April 2022 Homestead update with Gifts and Letters

hi everybody this is nate from the kramer life and katie also from the creamery life we are a little behind schedule but we are ready to do our april update for 2022. yes and we are recording this on mother's day of 2022 so i want to start off by saying happy mother's day to katie to my mom to my grandmother to my mother and all of the other women in our lives and our viewers happy mother's day mother's day with that yep ready let's get going let's do it we had a busy april so we're going to start off with we got some stuff planted i'm doing a lot of woos we're excited to have some things in the ground we also have a bunch of starts so nate and i we took some time we have a couple different methods of potatoes that we grew we have we tried them three ways container roof stout and mounding method and then we also planted a bunch of seeds we started with our peppers our tomatoes we have a lot of lettuces planted so we went through kale spinach uh different types of greens collards things of that nature and then we also planted um herbs a lot of herbs so flowers yeah some marigolds and some other companion type plantings so we have quite a few seeds that were now for may we'll have to think about where we're going to put them whether it's a container a raised bed or in the ground yeah okay any anything else on that you want to talk about your cool corn oh yeah so that's right i did plant the corn uh so we planted it two ways i put it in a pickled hay bale and that is actually working we have three of the 25 that are starting to sprout so it's really exciting to see that despite the fact that the pickled hay stinks really bad do you want to tell people a lot of folks didn't know what pickled hay was all right so it's my understanding that it's hay that's been wrapped up before it's been dried so in this case it's a big bale of wet hay that has been wrapped kind of airtight and therefore it goes through the fermentation slash pickling process and so when mr wayne introduced it to us he introduced it as pickled hay so it's really just high moisture feed in various forms whether it's hay or other types of feed so it's fermented wet feed for your livestock yep yeah in this case these pickled hay bales these bales of wet hay had been sitting around for years at mr wayne's farm so they really had a chance to ferment and break down they're still very wet inside and so it's a great environment for seeds to grow and so i wanted to try it out and i thought we'll plant corn in them awesome yeah and then we also planted our corn in the ground and did a little bit of uh mounding and ruth stout covering with hay and and we'll see how those do so our next thing we did is we did quite a bit of exploring uh we haven't fully seen the full 60 acres but we are doing our best to get out there and start picking different areas to look around so let's take a walk and go show some of the places that we explored so we've been doing a lot of walking looking through the property we've been exploring some of the different buildings that we have we've looked through the carport we've looked through the gray barn we found quite a few usable treasures and we've also found quite a bit of trash that we're looking to get rid of as well so we have this really nice road and path going through the property that takes us from the house back to the river in the creek so nate has been bringing a chainsaw or a pole saw or the hedge trimmer yeah with us yeah as we go on the walk so that way we have we can clear things remove branches cut vines uh whatever just to kind of try to keep our path clear and do work while we're while we're walking and exploring yeah because one thing that we're finding in the spring the forest is alive yes it has overgrown or it grew so it's almost over it almost grew overnight it's insane how different it looks out here versus when we first looked at it in the in the winter i think we even made the comment of if we would have seen it in the spring would we have been as excited about it because you wouldn't have been able to walk it yeah that and just really seeing how much work there is to get this place cleaned up and cleared we also placed some trail cams throughout the property and wanted to kind of see what kind of wildlife was on was here on the property the neighbors had talked about there being coyotes and so the trail cam did pick up did see one instance over a period of about a month yeah where there was a coyote about 300 feet away from the house the rv um plenty of deer i think we have a family of like eight or ten deer that frequent this property in the neighbor property and then we saw a bunch of wild turkey yes and two instances of a possum and a raccoon yeah so typical wildlife wildlife for this this area yeah and so we also have found um you know just looking at the different buildings we found lots of usable materials lots of things that we plan to repurpose for other projects or just to help restore the actual building itself and then we also had quite a few visitors come in yes we did and help us learn about our land because the trees are different than what we're used to and the cedar is not as valuable as we thought it was like it is in the pacific northwest so what she's referring to is we had a forester come out for a consultation and the reason we did that we wanted to find out how to best utilize this land and see if there was at this time any marketable timber for us to harvest and sell and the reason we went with a forester versus just a timber company is because the forester will actually uh take count or take inventory of all of the harvest-ready timber if there is any on the property and place it out for bid and they will be the one to manage the project and make sure that they stuck to the letter of the contract that they treated the