One Step At A Time

Happy day. Not so happy for Henry. We are derailed. Stomach bug. We're gonna tag team?

I think so.

Whoa! What's happening with the chickens?

What?

Something's happened with the chickens. Round 3, us versus chicken. We're definitely losing at this very second. We were, we were winning. We're supposed to get him and I dividing and conquering so that one person can watch the camera. This is not the normal escapees. A door or some opening has happened. Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick! Oh, the door's open. Yeah, that'll do it. Come on, let's get people in. Everybody. Whoa.

All right, that's a lot of rain.

You want to pour it out? Yes. I don't know if it rained that much or if that was coming off the roof. Oh. Harriet, day 2 milking you freestyle. I am a little concerned because yesterday we had a main milk cow here and she could only spin around that pole so much before she would have to stop because she ran into the dominant milk cow. But Harriet, hopefully you'll do it. Important to train her to freestyle milking because in the growing season we're milking out in the field from paddock to paddock. They move— it's a new paddock every day, and she needs to be able to be tied to the side-by-side, or even better, just milk without being tied. Eventually that's where we'll be. Mama— he's looking for Mama, but Mama is with Jonah. They're looking at a truck. Jonah is in the market for a truck. This has got to be the party. He threw up in the bed. Let's keep the laundry going. Really? 30 more minutes on the dryer. The dryers are the bottlenecks of the things, right? Set a timer for 30 minutes on the dryer. We stop what we're doing when that goes off. All right, Harriet, let's have a magic day. Some of the source of my anxiety, lady— so, or my anxiety, maybe, is my kids. I don't know, happened around the time of Halloween, but I think that was just coincidence. They just go, they're just go, go, going. And we were just— before that, we were just all together and just not going. Jonah's going to look at truck, mom's taking him. Lily needed to go to the horse barn where her horse is. Josiah took her. It's just me and them two little kids. What do you guys think? Drop in the comments. She gonna let me milk her without spinning around around this pole? Is she gonna let me get her on this collar? In the past, she's gotten wise to us and wouldn't do it. Step 1 complete. She let me tie her up. Now she let me milk her. And just like that, we're milking freestyle— collar style. We're not quite freestyle yet. I wasn't going to show you this. I I just wasn't. I mean, that was— the chickens were out this morning, the gate was open, and now the steers are out. Gideon's over there helping me, and Josiah just showed up. You know, if you want somebody to show you things when they are working and after they've figured them out and never show you this, there are plenty of YouTube channels and books for that. I'm just going to go ahead and show you this even though it makes me look like a fool. Just because I want to encourage you, because I know your animals get out too. And sometimes it's our fault, and sometimes it's the animal. I'm right here, let's go. And sometimes it's happenstance. Yeah, they could be. That's why I got this. Hey, Jesse, welcome home. Help us herd the cows. Josiah said there's an animal caught in the fence. Is it our animal? A turkey? Wait, get in. Don't get it out yet. Wow. Okay, whoa, there goes our cows. Okay, come here, come here, come here. Be careful, it might attack us. We have a wild turkey caught in our fence. How beautiful. I don't know, because it might attack us. We want to grab its head. No, never in my life. Cows out by turkey. I'm helping you. Let me talk to it. I'm gonna help you. I love you. I want you on this farm. I'm gonna help you out, okay? You don't have to attack me. I'm gonna help you. Well, if I cut it, I might not get it off her. Just relax.

That helps.

All right, that was the wildest escapee story I've ever seen. Our auto water here became stripped. We're just gonna move on from one problem to the next. There's no tightening that up. When that happens, it ruins the whole thing. It's leaking. That's probably why this is not in there, huh? You got an idea? Just redo it? With the other one, it's gonna break my wrench, huh? Yeah. Wow. It appears that replacement auto waterer has been screwed on so tightly we couldn't get it off with the Leatherman. They probably tried to screw it on so tight because there's not a rubber washer in it. That doesn't work. You want to test it before we go all the way out there? What happened? It's still leaking. All right, throw that away. We don't have another one. Hopefully that'll work. We go through these, these auto waterers. Cows bump them. And they're pretty vulnerable with this plastic threading. If that gets gone, as in that case, it's over. Really? That one stripped? Let's check on the little man real quick. Got Mineral Monday coming up. Do you throw up anymore? Okay, I'm on a show show, not a YouTube nonsense. It's YouTube, but it's on YouTube. It's a Paw Patrol? Okay, a story. I like a story. How much better are you? That much? Okay, the name of the game is nobody else get this. Mom and Jonah are almost back. I wonder what the word is on the truck. How are you, boy? Be diligent with that bowl. You sucking on the bowl? Hey. Hey, how was the truck?

It was scratched pretty bad.

More than you'd like? Yeah. Make him a lowball offer?

No, I don't even want to do— I don't want to deal with it.

All right, I'm gonna be all over the farm today. The big boys are building a cabin for their channel. What are these logs, 8 inches? Looks like they're building a pine cabin. The plan is to get all the materials ready today for a video shoot assembly on Thursday. How's it going? It's going good.

We get about 2 12-foot logs out of one tree.

How many you need?

I don't know, that's difficult. We're just gonna cut down as many as you think we need.

How close are you done?

