A new cow shelter and planning for winter grazing

Well, they certainly don't give good instructions. I've got my neighbor Bjorn with me. But the instructions are in Norwegian or Finnish or something. Still get the materials in. Ragnar's at home, so got to keep him entertained. At the same time is doing some heavy metal. Hey, new shelter for you guys. What you think about that? Check it out. Animals got very excited when we showed up. Wagner's very excited. So it's basically a bunch of metal sheeting. Some metal girders for the baseplace, some hoops that are up here, you bolt together, you add wood cross beams and then just screw on all the metal sheathing. Got some more of the bent metal sheeting up at the yard. But the instructions pretty poor and in the foreign language. So we're just going to work it out. But I think it's pretty straightforward. Okay. Just lining up the first structures. Now, obviously it's just a raw metal product, but the instructions are terrible. They just show pieces and then the whole thing put together. But it's all about details which way round these go. And these are end pieces. Quite different from the middle piece. Quite different from the two in between bits. But once you figure it out, straightforward. It's about 5 by 5 meters. I guess maybe 5 by 6 meters would make sense. Slightly longer this way. Maybe we'll get Ragnar on the film camera. So frame squares itself up pretty well. Once you've got the corners in with these angles. And then we just lift the hoops on, bolt them in. Hoops are just joined in the middle, like so. Very nice. The inner bracing gives it a bit more rigidity. And by the time you've got the wood beams along here, I guess we can climb up them as we go, drill them out, bolt them in. That will make it pretty rigid. Then just got to skin it. I'm going to pull the whole structure out a bit with the tractor to make one of these metal gates fit between the end fence post and the corner of this structure. So they have a little yard in here that I'll be able to close off at the other side. But it's kind of convenient. You can get wheels for the corners of these. That enables you to pull it around. So what I might do, I haven't got those right now, but I might get some or just jerry rig my own. And then after, they'll obviously have bedding in here in the winter, but then I'll be able to jack it up, wheel it off and be able to process that bedding for compost. Rather nice. Lovely Day for it. Okay, Metal structure done. Wood just goes on. I think we just drill these out and we've got coach bolts to go in there. I think we can climb on these as we go up on the roof. Now, I have said before, but we have hardy animals, Fjelko, the native Swedish mountain cow and sheep, obviously with their coats on, don't really need a shelter. By law we have to provide one. But they will be probably not using this very much. They will be very happy outside. But regulations are such we have to do it. So rather than the old ramshackle wooden shed that was falling apart in the forest, I've pulled that down this year to put this in place. I think it's going to be perfect. Wagner's got done with sorting out bolts, so now he's sorting out dinosaurs. Nice, Wagner. So I've been chasing up the police authorities because my replacement hunting license has taken ages and apparently all the payments in our local area that happened in September didn't get registered. So luckily I've chased them up and I just repaid for that. Had to fast track it and hopefully it should be arriving in the post today or tomorrow, which is fantastic. We've been watching the deer on my CCTV cameras and they're getting through the kale that are left in the gardens for that purpose quite quickly now. And Bjorn said he's seen some moose tracks there too. Now, we're not part of the moose hunt, but it can be that we apply for taking a young elk or moose, but you probably only get permission for that every few years because of the way that they look after the numbers of animals. Still, it's worth doing. But as soon as we get that license, I want to take a deer and I will of course bring you along on the hunt and how we process that deer afterwards for some venison in the freezer. So putting the shelter on the outside. Originally I had thought of putting it in the forest patch, but it's going to be much easier to move it about, to clean out, make compost from the manure and bedding. But the reason I need some kind of shelter connected to the forest patch for the winter is that the ground is pretty wet now. You can see the frost is drying out or thawing out. The ground gets very soft at this time of year, so heavy, hoovened animals can make a pretty big mess of our pasture here. So I want to get them off the grass pretty soon. I want them grazing as long as possible, but without being detrimental to the ground. So Good that we're getting this job done. Now before I