Gearing Up for Summer

hi I'm Pete and welcome to just a few Acres Farm I've been busy hanging for the last week and a half's worth of videos so today I'm going to take you all around the farm I got a little bit of this and that to do these guys are bellyaching at me we'll take care of them later I'm glad I got my hay in because it's been wet we got an inch of rain yesterday we got an inch of rain 2 days before that we've got rain in the forecast today it'll make the grass grow first things first this this is my big horse the farm allall 856 that I stripped down last winter and here it's remained almost ready for paint off camera I've been fixing little things I adjusted the valve lash I took the rear hydraulic pump off to replace the suction H ring on that and fix the clutch pedal pin that sticks out the side and kinds of little stuffff I just haven't had the time to work on I've been busy outside I also put in a filter system for the air compressor which I moved out here so it wouldn't suck in paint fumes and I have lots and lots of Parts all lined up not only here but upstairs there's boxes I've ordered everything I can think of to get me a long ways in the work I just won't be able to pick it up until I have more time howdy Bulls hi Orton this is my big project for the summer all the way through here our winter pasture is wet and it's wet number one because it's got some big building's roof run off dumping right into it this big new pole barn here with the cattle Edition is a 45 ft run of roof all dumping and then beyond the cattle Edition is dumping 25 foot worth of roof behind you is the old pole barn it's got a 36t long Roof Run all that water's dumping in the pasture it's got no place to go and that's reason number two it's w is because it's just the low point it's the natural low point of everything around it it would take a major Earth moving project to make this not the low point to kind of slope it to drain and I'm not going to do that with my little excavator instead I'm going to put in sub drainage but I have to wait until it dries out before I can start that this mini excavator is another project that I've been chipping away at off camera and that's what I'm going to use to do that sub drainage workout in the winter pasture I've replaced the pins and bushings on the bucket now the bucket's nice and tight it went through and changed all the fluids and the filters with the exception of the hydraulic I'm waiting for filters to come for that change the oil in the final drives went through and greased it checked everything out runs great it's ready to go howdy ladies you you're very Regal nesting boxes are all full laying hens are doing great we brought them out must have been a couple weeks ago and of course when we first bring them out we shut them in this Egg Mobile for at least 24 hours so they know where to lay their egg and where to roast in the morning we open the door here and they all come streaming out and when it starts to get dark outside they all come in by themselves we don't have to bring any of them in and Hillary comes out at Sunset and closes a door and they're safe for the [Laughter] night we're getting about eight dozen eggs a day now egg production Peaks on the summer solstice and start to decrease from there to the winter solstice and then it comes back up they're always busy out here looking for goodies that's what makes their eggs taste so good when they're on pasture these guys Broiler chickens meat birds as I often say just flow right through our farm all spring summer and and fall this is batch two and three that are out here they come to our farm as day old chicks every two weeks we'll do nine or 10 of those batches so they ship from the first week of April through mid to late August and we time them such that every week we're butchering and we're bringing fresh chicken to Market on Saturdays right now we're running neck and neck with demand there's none in the freezers everything that we bring to Market every Saturday sells and I don't bring anything home here's the latest batch in the brooder little chicks these guys are almost 2 weeks old and another batch is coming to go in that side later this week [Music] what do you think cows is the time to move move all right here's gate number one [Music] yes H it's been raining so much it's getting so I don't even need to call them anymore they just know where they're they're going they're going right into here it's the field right above where I made hay last week I got two more gates to lead him through watch out guys watch out don't catch the wire we're not going down there we're going in here that's right Patty go on in who knocked down my camera come on cows come on you guys down in the lane way let's go come on cows come on cows come on up here you two Cals they're all messing around up here well four of them anyway are come on cows come on [Music] in they got a lot in this field it's 5 Acres [Music] Hillary and I were eating breakfast this morning looked out the back window and Patty our herd boss here was having a well it looked like a scrum like a Rugby scrum scrim scrum with her daughter