Taking Back Control From the Verge of Chaos

Springtime means evening chores. The bath is gonna have to wait. Holy smokes. This evening's chicken move. They're going across basically half of our farm. Did you guys see that door came open while I was riding? And, uh, the goose got out. Let's see if she'll stay in this time. We got in here safely. Now let's open the door so they're free to roam in the morning. This morning, the word on the street is the cows have gotten to each other. The chickens look like they're doing well. 3 days behind the cows in the rotation. Good morning. Oh my word, they've wrapped that fence around the sheep shaw. Makes me think somebody busted through, which is bad because we don't want Maple to get bred yet. Stud's up there. We don't want the sheep to get bred yet. We don't want them to get bred till July. It's It's April, end of April. I think we're going to be a minute. It's busted here, it's busted here, it's busted there, it's busted here. There's too many pressures on the fence. Dog possibly chasing people, stud wanting to get to Polly, Joey practicing. Stud could be wanting to get to the heifers, he could be going to get the maple. Nacho could be— is wanting to get to those ladies. They're right next to each other. It's too much pressure. Wow. And I didn't test the fence last night. This is definitely a record fence break, so going prepared. Good job, Jonah! That's some skills to get over him over by yourself. He got her calf over, so if we can get Polly over Stud will follow her. Her hind end's wet. Did you breed her, stud? Won't be the end of the world. I think he's more after Maple. Got it. Block him there. Okay, good. Is that it? See Maple? Hind end is wet. Now Polly, we want him to breed her. We're selling her as a family cow when the Abundance Plus Marketplace is ready. Yeah, that'd bring up her value. She's got a calf, she can milk, and she's bred. Let's fix this fence. We fixed it. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty jerry. And there was like 3 or 4 patches just like that. Took about, I don't know, 45 minutes, an hour. I know the fence was on last night, but was it actually properly connected and the fence actually hitting. That's actually good news. It means they didn't run through an on-fence. That would be unfixable. We're about to go troubleshoot the fence, but I saw— what you guys doing?

I am currently pruning. I just— this is as far as I've gotten on pruning, but we replaced 7 8 plants. We had some frost damage from that one really, really cold night that we had last week, and then there was one— the plant just disappeared. I don't know where it went, so we put a new one in that.

We're gonna go find out why this fence isn't working. Well, there's the problem, Jonah. The, the wire— the wire isn't even connected. It's this wire, that one, the shutoff. It's got to go all the way out through there down to the cows. We got that fixed. Let's go see if there's any more problems. Disconnected there too, probably. Well, knowingly from the grading. What was the reading, Jonah? 4.6. Yes! Come on, Gideon. We were not sure our bug net would work for this because it's made for a thinner— it's only made for, what, a 30-inch row? Yeah, this is 48. It's working nicely. Look at your success in here. Look at this. This system is just working out amazing. This is, this is chicken compost-fed garden beds right here, and you're protecting it just in time for the bugs. Well, I hope before they've gotten to the— hopefully you're not trapping them.

I know, I know, I thought about that, but it doesn't look like it.

They look unscathed.

They do look unscathed.

