Preparing to Go

Do we have shoes for Henry somewhere? I'm not even gonna look where they're supposed to be. Again, way too much to do in the amount of time we have today. We gotta pack, we gotta go. We got Homesteaders of America. Turn the fence off. Ah, broke the zoom. I am spending way too much on cameras lately. $500 lens. This lens to be sent for repair. You're taking care of the domestics? Yeah. Lily, you getting it? Okay, the main cows have a big move today. We're going through our log cabin yard and all the way across. See that little patch there? It's— we're going all the way to that end of the pasture. We want to move them all at once, but we still got to milk, so we've got to separate the cows that aren't getting milked from the cows that are. Lily's up there getting a fence for that. While Lily's doing that, I want to go— I want to show you guys something. October 10th is supposed to be our first possible frost date. Boom! October 9th, it's It's cold. Lily, can you get that safe? Sure. Okay, I gotta go tell Jonah mom's coming. Throw in a PT appointment and mom just having to go get groceries, all in to a big day trying to get ready. I think I've been trying to milk for an hour. I don't even have time to wipe the window shields. Whoa, why is that so dusty? Oh, it's steaming. Look at that steam. Jonah did that himself. He loaded the manure spreader, he put the bedding in it and spread it himself. Is that too thick? No, I think that's great. You get your You're gonna have to do several runs. You can't do it now though, you got to get ready for your appointment. Today we're working hard as a family to get this ground covered, to get packed, everything we need to do before we go on this trip. And it's definitely going to take a family to get this job done. Good job, you got the two steers in there. We gotta get stud. He's like, we've been tricked, we've been tricked, it's not new ground. This cold weather came in suddenly. Lily is having to go warm up by the fire. That means I need to cut one of these other cows out. Best, if you can only milk one cow at a time, you better milk the dominant one first. I know it's out of the routine. I can't have them both over here because I feed one alfalfa, the other one's gonna bother them and come at the alfalfa. Nobody can bother us. It's you and I, honey. Are you back? Yeah. Okay, get your little hands warm. Yeah. All right, Vanilla. I just wrapped up. I was thankful for you, Lily. Did you cover all the bare dirt? It's so hard because there's a little spot, but you have so much in the back. Really? Let's let the cows wait just one second. Let's go check his job and we can let him know before he leaves because I won't remember to tell him. Gideon, I thought you were gonna do the waters. I thought you're water boy. That's what I call high quality tools. Do the water please. Wow, looks so good. Jonah did such a good job. Even if we had to leave now, it'd be covered in compost. It'd be all— it wouldn't be the end of the world if it rained, but we're still gonna put hay and that'll just be the icing on the cake. Those are up there. I was gonna go tell Jonah the results. You did a good job. Thanks. You got two mosquitoes mating. Good luck with that, guys. It was 32 degrees this morning. Life must go on. They're, they're going at it even though there's no hope for those mosquitoes. We'll see y'all. Bye. Am I picking him up? I guess. No, no, this morning. Oh, all right. Can we carry you? No, no, I think— I don't know what you said. You ready for this big move? Yeah, we got our horse. Cued up. Let's get all the cows together. Follow Vanilla, guys. There they go. It's easier if we keep everybody together. It's like they know where to go, but we have done this rotation in the past. There's not much to eat right here, so we're just skipping it. And we need to get down in the bottom for the farm sitter. We don't want the farm sitter to have to make this move. You go and you think everything's gonna be great, you're just gonna hop in and go, and the kid flips the seat. That's the trick with farm sitter— make it as easy as possible for them. So that, for us, we're skipping a path, and she's actually gonna be in one of the easiest pastures there is while we're gone. Back in the shepherding days, you would just be out moving them around all day. Usually the youngest kid was the shepherd before they had electric fences. So good, they're going through our yard now. Check, we've grazed this yard. I think it— I think they remember. This could go really bad. