Breaking Wind - Building a Windbreak on the Ranch!

hi i'm mike and today we're going to build that a windbreak for the cows on our wyoming life [Music] hi guys welcome back to the project list here on our wyoming life it's tuesday and that means it's time for us to get something done last week on the project list we spun the wheel to see what we would do but today we're not doing that because i left it up to ranch hand jeff to come up with a project for us for today's project list and what he chose was probably one of the bigger projects on the list it's right here the triangle pasture wind break which is a project that i've been looking at for a couple years but we got a chance to explore when we went and took a look at the dump just a couple weeks ago we do have a wind break that's located farther back you've seen cows in it you've seen calves being born in it but it's about two miles well about a mile or so away from the main part of the ranch so what i want to do is build a wind break that's quite a bit closer and we actually have the materials right over here to do it these panels are 16 maybe 20 feet long so we had a chance a little bit this morning to go out and get some stuff ready some gather some parts that we're going to need obviously those big panels we had to move over here that was a little bit of a trick [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] do [Music] so [Music] and jeff grabbed us a whole bunch of posts that we're gonna need to make sure that all this stuff stands up here is the plan prevailing winds on the ranch are north south [Music] so we know that we need to be able to protect the cows from that direction so we're going to be building a windbreak much like the other ones that we have elsewhere on the ranch usually what they do is uh they they're more of an l-shaped deal where the cows can get in and be protected a little bit from both the north winds which will blow in the winter time and a little bit from the west winds which do tend to come in quite a bit but we're going to do something a little bit different and this was actually jeff's idea and that is that we're going to make more of a zigzag pattern with the windbreak this year i'm going to switch colors so you can see this just a little bit easier but we're going to put this windbreak out in the triangle pasture which is right behind the shop here and it's mostly going to be used during calving season and of course in the winter time while we're feeding and what jeff's idea was this because we're still dealing with these north and south prevailing winds my end's a little messed up there there we go that we do the windbreak so that it protects cows from both directions and what jeff's idea was was to use our panels that we have for the windbreak and set them up in more of a zigzag pattern so that cows could be protected from either the north winds which are in the wintertime and the south winds which tend to be more in the spring so the cows can hide on either side of the wind break and be protected now to do this takes a little bit more planning because we obviously have more posts involved and uh there's a little math that's going to have to have to happen so we're going to go do some math but first i'm going to take you out in the field um show you some of the materials as we've got them set up and then we get to figure out where we're going to start putting posts okay so this is the site where we're going to be placing the windbreak it's a little bit up on the side of a hill here so that if we do get any any flooding we don't have to worry about it so much being under water and also it's protected on this side um by this hill that drops back over which will hopefully lend a little bit of protection on on the uh on the south side as well i'm not really sure how that's going to work but i did need to get it up and out of the out of the water line in case we do get any flooding which can definitely happen so i've got a nice little ridge here that i think that we can work off that gives us a pretty level area right out into here so jeff is actually gathering up a tape measure and a couple other tools he's going to be up here with the gator in just a few minutes and hopefully here he comes now we'll be able to get started another interesting thing is if you happen to watch the webcam which is on our website our wyominglife.com this is actually all in plain view of the webcam you can see us and what we're doing out here in fact i'll i'll give you a little wave but before we can put in a single post put up a single panel we've got to plan and that's going to mean tape measures and mouth which i did ahead of time these are 20 foot long panels jeff is messing around with them right over here they're 20 feet long eight feet tall which means basically we have to build squares without two of the sides so to do this zigzag pattern and uh if we have a 20 foot square our diagonal is 28 feet three inches ish and uh we can we can work from there what are you laughing at ish so we are going to figure out basically all we need is a starting point and uh and we can roll from there we know which direction is north that's that way and we want the windbreak to run east-west ish all right so that'll be the first corner so and we want it to run this way just swing it that way to get to 20 feet [Applause] and then i come back 20 feet and then wherever we cross so pull yours over pull mine over wherever 20 feet meech meets so using two tape measures we can come up with our diagonal at 20 foot and 20 foot that's our next point then we just have to measure so that's one two three four and then we just have one more to do here do you want to put this one at an angle or you just want to maybe just come straight out i've got five panels so we could just do straight out instead of at an angle or actually you know what we could do is bring it down this way or put it at the other end for an east west break we could actually we could put it down on that end because we have more weather that comes out of the west so if we put it down on that end heading back towards the gator there make sense right there i think that'll be pretty straight that'll be the one line that drives me crazy because we didn't measure it perfectly okay we just had our first camera failure uh due to the heat i don't know what the temperature is out here but it's starting to get warm jeff is painting the uh spots where we're putting our pins just in case