Nacho's gotten with the ladies. It's going to be the worst time in the world to have babies. That's like September lambs. Gonna be raising them through the winter. You know what the plan was today? The plan was to get the ewes into the stall with Winnie. They're scared to death of Winnie, and this will solve this problem too because Nacho won't be able to get them in the stall. He won't even think about them because he'll be here and they'll be there. So we're gonna knock out two birds with one stone. Spring management. They don't want in this, they want out. Hey, why aren't we herding them over there? I thought maybe we'd herd them to the stall. Josiah's going to get Winnie. How about that? Good job, Jonah. There he is. He didn't even have to go in. He was last. Look, Joey's figured out when we turn the nets off to put his head through. Jonah's turning it on right now. Go ahead. Okay, it doesn't look like the fence is working. Here you go. There he goes. That's worked. So something was off. That's why Nacho was getting through. He's gonna go in the ram pen. That proved itself. We tried this in the field behind them. We need an extra measure to get him into the ram pen. We need to castrate the boys, the little boys, and get them over here, because if they break through, the worst is gonna happen. They're gonna nurse their mother, which they're probably weaned, so they're probably not gonna do that. The idea here is close proximity for the sheep and the dog to get used to each other and, and keep her away from Laska. Bring her in. Get in there, Winnie. Like, don't make me get it with See, now you can only— you can only run so far in here. Look, he's all right. She's all right. See, look. Yeah, exactly what they needed. Look at this. This is a big reason why she's chasing them. She goes near them, they, they run away. Yeah, look. She walks around and they move. When we feed Winnie twice a day, we also give them some alfalfa and they eat together. Hey, what are you spraying the greenhouse for? Put the water in the barrels. It's time for the market pigs to move. Well, we done filled that water up an hour ago, but other things were more pressing. Hopefully we're not going to ruin the shocks. Oh my word, it's almost dragging. Pigs are going from right behind me to right over here. They're going to be pressing this fence. Just take some pressure off, get feeding them a little bit. Before pigs, after pigs. Before pigs, after pigs. Well, just thought we'd run out of our feed. Hopefully that bit of food curbed their enthusiasm. Got the fence up. Now let's get this water cleaned up, get filling it up. Got not one hose but two hoses going. This is what, an inch away? Good job. Pigs are crazy happy. They're finding food under this. Maybe it's walnuts. Listen, he's chomping something. Love it. Oh look, this is what they're finding. You can't buy more pastures? Well then, aerate pastures. Or rate the ones you got. Pokes holes in the soil, water and air can get in there, and we're just gonna have an explosion. We've got Randolph in the driver's seat. My idea here is let's feed Winnie, let's feed the sheep at the same time, and let them dine together. How are y'all getting along? You still scared to death of Winnie? She wants your banana. Come on, Winnie, we got you some raw meat and some eggs. Look, see how jittery they are of her? Buddy's scared to death. You think this is gonna work? Yeah. How long do you think it's gonna take? 5 days. I have no experience with guard dogs, just something tells me they need to be close. If I see no signs of jittering after a week, well, maybe we'll try it, put them out in the field together. The third chicken we found dead, and I didn't realize till this morning it's actually the goose killing the chickens. Let's change her location. Let's switch the geese out and see if that helps. Good catch, good catch, Sonny! Let's salvage the chicken. There you go, beefcake, a little dinner snack. All right, catch that goose, Josiah. That's one method. Maybe if I put this goose in this shock, then I can have two hands. It's fine if we run her against the fence, she can't go through it. There we go, she's pinned. Grab her. Oh, guess she can get through. All right, let's get her down here. Oh my gosh, really? Here, get her back over there in that corner. Teddy, you're not helping. Hey, you block her right there. Just— I'm not going to— we're going to see if the switch in environments will help. I mean, this was a smaller pen. Perhaps there was some boredom going on. Perhaps there was just some dominant issue, dominance issue, and just switching the entire posse can throw it off sometimes and change things. One of our main weaknesses, uh, that's really tugging on me is having males intact that aren't breeders and females that— yeah, we need to get good separation for the breeders. We need to make sure that we don't keep heifers anymore. This is a movie about castrating, but it's not really. This is a movie about taking control Because if, if those males in there are castrated, they're not going to breed their sisters. They're not going to breed their moms and aunts, which isn't the end of the world for the animal kingdom. It's not as weird as it is in humans. It's not weird at all for them. But we want Nacho to breed them. This movie is just feeling out of control at any aspect of your life. And it's about wanting to gain control. And I talk with a, a bander. It's about sleeping better at night. You might be like me and you might be like, yeah, let's castrate. Sure, we wanted to keep them intact. Uh, sure, we wanted to eat the testicles, but it's not happening. It's about wanting something and having to set up management to make that happen, no matter what it is in your life.