New Life (and death)

Friday morning, I came out to a crippled lamb. What happened here, guys? I don't know. We came out and this baby was limp on the ground. Born last night, right? I think so. Do you think it got trampled? Oh, this one has 3, Papa. Or do you think it came out ill?

No, I don't think he got any milk. I don't think he got any milk.

It had some milk on its mouth. Yeah, it's because I'm Lily headed up what she does best, nurture, and started bottle feeding this thing. We're waiting on a nipple head to come, but in the meantime it seems to be working. Okay, so come back out here and feed her in 2 hours. Okay, every 2 hours. It's a girl. Hey, we got a tail waggle! It looks like the lamb's got all kinked up in the womb. Here she is. Come, come minister to her.

Come on, I'm gonna name her Princess.

All right, got everybody else out for minerals right now. Give them a little moment. Yeah, look at the tail wag. Bill, you probably saved that lamb because I saw it wagging for the first time when you were milking her. We've got a bowl, we've got to get the colostrum, we've got a syringe, we've got to get the colostrum in the baby. We fed it some milk, but then I just realized if this is a brand new baby, The milk ain't gonna cut it. He needs— she needs colostrum.

There's milk into this, and then I can do what I did earlier.

No, Mom said to use the bowl.

Okay, I got a bowl full.

We gotta get this colostrum or she's gonna die.

After all my hard work too.

Look how yellow that is. That's definitely colostrum. Let's do a little bit at a time. Extra 30, 40 pounds of meat for us.

Is it worth it? Or an extra pet lamb.

Yeah, is it worth the trouble?

Yeah, we're gonna have an extra pet lamb now. Or an extra mama.

We have to have one, don't we?

Or a mama.

Well, we don't have the money. No, we can't let this one be a mama. Why? Because she's— it's not good that they didn't make it on their own, so we don't want to keep breeding that. Your kids We'll have a hearty stock. What makes you want to save this little lamb?

I don't know, I just like taking care of stuff.

Why do you think the boys don't want to sit out here trying to save this lamb?

Because they're boys.

Well, Jonah helped you a little bit. Yeah, and he's a ride with the bottle. Oh, you were able to get bottle tops?

Yeah, we did it all. So we'll milk more colostrum, and then I will put it in the fridge and keep it. And then when I make his hair milk early, I'll just mix in some cope some colostrum.

What we'll do, Lily, while this—

he's like, we just need to keep looking.

We need to keep milking her mom.

It's stuck on it, girl. She doesn't remember how to milk because I've been pouring it into her mouth.

The reason I don't want to take her in— I want it because I want her to bond with the mom. Maybe there's this chance she'll start nursing again. Put her back with the mom. Yes, we want them to bond. We're gonna let them be there alone.

I guarantee.

Please put her back. All right. We're feeding the hay. Let them— mom and the baby have a moment. The mom's trying. It didn't look too good. Been a couple of hours. Was, was that lamb up and about or laying there?

No, he was laying. He was actually asleep.

It's gonna sleep a lot at first. Did you get a bowl to catch the milk? Can you do it? Milk into that?

Yeah, she, she pooped. It stuck to her butt.

Okay, I mean, that could have been from her umbilical cord. This is nice that the baby was, uh, bleeding. Yeah, already more vigorous, right? It's holding its own head up and the head is already looking straightened out, right? Never mind. Yeah, I think if we keep milking the mom, it'd be good. Because the mom won't dry up. Okay, you want me to milk her this time?

Yeah, but I also got myself— He's wiggling.

She's wiggling her tail, trying to stand her up.

I think her legs are crooked too. Look, they're too close together.

Wow. We let them have some time together. I actually think it'll be better and try around with the other land sheep in there, it might stimulate this little one. Okay, this is improvement. For her to lay there and not just be laying on her side is an improvement. She's lifting up her head. Okay, well, you know we kill her in November, right?

No, I'm gonna buy her from you.

We'll give you her hide. I know everybody out there saying mean old Justin. But we, we aren't running a hobby farm.

