Setting up for our Lamb Butchering (Simple)

This time tomorrow, I'm gonna be well into a sheep butchering. That's a lot of kitchen scraps. Chickens will kind of eat this, and what they eat will compost. Kind of picked at this squash. They've certainly eaten the seeds, but if this were a pig, all that would be gone. You guys are pigs with feathers, but you're not quite as strong. And they won't eat those collard green stems. So Jonah, uh, I need you to get some grain to the breakfast posse. You come with me to help me do the sea monsters, get them water and move the ICs. And then I would say have you do everything else, but there's no everything else, is there? That's all the chores because I need to get— I'll have to help you with the luchadors. So I guess just help me so that then I can go Get ready for butchering. Yesterday totally cleaned up that dry feed. Totally. This is where wet feed was. I think they trample it worse because it's wet and it just like clunk clumps up. I see two guinea clowns made it into the coop. Well, I meant to have Jonah do these chores while I get ready, but I just ended up doing them. We got about an hour to milking. Still got to get water to the ICs. Gideon's calling me. This jacket is overkill. I just have to get a new sweater. You can go, just eat your snack and then come. And I just realized it's trash day. I got 45 minutes. Let's see if we can't find— let's, let's get ready for the sheep butchering from step 1 all the way to finish. Step 1, uh, would be knife. A sheep butchering is very peaceful and it doesn't have to involve a gun, which is nice. I don't see the knives out here. Jonah says they're at the barn, but we went through this last time. All right, Mom says they're in here. They're not in here. Do you want to the sheep this morning, Beck?

I am.

Good for you. Oh, so they're gonna have one more paddock today, I see. Then where do you want to run them? Because we need to think about that. Wherever you want to set it up this evening because we're butchering tomorrow. What about in the yard there?

Yeah, that's fine.

And then kind of go down the garden row. So maybe we have 2 or 3 more days.

Yeah, it's totally fine.

Okay.

Yeah, I'd like to see how they react with, um, out the weathers there, you know.

Oh yeah, see, we definitely don't want to move them in pasture with the weathers. So we're harvesting these weathers. That's what they're for, for meat.

That's why we bought them.

Yeah, we thought we were gonna have to raise them a little bit, but Greg gave us adult wethers. That was nice. Yes.

Okay.

Wow, he's got his shoes on. Wow, you want a phone? Call the Inquirer. You did it!

Good job!

You playing with your cars?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. Hey, will you do something for me just that after we knife the sheep? We need to bleed it out, and let's save the blood. There's a green— we go get one of our green feeders that we used on the pigs. Thank you. All right, Jonah, come with me. Let's find these knives. Where do you want to do this at? The barn, I guess. That makes sense, but, uh, we want to harvest them in place to not stress them out. So how are we going to get them over here after we've killed them? Well, we could use the tractor, we could use Henry.

Or the mower. Oh, let's just use Henry. Just put them both in here.

Hey, show me these knives. There they are. Hand me all the knives. Let's get a box for them. That's it.

No, there's more.

I'll go get them.

Where are they?

Probably in the one crib. Should still be.

Papa?

Yeah?

I'm here.

Where would they be in here? Loose?

Okay, so The wethers are inside. Oh no, one's out. Never mind, one of the sheep is out. But so yesterday I came down here in the afternoon and they were all inside, and I got the ewes in the corner like I normally do, and the wethers just ran out and the ewes stayed. So I'm wondering if we can do that again today.

Hey, come on, Boston.

Let's get in the corner.

Let's do the drill. Ryder, you're no Ryder. Hey, it worked! Good job, guys! Everybody's getting trained! So they're trained, but the Weathers are leaving tomorrow, so it's great that they got trained, but whatever.

Thank you, Josiah, for our bully bucket. You know what this is telling me, Jonah? What? We need to spend a little more time on breaking down and putting things away because now all we do is spend our time getting ready for a butchering, finding stuff. We ought to just be going to collect stuff.

All right, well, we covered a bee's nest.

