Look How my Chickens Make my Pasture Better (Not Worse)

Friday morning, just organized our pastures into paddocks. Aim for 15. We've added so much land, we've got about 18 at the height of spring. That would be 18 moves in the spring, but it's not quite grown that fast yet, so we're having that. So the cows are right here today. Let's put them in behind the barn.

That's your property?

Uh, yep, for a day behind our house. Okay, you've had your chance to eat, bro. Let's go. Come on, Lily. Good morning, pig raiders, doing your duty. They've exploded it right there. They could care less that we're here right now. They're just fat and happy. You might write one thing on a map, but then when you go out in the field, you realize I had had that as a half. That's not a half. So if we're gonna put them in here, we're gonna have to supplement a little bit with hay. I'm just looking, is it even just too small of a paddock? But I hate to skip it by. There's all this grass. Yeah, we're gonna have to do it. What I do is try to mark out my first, my 15 paddocks, in this case 18 paddocks. Those are my spring fast-growing paddocks, and then I judge how fast the grass is going and cut those in half or in quarters. So then it becomes a 30-day or a 60-day rotation. Gaten, you sure you want to carry that? Look at this strong boy, 10 pounds of grain. Goodness, that's why we need to bring you along, buddy. You want me to help you with it at least? Okay, I'll help you. Go ahead, you got it, Gideon. They're starting to nibble on you. Whoa, whoa, let's get a little further from the poop corner. Put it in the middle. There you go, Gideon, you're doing this! Good job. Since I knew I was moving chickens today, I really should have shut them up last night, but I didn't. But I have another idea. You grab that and I'll grab this end. My idea is to take that cattle panel, we're gonna get everybody in the corner, and then we're gonna close it in on them. Then we'll hand them out one at a time. Note to self: lock chickens up the night before we want to move them. We did it, guys! Good job! This is most definitely the happiest day of their year. Chickens to pasture for the first time this year. Best day of their life. Let's They don't know this drill. 1, 2, 3. They need training. Hey, they'll get the hang of it. They haven't been used to being let out. They've been free birds in the greenhouse. They're just gonna— are you guys gonna see and hang out for a little bit? Are we gonna hang out? All right, let's go. We'll let them come out at their own pace. Oh, look, look, somebody's already coming. Yeehaw! Just like that, everybody came out. Nice. Saturday, zero day, about to watch a movie. But first, how about an unboxing?

We thought you meant boxing.

Oh no, no. Yep, I get it. For what we can't grow and we still don't like to leave the house, Thrive Market. You guys ready to see what's inside? What do you think's in there?

Good stuff.

What do you think's in there?

Good food.

I told Mom we needed more lentil noodles. She said, have you opened the Thrive box? So I think that's where it's at.

This is where I like to buy pantry staples.

Like Christmas morning.

Yep.

Show me that, Jonah.

Craisins.

Boring. Pistachios. What's that?

She got a ton of popsicles.

Okay, super fruit freezy. I told Rebecca, why don't we just get pre-made seasonings? And she got on it. It looks like French onion dip, fajita seasoning mix, taco seasoning mix, and more fajita seasoning. And What I was asking Mom about. We're a gluten-free family, mostly grain-free family, so these lentil noodles have been like the best we could ever find.

I actually prefer them more than the brown rice pasta noodles.

Brown rice pasta.

And we also tried cassava noodles and we didn't like them either, so I prefer those over any noodles. Like, if I—

even over the black bean noodles. Yeah, because they're too black bean-y. Yeah, red lentil kind of tastes like pasta. Hey, I end up spending a lot of time finding— well, look, finding our seasonings to do a mix or a taco mix or Italian mix or whatever. I'm like, wait a minute, they make those already pre-made. Let's save some time. Basically, we try to do all we can do to never leave the farm, and it's kind of tricky to grow lentil pastas and popsicles. I can't convince the whole family to eat just meat and salt. Sorry. Then we went never have to go to the grocery store or buy any groceries.