tulip who's also a nice kind of cow on the large side and be which is the one cow that hasn't had her calf yet I think that tulip and B were ganging up on Patty to try and somehow become herd boss Patty was having none of it and but it lasted a while they they do that from time to time they challenge each other the grass looks tall compared to the cattle but it's really not it's just these things sticking up here if you remove them the top of the mainly Clover and elfer coming on now and Timothy are down here at about a foot tall there's not nearly as much in this field as you would think looking across at the tops of the seed heads I think this is the third rotation of the Year onto the field for the cattle I'll take you down to this lower field that I made hay off of and we can see how it's coming back it's been 10 days since I cut the hay on this field and it's already growing back these are up to 6 or 8 in this is probably Orchard Grass again down from the level that I cut it at which is about 3 in doesn't take long when we get rain like this this field will probably not go into second cutting I'll put this back into rotation as soon as it comes back enough and the idea is that I I do very little second cutting hay these days just one or two Fields because I tend to try and save as much forage as I can to keep them grazing as long as I can keep forage in Prime State and not overmature and that's how we kind of sneak through to December on grazing on a good year our next subject coming up from the woods and that field down at the bottom is this field right here that they came off of 4 days ago she is Shaggy and worked over it's time to start clipping pastures in rotation I'll take one out and clip it and this is the first one that's going to be clipped so I do that at usually a twoe interval it all depends on the weather but with the weather we've been having here toward the end of this week if it clears off I'll I'll clip this field and then Fields will start coming back online after either being hay or clipped and we'll get all this stuff off and lay it on the ground to feed the soil and that CCH the ground for the hotter summer months clean it all up the stuff that comes back will be wonderful looking this is when heel and clover really shine when it gets warm and goes through this part of the summer aelia Bush isn't that pretty it'll Bloom multiple times a year and it sits just on one side to the entrance to our garden in these two rais beds for salad greens and radishes pretty much everything in the early bed is bolted at this point we're still harvesting a little bit cuz we like strong greens strong arugula strong mustard remains still coming a little bit all the radishes are picked it's really the second bed that we're working out of mostly now and these guys in the second bed arugula here we picked the radishes already and that's mustard growing up over here and then in here we have Swiss Shard that has just sprouted sunflowers are up just barely sweet corn is starting to come up I'm not very proud of that crop but that's the way me and sweet corn work zucchini is up we're getting to the end of that time of year when after you plant everything it kind of has a slow start and then it just kind of all of a sudden it goes the tomatoes have are are stiring get into that phase and the cucumbers and the pole beans but we need a nice nice stretch of kind of hot dry sunny weather I think for him to really take off the cucumbers have grown long and off the vines where I can get it started up onto the trell here and then from here the Cucumber will do it by itself it just needs to be started that guy that guy all grab onto the fence I pruned Tomatoes aggressively all summer long and and what I've done so far is I've pruned off to 2 lers coming up here in a y and I've done that with all the tomato plants at this point this one here is a cherry tomato plant you can see you can tell cherries always come out on these ribs it's got little tomatoes on it the first thing I pruned for is airspace so no leaves ever touch the ground and I want a good airspace underneath and this is all to deal with early and late blight which is a big deal here if you don't keep up with it they'll succumb to it most years that's really the biggest reason I went to Growing them is bade like this cuz so much air flow can come through them and dry out the leaves and helps them resist blight more the second thing I prune for is leaders so if you look at this main that's coming up through here one of my two mains you have this Shute coming off of the crotch between it and this leaf and that will become a leader if you let it go and I just pinched those off here's another one right here there's a tomato grown that's a black crem will be I trained the plants to keep the foliage all on the south side of the fence here so that any tomatoes that grow in will all be growing on this side Sun ripened and not caught in the fence and I have to come out here about once a week and take off mainly these second Mains that start mainly the second Ms and train them that way and so I'm not letting the tomatoes weave through the