Search is over in the corn crib. We uncovered a bee's nest, so let's try in here again. Maybe they're over here. Mom's cleaning up. Maybe she hadn't put it back on the gray shelf yet. Is this them? Wait, maybe they're in this. Ah, it's empty. Said they were on this gray shelf. They're not on this gray shelf. Hey, maybe this is it. Maybe this is it. Oh yeah, oh yeah, look what I found! Let's put these knives in this. All right, we've killed, we've bled. We'll leave that here because I don't know if we're gonna go down to the yard sheep first, or the Luchador. We're still trying to figure out which of the two of the withers we're gonna keep. Okay, Jonas, so then we bring them over. So where's Henry?

Oh, he's down there.

Is that what we decided?

We gotta go fix him up.

Okay, let's go fix him up. How are we on wheel pins? Because we found a wheel pin. So how is this thing working? Did we have an extra? It doesn't come with extras. Oh, okay. So there you go. Can you switch it out? Can this pin be the pin for the handle? No. This pin from the wheel, is it the right size? Yeah. Okay, so they're all the same. So take this. Aren't you going to Home Depot today to get a freezer? Yeah, we need more freezers. Fridge, freezer, freezer, fridge, freezer, freezer. Gonna be 2 more freezers. There's another box freezer right there. That's what 100% meat sufficient, looks like. What'd you do with that pen?

I put it in the back trunk.

Okay, are you gonna remember? How are you gonna remember to get it?

I'll remember.

I'm done spending time with the sheep. We got the new sheep fence up outside. You guys ready to go? First one out.

Now they all go.

Where is your— where's their favorite place, Lily?

Right there underneath that tree.

Yeah, are they happy here, Lily?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, when we were putting up the paddock, Lily said to me, I think they're really gonna like this one. So it is, it is beautiful. It's next to the creek and the creek is going so nicely.

And chain around it to hold up a pig, it's gonna hold up the sheep.

Oh, for sure.

Pup, it's funny how that little piece of metal hold up a 300-pound pig.

Make sure this thing's gonna start. The tractor started. We're not going to use the tractor, we're just going to need to get it out of the way. We eviscerate, we're gonna need something for the skin and the guts. So how about our poop wheelbarrow? Poop wheelbarrow's in use, Jonah, down at the stanchion, so we need to think of it tomorrow. Because we're going to use it today. Heck, we could probably maybe put it in that if we forget our wheelbarrow. We could put one in here and you could go get the other. It's pretty simple. It's pretty simple. Maybe a stainless steel bowl for— no, because we'll have the butcher package up the liver and stuff, but we could still store it, the liver and the heart, huh?

We'll just put it in the open area. Open area, the cavity where the guts were.

Okay, put it in there, and then we'll bag it. So let's ask Mom where our big bags are, and we'll need a clean barrel. Where are our barrels? Are they still in here? Let's grab a barrel. Do you see any plastic bags? I have to ask Mom where the plastic bags are.

There's two sets. There's some in the barn and there's some in the back of my Okay, I'll get them out of the Suburban because they don't need to be there.

Good. See all those plastic bags? That's for bagging the sheep. You carry, you carry one. You got them all?

I got them all.

Okay, thanks. Put it up here. Now I realize we need zip ties. I've been walking around with zip ties in my coat pocket all morning. I don't know where I put it. Just got done milking Flossie. Thank you, honey. Probably a hair short of a gallon, so she's starting to dry off as she gets towards the end of her lactation. Hey, come on, we'll be drying you off soon enough. You'll be giving us a baby by Stud Muffin. That's gonna be a cool looking calf. Come on. Hey, thanks for bringing the pail down. Thank you. Oh, where'd you guys get that?

My garden.

Mama's garden.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

Wait, your kitchen garden? Nice. All right, are there more peppers?

Oh, there's so many ripening.

Yay!

Peppers take forever.

Let's have that for breakfast, huh? And our eggs.

Yeah.

You helping Mama this morning? Good. This is my talking teddy bear right here. You gonna help me milk now, Josiah?

Look, I can milk 3 teeth.

She's got 2 teats in one hand. Good job!

It's hard.

I almost caught it. Caught most of it. Is that our poop wheelbarrow over there, Josiah, or is that our clean wheelbarrow?

Uh, looks like the poop one.

All right, bring it. Josiah, you know what's coming next?

What?

Pee.

What'd I say?

All right, you want me to make another prediction?

Sure.

Next she's gonna poop again, probably. All right, you want to grab the milk? Okay, well, thankfully she didn't have that much more and she hadn't pooped yet. Maybe she'll poop while we're taking this milk up.