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 cows just total free range right now. That fence is open but not much. Feeling frisky too with the cold air. Ah, they missed it. That didn't miss it. He knows what's up. Come in, get in! Open up that fence more. Again, keeping them from running that way. I'll push them back up along this fence. Come on, we gotta go around. There we go, there we go. Hopefully they make it in. Where are y'all going? Hey, they're confused. They're right here, right here. There you go, now you get it. They want to do what we want, they just don't know what that is. Everybody's feeling good this morning. Oh, that's some good grass. They are happy. Really, I probably should make Gideon get that water. I like to think it's his personality the most because he's 9. Uh, well, the other kids is 8, but maybe, I don't know. Can I bring my toys? Maybe I've helped him too much. Have I helped you too much? No. My thought is he helps me, I'll help him, but probably make you do more. I don't know where the balance is. That is a big move with the water. I know it's hard, but it's okay to do hard things. Cows are like 300 feet behind us. I'm just going to keep the camera rolling so you can see how far it is. I couldn't find the drone this morning. That would have been a much more epic shot, so sorry. It's not always epic on the farm though. Most of the time it's not epic. Did they just get over on themselves? Now here we're here, so that is a good bit ways. Hey, you got the sheep over. Thank you. Getting you, bringing it down. The truth is I probably just want to test the water over there. It's been a minute since we've been in that pasture, and sometimes things go kaput not actually using them every day. It's been a minute. Yeah, since we've been in that pasture. It's probably been 2 months, hadn't it? There— were we there the last time at Annie Farms? Yeah, which would have been in August, I think. So yeah, 2 months. We need to bring that hose. Yeah, or you want to sit in the back and just hold it? Oh, okay. All right. If I'm being completely honest, I'm probably putting off packing. I'd rather do farm chores. Got it tied up. Hey boys, let's go! But I better start making them do hard things because Jonah and Josiah are going to be grown up one day. This is gonna be my crew. Uh-oh, maybe I got too soft on you, Henry. Wouldn't be doing you favors, huh? Oh, you like to help though. I wasn't so sure about this idea. It keeps getting caught up. Uh-oh, Josiah's got the sheep out. I've untied that. We gotta go help out Josiah. Having steers in it too is another element because they heard slightly different. What happened? I don't know. We're getting lucky right now. Okay, there it is. Now I'm starting to feel an urgency to go inside. It's like 10:20. What? Hey, get those busted hay bales! What? Because we, we, we can't stack those. They're just taking up a lot of space. And you want to ride the tractor? Come on, we gotta move it. Getting water to the cows isn't something I can really put off. Josiah's doing this ground cover project. Josen is gone. It's on us three. It's a lot to do before an event. We got a lot going on on our farm, which is One reason we're not traveling to events next year. Come on, that's one reason. The second reason is we know how quickly these kids are growing up and we found ourselves spread too thin, and we just need to condense and do more family-friendly things while they're young. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Hey, cross your fingers. Do you know how to cross your fingers, Henry? Like that. Okay, we gotta get Lucky out of the way, so just I can get to the hay. We got it moved. Back on this water project. Let's just get it done. Turned on the water line. We're gonna hope there's no breaches in it. Interesting, some spilled feed is growing corn. Pretty hosed out here. I've unburied this hose. A lot of grass had grown around it. That must have been our poultry watering hose. Look at this lush grass. 60 days of rest right there, guys. That's what it'll get you. We're timing it just right. Look, 20% of that clover has gone to seed. That's textbook perfect. Time to hit it again. That's good. That means the water is working. Now their basic necessity is met. The electricity can put up a little bit later. There's not going to be a lot of pressure on it with all that new grass, and we haven't cast separated yet. You've been busy. We got a bunch of stuff packed inside already. This is a lot of kitchen Okay, any lids for this? Those are basically the same. Let's go, guys! Last minute yogurt making. Can't— last minute yogurt, it's gotta sit for 20. Last minute on the homestead is like 24 hours. I actually feel really bad, you know. Andrew just called me, he's harvesting hay. We're getting hay from