fence I'm keeping them on the south side and unlike the Cucumbers they won't send out those tendrils to attach themselves to the fence so I use old bailing twine and just Loosely tie the tomatoes like this and pole beans have developed their tendrils so I just Loosely get them going nature always wraps things counterclockwise like this it's true if you look at things these will always wrap counterclockwise you have to them going here these Vines naturally want to do that wrapping so it won't be long they'll form themselves to the fence that way with first cutting hay done and in the barn it's a nice time to take a breath relax a little bit and look around and enjoy what the season is bringing there's so much more to come this summer when it gets warm and hot and dry I'm going to be busy clipping fields and digging in the winter pasture and getting the Summer's projects done we got beef going to the butcher this week two steers to start our summer of beef at the farmers market the farmers Market has been very busy it only gets busier after June 1st it's jam-packed in the Pavilion on Saturdays when I'm there and we'll have beef straight through from July 4th pretty much into the fall steak selling a couple weeks after we bring beef to the butcher but the goal is to have things straight through you're welcome to come and visit me at the market I absolutely love to get visitors at the market I like to kabitz with folks for a little while and it's really nice to put a face to the folks who view the channel I will be making a market video soon I know I you know expressed some reservations about that and filming the public in a previous video but I really think I need to do at least one market video to make the connection between what happens here and serving the folks that our food our food goes to also showing what else is involved in our Farmers Market as far as produce and crafts and prepared food it's really an awesome market and I want to be able to share it the next thing is that what we raise on the farm has been changing we Hillary and I made a decision a couple years ago that we were starting to kind of ramp down and head into semi-retirement and that's the mindset that I have semi- retirment so we have cut down quite a bit on the quantities of layers broilers by a factory four I think we're at 1/4 what we used to raise beef is still going strong we decided not to do turkeys this year because mainly because it was just so stressful allocating the turkeys different weights to customers making sure we didn't miss any for that really important Thanksgiving or Christmas meal and they're heavy they're heavy to butcher so it's something that we said well we're going to stop doing that and sort of focus on other things the garden and that yard and just having a little bit more time to breathe the same goes with pigs I get a comment every video or two or three that somebody misses the pigs I have to admit I don't miss the pigs that much they were very stressful to raise and I grew to really dislike their quarters in the barn and after all the breeding problems I had I need a break I had talked about raising some out in the field here some feeder pigs this summer we got plenty of pork in the freezer so we decided not to and if you only watch the channel for the pigs and you say I don't want to watch anymore because there's no pigs well GE there's a whole lot of other things to offer on the channel and if it was just the pigs you were looking for I guess you know that's fair the last thing I wanted to mention is that tomorrow the day after this video comes out Thursday I'll be at the Red Power showdown in Bloomsburg psylvia I know it's late notice but I forgot to mention it on previous videos Red Power Showdown is a Regional International Harvester collector's of that and it's Thursday Friday and Saturday this week I'll only be there on Thursday I can't make it to the red Power Roundup in Iowa this year it's just too difficult for me to get there it's in a small town accommodations are difficult travel is difficult I would need to be away from the farm for a week which is not possible so I'm not going I don't know I can make it to Missouri next year either cuzz that's kind of a similar case they I'd rather that they were in some place that's easy to fly to or easy easier to drive to but that's the way it goes um I hope to see you at the Red Power Showdown even though it's short notice and that's it that's that's all there is that's the status of the farm I guess doing what we love to do and just doing a little less of it and enjoying it even more I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you next next time

Channel: Just a Few Acres Farm

Views: 158,384

Keywords: farm, farming, hobby farm, hobby farm guys, hobby farming for profit, homestead, how farms work, just a few acres farm, life on a farm, day on the farm, slow farming, busy day, farm day, small farm, life on small farm, a few acres farm, few acres farm, just a few acres farm youtube, dexter cattle, cattle, chickens, calf, gardening, pasture

Id: iu6wL9ppcH4

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2024