You know, one of the questions I've been getting a lot lately is what are some of my plans for 2025 in terms of farm projects
Hey Abby dog, hey Toby dog, how's it going guys? Unfortunately, I'm going to actually have to leave the dogs behind today because you and I are going on a little adventure, and unfortunately, where we're heading on the farm, I can't take them with me, or at least take them with me easily. How's it going there, Betty Rubble? The girls are just sitting here eating and loafing, eating and loafing.
I want to tackle and improvements I want to make. You know, there's a bunch of stuff I'm trying to avoid going too crazy. One of the things I want to try to do is figure out a new winter setup for the cattle. I'm going to also try to experiment a little bit with a better handling yard for the cattle, so like when I need to do medical stuff with them. I also have plans to use the goats in some experimental ways as groundskeepers around the farm. But far and way the biggest project I have on my to-do list is I want to make our farm bigger. And when I say bigger, I don't mean add more animals or buy a second farm or anything like that, but what I want to do is actually have more land on the farm that I can use for the farm.
So what I mean about that specifically is our farm is about 160 acres or so in overall size. And when you guys watch our videos this time of the year, you're basically seeing everything down that way, which is I don't know, about a 12 acre space that we use for the permaculture Orchard, the cattle yard, the bird yard, the hoop cop, the dogs, like all that stuff, plus our house and the Barns and that sort of thing. And in the summer months, we spend a ton of time up here, right? Like this is where the cattle are always grazing and where I'm always riding my bike, and we've got about, I don't know, 25ish acres of pasture up here. But if you're doing your math at home there right there, there's probably about 110, 115 acres that remained uncounted for. And most of that acreage is in forest. And I actually think it's really good to have a lot of your acreage in Forest. You know, that Forest really provides really good habitat for wildlife. It creates a buffer for our farm, and you know, it just does a lot of good things. And so keeping a farm in balance is actually really important, and part of that balance is having plenty of forest. Oh, look, you can see what I think are fox tracks that go that way. So you kind of notice this pattern that exists here where the fox was coming down that way, and then as soon as it got around to this side of the farm where you've got the dogs down that way, decides to Veer left and go that way because the dogs create this protective bubble. That protective bubble is actually one of the reasons why I really like having Wildlife like coyotes on the farm because they do good things for helping to balance the land, and I can rely on Toby dog and Abby dog to keep my bird safe. And so you don't really have conflict with Wildlife, you can more or less live in harmony. And so yes, I do think it's important to have forest, and we've got plenty of it.
But there is this one part of the farm way over there that's like a mixture of pasture and Forest. It used to be pasture. I don't know, over the last 30 or so years, it keeps growing out and becoming more and more foresty. And so that's what I actually want to show you guys in today's video. Oh, would you look at that? We got some relatively fresh coyote scat here. It's frozen solid but not too old. It's all going along these tracks that you guys see going through here. You can see on our pasture, there's still probably about 2, 2 and 1/2 ft of snow on the ground. If these tracks weren't already laid down, I'd probably be wearing my snow shoes right now because if you try to walk in the pasture snow, you'll just fall right through it. But yeah, we got to just keep heading that away.