property with respect that they didn't cut more than they should have that they didn't leave the land in worse condition then it started so we felt that that was the right trying to navigate some of the stuff here uh the right path for us and what we did learn was that while we don't have harvest ready timber now we do have a very large stand wow this looks so this looks so incredibly different than you can't even tell almost can't even tell there's a barn back there yeah um while we don't have harvest ready timber yet in about 20 years we'll have a big stand of yellow poplar that will be ready and important also we learned what we should be doing to clear out the areas and get it ready to make the the timber that we would potentially harvest in the future more viable larger healthier so all good information we also had a friend stop by yeah that was super cool justin at metcalf mills and i think we should just pan to the smile on his face because she was amazing we we all were surprised on what we found in that property um we didn't we katie and i saw they old grain mill site before but we didn't know what it was and when justin was out here he told us exactly what it was and the more research we do the more we find out about the property the property and and uh the potential significance of what we found so really cool information and a really cool find yeah just makes the landfill even more special than what we thought it was yeah we're back by an old gray barn that the one that wants to collapse and this place has just come alive they're just it's crazy one of the other visitors the other types of visitors we had on the property is we had three actually four companies out that are knowledgeable in crawl space restoration and mold remediation and that's because the crawl space of the 1930s farm house is full of mold and needs to have some work done to level out the floors and at three companies out for bids and then one of our viewers teresa and mike mcpherson they actually have their own home inspection company and they offered to look at the property for us look at the house for us and give us some tips and some non-biased opinions on what we have and what we should do which was really nice of them got lots of information from them so now we feel like we have a really good plan for mold remediation crawl space restoration and leveling of the floors in the farmhouse so we've ordered the products that we need and we'll be able to get started here pretty soon on that yep that'll be for may projects we also uh moved the pigs three times now yes yeah so that's in uh hopes that they can provide some labor of clearing the land while they get food as well right yeah so they're doing a really good job and the first paddock was a little bit smaller we just wanted to kind of see what they could do in a couple um less than two weeks about 10 10 days or so 12 days and we've been moving them and increasing the size of their paddock it's really fun to see the difference oh it's incredible it's night and day difference yeah and then also just the difference between the different types of pigs because the mangalits they don't they don't clear quite as much yeah they're not quite as good foragers as the red waters as the waddles yeah so it's really interesting just to see the difference and that's why we wanted to get different types of pigs not only for the meat and lard qualities but we also wanted to see how how different they were working the land and that will help us in moving forward yeah because we have about 50 more acres for them to go through oh yeah way more than that probably like 59 more acres it's crazy it's just they do do a really good job the red waddles are very good at foraging and clearing the land it's also really exciting to know that when i pull ivy off trees i can just feed the ivy to the pigs they eat the leaves they leave the stems unfortunately but they really enjoy that treat so it's really cool all right speaking of the pigs the what is it eeny yeah beanie had his his hoof bitten off ripped off and we did a video on that he's recovered he's now putting full weight on that on that foot and he's doing pig zoomies wagging his tail quite a bit loving it's he's he's doing good he's doing fine we will have one what would that be a ham hawk we might have a little leaner thought yes one one leaner pork butt than another one but other than that doing really well all the pigs are doing really well they're really happy and they have lots to eat and forage and yep yeah and they have really cool shelters that nate built out of repurposed materials i think one of them cost us ten dollars we had to buy a tarp yeah and the other one was free yeah because we utilized all the materials here on the property in april we did our first sponsorship video with butcherbox that one for us was a no-brainer it was super easy we have been using butcher box for over three years now and we really enjoy their products the quality of the meat has always been fantastic we've never had any issues it's you know wild caught seafood i love that their bacon is nitrite and nitrate free there's so many good benefits about using butcher box usually we stick with the pork and the ground beef and the beef and yeah and then and of course the bacon but this time you did something different i did i wanted to try some of the members specials so once you're a butcher box member there's this special category that you can look at and every month they have different specials i ordered quite a few different items that i normally don't even look at i ordered a big leg of lamb ordered some sausage some shrimp and also tried some charcuterie wanted to just give that a chance as well and something different than the normal big roast that i get um because those are my staples and the bacon you all know i love my bacon that like a lamb smoked