Putting up 960 HAY BALES (Just in Time)

Look at all that hay. There's our buggy. Look at the little thing. Hey, we could give hay rides. Don't run over Gideon with it though. All right, y'all ready to load some hay? Look at the tractor, Henry. All part of the fun. Kids get to drive the truck. I used to do this when I was a kid, teenager. Gather all my friends around. Ridiculously tall paddock. I'll make short work of it though. These, they're not potato plants. Potato plants have, uh, long died off, but they're gonna get buried in this if we don't get on this. We gotta come harvest them. The potato plant dies, it's time to harvest. We need to cover this garden bed for real and secure it with more weight so it stops blowing off. Hey, what are y'all gonna do if I'm gonna be doing this milk? No, we got to get the feed out of the way for the hay today. We first began work while we were gone to Homesteaders of America. They will be back Friday, Lord willing, and the creek don't rise. This garden needs covered. Our new homemade compost needs to be distributed. This little checkup is not on my script for picking up hay today. It's just that we just got back from nearly a week being gone to Virginia. A bit of a checkup for me. What are you doing? Ouch! And so we began the walnut harvest. There you go. Pile the green ones and we're gonna set them down to crush them. Does your pressure washer work?

Yeah.

We need a bucket and then a crate.

Damn, think quick, dude.

Is that enough? Yes. Okay, now fun job, walking on them. We walk so as to not crush the nut nut, but crush the shell. What does that sound like? Sam's got it. Now for the not so fun job, break them open, get the nuts out, and throw them into the bucket.

Papa, he'd have— he'd collect walnuts and he'd have his mother make a spice nut cake.

Really? How do you remember that? He told me. Really? That's special. Well, maybe we'll have a special spice nut cake with this.

I ate spice nut cake for my birthday.

Be our first time harvesting walnuts. Just want to experiment, see if it's something we would enjoy and be worth the effort to harvest more. We have lots of walnuts voluntarily growing on our farm. Where's the pressure washer? What you'll do next Soak that, start loosening off all that.

Soak them first and then—

yeah, and then run them through the compost sifter. See how that's coming off of them? We have this tree up here by the people barn. These have already shelled and have revealed their nuts, so hey, why not? All right, put them back in the bucket. Look how clean that got them though. Do 2 more rounds, we're good. Hey, let's get it from the hydrant. That's the finished good. Now we just let them sit there and dry out for 2 weeks. If squirrels start getting them though, we're gonna have to cover it with half-inch wire mesh or something. Is that one of the three little lambs?

Yeah, I'm gonna walk her. Yeah, she walks herself.

Okay, how are they all doing? You know we're gonna eat her, right?

Well, yeah, but I want to tame her.

Okay, you would— you rather tame a ewe that's— that we're gonna keep? And she might not even make it, she's got diarrhea, looks like.

No, she doesn't have diarrhea.

That one looks a little runny on the rear end, and y'all know we aren't having good luck with our sheep this year. She would pick the one that's gonna die next, wouldn't she? Let's just hope that doesn't happen. Shall we go see if our new ground has sprouted with seed? So important that this bare ground start taking off and it's seed, or else it'll wash away. There's a lot of sproutage. All right, yes, that's new, right? Yeah, heck yeah, it's working. One little tiny one next to it too, one there. That gives me hope. This would be a nice walk. It'd be so nice. Some old stuff coming back up, this is good too. And look at this, more walnut. Look at this tree though, you have so many walnuts just off this one tree. Do you guys want to get any more? It'd probably be too late in 2 weeks after these first ones have dried out. Andrew's here. Hey, we're back in square bales. Yeah, you excited about that? Yeah. Hey, my man, we'll just get them stacked off, and then while I'm going to get to the trailer, y'all gonna be organizing if you want to. That's a hefty bale. There was some that were like 45, 48, but they're pretty— they're pretty darn hefty bales, that's for sure. They're nice and green too, and they smell fresh. Oh yeah, so the rain— they did get a little bit of rain, so you had to turn it again 3 times. Yeah, sure did. But seems like you dried it out nice. Yeah, it dried out real good. So we'll start at the far end to start stacking them. He's gonna unload it, we're gonna stack it. That's the pain with the little bells, but that's what we get for something we can handle.