She hasn't done it yet.

Wow, she's made me a liar, hasn't she? Can you get that off?

Uh, no, I need your help.

You pet him a little bit? That's good, he likes that. You are free to go. Into the line here. Let's go straight through there. Brought enough posts, forgot the line. Let's go way back down towards the house and grab the line. The guineas found each other. Stud knows what's up. He stopped right here to mow the lane. It's fine with me. Look how good the job they did on mowing that lane. Look who's back. This time you're gonna put a hole in our wall. Yeah, this time I'm really doing some damage. You can put our fridge back in there.

Yep.

You think that's a good idea or a bad idea? I think it's a good idea. Okay, good. It's too late now, isn't it? Oh, nice. Yeah, I like it. Thank you. Yeah, everybody remember Randolph from this fabulous kitchen reno? Hey, if you're going with your mom, you got to find shoes. Where's your Crocs, man? You had them this morning. Do you need to wear those with socks? How many people does it take to go get a freezer? 2 freezers. He didn't even hold up one finger. Well, what do we do without that Suburban? We've been using it like every day. I guess we got it just in time. All right guys, see ya. I'll be editing.

I'm using that trailer every week.

Well, I'll help you load it when you get back. Back to the ediati.

All right, been editing.

It's almost 4. I think Rebecca's back. Oh, we got it closed in.

Wall?

It's looking great. What'd you get? A DeWalt headlamp. Boy, we need that. Yeah, surprising we don't have a headlamp yet. Good job, Jonah. This is going to be interesting, getting these in by ourselves.

So easy. I wonder if we should get this off Right here. Get off now.

This evening, one of the guineas has found its way into the sea monsters, the orcs. But they have found each other. We're gonna get Moose up. He's been with Mom 24/7 for like 3 weeks. She's given a gallon in the morning. I want 2, so let's put Moose up. We don't really want her, we just want, uh, Phyllis.

That might not happen.

Oh well, they all came in. That's all right. Phyllis must be giving off a special scent. See, as easy as that. There we go. We'll get in here, herd mom out, keep the baby in. There we go. That's it. That's it. That's all there's to it. Put these guys back out. How's he doing, Mom?

Doing good. Hey, buddy.

First night in the stall. There might be some bellowing tonight, Mom. This is the end of the ewes for today, their paddock. So we're going to be busy tomorrow. Tomorrow. So let's go ahead and set up their paddock. I'm thinking let's keep going down through there. They're loving this stuff because this looked like that. All right, a day's worth of paddock took about 30 minutes. Usually Doesn't necessarily take that long, but hey, we threw in some brush. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Keep these guys on new ground. We're going to get them behind the cows really soon. We got some more yardage we can mow.

No one wants to mess with me. This is Victor.

No, nobody wants to mess with you. You got a whip. Rebecca, have you figured out which—

it's the little one.

Keep him?

No, that's the little one's jumping. You're gonna kill him. Keep the big one.

So I vote Escalito goes and one of these guys. I don't care. The little one jumps out, but it doesn't matter because he's going to be with the— okay, but I guess he won't always be in the wrestling ring though, right? He'll be with everybody.

Help!

We can also replace a wither down the road. Yeah, with another one. Or aren't we gonna think about getting a donkey?

Yeah, I mean, there's those two donkeys that I was looking at, so we could get one for the ram and one for the— then we just have two donkeys. I have to ask that lady.

You guys would want donkeys?

Yes, Lily wants a horse, so she's not grateful.

Well, donkey's as good as a horse.

Yeah, you can ride it too.

You want to see the cute little donkeys?

I want a little donkey. Ooh, Ninja Johnny like little donkey.

Wait, there's that one, and then there's guardian donkeys, and they're miniature donkeys. Minis are the only ones we recommend for introduction to sheep or goats. Adults are too unpredictable and can actually hurt the baby sheep. They're 900 each.

Mama, we won't hurt our sheep.

They're coming with us standing here. Mom, you've trained them so well.

Is Escobito bigger than Nacho?

Yes.

Like, for real?

But I don't think he always will be.

No, Papa Mike. For real, like in the movie?

No.

Who's bigger?

Nacho.

William?