Day 734 - Flail Mowin & Garden Talk with Jamie

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TudorKing.com. First time using a flail mower and this thing, I like the way it cuts, much more than a rotary cutter. This kind of like mulches it over and over again, kind of like mulching blades on a regular lawnmower. But you can see these, how they work. They just flop around and chop, chop, chop. So it's spinning top down in this orientation. So spinning in this direction, which means when the back side gets dull, I can spin these around and have the front side as well. That's pretty cool. And of course, they're easy to change out. You just put one bolt. Now it's easy, but it's a little bit repetitive. There's quite a few of these teeth. So, uh, anyway, this did a good job. I liked the fact that they have a roller on the backside over here, uh, this roller right here, so I can tilt it so that the rollers down. And then from there I can adjust the angle, uh, to get the height that I want. But in my location, it's not necessarily about getting the height you want as much as it is about trying to avoid scalping the dirt, because it's just so lumpy and bumpy where I was cutting. And, oh, I just noticed this. There's an adjustment here that you can adjust the position of the roller. I don't think I would ever do that, but yeah, there it is. That's pretty cool. Now, of course, this motor is not obviously PTO driven, so it's all hydraulic driven. So you've got a hydraulic motor over here. Looks like a one-way valve right here, and there's three hoses. I don't know the reason for the third hose, uh, but we have our standard one and two hoses, and then this third one. I need to research the, uh, the functionality behind this. Just, just educate myself. I don't know what the third line is for, but you can't mess this up. These are all sized in one, one configuration, so they, they can't accidentally be switched. As you can tell, I did not mow everything over here. I mainly wanted to figure out what this mower's good at, and where I should not use it, and also tidy up just a little bit. I tried to get all this over here. I got most of it, but I'm really, this is a good example of, of the condition of this whole future orchard area. We've got a big dip right there, followed by a big lip right there, and a big hill right over there. Everything's just so crazy lumpy and bumpy, and while it does mow in this area quite well, it also scalps. Like, I tried to get close right here and ended up getting too close because I hit dirt, you know what I'm saying? And then over here, uh, the, the, these three stumps over here were completely covered in vegetation, uh, especially that middle one, which still has a, uh, chia top. Ch-ch-ch-chia. Remember those? Anyway, uh, cleared out all this, but again, I'm scalping on the high spots, and then really scalping on the high spots, so, uh, and then I cleaned out all the way over to the culvert area, so we can better see vehicles coming up, but in the middle, I didn't do too much. I mainly focused on the perimeter, got that over there, and then came back on that side over there as well. I got another burn pile right here in the middle, and still, just still have debris everywhere. Now, not all of this debris is from the ice storm. The majority of it is from the ice storm, the big stuff like this, but let me see if I can't walk over here and I'll show you. We still have a bunch of debris from two years ago when we got this, uh, professionally forestry mulched, paid, I forget how much it was, $1,200, I think, to forestry mulch an acre, and we still have some bigger stuff like this that was from the original forestry mulching, but it's getting better and better and better and better and better. What I need to do now, not right this second, but the next step over here, I think, is I need to put the box plate on the tractor and back over the ditch, because there's a ditch that runs this entire perimeter, and then pull that berm, there's a berm all the way across, just pull that berm towards the center of this area and just grab and pull and grab and pull and kind of feather out that edge just a little bit and work some of these low spots and just kind of sort of level it out before I, before I make this place really easy, or this space rather, really easy to maintain with a mower of any kind. That's basically it for this video. I wanted to make sure that I kind of figured out how the flail mower works by itself, also how it works in conjunction with the mini skid that's actually powering it, and so far I really like it. I can get, I can get really close up to these trees, not the one I'm actually pointing to, I can get really close up to those trees without scalping the trees, which is fantastic. Much, much easier, it's still time consuming, but much easier than say with a rotary cutter or bush hog on the back of a tractor. I can get really close really easily. That's it for this one though. I'm going to switch gears and I think we're going to put the auger on the mini skid next and drill a bunch of holes because we got the material in for the fence around the garden and that's probably going to take a few days. By the way, you see Jamie right there? Maybe you can, maybe you can't. Right, that's a burn barrel and that's Jamie. She's using a wheelbarrow and a shovel and why would you use a wheelbarrow and a shovel when we have a tractor and a mini skid, both with a bucket and I can move all this stuff much easier. I'm a horrible husband for not offering it, right? No, that's not the case. I ask her all the