I guess that we're about 1/4.

Do you agree? Yeah. How tall is this cabin going to be?

8 foot maybe. It's not gonna be no 8 feet.

It's gonna be 8 feet. You need 16 for one wall.

Okay.

Oh, that's—

and how many inches is that?

That's 6 inches.

Yeah, they're not.

What's your duty? Well, measure and then he'll cut it. Afternoon check-in on these boys. Turned out to be a beautiful day. Breaking out the big guns. How many trees you got?

Uh, I think like 25.

You need 48.

Not when they're 10 inches long— 10 inches wide, I mean. I think we only need 35.

I think you guys probably have about half what you need.

There's these 3 and then we have a bunch in there we gotta finish.

You okay? Okay. That's a good babysitter, the screen. I'm thinking it's a beautiful day, let's clean up our raspberries.

They're saying that black raspberries don't have to be trellised.

Okay.

So what they're saying to do is before spring pruning Same plant after pruning. So then, oh, you take it. Let's see, they have arching canes, they don't need to be trellised. The plants, however, can benefit from a trellis. The black raspberries are treated much the same as an erect blackberry. Some are pruned by pinching them back when the new shoots reach 18 to 24 inches.

Secret to success on a homestead is do a little bit every day. I was gonna work and I was gonna clean and organize the office But it is so beautiful. So let's take this hour and let's prune and clear up the raspberries. The boys have the radio playing. I'm glad they're having a good time. It's pretty gnarly. Pretty sure there's 3 projects to this. Pretty sure this is a dead one. No, scratching them. If they're green, they're not dead. Here's some dead ones. All right. Yep. All right, we got 3 things. We got to do to clean up the raspberries to maximize our harvest this summer. We love raspberries, did not get a great harvest. Want to change that this year. One thing we got to do is cut out the dead ones. Oh, I should probably use the big loppers. Gideon, we cut out the dead ones, that's number one. Two, cut the live ones to 5 feet. Okay, that's 2. The third thing is to thin them to every 5 inches. Let's kill one of them. All right, I'm missing my gloves and I'm missing Gideon. Gideon is not sick, so he doesn't need to be watching screens. Gideon, let's go! Hey, get, get my gloves out of my sweater right there. Fourth thing is get up vines. These got to get cut down to 5 feet. Ready? You take these and throw them in a pile. I realize I may be cutting some that are going to get pulled, but all right, you cut them down. Do one on your own. There you go. Is that one dead?

Let me see.

If it's dead, cut it to the ground. Look who's come to see us. You're a good boy, Mom. And the cat. How's Henry doing?

He's doing good. He's, uh, doing— he hadn't thrown up in a while.

Tip number 1, we already got that up plus that. These raspberries are breathing. We got them trimmed down to 5 feet. I feel good about that. Next, Gideon, let's get all dead stuff. This isn't a real, like, um, like if you were scything and cutting grass, you know, it's not a real, you know, smooth job. You basically have to look things at one at a time. See, here's this vine, so let's cut the vine. See this dead stuff? You know, we're just getting a little bit at a time. There's no— I don't know, it's just one little thing at a time. It's a bit slow and tedious. It's helping my mind to break it up into 3 projects. Whatever gets you excited. And then just take one section at a time. All the dead stuff out of here. Nope. All right, that two sections done. Two foot sections done. Step 2 is done. Uh, 3 is going to be thin it, but got some battle scars. Hey, maybe I should have wore long sleeves, but it feels kind of good. This is very satisfying. Thing being done. I still need to thin it.

Who'd you get in a fight with, babe?

Yeah, I've been getting a fight out here with Austin. I know I will. Get in. Step 3, we're gonna thin these to every 5 inches. See, there's a cluster. There's 2 growing in a cluster here. I can't pull it because I'd pull this whole cluster out, but I could pick my strongest one. All right, so let's save that one as a new plant. Okay, go put that in our Keep, keep as much soil on that as you can and put it in a, put it in a special pile. Okay, we got so far, we're gonna do a bonus. Have we routed this, this— I don't know, wire? It got loose. Let's just patch this and then go check on the boys.

You know, like snap it.

There we go. I mean, I don't— I could be We could do this, but tomorrow's another day. Okay, let's go check on the boys before I lose your esteem. We also need to figure that out. We're gonna have to re-dig that and put it in. Okay, maybe they've decided to build down here at the pond. Do you have a lot more than that?

Yes, we haven't even gone over that road and done anything. We're down there.

You've cut them all? Yeah. How was Luna?

She was good.

Good. Just ate supper. You're back at it, buddy. You gonna be okay? You'll be okay tomorrow. Round 2 continues. Us versus chickens. Let's get them in and shut them up. Oh gosh, nobody's in, but I could get the people that are perched outside of their area. Need everybody to go up in the shawl tonight. We can shut them up and in the morning clip everyone's wings. I have chickens that weren't in there.

I got everybody in.

All right, I'll move away, geese. I got everybody, save maybe 2. Maybe it'll be easier for us to catch them in the morning. Oh my gosh, okay, I thought I saw one, but it's just a cat. We're calling it there. Let's conquer those chickens tomorrow. See you then. More raspberries coming, more raspberry projects. Happy day.