Yeah, it would be, it would be really amazing, but I just can't get behind it.

I'm sorry. What are you living for?

Cookies, apparently.

Send the baby off. He's cold. He's not so keen on that. Oh, Josiah the baby whisperer. If you guys are interested in getting from Thrive, I've got an affiliate link down in the description. I also get— I guess I'll give you the link to the stuff we order because, you know, Rebecca does her research and all that is like no sugar, organic, gluten-free, kind of hard to find stuff, and she ends up getting the best stuff. Say the best in your best Nacho Libre accent. It's Sunday morning. My uncling skills are really going to be put to the test. You see one of my local Abundant Permaculture members needs their piglets castrated. Sunday seed day. I hope to get in there and we've got all our animals out of the greenhouse and get that prepared, getting prepared for our garden. Jonah, wait, put feed over here. Put it in our worst part of the pasture. He's putting it on poop, which is what we do in the summer months when we have active flies, but we don't have active flies yet. It's still too cold. That's what I'm talking about. Doesn't take them long to get a hold of that, does it? If we put the coop and our feed in the worst part of the pasture, they spend the most time here and we build up the worst parts of our pastures. Let's pick up the old net. They got no nest.

And 3 new polly crackers.

Go ahead. You wanted to do it, but these piggies are hungry. Are you digging in here, huh? Yeah. All right, pour it in. They're crazy. We gotta get them a little more, I reckon. Are you gonna do this part too? Yeah. Okay, putting it on their manure. Yeah, you didn't lose half of it on the way there. Good boy. Oh, don't go over there. Feed. Good, good boy. Why do you like to do these little pig chores?

Because they're fun.

Yeah, yeah, they're fun. The pigs are fun or the chores are fun? Why don't we go ahead and get this cage out of the way? It's not easy, but we're gonna have to do it.

Can I go get a sled? I'm gonna stop putting it on.

Oh, you want to put on the sled? That's not a terrible idea. You want to try the wheelbarrow first?

That was easy.

Now I think This might— this next part might be the hard part. Can you stabilize it while I move it? I want to grab it with my teeth, but that'd be nasty. Problem with the wheelbarrow is I have to hold on to two handles and I cannot hold on to the cage and it falls off. I said we need Henry, our cart, and Gideon went running. He's in a good mood this morning. Oh yeah, let's empty him. Here, grab that in. Grab that in. Good boy. All right, do you think you can keep it stabilized? Yeah, because I can pull with one hand, I can stabilize with the other. I'm telling you, that dog crate is coming handy for moving some animals. Get in! I got the 3 eggs from the field. Let's go! I cracked one. Let's go get the eggs from Lily's posse. There's where all the eggs are. Got the eggshells from in the house. I'm gonna crush up those nicely. Half into Lily's posse, and let's go out to the pasture posse. First, we're gonna get some hay for that nesting box out there. That's a problem with the female guard goose. They get broody, they get wanting to lay eggs, and they pull out all the nesting material to make a nest. Wait, where is her Her nest has not been laid in here. What has she been doing with the material? How's it going in here?

It's going good.

How's little baby Henry?

He is so good. He's been talking to me. I think he's, I think he's tuckering out, feeding his fat, huh? Yeah, I think he's getting tired.

It's been a long 45 minutes, right?

It has been.

He's—

bless him, he's Trying to figure out—

he's running out of steam.

Basically, he's running out of steam, poor thing.

