Speaking of mess, would you look at these three troublemakers? They are always around here causing trouble
Wait, how did the door get locked? What the heck did you guys just lock the door on me? That is some serious mud we got going here everybody. What do you think, Jenny Barncat? You don't like the mud either? Wait, Jenny just leaped right on top of me with her Muddy Paws. So it's been a wild couple of days here on the farm. We have had very warm temperatures. 3 days ago was actually 60°. We've gotten a ton of rain. We've had flooding here on the farm, as you can see by looking even at the Garden. Most of the snow on the farm is melted and yeah, we are unquestionably in the thick of mud season here. And so I figured we'd do a quick walk around and I'd show you what's going on and tell you what's happened because right now on the farm things are a little bit of a mess.
Since all the snow melted, I've actually let them run around the farm for the most part in the lower area and they're starting to eat some of the weeds and get into some of the berock. And so yes, the farm has also been embroiled in Goat chaos. All right, back off boys. I come bearing goat treats. Excuse me, Baracus. Excuse me, Abby. What are you doing? You want to get pet? You don't like all this goat chaos? Well, here we're going to give some goat treats and some Abby pets and everybody's doing okay here on the farm this afternoon. Barnas, how'd you end up with a goose feather on you? You guys are a total mess.
While the goats are busy doing their thing, I'm going to take the dogs and we're going to complete the egg collection for this afternoon. Good afternoon, Birds. You'll actually notice there's a surprising lack of birds around the the bird cpop. You'll also notice our big Glacier is starting to finally melt. But the really interesting thing that's going on right now the fact that most of the birds we actually back here hanging out by the pool. Are you getting all sassy with me there Goose or Goose? Yeah, most of the water foul have been hanging out in this seasonal stream that we have as everything's melted. They've been keeping very busy. Like you can see we've got like a little stream going here because I think at its peak we had I don't know about 2 and 1/2 ft of snow on the ground and at this point there's like virtually none. Some of these shadier spots over by the woods still have some and some of the spots where you have snow that fell down to accumulate has some. But overall, most of the Snows melted. I mean, we could always get another snowstorm, so I don't want to act like winter is done and it's just time to move on. But I will admit as I look at what's going on here around the farm, it does have some serious like summertime Vibes and one of those summertime Vibes is the fact that it seems like there's eggs everywhere. This is what I collected so far. As you can see, it's I don't know almost a dozen chicken eggs and about four goose eggs. I was waiting so long and getting so worried that I wasn't getting any goose eggs and now they're just coming left and right. I bet you if I check the nesting spots right now, I'm going to find even more. Let's check this one here. Nothing in there, huh? Abby dog, let's check this one. Oh yeah, there we go. Another big old goose egg. Come on, Toby, help me look for more goose eggs. We going to go check the other nests? No, no. All right, that looks looks like it. So our grand total is five goose eggs for the day. Now let's see what we got for chicken eggs. Oh yeah, six 7 8 9 10 11 12. All right, so it looks like I got 12 chicken eggs.
You can see this chicken egg is kind of dirty and gross. This one's clean. That's because I need to build new rollway nesting boxes for my chicken coup and what I want is them to all come out looking pretty much like this like you know this is almost perfect this one not so much. If I build new roll away nesting boxes, the eggs should roll away before the chickens can get them dirty or they can get into some poop and it'll keep my eggs much cleaner. And so before the chicken Co gets ready to go outside for the summer months, I've got to build that and so you'll probably see me do that project in the next couple of weeks and that'll prevent us from having these gross and dirty eggs. The other thing I just found while I was checking for our eggs is look at this one. See this? This is what's known as a fairy egg. My guess is that one of my new chickens that uh I hatched out last summer, this was probably one of their first eggs and sometimes when they do that first egg or they're just starting back to laying, they will make these tiny little eggs and so that's what we got here. This little tiny one will probably end up as a part of Abby dog's dinner, isn't that right girl? Abby is in clear goofball mode right now. Would you look at her? The chickens don't quite know what to make of it either. I also ended up collecting uh three duck eggs on the day too. To give you the size comparison, this is the goose egg egg, this is the duck egg and this is the chicken egg. You can see actually surprisingly this duck egg is actually not that much uh bigger than the chicken egg. So I'm going to guess that this is like one of the early young duck eggs. This chicken egg is pretty much an exactly normal chicken egg and this goose egg is a pretty normal goose egg. So that is your size comparison and by the way the shell on these guys is significantly harder.