Mean old great-grandfather.

No, I'm thinking about my grandchildren. They'll have a hearty stock if we keep breeding the strong ones. And so we bottle fed every 2 to 3 hours during the day. We decided we were going to go through the night, so we bottle fed it right before we went to sleep at the very last minute. 9:45 session. She's standing up.

She can't by herself because she can't even stand.

She's got her head straight.

We haven't milked her in a while, so she, she has so much.

You think that baby's gonna be crippled? I'm not gonna make it.

Oh, she's gonna make it. She's a strong princess. She's getting stronger, but it'll take time.

I think if she makes it through tonight, she'll probably make it. She seems a little livelier every time. What do you think? Although they usually snap to it a little quicker than this, don't they?

You don't want her head getting hurt more than it already is. There we go.

And then once in the very middle of the night, 3 AM. Wow, she's still alive. That's a good sign. And then 8 AM. 8 o'clock. You tired from last night? That went by really fast. and commenced a regular 2 to 3 hour interval on Saturday. Is it going okay today? Yeah, so far. Good to see you have pants on. I mean, shorts. Oh, is it cold out here? Even boots. Look at that. I'm not here for longer than 10 minutes. I might want some pants. How's she doing?

She doesn't seem all that strong, but that's because last night she didn't get that much food.

Mm. Did we see improvement?

Yeah, she was really like—

that's what we need to see every time. I mean, I hope this lamb isn't crippled and beyond our— if she doesn't start walking by tomorrow, let's hope by the end of the day that lamb is—

look, she's already jumped.

He's trying to get up. Does she have more vigor in her nursing?

Also, that's because she hasn't eaten forever.

Sometimes I think the moms know instinctively and they abandoned the baby. And so I think in this case the baby could never stand, so the mom moved on. I mean, sometimes it seems like they reject them.

Look, she's lifting up her head.

Yeah, is that more than what she's done?

Yeah, I think she seems curious. Look, she's sniffing my leg.

Now she's feeding some cow's milk warmed up. Either she's full or doesn't like the cow's milk as much. It's not as sweet.

Wow, look, her tail's waggling! I told you she loves standing up.

Yeah, this is good.

Oh, look at her, she's improved so much! She loves standing up. I've got you. Oh, that's okay. She just doesn't have that much balance yet.

Look how adorable.

I don't think she ever was able to walk. I don't think she was—

okay, look at her. Okay, okay, I see a little improvement. Saturday afternoon we were getting really concerned, but because usually if we bottle feed a lamb, we're seeing a lot more recovery by this time. Two new ones. How do we get twins, Rebecca? We've never had twins every time.

I had read— I read a very long time ago that if you put apple cider vinegar in their water before you put the ram in, yeah, for several weeks before you put the ram in, that it will flush out more eggs and therefore you'll get twins, more twins.

I got a bunch of twins.

I think that it worked.

The little lamb isn't looking that great. See, that's how she was in the morning. Yeah, both of them look just fine. It's sitting there, its head's straight. That's a good one. We're letting everybody out but the new mamas just so we can make sure everything's— everything's okay. No surprise on a diverse permaculture homestead you know, our eggs aren't in one basket. This isn't a complete disaster even if this lamb dies because we just got pigs. And so our attention went to these new baby piglets. I guess it's, uh, baby season.

He smiled at it, it was so cute. He like looked at it, he's like, are you sure this is okay? Yeah, it's totally fine.

That one's cuddling with the dad.

I know, do you see this one? It's like up against the dad.

Oh, can I just take Yeah, then they turn out to be that big.

Another one! It's coming out!

Oh my God, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 so far. 2 dead.