go off to Luxembourg to make sure the animals are fine while I'm away, Bjorn's going to help look after them in that time. So that's great help. Okay, Got most of the woodwork done. Just dragging this structure back so that one fence panel meets there. I'm going to lift this side up because we forgot to put the lowest beam of wood on. You can't drill upwards through the holes. And we're going to call it a day. I think Ragnar's been super patient, but it's better to split this kind of job up into two days so that he's just not waiting around for the adults. The whole doing. Okay jobs are good then. So I've left it so that there's a fence panel that will meet and then I can easily have another fence panel here. It'll still give me good access to bring in haage. I've got all my haylage up on the side here. I think they're going to rather like this. Just use a bit of wood to help slide it out because it's quite heavy structure. Last little bit of wood done for the day. Just lifting this up so we can get under these to drill up. Makes it easy. Is that flush at your end? It's a little longer here, so pretty good progress. We've been at it a few hours. Ragnar's been very good, but we'll leave it there. I think just this last bit that Bjorn's working on, it's quite a cool structure. Really helps to be doing Meccano Lego when you're a kid. We always had the amazing technical sets that they don't really make anymore. And we sold them all off when we became teenagers, me and my big brothers. But building like that from a young age makes things like this super easy and makes you really confident to take on any of the sort of building projects that we have around the farm. What did you find? Ragnar? That's a big worm. He just fooled. As you know. Tickets for my masterclass, the online Regenerative Agriculture Masterclass, are on sale. There's a lot of free gifts in the free mini series if you visit the links below. You can sign up with your email and you'll get a copy of the book I put together from the farm Like a hero experience. And there's also a bunch of other giveaways coming in the next days. Join us for the broadest, most in depth dive to Regenerative agriculture you'll find online super proud of it and super excited to meet many more of you in there. Stop there. Okay. It's day two of the build. Trying to get the roof on today, get it finished up and see how that goes. One thing I'm considering doing is building a wheel kit for the structure so I can move it easily and then compost the insides. Another thing is I want to put plywood boards down the inside of the frame. I think it will extend the life of the structure quite a lot to have something that keeps manure off the metal and the wood at the lower parts. So that's something I think I will end up doing. And I'll talk a bit today about how I'm managing the animals over the winter. But first, got to get that roost started. Grass is starting to run low, giving them a haylage bell out on pasture. Next step is putting on the central roof pieces and just not screwing down the very ends. And then we can slide up the sides from underneath. I figure we need six or eight of these. They're not actually a meter wide, so maybe eight of these. Gonna try and lift them up as high as I can with the forks so we can then lift them onto the roof, see how that goes. So you can see the ground's getting pretty wet. That's why I want to put the animals inside. Certainly September is typically the wettest month here, but you can see it mashes up the ground, certainly with a bigger machine. So while I'm away in Luxembourg, I would be tempted to put them into the forest paddock with haylage. I do have front field and nutfield that's got grazable grass, but that's something I can do hopefully when the ground freezes later in the year and otherwise they'll be in the forest. Obviously you could have animals out all year round, but I don't want too much of an impact. So it's better for me to have them in the larch and spruce plantation there and just bring them out at opportune times. They can graze through the snow. I mean, the mountain cows and sheep will out dig cows to get to fodder. But there's a risk now that they will start not only impacting the ground, but eating on trees and berry bushes. And I don't want to encourage that. So once this shelter's up, I'm going to finish up the gates, get the paddock together and probably put a fresh bale of haylage in. And Bjorn's going to help take care of the animals while I'm Away. Unfortunately, there's a bit of a poor job on the silage in that a lot of the bales got punctured. And I would say even up to half of them have got mold and fungi growing in them. And I can tell because they're soft, they're already, you know, you can see little holes. But I reckon probably half these bales are actually trash. Not so happy about that. But that's the way it goes. On the flip side, I have