All right, we got more chores to do. Come on Dougs. Toby dog, Abby dog, come wait, why is the the door locked? What happened here? Wait, how did the door get locked? What the heck Abby dog what happened here? Oh my gosh, did you guys just lock the door on me? I won't believe it. Do you see that latch right there? You know, you push it in and that's what locks the door at night so you know the birds can't get out and nothing can get in. But apparently the goats have figured out how to lock that door and so they just locked us inside. Let's see if I can open this door using the tripod latch. ly get out of here. Nope, I don't think so. I think I'm going to have to hop a fence. You know, it used to be really easy just even a couple of days ago to hop this fence. Now it's a little trickier. They don't bend the fence too much. Hey, hey, hey Lauren, get down. Lauren, Lauren, do not try to jump that fence. That is the last thing I need. If you if you start jumping that fence, you guys are going to be on permanent lock down and I got to let the dogs out. Come on, Toby dog. Come on, Abby dog. Come. I feel so bad for them. They got locked in by the goats.
All right, everybody, come with me. We're going down to check on the cattle. The goats think it's time to go back into their home, which is probably not necessarily A Bad Thing. They've been on some very bad behavior. But yeah, here you can see our pasture. Let's take a look at how flooded things are. So this is that Channel that I was telling you about earlier that runs down here and then this is the actual pasture. This is our pond right here. Somehow with all the wind and storms that we had, this ended up blowing down here and yeah, this area over here is just kind of a soggy muddy mess. I got to admit I was actually very worried the other day that my cattle were going to get flooded out. But things got close but not too bad. Like if you look at the footage of here from uh even just 24 hours ago, I actually shot the footage that you're seeing right now. Most of this area where I'm standing was completely underwater and pretty much all the way up to the cattle area was underwater. It was really bad and it got dangerously close. You know, when I set up the cattle panels last fall, I was actually trying to be very careful or something like this happening and I took measurements last spring about where the high water mark was for when things flooded down in this lower pasture and it pretty much ended up being like about 20 ft or 15 ft from where I put all the cattle panels and the truth of the matter is at this point I wish I gave the cattle even more space. Like as you look at where things stand right now, you can see even just over here the edges of this area are starting to get flooded in and it's just kind of turned into a Mucky muddy mess. I mean, it's not the end of the world, but it also not all that pretty. How you doing Annabelle getting a drink of water right there? I see Betty Rubble, my new favorite calf, coming in to get a drink of water too. So Betty is actually Annabelle's daughter, so they are related but she's like nope let your mom drink first that's the rules of the farm.
Even though I don't love coming in here right now, let's come inside and check on the cattle. Come join me in the muddy swamp, buddy. He's like nope I don't want to be there. You'll also notice that Abby dog who's usually like the first one to the cattle yard when I'm coming in here to visit she is nowhere to be found too because there are parts of their yard that are just pure swamp at this point. I'm even just starting to drop hay bals in here to soak up some of the mess. You know, I did such a good job and I was actually kind of proud of myself for how clean I kept this area this winter just coming in here and scooping up the poops. You can actually see most of my compost pile from the cattle right back there behind that fence and so I felt like I was doing such a good job but now at this point it's like almost impossible to keep things clean cuz it is just such a muddy Mucky mess. The good news is too this was a big enough area that the cattle can do a pretty good job of getting out of this space and getting out of this mess themselves and so that's what you see here where for the most part they're hanging out on the higher ground that's where they're eating that's where they're sleeping and all that good stuff and it keeps them kind of clean. How's it going Amilia badila look like you've been scratching yourself on that brush? Yes, the BR brushes have been very popular with all of the animals. The goats and the cattle really like the brushes. Hi baby be how are you want to say hello come here sweetheart yes I don't have any treats or brushes for you today but I will Boop you on the booper snoot good girl. We're still probably two or 3 weeks away from calf watch and so my hope is that a lot of this space dries out and there's not nearly as much mud for when the calves come. If there is still this much mud, I actually again set this area up with a little bit of forethought and if I want to I can move even just the moms and the calves out that way into drier cleaner space or I can even move them up the hill into the permaculture Orchard and so that was like actually one of the advantages of keeping them here and so I don't really know what I'm going to do and it's going to be very based on the weather.
