The mercury dipped to a crisp 28° last night, and as you can see, a delicate layer of frost blankets the ground this morning. It finally feels like winter is poised to make its grand entrance. My wife is diligently tidying up the last vestiges of her garden. Pretty much the only resilient survivors are our prolific kale factory, a few stubborn Brussels sprouts, and a handful of late-season winter squash that are still hardening off. But for the most part, the farm's bounty has been harvested. These cabbage remnants will be a welcome treat for the other animals.
"Good morning, large white farm dog dogs! How are you guys doing? You look very happy! Hi, happy Toby dog! Hi, Happy Abby dog! Good morning, you guys! Good morning!" "Hey, inside, inside please! Inside, inside, thank you!" "Hello, my Abby dog! Hello, my Toby dog! Hi!" Whoa, both dogs are absolutely brimming with energy right now! It's actually quite lovely to witness, even Toby dog is running around with the zoomies! Mornings like this truly reinforce my gratitude for life on the farm.
"Good morning, goatie otis! How are you guys doing? Come on, I'm going to let you out. I want you to work more alongside the greenhouse today. That's actually going to be where I'm working too. Come on!" Toby dog is practically vibrating with excitement to be in the greenhouse. "Come on, come on, fellas! Let's go! Come on!"
So, the primary task on my agenda for today is to begin the process of cleaning up and prepping the greenhouse hoop coop. I've already gone through and harvested the lion's share of our pumpkin crop – a grand total of 74 pumpkins produced within this one space alone this year! We also have a significant amount of lamb's quarter, now withered and brown, as well as pigweed, a type of amaranth, that has also died back. Everything remaining in here will serve as a nutritious feast for my animals. Now that my foot injury recovery is progressing well, it's time to put in the effort to get this greenhouse in tip-top shape so that I can begin moving the chickens in here first, followed by the other birds, probably within the next few days. The temperatures are indeed dropping; as I mentioned, the overnight low was around 28°, it's currently about 31°, all according to the wildly American-centric Fahrenheit system. I have a considerable amount of debris and supplies that need to be cleaned up and put away. I also need to take down the sides of the hoop coop and undertake some updates and reinforcement of the fencing surrounding it. All in all, the goal is to get everything thoroughly ready for winter. Winter is coming!
I actually have a handy little attachment for my drill that makes taking down these clips super easy, but I forgot to bring it out with me. While the drill attachment would be technically easier, it would involve retrieving the attachment, getting the drill, and coming back out here. Sometimes, the most efficient way to do something isn't necessarily the easiest.
Other than some driveway ruts and our pig area that experienced some flooding this past summer, the only other flood damage we really sustained were some rips that occurred in the plastic of the hoop coop. Thankfully, I recently ordered and received some special tape just two days ago, and I'm going to use that to patch up those holes. All things considered, seeing just how absolutely horrible and devastating the flood was for some of our neighbors, I feel exceptionally lucky in terms of what happened to our farm.
Now, ordinarily, this would be the time in the morning that I would be pumping water for the animals. But as you can see by this water bucket, most of the water has succumbed to the freeze. Because we're still operating on our summer watering setup, where approximately 95% of our watering infrastructure is above ground, the pipes are mostly frozen solid this morning. However, our high for today is predicted to reach a mild 50°, so it will warm up in, I don't know, two to three hours. Typically, when we have nights like this and I still have my summer watering system in place, I'll wait to do the water chores until later in the day. In a couple of weeks, when I switch over to my winter setup – and it is a definitive switch where one morning I wake up and simply begin doing all my chores winter-style – everything will be configured in a way that the lines won't freeze. But I don't have that luxury right now.
Now, some of you might be wondering why I don't just bury all my water lines, like the one that runs from the barn to the shed over there, as well as the line that extends from that shed over to this hydrant right here. The reason is this: we have extremely rocky soil. I mean, it actually took my buddy Alfred – you guys remember my buddy Alfred, right? My buddy Alfred – well, it took him almost an entire day to dig a trench deep enough to be below our frost line, which is about six feet, to go from that hydrant over there to this hydrant over here, because there was just so much rock and boulder, and he had to literally crack a couple of boulders open. So, due to three major factors, it's simply not practical to dig trenches for all of our water lines, particularly when you consider the cattle areas and where they're grazing in the summer. You know, I think at this point we have around 3,500 feet of black poly pipe that sits above ground, crisscrossing the farm. And really, that black poly piping system is incredibly useful because pretty much over the span of a 50-acre space, using only a 25-foot garden hose, I can access water anywhere on the farm by simply adding an attachment to the end of the hose and plugging it into one of the various plug points we have strategically placed around the farm. Super, super useful! But to implement a system like that where I'm digging trenches and burying those water lines, even if I'm burying them deep enough to not freeze on a day like today, it would have probably taken me ten, maybe twenty times more time just to do that basic layer. And I don't know, it would have probably taken Alfred all summer on an excavator to dig enough trenches to cover that much ground around the entire farm because the soil is so rocky, and because you do have to go six feet deep. So, to me, the best possible compromise is to have both a summer setup and a winter setup and just switch it over when the time comes. It always makes shoulder season moments like this a little bit tricky and awkward because you will have to make adjustments as it just freezes a tiny bit overnight. But I will probably only end up doing this for the next two, maybe three weeks until I switch over to winter full-time, and then I'll be operating in that mode until, I don't know, mid-day or something like that.