time if she wants to use the bucket and tell her, hey, you're spending too much energy, we should use the bucket and hydraulics and she's a go-getter. She just grabs a shovel or whatever and a wheelbarrow and she gets it done. Yesterday we had a huge productive day as far as getting stuff done. A lot of that's not on camera, so I thought I would just go ahead and give y'all some updates on what all we've done. One of the major things we did was we went ahead and we planted a lot of the plants that I had started from seed in the garden. It's just getting warm here and they weren't looking the best in the containers anymore just because I think they were ready to get out and instead of planting them in bigger containers just for a couple of weeks just to move them back, we decided that we're just going to go ahead and put them in the garden. So, the garden's not quite ready as far as like the finished touch. We don't have the fence up or anything like that and that was a big worry for me. I did not want to originally put the plants in the garden until the fence was up, but it's just going to take longer than I anticipated to get that up. So, what we decided to do was we put up this. Here, let me turn the camera around so I can show you. We put up this orange barrier tape and there's nothing to this. It's just a visual little tape that the dogs can see and we put that all around this big rectangle. Not the whole garden, but a good third of the garden. We did like that and we went ahead and planted and at first I was like hopefully they will respect that boundary and we'll be good and we just watched them yesterday and they did really well. We had a couple of them where they cut the corner like they'd come in this way and then just sneak over and we were fine as long as the kids weren't playing around it and hollering. They didn't want to come in. They respected it. They just kind of sat on the outside of it and watched us and we're very, very good. So, I'm hopeful that this will work fine as far as keeping them out until... Ah! Greasy, I was just bragging on you. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out. Y'all gonna have to go. Go on. Go on. Just bragging on her and then what does she do? She goes right in there. Telling you. Telling you. Telling you. Just like kids. Greasy. No, Ollie. It's because they're playing right here. Go on. Go on. So, let me show you what we planted. Um, this first row here and he's such a little guy is uh tomatoes. I had more tomatoes than I realized. Um, I planted several in containers and I planted them kind of thick and I did that because not everything comes up. So, I had some containers with five tomatoes in it and that's another reason they needed to come out because they were just way too crowded and then Nathan, you know our friend Nathan, he loves to give me plants. I think that's awesome. I love that and so he brings me stuff all the time. So, he planted a garden this year at his place. Um, but he bought his plants, I believe. I don't think he grew anything from seed this year and so he brought me a bunch of tomato plants. He's like, I have extra. This I had more than I needed for the rows he had. So, he brought me these which are very nice um tomato plants and they're way bigger than mine and he bought one, two, three, six. So, he gave me six of those but so between the six he gave me and the ones I planted we ended up planting 52 tomato plants yesterday and that sounds like a lot but some of them are kind of little and so I'm hoping that they do make it and we don't lose any but if I do I have more than enough here to still have a good harvest if they all don't make and do well and stuff with that amount. Um, again this is the new garden this year. Last year I don't remember how many tomato plants I had. It wasn't too many maybe like 10 and they did not produce very well and I think that was just because of the conditions they were in. However, uh this year it's better conditions still not perfect conditions and stuff. This is the new established garden um probably deficient in a few things and stuff just because I didn't put tons of well fertilizer and all that other stuff down but we'll just see what happens and we're very curious like we just see it as like every year we're just gonna get better and better and we're just not gonna sweat the small stuff we're just gonna keep learning and just keep going and see what happens. So again this whole first one-third of the garden ended up being tomato plants and the rows aren't very big and stuff either and I like them this way and then I don't know if we've showed you this maybe we have or have not but you know we had the the tree service company coming and dropping off wood chips so what I've done here is literally what the original plan was we we made our rows here and then in between is the walkway and I have that with I don't know maybe an inch of wood chips all the way down and stuff to help with the weeds and whatnot and I'm really hoping that that helps maintain this garden and doesn't get it where it's just overwhelmed with weeds and whatnot and so far ever since we've had this even before we planted there's there's nothing out here like I haven't had any um weeds or grasses come up yet so hopefully and stuff that continues to be the thing all right so this here's the barrier line this is where we stopped and stuff with the boundary for the dogs but we stood went ahead and still planted a few things over here so this these two rows are going to be corn and they're kind of planted in closer rows than those and just I'm just