Life on Our Rescue Farm: Feeding Animals & Farm Projects

Mark and Tara here and welcome to the 10-acre woods. It's finally cooled down, the sun's shining, but it was single digits. It was single digits, almost single digits. I think it was 10 degrees this morning when we first got up. So yeah, August. So we are, what are we doing this weekend? So we had, oh last weekend we had our family reunion. So that went off really well. We had we were expecting about 60 people. I think we got about 40, 45 people that showed up and we fit them all in our living room kitchen for three meals. So Tara moved, was it four meals? Tara had moved around a bunch of the tables that we use for crafting. She's collected tables and chairs over the years and she moved a bunch of stuff around so it was one big wide open space. So it worked pretty good and then we came out here and we had a bonfire. There was a few people, I don't know, maybe a dozen, 15 people that stuck around later that night and sat around, had a fire. It was just good to see everybody again. It's been a number of years and yeah, it's good to reach out to family and we decided to just reach out and say, hey let's just get together as happened last year. You need to be an instigator on that to say let's do it and organize something and it went off great. And then we've got, I think I showed this last video, you can see the, you can see the McKean here which is our family name. So Tara planted that week. It's still there. The M is kind of, kind of losing half of it but, but yeah, so that's, that it was, it was good. So now we get out to feeding these guys. Morning. We were working over at our son's place yesterday doing some, some chipping, getting rid of some branches and today we're going to take down, not this building here, but there's another one almost identical to it. I think it's a little bit higher. It's down at the barn. So we're going to take that down, probably use it as a woodshed. The whole front of it is open. So that's today's task. I won't be able to record that. Maybe I'll show some spots of it in next week's video. And it's going to be a challenge. Tara wants to move the whole thing by putting wheels on it and rolling it down the road, but I don't think that's going to happen. And hey, so we had, we had a few hands last weekend for the 300 bales of hay, the second load. And that went actually pretty good because we had my brother, sister, my sister's two, two kids and we probably unloaded it. I think it was a half an hour. 31 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we are unload with 31 minutes. We are loaded for winter. So it's a, it's inevitable. Winter's going to happen. You know, you look back and you go, wow, summer's done. So we've got all of this here now full. Yeah. So he has a little scratch on his nose. There was some hay sitting right here. Oh yeah. Well, yesterday I came in here and he had his head rested right here as if to say, please serve me. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So these guys are done. We'll come out and we'll, we'll let these guys, we'll open up that gate once everything's done. Oh, right. Yes. Well, cause Bailey, you had in the barn and then we were testing her with hands on and she is a fighter. Yes. So we can't really have her in with the petting farm because she actually actively goes out to bite. Yeah. But here with us, it's okay. Like just don't undo those twines. Yeah, she will. Yeah. I guess she's already got her spot in there. They're already in place. Yeah. So this happens from time to time. We we just let the rabbits be rabbits. So they can't mate with domestic. They don't have enough chromosomes or there's an offset number of chromosomes. So domestic rabbits cannot mate with wild rabbits. All right, Bailey, live the life, live the life. Don't fight my ankles. Yeah. Yeah. And a bird update. So we've still got this mama here. She's sitting the pigeon that was over here has now grown up and it's probably learning how to fly. So that was a something we showed at the reunion. A lot of people got a chance to see a little, the little baby pigeon before it fledged. Tinker and Petunia's meals. Okay. And you've got this broccoli. Is that a whole broccoli in the bag? Yeah. Yeah. There is separated. Oh, she's already left me. I think I heard something about pre-cut. Oh yeah. Broccoli. Broccoli's on the menu and it's a race for PD. How much can he eat before? Oh, he doesn't care for the broccoli as much. Interesting. There are little bits of, um, what is that? That is not sure. Oh, uh, no, I don't know what that is actually. Oh, banana. There's some banana in there. He does love his banana. I think broccoli is their least favorite. It's conform. Yeah. That's not what we tell the kids. Eat your broccoli. It's good for you. Oh, the girls are out. And hey, yeah. Vegetables are not on the top of the list for all of the animals. Some of them like the dry stuff, the hay, and of course, grains. Oh, getting it on their back. Yeah. Yeah. Shimmer out yesterday. Oh yeah. Now the grains do keep them busy. They do love them, but they have to work for it. You don't want to give them too much grain at one time. So it takes them a while to go through that. Is there grain up there too? Oh yes, there is. Look at that tongue go. Picking them all up. Yeah. She's usually the one that jumps up on there. Good morning, Barry. Good morning. Yep. Mama's coming with some fruits and veggies and grain. We got Barry. We got Poppy. Where is