Oh, I got gloves. Lessons?

Yeah. Oh, how convenient! One of the coolest things about square bales is the kids can manage it, but it's work together. 158 hay bales right there. We've got this bay, we've got the bay right behind me. We want to get 1,000 bales in here. That's what we need, 1,000 bales. You think we can do it, Henry? We left a hallway here so that we can get to our feeding our troughs in the winter. Another cool thing about square bales, you can stack it all the way to the roof. We probably put 3 more layers up there, as opposed to these round bales. Not quite enough room above them for another round bale, but there's plenty of stacking room left.

Sure, bales last a whole day, I think.

Oh yeah, it'll last the cow a whole day.

I mean, 3 whole days.

We got a little lull here. Once the kids' lessons are over, we can help throw hay and we can go see them make more hay. That's gonna be exciting. Hang tight. What are you making?

Hey, hooks.

Heck yeah. What are you gonna use for handles though?

I'll weld some rebar onto the tip.

Check on Randolph's homestead remodel. I need to know if he can be prepared for the roofers this Friday. Be careful, Henry, there's a hole. You're just digging holes everywhere. What are you making all these holes for? You know why you're digging holes? Because it's good for you. I'm trying to cover it back up. Oh, okay. Oh, these were plumbing and— yeah, that's old holes. I like how you just see stuff that needs to be done and do it. Do you see any reason why I can't stack hay in those stalls? Are people going to need to be getting in those stalls for construction? I think it would work. You got your first hook.

It's not the best, it's a little crooked.

Are you about to weld?

About to weld that one.

That welder comes in handy. You got your J-hook there. Uh-oh, now what you gonna do?

It won't stay on there, so I don't know.

Took a little break to pick up after breakfast and we're mostly unloaded. Whoops, hard to keep up with you, Andrew. Uh-oh, now we have John. John, how'd you get off school so early to come back? I did most of it. Heck yeah! Look at the stairs, dude. Your hand hurts. Works?

Yeah.

Is it easier than grabbing the strings?

You all right, John? Dangerous.

I couldn't be any happier right now. Working hard, seeing these kids working hard, working hard together. That beats any roller coaster on a vacation. 310 bells. This feels so right. Nook and Cranny Farm and Nook and Cranny haystacking. We're in a midday lull until, uh, Andrew bales some more hay. Okay, she's got some wings. See, I've clipped those though. Our first vlog 8 years ago.

8 years ago, I was 4. Gideon was 1.

Let's see, chickens escaping. I think that's good, guys, but she can't be alone. She has to have a buddy. Guess who's here? Hey, welcome back!

Yes!

He knows about the gloves. Mama got us gloves. Mama got us paper. Mom, you showed up and I gotta leave. I know. I'm sad about that. Andrew found a hay wagon for us and we're gonna use it today, hauling back and forth. I like those. You can help with the hay now. Nice form-fitting gloves. Thank you, Beauty. Oh, you and your thyroid acting up. Rebecca has crashed a couple of days and we just found out why. We got our blood test results back. And her thyroid is in the toilet. In the toilet. So you'll just crash on the couch this afternoon, huh? Or you got to do stuff?

I have to buy things.

This is her list. Homestead remodel. Bless her heart. All the behind-the-scenes stuff you do.

So tired.

Wish you could go throw hay with us.

It's new, me feeling so tired when my thyroid wasn't that off. Yeah, that was interesting because my thyroid's been way off and I did not feel this bad.

I'm supposed to be leaving. I cannot leave. I cannot leave Rebecca like that. Gotta at least get our lunch going. We had leftover pizza materials from our trip to HOA. And we're 11 miles to empty. We just went a half a mile and we were 16 miles to empty, so good miles. Oh my gosh, it's 4 miles to the gas station. Oh boy, we're definitely pulling a Kramer. There's still some overlap between the needle and the slash below the E. How low are you gonna go? Oh, I've been in the slash many times.

9 miles.

