stud out? Yeah. Okay, they seem largely uninterested in each other. Ready? Yeah, go ahead. He probably won't even come out. Oh, here he comes. Okay, watch out, Lily. Stop. He's just going for the alfalfa. He could care less about those sheep. After months of hard work, it's finally happened, and I feel a real big sense of accomplishment. I feel like this is something really big. I look forward to the nutrients we're going to preserve from this, the way we're going to be able— see, we only have a limited amount of acreage, and for grazing. So we really need to get more out of what we have to sustain our 2 cows and our bull and our steers. That's a lot. And one way to do that is to make the land we already have so much better. And this will go a long way in doing that because the loads of compost will get out there. One of those cows, 50 pounds of manure a day. Mixed with wood chips, that's going to be a lot of material going back on our poor— on our poorest parts of our pasture in the spring. How does it feel to you, you know, after we finish? Feels good, you know. And you won't have to go through all this again, you know. We'll just put them in there in this— I mean, put down the wood chips and put them in there in the next fall, next winter. Yeah, right, you know. It won't be this much labor every time. We'll just get the hay, and, uh, in the spring we'll put out the compost, and in the winter we'll bring in more wood chips. But you know what, we're probably not gonna rest. We're just gonna get more done.