All right, now to just give you a quick sense of where we are, this is the back corner of the pasture. So, you know, a lot of times in my videos, like in the summer, you'll see Abby dog and me come through the gate to go move the cattle. Well, this is actually the backside. And so the other gate is like directly on the other side of this field here. And as we get over here, this is the part of the farm I usually like to refer to as the secret pasture, meaning it's like uh, I don't know, it's kind of hidden. And like I said, it used to be like real deal legit pasture, but over the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years, it really hasn't been used much. I come through here and brush hog it, you know, once or twice a year just to keep it from overgrowing too much. But you can see there's trees that have sprung up. You'll see here in a minute, there's just like a lot of rough lines that come into play. But as a big project that I want to try to tackle in 2025, I actually want to fence this whole area in. And so what you're seeing here is a path for the fence. And so this is where the future fence is going to run. And you're probably going to notice it just looks like somebody's come through here and has been grinding down branches and brush and basically creating a clear path that is going to make it significantly easier for me to try to put a fence around this area. Come say, I don't know, May or June or whenever I actually start doing this work. Like, yeah, you can even see these Cedars, it's getting their branches grinded off. Like all of this, it's just it's a swath. And so everything you see actually on this side is going to be fenced in. And my initial plan is that actually in this pasture is where I'm going to keep my heers this year. So that includes Betty Rubble, who you guys saw just a little bit earlier, as well as Betty White and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bell. Like those four girls are going to be separated from the herd so that they don't breed with Macho Man. They're going to be living out here kind of in the wilderness. I mean, this will now become our farm's true Wilderness, and this side is going to basically turn into silvo pasture. But essentially with this change, our farm is going to have a new like furthest Outreach of like civilized space. Everything you're seeing right here is where the new fence is going to run. And so this stuff will be fenced in, this stuff won't. The cattle are actually going to love having trees because it gives them shade and shelter, but then I'll also probably start coming through here with like a chainsaw and just taking out more trees and thinning this out because what I really want to have is like this combination of good healthy mature trees, grass, and pasture, just like all mixed together as one habitat. You know, my main pasture has always been clearcut, but in a perfect world, it would actually have a mixture of trees and grass. What we're actually going to try to create out here is that mixture. Hear the noise? Yeah, that's what I'm going to to show you guys in just a minute because you're probably wondering what sort of equipment would you use to make a path like this? I'm going to give you that answer right now, and it comes at the courtesy of my buddy Alfred. My buddy Alfred, he lives on down the road. He's a wizard with machines, a genius in blue jeans. Let's stop and say hello. How's it going today? "Good. How are you?" "Pretty good. So what the heck's going on, Alfred?" "Well, we're cutting in a perimeter here for your New Pasture or your old pasture resuscitation of pasture, I suppose." "You've been out here what, it's been five days or so, six days?" "Four or five." "Five. Yeah. So so I have that molting head on, and I'm I'm going through and grinding down little trees like that. There were a bunch of Cedars. I can take the uh the limbs off and grind up all that debris, and it'll um I mean, you know, we still end up with bigger chunks like this, but it'll lay low on the ground and decompose rather quickly. Going along the top of the property was pretty easy. I just had to chew off all the Cedars on the edge of the existing pasture, and there were a few places where I found some wire running into a few old trees there. Coming down the southern boundary, pretty much the same thing, but this eastern boundary, this Lower Side, was a different Beast altogether because it was uh there no landmarks. I was just charging through the woods really."
"So for the way this actually worked in terms of planning, I had like a rough sketch of it. You made a better, less rough sketch on your phone, and you've basically been cutting to that line more or less." "Yeah, you know, with your rough sketch and the criteria being you you want as many straight lines as possible so we don't need to mess around with with Corner posts with the fencing or whatever. That's what I've had in mind while doing this work. And on this lower Edge, I kind of punch through through like the thinnest vegetation, the thinnest trees that I could. I've established a couple corners. There's there's one up here, very logical corner, and then I have my tractor parked down on another one. And now what I'm doing is just kind of cutting back this line so that I can maintain a line of sight between my tractor and this top corner, and I'm I'm really close at this point. I think maybe three or four more trees and it'll be be close enough." "I was going to say like it looks like it's almost connected cuz I' I pretty much just with these guys walked the entire perimeter of that side and was just going to do the full loop." "Yep. And so it looks like yeah, the full loop is not that far away." "Yeah, I finished the loop last night a little while ago because there was so much snow, I came through with my tractor and and kind of plowed. So I got back up onto that plowed road yesterday, and then what I've done in a few places is I've punched down through from the middle of the pasture, from that established Road, I've punched down through to this perimeter. I mean, if you're have doing any work down here with your tractor, it'll just be more convenient to come straight down the hill rather than having to circumnavigate the entire thing. You know, for the cows, I think just be, you know, give them Avenues to walk and yeah, I mean cuz like the the slow progress is going to be it's like I'll start just knocking out trees here and there inside just so that like the good stuff stays, but then the other stuff ends up like basically dying out either getting beaten up by cattle, which they do that, or it'll be something that gets cut down so that, you know, like every 10, 20 ft, I do want a tree, but I don't want it to be forest and like essentially reclaiming all of that." "Yeah, yeah, it'll be I think it'll be a Haven for the cows this summer. Yeah, if if that's what your plan is to have them in here, it'll be nice and shady and especially up top there's that that spring up there where you got stuck. You can cut to that footage."