experimenting to see what does best so those are are two rows of corn and so is this this is just a wider section I think five five strips of corn planted in that and so we'll see what does better as far as like it producing and coming up and then actually standing up and being able to take the elements such as the wind and the rain uh clustered together this is the the last thing we planted yesterday this is going to be a trellis system so these are cucumbers and we we talked it over and this is what we came up with so I have two types of cucumbers here and I can't give you their true names but this side right here is like the long slicing cucumbers that you think about and stuff that grow kind of long that are good in salads and stuff like that and so I have three of them planted and I have more that are babies I didn't plant them out here yet they just did not they're not big enough they're not established enough in my opinion to go into the ground so we didn't put those there and we just put a stake a temporary stake beside them that kind of says hey I'm here don't step on me um and hopefully the dogs respect that until we get the fence around it and on this side we have a few more these are the the smaller little what I call pickling cucumbers and I got them on this side and then what we're going to do is we're going to get us some cattle panel and we're hoping to do that as soon as maybe tomorrow get the cattle panel anyway I'm going to call around today and try to get some good prices and determine where we're getting it from officially and see if I can get that ball rolling well we're going to trail us on over here and let it climb up and kind of make like a little cave and then I have some strawberry plants and what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to come back and put them uh right through here and so when the cucumbers get to growing over there give them a little bit of shade and I think they're going to enjoy that because I got them in um I have two uh two strawberry plants now and they don't appear to like the the direct sun where they're at now in those little cups outside so I think they're going to enjoy that little shade and hopefully do well and then I'm hopeful also that that'll help keep some of the the pest away from them from what I understand strawberries are one of those things like the birds like and we have birds they're always hollering through here so I am curious to see if that helps uh keep it to keep the pest off of them I also planted like a bunch of companion flowers and I'm hoping that they grow up that I can plant with some of these uh plants I had some marigolds I planted that I plan to put in between the the uh tomatoes up there and hopefully they make and do well I was able to put two marigolds out between them yesterday but that's all that I had ready to go so we'll just have to see what happens um but one benefit of this garden and this is kind of one of those um oh wow this happened we didn't even realize so last year before we determined we were going to make this a garden this whole area right through here was just these little yellow flowers and so then they were so pretty well we looked them up and found out what they are and they're some sort of wild marigold and I was like well I wonder if they do the same as far as pest control um as the domesticated species that we have so I'm hopeful of that and they're this area is full of them like if I squat down right here and show you just like right here that's what all of this is these little wild little yellow marigolds that come up and they came up thick last year and were very nice so I'm hopeful that they do that again this year it was mowed down and and that's why a lot of it is small again but again I'm hopeful to see what happens and hopefully that again will help with the pest yesterday these are some last minute sticks and roots that were in the garden we I mean we made this a big event like y'all we have some friends we have some friends uh Nathan came over he brought his boys uh y'all met Lucas Lucas is uh around Tyler's age they came out here they him and Tyler were picking up these roots out of the garden so that Nathan can till it I was over here making some more rows pulling this stuff up his um older son Gabe came out and he's I think he's supposed to be 15 and he took over he did this and he was great like his dad I just saw him a couple times like hey you have to sit down and get out of the sun like it's hot and stuff like that's not a suggestion you got to do that you have to take a break from it because you get hotter out here than you think while all this is going on Jay was like mowing and doing other things but he would come in and go out there's just so much stuff happening all at once and so it's nice today to come back and look at it and be like wow yeah this is great we we had a huge huge productive day and so not only did we work on the garden this weekend but we also worked on the orchard area and really cleaned it up and I'm sure he's got footage of that that he'll show you as well but we just we just tackled it and we've done some things and it's been great um and we're just really looking forward to spring and seeing what all we can do and just making this property more and more enjoyable as the day goes by show you my next task that I've got going on this morning and uh show you some more things that we got going on that you may or may not have seen I don't sometimes I don't know what all day is recorded so I don't know uh what he has and hasn't shown you but let me show you this