was delicious it was so good i really really really enjoyed that it was a lot of meat for both of us so we did have to freeze some of it after we cooked it because that was a lot so we do have a special link down below in the description to where their current promotion is a viable part of that link but you also get 10 off your first box and so we're really excited that they partnered with us and gave us an extra promotion to our viewers you to order so there's a link down below use that ten dollars off and their current promotion on your first box yes which is two pounds of ground beef for life on every box that you order so continuing with the animal updates little baby chickens we have little baby chicks yeah he's a dad we found out that karen went broody that's right lucky karen when broody we didn't really know it at first and it turns out that because she was broody probably for a week or two before we really realized it she was sitting on quite a bit of eggs yep and also the other girls that was their favorite nesting box so they would go in beside her they would lay an egg and she would just go ahead and scoop it under and collect another one so before we knew it we had about 20 eggs she was sitting on yeah so i ended up marking the eggs so that way any new eggs that she started collecting we would just remove yeah and we decided let's just see how it goes and let her do the natural thing and see how well she does it at hatching those eggs yeah for the most part she's been excellent she did a very good job sitting on them making sure that they were you know cared for she rotated them kept them warm the first three hatched um and then i think there was four that hatched all in one day yes and unfortunately one of those was not alive when it when it finally came out and so we removed that one and then another one hatched maybe the next day yes and she rejected it and so we found her actually outside of her nesting area with the other three and she was on the other side and the newest one was still wet from coming out of the egg very low energy so we went ahead and grabbed it put it into the incubator to dry it off and we had also take yeah warm up because it had been cold and we weren't sure how long she hadn't been sitting on him since he was hatched so we also grabbed a few more eggs because now that she had babies she was ignoring the rest of the eggs she wasn't sitting on the eggs anymore and so we took the eggs took the little hatched baby put them in the incubator and we kind of did that process yeah once the the little chick warmed up and dried off we did try to reintroduce to uh karen and the three chicks that she had and she took she took the that fourth chick that evening and we and the next morning chick was doing fine but by the end of the day it didn't make it and so we then decided to take the remaining eggs that she had been on yep put them all into the incubator and now we have how many we have had 10 chicks hatched two didn't make it so we have five babies inside that have hatched three are outside following her around and then we have five eggs that are still on an incubator we're pretty sure they're not gonna be hatching because it's been too long past the date so um we'll probably check to see what happened with those because we did candle them they did have growth they are about halfway to three quarters of the way there but we've seen zero movement in the last four days and so we'll we'll run and remove it nate is super handy with all of the stuff we've been finding in the barns we found this dolly here and nate repurposed it to power the fences for the pigs then you can see that i added a solar panel so that way we can charge the 12-volt battery during the day when it's sunny out to extend the life of the fence charger and the battery and that was a super super simple installation and i think it's like 30 bucks for the solar panel continuing on to some other things that we did on the homestead for improvements i did reattach the gutters on our sun room or is that what we're calling the sunroom because when matthew and i put them in place we didn't do a very good job on grading sloping the gutter so there's a lot of standing water after big rains so i took it down and i re-sloped it and it's now draining quite nicely i also needed to clean the carport it was a mess after we got the pods there was just i had stuff everywhere and it was really hard for me to use any of the tools and supplies that i had so i took a day and i cleaned the carport there's actually a video of that of me doing the cleaning no talking just doing the work and i'll we'll put a link in the description down below if you're interested in that there was a little issue that i had when i was doing some of that work i had to go back to the gray barn to put some stuff away and i ended up getting myself getting the truck stuck back there because there's an area that is a low spot and it collects a lot of water and it gets really muddy and i got myself stuck for about two hours while i was in meetings yes and eventually i had to get some help so katie and i worked our way to get that truck unstuck so after two hours of me trying to do it by myself within 10 minutes having katie drive and both of us kind of working working through we got unstuck and out of there but left a really nice big mess we were also able to make it off of the homestead this month i visited mr wayne i wanted to go see him i haven't seen i hadn't seen him for a couple months since we moved out here he also had that pickled hay that i wanted to try that experiment with and there's a few other things we needed to collect that we left behind i also went over to sean and holly's the the modern yeoman to do a couple things i returned the trailer that we borrowed from my haven farms for the pigs at the same time i picked up some wood chips because