Andrew this year. Local hay, local unsprayed hay, square bales. It's gonna be square bales. Bring it back to Hayford. We like the little square bales because the kids can playing them. That's a factor. We got stuff going on with the remodel happening this week. We got hay, like, Andrew's gonna be delivering hay. We could have been all up in that helping. How are those boys doing? Look at these guys. How y'all doing? Proud of you guys. It's not easy, I know. No, I wish. I ain't even started making it. I gotta go make yogurt and then maybe I can make lunch. And I hate to tell you too, we're gonna have to get that loose stuff out because Andrew's probably gonna be bringing us square bales this this week. Hopefully Thursday. All right, I'm thinking we need to make lunch. Yogurt's gonna have to wait. Bailey, what do we do with that pot for yogurt? I just remembered the yogurt. Hey, you two come with me. You're gonna be in nothing but trouble. Looks like the boys have gotten some help. Sam, I think it'd be wise to use the cooler stuff first, right? Since we're souring it. Take the fresh stuff with us. I've never cooked it over here, but makes sense, especially since we got a lot of prep going on for this week. I've got a bunch of jars hanging up for the farm center. She'll have plenty of storage. Now, to get it over without spilling it, we might start heating this up over here because there is not much room in our little cabin kitchen. 2 AM. Feels like it's been a slow start. But I think, I think I'm on a roll. Hey, get off of that. Get off that. You need to find other ear muffins. Okay, does everybody have ear muffins? No. Well, we gotta find other ear muffins. We just made some breakfast sausage spices. Jonah's gonna make biscuits and gravy after the event. You've got problems? What's the problem? Okay, get the water. Let's see if it works. Okay, look at these guys, gonna put the extra touch and put some water on it. These boys have been working hard 2 days in a row. It's almost 4 o'clock. We're going good in there. You're gonna spray it? Nothing. Were these on? No. That should probably have a switch too. We're not showing any pressure. I think we have to let pressure build up. That's probably the pressure meter. Oh, it did. If these are working, we know the pump and stuff is working, and we know it's our wand. Wait, is there a switch on this? Wait, wouldn't that be going? There's got to be some sort of on or off. You did this with Austin, you don't remember what happened? Yeah, it worked. Okay, so this is off. Okay, these need to all be off. See if our— we're submerged. Oh boy, I hope we didn't clog it up. That is clogged with that leftover milk. Oh look, yeah, look, look how gooky. Even though that curdled milk in there is because me and Ross actually put some in. Oh, see if that did it. Try it now. Come on now, spray. What? It's weird why this isn't working. Um, we need that pressure to build up. Beyond my pay grade. I don't know how to get that pressure back up in that, Josiah. He's gonna drain it so it doesn't get any more gooky. We're just gonna have to cross our fingers weather stays like this and maybe even a little rain, except we're also harvesting hay, so we don't want rain. We just need like this. Seeds won't dry out, they're mulched, we're good. They'll get the hay up Thursday, we'll get a little rain Friday. Sun setting. We got the coolers queued up. We got a bunch of stuff packed, more stuff packed, mucho meals prepared. Spaghetti, we got eggs for the road, mashed potatoes, all kinds of goodies in here. Pizza crust. And in the freezer section, all kinds of goodies. You gotta see what these boys did. Realized, shoot, I never got electricity to those cows. I'm hurting, I'm exhausted. I think they'll be okay. They're not sheep, like the coyotes aren't gonna kill the cows. And the sheep, of course, have electricity. This is not best practice, and I won't be surprised if this vlog ends tomorrow morning with us chasing cows. I guess we're gonna have to see, aren't we? We're gonna have to hang on and finish this vlog in the morning. Oh my word, guys, they've literally covered half an acre by themselves. So proud of those guys. And it's not just that, it's this too. I gotta show you the, uh, Povarn. I think I had like 35 hay bales. Not anymore. We used 34 hay bales on that. I thought we were gonna need 6. So if you're ever doing a mulching job to new pasture, can take 30-ish bales per acre. No, that's acre and a half. What's that math? Cows are over there. What do you think? I bet they do not get out. What do you bet? Yes! And the cows that didn't get out, our ground is covered. We can rest easy on our final trip.