over here real quick these are some burn bins or rings that we had they were just sitting over there in the middle of the clearing uh with no purpose they were just hanging out I feel like we have a big collection spot over there was like okay this is all usable stuff we need to find a goal for it and use it and we just hadn't done that yet well Saturday I got out here and I was like you know what I got a purpose for it so I took them I got me some spray paint I spray painted them white and then this is all my compost this is all compost I made so some of it's a little thick on there's a little bark here on top but overall it was really nice and rich and black and so we just filled this up with some uh firewood that Jay had already cut up on the bottom and just kind of layered it and then put the compost on top of it and I just flooded these beds with uh different flowers there's some uh marigolds in here there are zinnias in here I put some impatiens around the front I mean it is just flooded it's like if this if these seeds do come up I'm probably gonna have to thin it and um thin it quickly because this this is way too many seeds for this this size uh container but I'm hopeful that they come up and do well over here and again I have this one and then this one right over here and it's the same way I planted them in the same strategy and so nothing's came up yet but um hopefully in the next couple days we'll get some sprouts and we'll be able to kind of see what happens um I'm also curious to see what happens because the zinnias and the marigolds I planted in here is seeds I collected last year so I'm just curious to see like did I harvest them correctly they gonna make it what's the percentage that's gonna make it that kind of thing I said I planted them heavy just to just to see what they do so uh turning this area into really just an enjoyable area and stuff like we've really enjoyed since we got the wood chips down and the gravel down like it's just been nice and hopefully before too much longer we'll get some benches made and it'll just be an area you can come relax I guess it's morning right now just a beautiful morning this is a time to come to sit out here and relax or whatever you want to do and Tyler has got where she likes to bring her school work outside and she sits on the mule a lot and a water that water catchment we got um container over there and just does her school work so hopefully this would be an area that she can come do that and enjoy uh her morning while getting work done um this is the the bomba light jade see she's got the flow more on it he mowed yesterday and I'm going to reap the benefits of that this morning because at one section that he mowed there's just grasses green grasses um so I'm going to rake that up and that's going to be some start of some new compost that'll be the first compost I've uh start making this year and I need to do that sooner than later because I made a good little bit last year but sadly uh where I put it was in a bad location because I had it uh hold on let me see if you can get over here I had it over here where the that tractor is over there and that's where the wood chips went so it kind of got all mixed in and a lot of it isn't true compost as far as um readiness at this point because of that because it has a lot of those fresh wood chips in it however I'm not complaining those wood chips have been a blessing we're just going to get better and everything will eventually get a place and it'll all work out. Jay took the bomba light with the grapple and he picked up so much stuff so much stuff we had a huge fire just right here and stuff just from all of the the storm debris what we had from the ice storm back in January we just were able to pile that up and really just get rid of some stuff and it was amazing and so with him doing that and then me and Tyler Cahill helping a little bit um with the little trailer attachment we gathered up so many sticks it was like way higher than we were um and he's actually I don't know if you can see it way out there is another pile that we're gonna have to burn too that we just piled up and it burned so well because it was so dry so we were very pleased with that and very productive day we're really trying to make sure this area here does not overtake us this year there was a lot of poison ivy again out there and we're just trying to get it where we can keep that mode keep that down and hopefully get these trees down this year so that we can really start planning on the future orchard like that is really in the cards as far as like nailing that down this year and maybe not getting everything planted per but really getting the layout down pat and really getting the area just taken back over so we can enjoy that in the coming years one of the downsides to the garden right now is we do not have our water retention plan in place and so we want to rain harvest off the root of of the the shop here and catch the water and do that um but we need tons and tons of water and the catchment containers we need have to be so huge and they're kind of costly we have a small one now and then we think we're going to build a small pond and that's going to be how we we um pull the water through however right now i don't have that so what we did last night is we got hooked this up got it ready to go i filled this up with just our city water and i've just let it kind of off gas overnight and this is just going to have to be what they use i want while all of the plants were in um their little containers i was using reverse osmosis water which is what we