So yesterday I was out brush hogging the secret pasture. Oh, look, a deer! when I suddenly became stuck in a whole bunch of mud. Boom! Swamp land right here! Who could forget that memory? "So show me the tool because I think folks will be actually really curious about idea of a forestry muler." "I was able to rent this from a guy in uh Southern New Hampshire. It works really well. Just has those teeth, those are cast steel teeth and um there's a hydraulic motor underneath that cover right there. So it's a direct drive thing and I think the thing spins at like 15, 16,700 RPM something like that. You know, a little tree like this, like that cedar, I'd almost be able to reach the top, reach up high, get the thing spun up and then I can just cam down through the tree, knead it right up. And I found that the Cedars Cedars are soft and they get eaten right up. White pine like that, that's pretty soft and also all these pasture Pines, you know, they split into multiple stems really quickly. Every single one of them, there's not a straight tree anywhere to be found, but they they uh get eaten up. And I think this is like such an important thing to recognize too. Like all these trees that we're seeing here are maybe not quite as young as we are, but they're not a lot older, right? The there I don't think there's a single 100-year tree within this pasture area. This is all stuff that sprung up after, you know, Vermont was clearcut at one point and that's where people just basically graze sheep. Things have grown back to the point where it's actually almost the ratio that it was say in like 1850 is like the opposite like 82 yeah 8020 or 75 25 something like that where it was 25% Forest 75 open now it's the other way around. And so it is essentially reclaiming that pasture the way it was was 150 years ago. So this eastern boundary, it's not so pronounced right here, but like a little bit further down where my tractors Park, you'll see there's a real distinctive drop off in the terrain and so I've kind of been using that as a control point. I went right up to that drop off and I'm sure you know that was the case that was like The Logical edge of a pasture 100 years ago or whatever." "Well, I mean even the reason why this turned the way it did versus the other pasture still stayed like a good hay field is this area area is much wetter and the soil is much more acidic than over there. There's a lot more clay here versus over on that side it's a lot more Sandy LOM and so like the reason they divided our pastures that way say 150 200 years ago is because they were looking at like what's the quality of the ground and can we use it or not and so you see that play out even today."
"So Alfred, what have you been doing this winter other than grinding out Trails?" "Oh, I've been driving a school bus. I don't I don't even know what what I've been doing. Sorry to put you on this spot." "Oh, I've been sewing pants." "You've been sewing? That's right. Yeah, you got pants. Do you do commission orders yet?" "No, not quite yet. I got I got a backlog of friends and families I got to chew through first. But yeah, if anybody's out there wants them, drop it down in the comments and maybe in six months you might be actually up and running." "Yeah, Kevlar reinforced work panels." "When I'm done with the mure, I'll probably fight my way back up into the Quarry and start splitting stone for a bunch of projects including your wall and a couple other projects that are on the actually if anybody is curious about this, Alfred has like a whole YouTube channel about his Quarry and what he does with stone, which, you know, this time of year isn't the best type of work, but in the summer it's incredible. And so um I'll leave a link for where as well as maybe link a video up here uh so you guys can check that out." "I think you can grind that tree. I give it to go. Yeah. Yeah." "All right, let's do it. Here it is, the old tree, a leader 9,000. That's amazing. Yeah, the cedar the cedar goes really well. Any of the hardwoods like whatever that is, some kind of cherry or whatever that uh it's stringier, it's a little harder to eat up. Yeah, I don't know, you know, I've gotten I I pick my battles now. Actually, what happened is I cut it with a chainsaw, tried pushing it one way, it didn't want to go. So I like, oh, I'll get the Machine push it over, and then I forgot that I cut it and knocked it over onto my machine." "Oh, jeez. And actually, you can see right there right behind you the cross that trees the mirror that knocked off." "Oh dear. That's what I get for forgetting about half cut trees. A real bad habit." "I was going to say, yeah, you're Lumberjack and be careful."
I feel like I am so incredibly lucky to have Alfred as a friend. He just comes up with the coolest solutions to problems. Like, you know, this all came about because I was like talking about wanting to expand this pasture but trying to figure out how to clear stuff out and like what equipment I need to rent and all that stuff. He's like, ah, I know what we can do. And he yeah, found that muler, figured out how to retrofit it to his excavator, and yeah, here we are. We've got a brand new Trail. Now, I know one question that's going to pop up in the comments from folks is why are we just grinding the trees up? Why am I not trying to log or do anything like that? Like, isn't it just kind of wasting the trees? And like if you would have asked me say, I don't know, 10 years ago about a project like this, I would be in the camp of, oh, that's really wasteful. But the more and more I'm out here on the farm doing projects on the farm, one of the things I realize is that sometimes