I should have—

oh, so, so wait, 7. So we're gonna put this little pig panel up so that the little guys won't crawl out underneath the fence. Likely we're gonna have to get Beefcake up because They're cuddling up to him and he won't hurt them intentionally, but he'll probably just lay on them. He will lay on them. And besides, we need to give her all the food she can eat now. We don't need to give Beefcake all the food he can eat. He eats 50 pounds a day and eat us out of the house and home. Pigs are herd animals. They don't want to be separated, so we're just going to move right next door. I'm getting out of there. This puppy pig is protective. I don't think I'd worry about this too much if it were summer and they weren't cuddling up against each other, but he's gonna cuddle up against her, aren't you, bud? See, he already inadvertently stepped on one. It's fine. Buried one in the hay. It's fine. But he's gonna lay on somebody. Here you go, big pop. A little cigar for you. You did cut it right. You want the open side to the south side to let in the sun, and this sloped roof blocks a lot of the wind. Sorry to make you do this, but go get— no, you got the right one, but it's too small now that I'm looking at it. Go get the, uh, sheep shaw— the ram shaw. Rebecca's right, we tried a big pig with a ram shaw before and it's It's too small. We'll try the meat shaw. There you go. Come on, we got Beefcake over, so he'll build a little nest. It'll be a little comfort for him. Plus, it's not going to be that extreme cold anymore, is it? No. Should I spread it out? No, he'll do it. Okay, just right there. Oh shoot. What? It's just— we need two waters now, don't we? Now we need two waters and two water heaters. You can't get in, huh? No. I think that door has swollen or something in this cold weather. Look, the root cellar has sunk. Got to get in our root cellar. That's going to keep getting worse cuz it's already gotten worse from the other day. Here you They're vigorous fast, huh?

They are. They're doing great.

Bunch of them. We only need 3 or 4.

It's a good day for them to be born. I know I'm wearing a big jacket, but—

We had 2 animals born today.

Yeah, we did. It's warmer than it's been in a while, and it's, it's trending up, so we're gonna have warmer weather. We're not like— at night we'll still be cold, obviously, but Normal cold, not like crazy freezing cold.

She doesn't want me to go back there. If that mom gets upset, she'd kill me. That's one reason we like the Gloucestershire Old Spots so much. They are so very calm. I've heard nightmare stories about people approaching. Mama and her pigs, don't do it. Just because you're seeing me do this and us, don't do it. We know our lady pig. We're still being very careful. You can get terribly hurt, terribly hurt. As for the lamb going in there Saturday night, it's kind of like we're a bit surprised we're having to go into another night. We're hoping for the best though. Yet we did see seemingly a little bit of a reperment, so we did decide to give it a B complex shot. Hope for the best, but we were kind of in disbelief we were gonna do this a second night. Gonna have to make a hard decision here. It really should have started recovering by now.

It's at least trying. I haven't seen it do that at all.

Yeah, it's sitting up. Okay, so you think it'll snap out of this?

I don't know. Here comes Lily.

Wow.

This sounds really harsh. There's a reason its mother rejected it.

Yeah, if, if he may not ever— she may not ever stood up.

Do you think if we gave it B vitamin injections? Because remember, remember when we had that?

Yeah.

Do we have B complex? Yes, we do. Can you just shoot it in there? The beautiful one would have B complex on hand. I guess I can't bring myself to kill it yet.

No, I can't either. I don't feel like that would be there.

I would have let it die day one. Is that improvement in the bird owl?

Yeah, she— I don't have to put the tea in her mouth. She's actually grasping.

Yeah, look.

Wow, she jumped right out.

All right, how much— how often do you do that?

Um, well, let's do it tomorrow morning.

You gave her a big dose.

I only brought 100 grams.

What if we count this?

It could be a vitamin deficiency, a vitamin B deficiency. Um, that could cause this.

Was that the first time she milked herself too? Hold her head up to milk?

Yeah.

Okay, and she drank all the cow's milk bottle, which she hasn't done before, so As long as she keeps improving, we're gonna stick with it. It's the 9 o'clock shift. I guess we're doing this again.

She moved!

Oh yeah? She's in a different spot?

Yeah, she was right there.