drink in the house but that i'm killing the filter on that because it's so much water it takes to do that that like it's it's getting slow and the filter's old we bought a new filter but the the holding tank is only i think four gallons so it's just not big and i'm just really putting a hard knock on it and so we've decided that we're just going to give this a shot and see what happens and so i'm going to water it real good today and then i may not water the garden again this week i think it's supposed to rain thursday and it's kind of an overcast day today anyway so um we'll just see what happens and stuff and how often i need to do this based on the appearance of the plants until we get that catchment plan in place but hopefully it comes along in the next few weeks and we're we're good to go like everything here i feel like the projects are always bigger than what we think they are they take longer and we've just learned patience like okay it is what it is like we're okay with it once we see progress we're good it may not be like the finishing touch but again progress is progress and we're okay with that so let's let me get this situated here and we'll take this over there and i got me a little gal and juggling me over there a minute watering these these plants but i don't care i enjoy taking care of the garden i really enjoy watching the things grow and especially when they come to blossom and whatnot this trailer we we enjoy it this is a good buy we really do think that but if you notice it's not level is probably was more used for like a lawnmower or something something that was a little lower so we're gonna put bigger wheels on it and kind of level it out over time and i think it'll be easier yeah a little water spilling out the back right there i feel like when i take the lid off i'm gonna lose a little i'm not parked this level i guess but overall most of it made it so that's that's a plus all right so i'm just gonna set this up and we're just gonna make um i don't even know how many trips back and forth but we're gonna get it done i actually watered a lot of plants right there with just one bucket i don't know why i thought we needed so much water um when i think about it that doesn't make any sense i wasn't using this much water when they were all in the pots up there but it's okay we're just over prepared so i'm gonna take a second and talk about the four-wheeler we got so this is going to be my primary ride around the property and so if i had the mule but the mule was older and it started giving us little issues and jada hasn't had time to debug it completely we don't plan on getting rid of it plan on getting it um fixed and being a useful vehicle around the property but in the meantime i needed something to help me take care of the garden and just kind of put some around the property and get stuff done so we looked at different side by sides we looked at different four-wheelers and this is what we came up with so we got we ended up going with a kawasaki brunt force uh 450 i didn't want the that they had out there i just didn't think i'd use that potential um so we looked at several different brands we looked at honda we looked at this we looked at polaris just kind of all the the options that the local market had and this was the one that just went out and so if we were very happy with it it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of the the bigger four-wheelers but again i didn't want that and so we decided that this was going to be the best suited four-wheeler for me and um go around the property sorry i'm a throat this morning it's all scratchy and i like it we we went through we looked we were very impressed with this one overall um we looked at honda they just didn't have any of the lower stuff like everything was like all uh top of the line and it was like i'm just not going to use that for that for its potential i don't want that i want something i can just pay well right here not make payments on and just be done um so that kind of got knocked out of the the options real quick and then we went looked at this next and we really liked it and then we're like you know what we like it but we want to go look at one more just to make sure so we ended up going to like a local co-op that had uh polaris's and we just we weren't they just weren't going to fit our bill and so there was just things we didn't like about it one of the things that was told us on this one was the the hitch on this one i mean it's just a standard receiver here and we already had this we bought this a few days prior this was a um find on marketplace um a gentleman was selling this at a reasonable price and we're like hey yeah we want that that took to a full wheeler good to go and that's all i need i don't need anything crazy just something like i said that i can pull whatever it is i want to uh pull around the property to take care of just maintenance needs as well as the garden and so we got it it isn't level with the full wheeler i think that the gentleman that had it probably pulled it like around with a lawnmower or something um but we've looked at some options we can do to kind of level it out to make it easier and we think what we're going to do is just put bigger wheels and tires on it and that should level it out so we don't have that problem anymore um one of the things we like about this this whole uh system here this just comes off like i could just take that off and do whatever we want he also had it where there's a like a gate back here with the little latch and stuff we could take off so if i wanted to lift this