way more than I need, so job's done. Now there's nothing to do about it. What can you say? Okay, that's as high as we can get the roof sheets. So we're just sliding them along, trying to get all lined up nice before we start screwing in. Okay. A little bit awkward. So leaning in just about reach. So we're putting on the first sheets. We've lined it up square. With this kind of roofing, obviously, it's important to square it properly so that you don't go off on a tangent that one degree, you end up 90,000 kilometers from the moon kind of thing. This is going to be nice. This structure will probably last 25, 30 years, no problem. You can see what I mean about putting plywood sheets down on the edges, because bedding will build up on the metal hand on the wood here. That bit of vertical plywood will really extend the life of this, I think, and make it much easier to pull out the structure if I get it jacked up on wheels. To give me access to the bedding, I need to get some manure forks for this tractor next year, and then we'll be sweet. What have you drawn, Ragnar? This is a shark that's scared of a spider crab with a massive crusher claw. Wow. Is that a Japanese spider crab? Yeah. And then. And the mites. A crab, small crab under a brain curl. Nice. You're a great drawer. Well, that was pretty smooth and easy. Now I'm just going to try lifting the end panel one at a time. And I can tuck it under the roof, get two bolts in to hold it in place. And Bjorn can work down on the lower two rungs of wood. Shouldn't take so long. Okay. That's how it seems to work. It pops in under and under, and we just get end row of screws in. Hold it down here. But looks pretty sweet. Wind's picking up. Bit colder today. That's what half it looks like. So you can really see how having vertical boards, we left a little air gap at the bottom. But I'm Thinking if we've got plywood boards stocked up against this metal vertically, you'll get a bit of airflow behind them, which is nice. Reduce condensation, but it will also just protect the infrastructure and give them something to rub against. So fairly good progress. Just got to get this side on there. And in the end, a bit of trim that meets the two sides. Then we're done. Last section to go, As always. Magnus got a bucket and a net. He's looking for creatures. Hey, sheepies. Hey, you're a handsome one. See you later. I don't see anything but a try cat. Okay. Lovely jubbly last bit is this trim. I guess they've gone for the traditional Swedish home look. Barn. Look like that on. Okay, job done. So finished it off today. It's about five, six hours. Took to put that up. Taking care of Ragnar at the same time, but happy with the result. It's a really nice product. A little bit more work to do. Got to get some bedding in there. Got to fix up the gates at the end. But essentially, job done. Very happy with it. Historic moment. Makako. We're taking to Johanna's house. We're gonna put a cat flap in for her. Monkey is staying. Oh, Macaco is a little bit sad or she doesn't like the car. But I was always super involved with her mother, Monke, and I never really liked my cat girl. She's like this annoying cat who. She has this cheeky. He has this cheeky thing. He would always pee on the beds and on clothes in the cupboard, and I didn't like that. And he would sit on the table and he wanted your attention. You're trying to work. And he'd flick a pen closer and closer to the edge of the table, looking at you like, hey, hey, hey. And then boink, flick it on the floor. I like the cheekiness, but it's happy that he goes to your other house, Maggie. That's going to be perfect for you. And I'm happy to have Monkey at our farm. Still. One door flap in, another door flap to go in an old one. Okay. They've added this frame on. It's too thick. Bolts aren't long enough. Plastic is not wide enough. So I'm going to take these off again and precision cut to fit this in. Hopefully it's going to be a body job, but can't see any way around it. That's it for the video folks. As you know, hopefully the online training that I run, the regenerative agriculture maths class is open for registration for a short time only. That's happening in January and February, but you can only get on if you get tickets now. We're also running a free mini series at the moment with free giveaways. I'm giving away the third book that I put together last Winter of the Farm Like a Hero Tour and you can look and read about 70 of the best up and coming farmers in Europe. There's downloadable step by step plans to build our infamous Rollaway nest boxes, as well as planning spreadsheets for enterprises and crop notes for our market gardens, etc. So make sure you check the links below. You can get those free gifts. There's no obligations and hopefully I will meet many more of you in the Regenerative Agriculture Masterclass and looking forward to that very much. See you in a video soon.