Moo? Oh, oh, here she is. The grain. Poppy's going for the apple and banana. No lettuce, right, Barry? Oh, lettuce. Romaine lettuce is his favorite. So, Sheldon, you got some grains on you. Yeah. Mummy got you, didn't she? Charlie. Oh boy. Charlie. He says I'm busy. Don't bother me when I'm eating. Yeah, he's not fond of the broccoli either. Yeah, he's just skimming by it. Good. Well, you know their preferences. They'll leave that to the end. He's probably looking for the banana and apple pieces, which are his favorite. And then we have the hay eaters. Yeah, they like the dry stuff. Everybody's got their preferences. Okay, prepping for tomorrow? Yeah. What's on the menu for tomorrow? Kiwi, oranges, bananas, yams. Nice. Broccoli. Broccoli, yeah, lots of broccoli. Not the most favorite. It's very strategic because you have to use, like the apples last the longest, so, and that's like all given, they have apples almost all the time, but you have to kind of balance what they're getting, right? Like, so broccoli will give them gas, so you want that in the morning when they're walking around, not at night when they're sleeping. So it is kind of a balance, but. Yeah, yesterday I had a lady stop by. She was, I think from Morden, and she drives off, so to the east of us is Lake Country. People from the city, people from a lot of parts of the provinces drive out to the cottage country. Every area has a cottage country, and our road here is kind of the highway, the back road, scenic road to cottage country. So she stopped by yesterday, and she says, you know, I watch your videos, I follow you guys on Facebook, and I've got some fruits and vegetables. Can I donate them? And I said, well, as long as they're edible, you know, as long as we would eat them, then we'll give them to the animals. And she said, if they're a little brown, I said, if they're a little brown, they're fine, but not slimy, you know, we don't want, we don't want the gross stuff. We usually just do that as a compost, if we have extra that. So, so yes, she may stop by and drop off some stuff at her barbecue area in the coming week. Like that, is that, no. Yeah, questionable. Yeah, it's funny, because I like to do oranges last, oh, the citrus. You're cutting board. Totally true. Are you still using that Betty Crocker knife? This is still the Betty Crocker knife. What, 10 years? Yeah, yeah, you've been raving about that, your Betty Crocker knife. Dollarama. Well, it's cutting fruit, which isn't too bad. Oh, you get into potatoes and like the seeds, like, like, yeah, they're gritty. It's like, yeah, no, there's some work to be done. Here we go. One up for Betty Crocker. One up for Betty Crocker. After the reunion, everybody left, and it was my brother that was the last one to leave. My older brother, he is, what is he, seven years older than I am. And he asked, what can we do? What, what can I do? He was eager to get stuff done. So Tara mentioned that we need to bring the grains from the other building into this building. So these are the grains and these bags probably weigh 100, 125 pounds, probably even some of them more. Some of the wheat can be really heavy. So we spent, I don't know what it was, probably about half an hour, 45 minutes or so bringing these in. And yeah, he, he got a good workout. So I don't know if I caught anything on the cameras. I've got two cameras here. I should check that and see, see what I caught. So if you've been watching our videos, you will remember we had Ollie out here, Ollie the rabbit. So he was hanging out here and he was over in Toby's pen. Sad to say that he did pass. So Tiana was out one morning or one evening and she was feeding everybody. And she thought, oh, well, Ollie is just kind of relaxing over here. And she went over and yeah, Ollie did pass. So we knew he had a lot of health issues. Probably, it seems like stemming from birth. So the people that dropped him off, they had mentioned that no, he hadn't injured himself. And he was fairly young from what I remember. So from whatever reason, Ollie did go around and, and actually made friends with our West Highland Terrier, which is an odd combination. But he was just out here kind of living life and, and he didn't seem like he was in any kind of pain or anything. It's always difficult to tell with animals because they can hide it so well. But he was out here eating and running and doing things that rabbits should do. So, so we gave him some time out in the open and then he peacefully passed. So that's sad. But when you're on a farm, especially on a farm where you bring in animals from different areas, rescued animals that, you know, maybe have been neglected or maybe have been sick, things of that nature, then, you know, you do run into some issues. But anyway, so that's Ollie. So that is it for this video. Short little video, I think. I don't know how long I've been recording for. But Tara and I are going to head over. Actually, we're going to probably start taking apart the woodshed and see about hauling that over. With the cooler weather comes the cooler, cold weather. So we want to make sure we get that over and that's going to be their woodshed moving forward into the winter. And we want to get that done. We want to get that filled up. And there's just a bunch of projects that we need to get done there. So sharing the labor between farms. So anyway, that is it. If you stayed this long, thank you for watching and thank you for supporting us. And we hope to see you next time. Take care. Bye.