up i could um and because it comes off uh it's not attached in any way we just he said he used a zip tie when he did it so we had this little his little ties here and it's been perfect i haven't lost it yet pulling it around and i've pulled it um around the property especially um the day before yesterday and stuff picking up sticks in the orchard and it was perfect perfect for the task again we just want to get it level so that it just rides smoother and then has a little bit more ground clearance because we don't always have the the levelest of land out here but anyway great great great attachment to it's going with my four-wheeler um and again i think we we made a good choice we've been very happy with it it's just smooth this is just a smooth smooth ride and if you know me that that's who i am like i'm not this big mud rider i just you know i'm just we got a task give me the the equipment i need to get the task done i don't i don't need all the bells and whistles i just i just don't i'm not going to use them so there's no reason for me to have them not only is it um uh more cost and if you don't use it uh again it's just like what's the purpose and so so this is the one i was most satisfied with when we went looked at it and and it's funny i told you i said because he's like well which one do you want you know again we looked at three different options and um i told him i said i want to go with this one and i said i want to go with it for a couple reasons i was like i like the price of it uh i like um how smooth it is getting on i i like that it doesn't have all the bells and whistles it's just i like it and then i said and there's two other things i like about it and i said they're such girly girly reasons but i don't care i like them and i'm gonna give them to you and he's like what are that and i was like i like the color of it i think it's a pretty color and i said it has this little nifty cup holder too and i said i like that too and he was like okay and kind of chuckled or whatever so this is what we ended up with bringing home and so now we all three have four wheelers and we're happy about that um one of the first things we did when bringing it home was usually to take the trash out and tyler loved that because she gets on her four wheeler and we ride together and when the mule was working that was kind of our thing she would she would lead me down the driveway uh to take the trash out on her four wheeler and i'd follow in the mule and now we can do that just with this uh one of the things we joke about is now that we got the trailer the trailer is so loud it's just the metal base and stuff so i tell him i was like i feel like i'm that little kid on denis the menace um that he's got his little red wagon and he's going he's got all the things attached to it and he's so loud i said that's how i feel going down the driveway when it's on the rocks and it's kind of uh jiggling around us but i was like it's just that's a chuckle that's not a deal breaker or anything but anyway just wanted to introduce you to my new ride just gonna help do a lot of work around the property that i'm very satisfied with all right back over here at the log bed now again gonna do some weeding this morning and some good watering because again i have a container full of water that um was overuse for the garden so we're gonna use it over here and get this real good this area is becoming one of my favorite on the properties like everything in here is just thriving it's doing well we're getting some color in here getting these little blooms here coming up and then this one over here this is jay's favorite he just loves this flower it's almost in full bloom throughout the whole well not the whole plant but a good portion of it and it just has these gorgeous little like tri-colored flowers and then there's some white ones they're coming as well and it's just it's just blooming really nicely just making this so pretty and then both jay and tyler k love the sweet william they say it smells so good like it just smells like a flower shop just just good good good good so i just raked up a little grass some of this old grass this on top doesn't even green anymore that's probably from maybe even last year just been sitting on the ground so i raked it up and this is this is the old garden as sad as it looks um from last year they didn't do well at all just did not do well at all and so i figured this is a good place as any to start some compost here just because it's a barren piece of land nothing here and then once we get the the garden fix and we have our compost stalls over there i can just easily uh have jay come get it with um either the tractor or the bomber light and just move it over there but i didn't want to put it over there to start with just because i was scared that i might put it in the wrong spot might just be in the way trying to get the the fence and the panels up so i didn't want that to happen so i was like well i'll just put it over for now and then maybe tomorrow if i get a chance and we go out into the the woodland a little bit and rake up some more leaf debris and just stuff from last year uh where the leaves fell in fall and try to add that to it and just see what i can get over the next couple days and stuff because like i mentioned once before i think already today um my compost from last year got mixed in with the wood chips and just isn't very uh accessible at the moment and not only that but um i need more need more regardless and so so just trying to get a start on it while i got some materials that can be used to uh make that