we lose a pin for some reason a little more a little bit of marking paint does wonders especially when you do run over these things and everything else i'll take that so our next uh thing that we need to do is actually get the skid steer fired up and we're gonna sink some holes here oh you know what we still need to do is we need to do this the halfway holes too so we need to mark those those will be relatively easy though we're going to do post halfway through each one of these things each panel also just to get a little bit extra support because there's gonna be cows rubbing on it and and everything else so we have to mark the halfway point put in another pin and then um and we'll be golden [Music] so i found a house to make you smile a little white picky fans you wanted since way back when come on let's go and chase our dreams where folks live and pray like we do each day no one has a problem with the bible [Music] trust in me i know you do will more than make it through we'll find what we want to see let's go and live our dreams alrighty so jeff is going to keep on digging these holes for us uh as he moves on to the next hole this is something i wanted to point out is how dry the ground is i mean there is literally no moisture in this in fact you can see down in the hole that there's really no dark soil it's all very very dry let's paint our dreams where folks live and pray like we do each day raise the flag every morning trust in me i know you do well more than make it through we'll find what we want you see let's go and live our dreams [Music] folks they live and pray like we do each day and they know where they'll be on sunday i'm asking say i do will more than make it through it'll be all you want you'll see let's go and live our dreams go and live our dreams [Music] all right let's talk about posts for one second uh this is an eight foot tall panel so we need to make sure that we have enough of the post out of the ground in order to support the panel now we want the post to be at least halfway up the panel and so we're going with three foot holes so if we have eight foot posts we'd have five foot above ground we're actually trying to push our way into 10 foot posts is what we really want so we've got some 10 foot posts i'm going to drop a couple of those in the holes that jeff is already making and then hopefully we can start getting some things lined up [Music] [Music] [Music] all right it's getting too hot to film outside cameras won't stay on long enough so i'm gonna leave jeff out here in the nice air-conditioned bobcat to uh continue digging holes and we'll come back once he's done with that take a look at the next one take a look at the next step of the process so stick around okay it's now about six o'clock uh the following day actually uh what happened was uh jeff kept on punching holes and pretty soon it was 95 degrees and just not fun and in fact my plan was to come out a little bit a little bit later excuse me a little bit later in the in the evening and get some more work done uh it didn't drop below 90 until after eight o'clock at night so it's now six o'clock uh the next morning a little bit after six and we're out here to try to get this wrapped up today our plan is to finish putting in these posts we'll get the panels set and then what we're hoping is that we can use the panels to try to uh and we'll level the panels and then we'll get the posts uh completely um uh set in the ground so we're gonna leave the post a little loose until we get the panels up attached to the posts and then be able to make everything straight at that point that's the plan um we'll see how it works [Music] okay [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're getting somewhere wind break and we've got two panels left to set [Music] [Music] cool so with one more panel left to go jeff's gonna swing back around with the tractor we're gonna get this one up um we're gonna get our holes filled in we've got a few more lag bolts to get sunk in to secure the whole thing but after that we're pretty much done and the cows have a pretty cool place to hang out out of the weather [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] so so [Music] [Music] well guys that's it we've got a windbreak built it looks pretty good even from up here uh i'm up in the bucket of the tractor by the way in case you can't tell up here getting a bird's eye view of the brand new windbreak that hopefully uh the cows will be able to utilize now the big thing is that not all the cows are going to fit in this obviously but it does give a chance for maybe 20 30 40 50 cows might be able to squeeze in to get out of some weather now we have other places up here for them to do that we also not also we have this wind break that we just built but if you look down here we've got a nice break there along our fence that they can hide out in and we've got the big cow shed over there which can fit at least a couple hundred cows but we always end up with those weird cows that don't want to come out here that don't want to go in the barn they want to be out here in the wide open prairie and now they have some place that they can hide out during calving season and of course during our worst winter storms let's go down and try it out let's see how it works all right so the windbreak is complete uh like i said now we get to try it out because the wind actually can this can be work work both ways we have winds out of the south you can be on the north side of it winds out of the north you can be on the south side of it and be a little protected so this is a trick that my dad taught me long ago to figure out which direction exactly the wind is coming from you you clean off your finger as much as possible lick your finger up in the air it goes the cold side of your finger tells you which direction the wind is blowing from uh right now we've got a nice little 10 mile an hour wind out of the south so to get out of the wind all i got to do is walk around to the north side of the wind break wind no wind it's a beautiful thing thanks guys for hanging out with me once again i guess if nothing else i can come hang out in here when we're calving too and get a little shelter myself we'll see you next time right here on our wyoming life [Music] you

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 43,432

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching

Id: 7H9uCAToCms

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 17 2021