Let's get the— a little bit of skim in our food scraps. We're only feeding food scraps to these big pigs as we want them to dig for that corn we bury in their deep bedding. Look, look at their job! Look what they've done here. Guys, looks like I need to get a better gate. I need to get a gate more like this with mesh so the mulch doesn't come through it so easy. You guys knock your bedding out? You're really starting to work it, aren't you? Oh boy, I love that sound. That's the sound of pork growing. Now these guys are our breeders, so theoretically they could just eat the corn, but give them a little bit more of a balance. Diet just in case, because it's breeding season. So I want to make sure they have all the nutrients they need, aren't stressed out a bit. I want them to mate. You guys gonna mate? Guys, we gotta also cover the sacrifice paddock today. We're gonna cover it with a silage tarp until we're ready to plant in there. That's going to be a fine spot for a pumpkin patch. Milking time! I got a dilemma. It's 9:40. These folks are coming at 10. I need to freshen up on it. Uh, Art has helped me with it, I've helped Ben with it, but I've actually never done the slit and pull out, so I need to refresh with an instructional video. But we've got to get the sheep over too. Thankfully I've got a member video on it. I've reviewed myself. Okay, then you're taking bath. John, are you coming?

You have a bird in your attic.

How do you know?

Come see, there's a hole right there and a bird just flew into it.

Oh my gosh. Oh my. We need to move the sheep. Sure, because if— when those people get here, it won't hurt them to watch the video too, but they're not coming to move sheep, so we'll get that stuff over with. The problem is this is where the sheep need to go But it's not a regular move. I'm giving you guys perspective, moving the camera around the pole barn. The sheep are currently in that pasture behind the house, so they're right there. Hey, what's the squirt guns for?

So I can squirt Josiah and tackle everybody.

All right, grab the feed pan. You'll lead. Josiah, you stand in front of the road, don't let them go that way. Lily will stand in front of the garden. I'll kind of go— Jonah will lead them with a pan. Where's the gate here? Hopefully I don't take off up in there. You ready? Yep. You sure they're gonna follow you and not go way up there? Okay, okay, here you go. Let's get the stragglers. Come on, come on. Oh, they went wrong way. They turned right— I mean, they turned left. Oh, Josiah was there. That's good, he directed them back. Hey, how'd you get them to go back? The water gun. The water gun? That's one way. The sheep came and started running up that way. I couldn't see, and then I saw them coming back. Thanks to you guys. I thought you guys were slacking. I thought you weren't there, and then they came back. There they are where they're supposed to be. Looks like they're here. Mom's got baby Henry. What are you doing, pinching his toes back there? Is she pinching your little toes? All right, I've looked up my video in my own member area. Sure, I made this video. It's okay to have to review. I think I should wait and do this with them just to go over it, see if they've seen the video, and, uh We'll just all just double our knowledge. Good morning, y'all. Hey, good morning.

Good morning.

Just leave the pigs, we're gonna review it first. Good. We're gonna go over a lesson. This is like not chickens. This is your first time, right? Yeah. Yep. What's your name for everybody that doesn't know? Uh, Mark. Mark, did you watch— did you watch this in the member area? We did, we did watch it. It looks like the pigs are maybe a little bigger than ours. I'm not sure, ours are about 10 days You got coonies, coonies, and they're little, so that's going to make our job so much easier. Mark asked me if I've actually held the scaffold yet. I haven't, so we're going to review this. I have helped at least twice, so it's time. Great links to give. All right, we reviewed. If you guys are Abundant Permaculture members and want to do this yourself, log in, there's a video. If you're not, you might want to, uh, become a member. I'll leave the link for that. Either way, you can log in or sign up, uh, down in the description. Gloves. Oh, they might want some gloves too. Iodine. Wow, they're like little, uh, guinea pigs. It's gonna be easy. Well, we're gonna castrate your guinea pigs this morning. All right, I'm ready. How many mama have? She had 4. And these are— 3 of them are males? 3 boys. So you're gonna eat 2 or 3 of them? We'll eat, uh, we'll eat all— we'll eat all 4 of them. Okay. I mean, we'll— oh, her too. Okay, nice. We'll probably process one on the farm, uh, for ourselves and send the rest out. Cool. Now sell the meat. I got our board. We lay them down over that, we bring up the testicles, make a slit, pull them out, slit off what's connecting them. And this is their— yeah. These guys are gonna have two bad days— castration day, and then the next one they won't know it's coming. They certainly won't remember it. Well, that's slow going with the little pigs. Yeah, they're manageable, but we did, we did get it. Uh, I think that this was too, too wide maybe, and maybe a little too wobbly. So we're gonna try with this thing. It's thinner here and it's not going to be wobbling. I'm sorry, guys. Okay, I won't pet you. You've been through enough stress. You did it, Mark. You did a good job. You did the third one. Always good to have, uh, have friends there to walk you through it. I know, right? Be there together. We just said goodbye. Mark said, you know, now my heart rate's back to normal, we can leave. Hey kids, come on! Rooted episode 3 trailer. We're seeing it for the first time. You know, we came here to have a baby.

