I Have a Special Surprise Today

yep there's a little manure left but i ain't doing that today [Music] mmm uh rule number one of loading pigs is they don't like step downs and step ups and when we back up to the winter pen here we've got both the step off the bedding pack and then a step onto the trailer with this funny gap in between so we try to fill it up with stuff to even it out and then the pigs are more likely to climb on the trailer look at those hams hey the pigs kicked this out of the pen a relic of my ancestors pretty cool to find stuff like that around the farm this is the best method i've come up with so far for low stress pig loading and that is to put the trailer here about a week before they go and then i exclusively feed them out of the trailer so if they want to eat they got to go in eventually they get comfortable with it seven are going this weekend and i've got one two three four five six in there right now so hopefully that'll continue this morning i'm gonna fix some fence with my favorite players you know it's the little things in life what's a group of chubby newborns called heavy infantry we've had close to an inch of rain in the last couple days and the grass has shot up a couple inches i think say that again patty i think they want to go out on grass well here's the first job right here this gate wire's been broken twice already and i've patched it back together the calves always break through the lower wires those calves they don't know where they should be stand so that happens and we'll just replace the wire [Music] man i'll tell you i should have brought out earplugs because these guys are going to be hollering at me all day long [Music] there we go [Music] this is pretty much the job drive along all the fence rows and look for problems i got a sag and lower wire here i'm looking for the source still haven't found it typically what happens is we get deer running out from the woods during the winter and they'll break the wire someplace or another every year i gotta fix it speaking of deer when i caught my neighbor trying to attach a rocket engine to a deer i immediately reported him to the authorities shame on him for trying to make a quick buck here at the road probably the deer crossed the road and i've got a whole bunch of bad insulators that need to be replaced well here's the root of the problem deer ran into the fence and ripped the wire off where hooks onto the end post and loosen the whole run up around three sides of the field looks like i'm gonna have to loosen this up to retention there's two tensioners in line on this run and i got enough wire on here to loosen it up to get the length i need at the end just release the strainer and then let the wire out look at that leaves yeah all right let's see what we got now is there enough yep gotta replace this insulator and plenty of room all right i'll go back and tighten it up and see if it's all right beautiful [Music] now it looks like our largest soil aerators have been at work also known as the woodchuck all right now let's see what happens when i tighten this back up deer not only run through and break the insulators and break the fence but they also stretch the fence and that's what's happened here where's gotten stretched i'll just tension the top one too so now that you've seen some of it let me tell you how we do it our perimeter fences this is a perimeter fence for us are just t posts and they're spaced at about 30 feet apart i just pace them off when we set the fence we use t-posts we use these cheap insulators and yes they do break but they're easy to replace and then for corners we use braced corners and this is just a an aluminum system it's actually quite expensive for what you get it doesn't work very good i wish there was something better out there but this is what we've got now and we just maintain it sometimes these come loose and we have to replace them the corners are made such that the wire can move around the corners so when we tension the fence it flows through the corners the wire does and then we use these tensioners that you've seen to keep the wires tight it's a really easy to build and cheap fencing system it's just two wires one at 36 inches high one at 18 inches high the cows don't go through it we keep it nice and hot with the fencer the calves will go through it in their first few months of life and there's really nothing to do about that and it's really not a big problem because eventually the calf crosses back through to nurse from its mom i'm liking what i'm seeing here you saw this grass a week ago when i was spreading manure and look how much taller it is and the clover's coming up through i like it we'll probably have the cows on here if it keeps raining in a week two weeks at the very most all right yell at me all you want i don't know why it takes such pleasure in their unhappiness i just think it's funny that's patty the lead cow right there the boss cow with the short horns and uh she's the one who complains the most and of course we trim around the fence and make sure there's nothing touching the wires a hot fence is a good fence this field that i'm working around now is about six or eight acres you can see the old pole barn there there's the hay barn the cows winter pastures up on the top of the hill it goes to the woods over there and then it elves around the back so this is the field where we normally run our poultry in the summer but this is the first field we'll put the cows out on before the poultry come out to to clip the grass down here's a case where the deer not only stretch the fence but they broke it so what i use in this case are these crimps i put two of them on in-line splices just like that and then you just take the crimping tool and give them a crimp i bend the ends back which makes it less likely for them to slide through and we're done and that's it fence repaired on the first field man the deer had really done a number on it there [Laughter] i freaked out the chickens what are you chicken we'll go and see how the little fluffs are doing these little guys are about 10 days old now cornish cross broilers and they sure do grow fast they're already feathering out on their wings they'll be out in the pasture in two or three weeks and that means we'll have our first fresh chicken of the year memorial day weekend which is always a great time to have fresh chicken i asked hillary to come out and hear some jokes but she's busy making cookies so in my mind it's a win-win because i get to tell you the jokes and then i get cookies when i go in later what do you call a murderer who can't stop farting jack the ripper if you cut off your left arm then your right arm will be left well i have to come clean with you i lied at the beginning of this video i am spreading manure today sorry [Music] but i got a special surprise to show you today i'm looking for something in particular and i know where it grows here's a little bit here's a bit more these are ramps and uh you may know what they are you may not but um to a lot of people where ramps grow in the woods is a highly prized secret people don't tell each other where their ramp stashes are they're kind of wild leak and unlike most leaks eat the whole thing you trim the root off here well i did a poor job of that but and then you saute the leaf the stem the bulb and they are delicious they only grow for a few weeks a year and when you harvest them you got to be careful because if i dug this whole thing out i wouldn't have ramps next year so you take i usually think 10 of the patch is fine to let it regrow back in some people actually take pieces out and plant them in other pieces trying to spread how many grow i'll tell you to the people who love them these are worth a lot of money i saw for sale the other day uh a dozen of these a dozen of these for 10 bucks they really are like nothing else and i know people come from outside states sometimes to this area to dig them at this time of year these will be sauteed for dinner tonight look at these beautiful flowers amazing what grows in the woods early before the leaves go on the trees looks like i'm a little bit early yet but this is trillium trillium is one of the ways i marked the season it turns into this beautiful white flower and it's called trillium because everything in it comes in three you can see the leaves go in threes and then when the white flowers come out of these they'll have three petals as well this woods will be covered with trillium and probably three weeks or so when it comes to things that require brute force i'm probably not the man for the job i don't like that sort of stuff but when it comes to doing this sort of thing and looking carefully around at your surroundings and seeing how things work that's what i love [Music] so many people these days are too judgmental i can tell just by looking at them they boogied right out they'll be back in to eat i feed them pretty light in this last week so that they really want to go in the trailer and get something to eat all right piggers mud puppies well they're in there eating i count one two three four five in there and two wanting to get in yes their pen is wet and poopy we're not bedding them for these last two weeks because hay is expensive and we're out of our own [Music] i was hoping doc would come in and see us today but he's got a busy schedule these days you know he's a star so right now is his cud chewing spa period where he lays outside in the sun and kind of rests himself for his evening engagements i'm tuckered and i'm going inside i hope you have a great day and i'll see you next time

Channel: Just a Few Acres Farm

Views: 168,153

Rating: 4.9593549 out of 5

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, dexter cattle, dad jokes, spreading manure, day on the farm, spring on the farm, slow farming, new idea 12A, manure spreader, composted manure, farmall 656, farmall h, starting broiler chicks, special surprise, digging ramps, pigs

Id: c3UqnaWFMLY

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021