Did you guys see that jinny Barn cat's over there and both Betty Rubble and Betty White are very curious about what's going on with jinny? The cows do not like jinny at all. Now you can see Buffy the Vampire Slayer just came in here. Annabelle's coming in. They're all curious about who's this other cat coming in. They do not like her at all, particularly the Cales. Like I think the adults are kind of used to them but the Cales do not like the barn cats. Hey Jenny want to come over here and visit with me? No, you're going to stay on that side of the fence. It's probably a smart choice. You don't even want to be in this yard anyway. Yeah, you don't really want to roll around in the muds do you? Well maybe she does. Let's see what happens. See the Cals are like wait what's this thing up here? All right, I was going to give you a kitty back ride to the other side if you want. You want to come or no? Okay, come on, we'll get out of the swamp. Yeah, she does not like to walk around here at all just like the dogs don't like to walk around here at all. Especially right by the gate is actually the wetest and the grossest just cuz it's like the furthest downhill and as I've said in other videos my plan is to not keep them like this for next year. All right and out I go too. I can't believe you passed up a chance to go visit the cattle but I guess that's not that surprising if you look at my boots. Toby dog actually went into the cattle Paddock yesterday and his feet were just so muddy and gross I ended up washing them off for him. Yeah yeah buddy you know in a couple weeks you're going to have to get groomed get all some of this winter fur off of him and I know I'm probably getting tricked into fool spring here but I don't know the the spring Vibes are just getting really strong here on the farm.
All right, let's see how our sap collection is going. This one is looking oh wow this bucket is almost entirely full. I'm going to boil my sap tomorrow so it's pretty good timing. This one it's actually not looking too bad it's about half full but this one with two Taps filled up probably the next video you guys see from me will be me making my maple syrup. You'll see me put up the Taps collect with the buckets and then what I do tomorrow when I evaporate everything this contraption that you see right here this is actually my maple syrup evaporator just getting it ready to go for tomorrow. It should be a nice day of just kind of hanging out outside tending to the fire and actually I will probably be editing a book so um you you guys know I've been working on two books this winter my other book the one that it'll probably come out like spring of 2026 it's like kind of a story about like leaving the city and moving to the farm that book I'll probably actually be doing some final edits and just checks and revisions before I have to submit it to my publisher for a first draft so like uh yeah I got work to do still you know I really set my calendar of like work and projects for like the seasons and so I try to do all of my writing work in the winter months which I feel like actually came out pretty good this year and uh it's timing out where I'm just finishing that project right as all the stuff that I have to do outside is like coming to bear and so uh I don't know it's going to be time to get busy.
Hey dogs I got food for the dogs I got food for the dogs I just walked around here when I was just checking to see if they were ready to be fed and the goats like it was like I almost caught them stealing or something it look so guilty when they sprinted back into their area they're ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? Jenny, you are not allowed to have that dog. Sorry girl, get out of there. Get out of there. Go go go go go both you. Hey, hey, get out there. There she is. Isn't V there are many ugly farms in America as ugly as this good boy. Oh yes, she is the ugliest Farm in am and that's why I don't do all ducks go to bed anymore. They know how to put themselves to bed the ugliest Farm in America.
So I will admit that a part of me is feeling kind of like overwhelmed because I look around the farm right now and I'm just seeing like all sorts of work that I have to do. But at the same time, I'm like Wicked excited about it too because I feel like this middle part like this ugly messy part where like everything's transitioning and it's like the end of one season and the start of another and there's a lot of things that need to be done that like that right there is actually the most exciting and the most fun part and where like the really like I don't know the magic of the farm ends up happening and so I'm very much looking forward to it. I hope you guys have enjoyed this video update. If you want, you should watch another video right here or you can maybe check out this video right here or maybe Jenny is going to try to crawl up me and uh say goodbye to you or maybe she won't. Thanks for watching everybody but thanks for watching everybody. I was like trying to end the video and see if she would do it on and she didn't but then she did it right afterwards so yeah it doesn't always work out perfectly when she climbs me.