Naturally. I'm realizing I'm the type of person when someone tells me like, you can't do this, I'm like, watch me.

Watch me. That's your line? Well, they said you can't do it. So far, every time I see one of these trailers, it's like I gotta share this with the world. Like, I want to put that up right now. That's so good, right?

Right.

So I gotta get working on that today too, getting that up and getting the sign up ready. We'll do, we'll do a premiere of that one. And if you saw Rooted 2— okay, Rooted 3 is going to be redemption because Rooted 2 was just a big cliffhanger, wasn't it, Rebecca? And this is coming. So I think when we have our premiere Here at the holler, we're going to show both. Yeah, because they're giving them both— really go well together. We're working out the details for the live premiere. I'm thinking that's going to be— let's look that up. I think that's gonna be right here, the 28th. Man, what a beautiful day. Jonah's got me setting up. Jonah, you're gonna interview me or something? He's got some idea for— is it a cow course? Yeah, look at this setup. Boy, that's a monitor. Can you actually see? Does that actually work? Yeah, it does. Let's see it. What? That's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's so I can see that hooked into that camera.

And now, now you can see what that camera's seeing.

Yeah.

All right, you got a way to hear, hear me too?

Yes.

What are you gonna ask me?

I'll see what you need to know about cows. Why are cows easy to take care of?

Okay.

Why are cows hard to milk?

All right, there we go. Wow, I feel like Ben Roberts is here, big time, big show. Scratch that, Jonah says it's too bright. There's too much light coming in there and it's too dark over here, so too much contrast. Yeah, I can see that. That's not the mood you're looking for.

No, it's like too dark because they can't see your expression.

Okay, maybe we should try in the morning. Yeah. Okay, let's cover these gardens. And then really we'll be done with our work today. We'll have— we'll take a break and do some, uh, iced coffee. Hey kids, let's do the gardening real quick and then we'll come have iced coffee. Okay, Jenna's getting the calves over. We've weaned Paulie. This calf, you know, that'll be Floss. That's Flossie. She'll now build up the milk and we'll get the morning milk. Guys, you came over! Thank you, thank you. Okay, on the count of 3, we're gonna clean out this greenhouse. 3, 2, 1. We got everything out. Now we're wetting it down just so we can move this around, leveling it without getting it too dusty. Now we're going to cover it with silage tarp to prevent weeds until we're ready to plant. What do you guys think? Looks good, right? Yikes, hate to break up the party.

Disgusting stuff.

We're gonna do that right there. Well, I might use a fork. We're gonna spread the manure, then cover this up. It's not the most prettiest thing in the world, but neither are weeds, so we're going to keep it at bay until we're ready to plant in here. I'm doing a little something I don't know if anybody's done before. We're doing a little— well, certainly not done it before. We're doing Joel Salatin sacrifice paddock, go garden. We got mulch, so that's Back to Eden wood chips, and then we use silage tarp, so that's JM Fortier. We're blending 3 methods, and then I guess that just becomes the Justin special. So we'll see how it goes, we'll see if it works. Nice coffee for everyone. You have to be quiet though, I think Mom's napping with the baby.

Cheers!

Thank you for the nice coffee, thank you for the garden work.