Are you serious? Why is it dropping so fast? Is there a leak?

Papa, it might be, um, sloshing.

8 miles to empty. Shoot. 7 miles. It's not slowing down. Shoot. The lowest I've ever gone was 5 miles to empty, and I was backpacking.

6 miles.

What happens when you run out of gas is it becomes hard to steer because you've lost your power steering. It becomes hard to put on the brake because you've lost your power brakes, and you just have to coast to the side. You don't want to go too fast. You want to drive steady. What? Shoot, they won't take Apple Pay. I don't have—

wait, are we down?

I don't have my freaking credit card.

You didn't bring your credit card, Papa? How are we gonna pay for gas?

Hopefully they take Apple Pay. 1 mile. Oh my gosh, if we get to the top of this hill, we can roll in. What happens if we go to 0 miles to empty? Wow, wow, 1 mile to empty. Well, that pulled a Kramer if we ever had one. 1 mile to empty. To my credit, we had like 18 miles to empty 3 miles from our home. 4 miles. They did take Apple Pay, so we're pumping diesel. Keep your windows down and you stop and you let people load from both sides. Lily's picking these up.

Hello!

He made these ones quite a bit lighter. Even Gideon and Lily can handle them. Our first ever hay wagon and truckload of hay for this next generation. Andrew's been experimenting with the bells. These ones he made a bit light, like 30 pounds, so they're a little loose. I'm hoping they'll hold. He's since tightened them up on the far away field, and we've got his gooseneck and dump truck hook poked up. Also coming to the house, thank goodness. 3 miles from home, we've got some loose. There we go. And the thing is, we don't live in an agriculture area anymore. People are riding me as if these hay bales can't fall off at any moment. Thankfully, Andrews is only like 10 miles away. Okay, here we go. It's not helping that Henry's been crying the whole way home. At least he's not going to sleep, or he's been going really slow. I wonder how many we'll have. That's 11. 12 in the back of the truck. Oh boy, we're running into a problem. It's good that these are lighter. They're crushing when we're stepping on them. I think there's like 500 done like this, so we're gonna make the best of it. If he's gonna load his tractor too, 3 truck goosenecks hooked up. We're gonna get another load of on the hay wagon. He is getting the tractor out. We're gonna have 5 vehicles of load. Oh, you can't see over the hood. We didn't have to get a full load. Got the tractor. He didn't even have to get a full load. We got 2 goosenecks up there. We're gonna have almost 9— almost 1,000 bales. We're turning it off. How many cars did we back up?

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

We're going 25 miles an hour. Maybe like 15 cars. 15 cars. I'm so tired. Hey, they want me to play soccer with them, but we're in a lull here. Andrew wanted to unload first in case it gets dark. We can unload ours in the morning. The two old people gotta get in the truck, watch them play. I don't know where they are, but let's just pull through and unload, and if they come, then we'll just pull through. The idea was that they were gonna come, we could unload them first, and if it got dark, we didn't— you know, we could unload in the morning, not be in the way. They come, we'll just— we'll just drive through and back around in the morning. All right, it's a race. To beat them before they get here.

Now we got a crew.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 people.

I can't lift it. It's like falling apart.

We don't want this to be on the bottom of the pile. I'm gonna chicken some of this broken stuff. One of two more loads coming. He backs out like he's driving forward. We've gotten a little loose in our stack job, but I think we'll get this trailer and dump truck in it. We've stacked the pole barn. We got to put it in Hollywood now. Kids are saying this is going to be the one with their fort. Well, you know how to stack it? You don't stack it tight. Yeah, you know, so that you can have room at each level. If people want to stack it tight, pushing hay bales close to each other, and then you get one that's longer and it starts to sag. Okay, nothing like that feeling of a full barn of hay. We got to get about 100, maybe 2 loads tomorrow. I have to— I think I need to get one of them. I was dumb for not wearing long sleeves. Lily, the domestic hero today. Taco Tuesday in the house with Flossie. Yep, we'll see how she tastes with Cumin.

Chili powder.

Cumin and chili powder. She needs a little salt and we're good.