That's a good sign. Oh yeah, maybe this is worth it. See you at 3 o'clock in the morning, princess. Sunday morning, not much improvement, and we just go about our Sunday seed day. Happy Sunday seed day! This feels, uh, it's 29 degrees, feels balmy. I'm dying to see how these piglets fared overnight. Look at that. You miss your cuddle bug? Oh, I thought we would have filled it up. More with water. I'm gonna go see that in a second. Pig's nipple freezes even at 26. Water stays thawed out with the water trough heater. It warms up pretty quickly. It's okay, Mama. She went from a 4 to 6 pound day ration to all you can eat. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Oh, we had 8. She must have lost one in the night. Lily's fussing for me to go help her with the lamb. Little basic farm lesson: the more babies an animal has in a session— so like, she actually started out with 10— the less careful the moms are with them. So if you take an elephant or a human, for example, we're very careful with those babies, but a pig How's 10, 12? She might sit on 1 or 2. We have a crazy busy day. Doing any better?

Yeah, a little bit.

I don't know, she's not anywhere near standing up. Oh my gosh, really? But we filled this up yesterday. I left my hose out because I didn't dream we'd have to do waters until the afternoon, which this hose would have thawed out since it's going to be 46. Oh, this is frozen anyway. I'm going to have to get him water in a couple hours when things thaw out. Let's see if we can find this missing pig. Got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Did she eat it? Sometimes they eat it. Is it maybe sleeping in the hay? I don't want to get in there and get cornered. Anyway, you're a good mama. What is this? We got defenders of the homestead. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you got me. Balmy weather, boys. Cool. Do you know it's 27? It's still freezing outside, but it feels warm. So y'all trying to shoot this retainer wall right to there? I'm trying to take the land back, put the creek back where it was. There's nothing to put there. We beveled this. This looked just like that. That's all we've got. The old creek. Had a divot here anyway. I don't think we have enough rocks to have a retainer wall so far. See how you guys kind of made it a turn? I'm kind of thinking you go straight here. It's the purpose of the retainer wall is so we can fill in material to hold up the pole barn bank, and then we're going to bevel it down pretty far. Yeah, this is by far our longest lasting, biggest project after the Hurricane Helene damage. Normally in winter we expand. We take the time to expand 2 acres, but I'm thinking repair, recover should come before expansion. So Josiah, he's going to start hauling material. Once we get all that material out of there, we could start gaining back our— yeah, see, why expand if we have pasture, premium pasture right there? Hay bombing, getting the material out of there. Let's go! What is this? Why are you giving him a toy? So if he can figure out how he gets it. So what? It has some chaff hay in it. Keeps him entertained? From knocking the water over. Is this your internet, He-Man? Is that your internet? Look at this.

Papa, gonna buy me a motorcycle?

A motorcycle? Is that what you want for your birthday? Yeah. No. So you bought replacement lids for missing lids. I don't know if this will work.

Let me get that.

Because that's a No, it will work. Airbnb, camping, whatever, ready to go. Is this the last of it or do we got more stuff coming?

I might have like 1 or 2 more things coming, but I think that this is pretty much it. I have my towels in the dryer. I bought like a little set of kitchen towels for it.

That's enough if you get it tight. That's good.

You know what I need to get in here?

What?

A parchment paper.