sean has a really large pile of wood chips and he also had just recently announced that he and holly were pregnant so i definitely wanted to congratulate him on that so sean thank you for the wood chips yes absolutely we got two doors interior doors from from sean's dad he's over there hard at work getting things ready for us but i wanted to say to you congratulations thank you sir we are pumped yeah this you're looking at a soon-to-be yo daddy yo daddy that's right so the yo baby it's a boy his name is henry he's dude late september mid to late september so awesome yeah we are excited a little nervous but more excited more pumped oh yeah um all of that comes with it and it goes so fast it's i was gonna say like it's april now i know september is just gonna just like be here and then we know it and then you're sending them off to college then yeah yeah it's great it goes so dad agrees it's the whole uh cats and the cradle thing yeah and dad said it's like the whole cats and the cradle thing it's true so you guys just recently did a reveal video and i want my viewers if they haven't seen it many of them have i want them to go and check it out so find the link this shoulder left shoulder yeah but again congratulations thank you so ex so excited for you uncle nate uncle nate aunt katie you guys are going to be out here a lot little henry wow that's awesome i love it it's true i love it and then we made it official y'all we have tennessee driver's licenses and a tennessee license plate tennessee license plate a because it's only one in the state of tennessee um so yeah we made it official it's sometimes hard to get off the homestead with so much going on especially when i work full time so took advantage of one of my days off and we went to town to sort out all of the moving stuff that we needed to do and then we also stopped into the extension office to talk to some folks and just to get a better sense of how we can utilize that so there'll be more to come with what we learned there yeah so we have been very blessed with friendships and we really appreciate you the viewers many of you have reached out with kind words in email and comments in the comment section many of you have offered services that you um in person which we really appreciate and then there have been several of you that have also given us gifts uh through our amazon wishlist which was a huge surprise for us and while we still feel a little awkward about it we do really appreciate it so why don't you join us on the porch and we'll show you the kind gifts that we got and recognition for those that got it some of the gifts came with a note and some of them did not so we're gonna go through the ones that we know who sent them so thank you so much linda for the 10 pack milwaukee cutting wheels yeah for the grinder nate used those building the burn barrel colette sent a couple different items thank you so much for the two feed pans we're using those for the pigs right now and that's how they get their food every night and i guess every day twice we do feed them multiple times a day also for the cultivator hoe it's kind of a cultivator tiller thank you for that as well and also the really cute chicken signs my absolute favorite is that i may look calm but in my head i've pecked you three times ken thank you so much for the chuck it balls kinsley absolutely loves them she carries them around she has one in the truck one outside one she just she absolutely loves them she stockpiles them she loves them debra thank you so much for the peanut your biscuits floyd is a huge fan of you and the biscuits and the biscuits well for sending the biscuits he literally just stares up and is like hello hello i want them i want another one he also loves that they're extra large size thank you so much to adrienne and herbert quite a few different amazing gardening tools here got a garden trowel a hand hoe a mini ray brush clearing sickle and also a weeding sickle in addition to two head lamps and those headlamps are so bright and they come in so handy at night when working yeah when we're closing out um doing like closing the chicken coops and going out at night to check things out so thank you so much thank you so much to dwight for your not glitzy gift i love it the hardware cloth is a lifesaver here and we will use that as well as the really cool pendant light i look forward to being being able to utilize the pendant lights in the kitchen for the remodel for the remodel haven't quite used them yet thank you so much arlie for the essential oil diffuser really appreciate that as well so those were the the thank you cards that we got um appreciate all of the thoughtful gifts and then we do have a few other items that we didn't get a note with but we do absolutely appreciate so as you can tell from this video april was pretty busy for us we got a lot accomplished we still have so much to do so keep following for more shenanigans on the homestead while we work through may and the projects that we have we just want to say thank you so much for your continued support through liking our videos watching our videos commenting sending thoughtful emails following us through facebook and also on instagram we really appreciate it we couldn't do it without you all so thank you so much yeah and we will see you online on the next one take care bye bye guys

Channel: The Kraemer Life

Views: 7,329

Keywords: homestead, homesteading, modern homesteading, kraemerism, the kraemer life, homesteading family, simple life, make your own life, homesteading for beginners, life worth living, homesteading lifestyle, homestead life, homesteadersunite, get to know the kraemer life, homesteaders, north carolina, farm update, homestead update, monthly update, butcher box promo, butcher box promo codes 2022, butcher box

Id: V8WaAOgODok

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022