So, you know, I picked some of this cabbage, it's just for you guys. But it looks like you got a little aggressive and already started chomping through it. Enjoy! These were meant to be goat treats! Now, I want you to stay in here, okay? Don't get into mischief! I'm going to keep this door closed just to keep you inside. Alright, time for food for the barn cats! The cat water didn't totally freeze, but it definitely got that nice little disc of ice. Got most of our winter wood stacked. I bought some extra, so I have some of this wood that needs to get put away. I also like to stash some of the extra wood that I have in these totes, which are typically for like, uh, big, like 125-gallon water totes. But instead of using the IBC totes for water, these make great firewood containers. And then what's nice is I can just use the pallet forks on the tractor and scoop these up and then move them closer to the house when the appropriate time comes. Goats, you're on the wrong side of the fence! What happened here? Come on, let's go! I love those goats, but they can cause trouble. At this point, I have angry ducks and geese that are just demanding to be fed. Don't worry, Carmen, I can't forget about the weirdos! Here you go, weird chickens! Come on in there, don't be shy, get your bite!
So, you guys will notice that our rooster, Barry White, opted to leave the weird chickens. So, to the question that I had put out in a previous video about whether or not he should live with the weird chickens, he kind of answered that question for himself. Well, if I was ever under any delusions that the goats would respect the greenhouse walls, I was sorely mistaken. It doesn't look like they did any damage, but I think they just hopped the fence, and they're now back over here. The thing I got to be careful for is I don't want the goats eating the bird food because that's the kind of thing that could actually give them like bladder stones or kidney stones or something. And so, I'm trying to keep them desperately away from that grain, only giving them weeds, only giving them alfalfa, so that they don't get more nutrition than they need and cause problems for themselves. Now, can I have the expectation that you boys are going to behave while I go get some water for you and the dogs? Can you please at least just respect this for like five minutes, just to give the birds enough time to eat their food? Yes, I'm here pumping water, and the goats seem to be respecting their boundary. I see Barney over there, I see Telly over here. You know, I'm actually pouring your water right now, so guys better not get into any mischief! I feel like if there's any instigator in mischief, it's always Laën. He seems to be the most mischievous of the goats. They also love to rub up against the fencing and the fence posts, almost as a way to give themselves a healthy scratch. Well, well, well, look at this! This worked out good! Birds have eaten most of their food for the morning, and my two livestock guardian dogs have done a very nice job protecting that food. Of course, I'm noticing that both of you seem to have some burdock here. Maybe let me get yours, Toby, you got a bunch of them! What did you guys do again? It's like every morning I'm pulling burdock out of your fur. Okay, we're almost done, we're almost done. We're doing football player who… like, I know you think it's roughhouse time, it's not! Toby lost patience with me, and now he's in full-on zoomie mode! Toby, come! I got most of them out. I'll have to get the last couple out a little bit later this morning.
Alright, now we need to attend to the task at hand and continue working on hoop coop prep. Have now successfully completed putting in a fence along basically the entire north wall of the hoop coop. That fence runs all the way now and connects to this fence that I have here. So, this side will basically be the winter bird yard, and then this side I'll be able to have actually the goats and the dogs be able to hang out. You might have noticed that I actually put in more fence posts than I need. That's because these fence posts are going to ultimately make the goat yard. So, I'm going to be fencing in this coupe so that I can keep the goats in there, and at least for the overnights, I'll lock the goats up in here. That house will now become the dog house again, and then during the day I can actually let the goats out and play in this area, and I can let the dogs kind of have access to the whole thing. And so, yeah, this is going to take a couple of days to finish off, but it feels good to get out here and do this work. I can feel my foot like starting to hurt. I'm going to probably go ice it and put it up pretty soon, but before I can do that, the water system has probably thawed out at this point, and we've got to go move some cattle. The moo crew is a little bit cranky this morning because they're obviously getting moved, I don't know, probably four hours later, five hours later than they usually do. But I don't think you girls are going to die. "Hey, cows! Come on, cows! Fresh grass, fresh grass! Come on! Hey, cows! Come on, cows! Fresh grass, fresh grass! Come on, let's go!"
So, I'm going to keep them up here as long as I can keep their water flowing. "Want to say hi? Come here, Belle! Want to say hi to me?" Okay, pretty soon we're going to be spending a lot of time together this winter. I actually think that the winter, particularly the period of time when I'm weaning the calves off the milk from their moms, to me that actually is the best time to actually get to know them better and spend time with them and work with them and treat train them and all that good stuff. And so, you can expect to see a lot of that this winter. As you can see with our girl Betty, she is definitely getting some healthy gulps out of it all. Now here comes the real test: if I can plug this in and have the water go, that means the pipes have unfrozen, right? It is rain! Yeah, one of the things I've learned after doing this for a few years is sometimes it's best to change up how you do your chores depending on the time of year and the situation. I think there was one point in my life where I would have been so stubborn as to keep trying to get water out to them first thing in the morning versus last night I made sure they had plenty of water for the early morning and and basically was able to just let them have kind of their mornings to themselves and I come out here it's like just about noon right now and I'm able to move them and it's super easy and I don't have to fight anything versus trying to get the lines all dethawed at previous times in my life that could have very much been the case. Wait, what's going on? We have baby Jin over here! She was sound asleep until you came growling up. "Oh, hey Jenny! Getting a little nap?" And then Pablo's there into a kale in his little… oh, oh! So, they are sleeping in the brasas! Both of them look like they're getting better!