That's because when we travel, Airbnbs or hotels with kitchenettes are very ill-equipped, and if they are equipped, they have Teflon. So our extra selves have got to get traveling kits. Josiah says we've— he's got a lock— a rock lodged in the track loader. See this? All this was pristine grass. We got to focus this winter on rebuilding this. Recover, then expand. Even though expanding, let's be real, is much more fun. And exciting. Gosh, wow, that's never happened before, has it? Let's get the sledgehammer, let's get the digging iron, and if that doesn't work, we'll have to get power out here. We're all in one little load, one little load at a time, because it's a track loader. That's what we have. We don't really have a budget for hurricane relief and recovery, so we're gonna see if this is actually feasible. Come through here and start peeling in. Yeah. So it's very important that we keep this little track loader running, and we keep it running ourselves. I couldn't find the digging, but I got the wood stove— the wood boiler poker, and then I got this really long T-post. I don't know if it's gonna push it out as opposed to break it. That's in there good, isn't it? That's why we need that digging iron. Our hope is that it'll break. Oh, hold on, pulling it up. Otherwise you'll get it. Hold on. Okay, hold on. I'm thinking that scene in the book Shane where Shane and the dad of the story Just going to town on some cutting some roots to get a big, big tree stump out. All right, back it up. That's it, that's it, that's it. Pull forward. All right, take a break and grease the machine. It's 11 o'clock. If this isn't thawed out, we're gonna have to— oh boy. I got to figure something else out. Don't be lazy, roll up the hose in the winter no matter what. You want me to roll up this hose in here, in this greenhouse? Just put it inside for a little bit. Austin, how long'd that take me? I mean, if I would have just done that— I should have just done this yesterday. But to my credit, I thought this hose would thaw out by now. Should thaw out pretty quickly in there. All right, when I come down here, everybody else jumps up, gets up, gets moving, except this little gal. Daggone it. We have to make a hard decision. Look, okay, I don't think we're making any progress. I was hoping the, the B complex would help, but she's just disoriented. That means Mom's making another video. This time, what are you making?

We are making soup. We're making chicken soup. Is this a chicken pot pie? So it just started.

We got this. You think it called out in the room, Josiah? Here, take this. It's coming, beef. It's coming. Here. Uh-oh, it's not. Shoot. We got it up over the nipple. He's a happy guy. Degrees.

Oh yeah.

And now this is probably a little bit more accurate of how you would put it in the bed. Okay, two rows of collars, right? And under the layout here, finally at the end we call it for this little baby lamb. Well, spoiler alert here, we've looked at this little lamb. It's zero better from yesterday at this time when we gave it the B complex. And so we've come to the difficult decision— difficult because You know, we like this little guy. We've been, you know, 2 nights up with this, this little guy, and every 2 hours. And, you know, to come out here and— yeah, he's moving his head around. She, she tried to get up. She's wagging her tail. That's going to be difficult. But with zero improvement, this, this, this little lamb may never walk. We're making the decision that's, that's no kind of life. Difficult because, oh my God, what if, what if it would recover in a couple of days. We don't know. It's not on that trajectory though, so we're having to call it because it's just miserable. It's just laying here trying to get up, can't. Probably get stepped on. Lily agrees, she's getting the knife. She didn't want to, uh, I'm not going to show it, relax. We are going to slit her throat and repurpose her. We waited till Lily was gone with friends today. We were thinking about it this afternoon but wanted her to take part, and she's okay with it. She's tired from caring for this sheep, and, uh, she also wanted to be here. I said, you don't have to be here. And not long after it was over, I think both Lily and I both started to feel some relief, and we're very confident in our decision. It's time to eat.

I don't want to eat.

How'd the film shoot go? Good. How's whaling going? He's going good. Is he walking yet? He's trying. He's getting close. Getting close. Hard work of filming. Does he get to eat it? You gonna kill one of those biscuits? Chicken pot pie soup. Gideon's gonna kill the biscuits.

He said he's gonna murder the biscuits.

And the soups. You gonna murder the biscuits?

Oh yeah.

You a good southerner?

Uh, I'm actually from New York.

Oh, we're gonna convert you before it's over. But she likes biscuits. Okay, you like sweet tea?

I do like sweet tea.

Okay, we got you.

Grits?

She doesn't like biscuits.

I don't like biscuits. Oh my gosh, you gotta give her your creamy dreamy grits.

I know, you never—

oh, we're gonna have to get grits.

We'll convert you.

I like biscuits and gravy.

I like—

no, I like biscuits.

He said grits.

I don't like grits.

That's because you Northerners don't know how to prepare grits.

I didn't like sweet tea.

You gotta add salt and butter.

You didn't like sweet tea when you But I love it now.

She's converted. We're getting her. Biscuits, sweet tea, and, uh, grits. Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure everybody likes fried chicken. We killed the soup. We hyped it up. I forgot to talk about it while we were eating it. I'm calling it there. Happy day. See you in the next one.