Morning Chores Farm Tour! - Feeding All My Animals in 8℉!_

It is eight degrees in a place that is not supposed to be eight degrees. We've got 121 mouse to feed. Let's do this. Hi, piggies. This is Kevin Bacon One and Kevin Bacon Two. The most important thing, aside from shelter and water for animals in the cold, is that they get calories, calories, calories. They're about 300 to 350 pounds each. And everyone told me getting pigs was gonna be the worst decision I ever made. And that is in no way true. In fact, if I had this whole farming endeavor thingy to do over again, I would basically just have pigs and cows because these little gentle giants have become some of my absolute favorite creatures on the farm. When we have friends over the farm and they touch the pigs, people are usually really surprised to realize that this is not fur, it's actually hair. In fact, hog hair brushes are what we use to paint the School of All Trade over there. But because they have hair, not fur, the pigs were my biggest concern as we approached this insane, record-breaking polar vortex we're currently having on the farm. So I had to think real long and hard about how to keep them warm. Let me show you what we did. Don't fall in the pond. This is my quarter scale replica of that barn right over there. And it used to be my chicken coop. But for right now, we reuse some siding from the school build, put it on the floors to remove all drafts. And then we filled the whole thing with a ton of straw for them to bed down in. When I came out to check on them this morning, they were like snuggled up like two little bugs in a rug. Normally, we have to do all of this before work, but it's a snow day, so no work today. It's a winter wonderland! Incoming, piggies! Oh, I thought that was gonna be more exciting than it was. Oh, dang it, now I have to walk up the hill again. The three rules for winter gardening with livestock is keep them sheltered from the wind and rain, nice dry bedding, keep their water unfrozen, and calories, calories, calories. I actually think that might be four rules. Keep your eyes on this mother goose right here. She may look real cute, but she has a nasty habit of trying to bite my tushy lately. And if I were one foot tall, that would be terrifying. The chickens don't really wanna come out of their coop when it snows. As we're caring for our livestock, we wanna make sure that we're using our best tool for good livestock care, which is observe, observe, observe. Check the animals, if any of them are being reclusive or quaking or shivering a lot, then they might have to take a little visit to the animal hospital and get warmed up. But no heat lamps or anything are needed in the chicken coop because honestly, they're birds, and unless it's sub, sub-zero temperatures, we don't really need to worry about the chickens. Thanks to a TikTok video that Adam showed me, I got the donkeys a little toy on the internet. Let's see if it works. This might be the best $12 I've ever spent. The neighbors are gonna love me. They were actually really terrified. One of the hardest things to manage when it's this cold is keeping our pipes from freezing. And honestly, we have about an hour of usage of the hose before it freezes too. So this is one of the coolest inventions I've ever seen. Automatic frost protection for the pipes in the house. And then because these are expanding hoses, what I'm gonna do is open both ends and pull it downhill so it'll fully empty out before I put it back in a bucket and store it inside in the barn underneath a heat lamp so it doesn't get frozen. And we'll get the rest of the animal's water from the sink in there because livestock actually needs to drink warm water in cold weather because nobody wants to drink ice water when it's eight degrees outside. We need a cafe for the cows, pig food for the piggies, little bedding for the barn. Excuse me, excuse me. Just remember, my friends, as the new year has just begun, every dead body at the top of Everest was once someone who was highly motivated and very productive. So maybe just chill. It's fine. I'm actually really shocked that this gate latches kept working in the winter because last year it rained and then froze and I had to climb over the gate to do my chores for like three days. As I was preparing for the storm, I learned a few tips about staple guns from Clark Griswold because the most important thing in addition to calories is having wind shade. And last night I saw these little three-tushies parked side by side by side and it was so dang cute. By the way, a YouTube commenter on my why I regret getting alpacas video said that their haircuts are hideous, which I took a lot of offense to because as the former owner of a bowl cut myself, I think these gentlemen are very, very handsome. We wanna pour the icy water out over the bridge so that we don't have an extra slippery spot. By the way, when we first moved here, I accidentally backed Adam's forerunner right off the bridge right here. And then when my friend Morgan Gold was here, he fell off the bridge and after I was sure that he had not actually injured himself, I laughed very, very hard, recreated it for the video and then myself fell off the bridge. So obviously this is a really special, special place for us all, especially when it comes to achieving my lifelong dream of getting on America's Funniest Home Videos. Well, we can just let that happen for a while. I put this water bucket on a seed mat thinking that that might keep the water from freezing, but not only did Howdy backwash a whole bunch of chaff hay in here, but also the water kind of froze. So we'll fill both buckets at once. Having warm water for the animals is also really helpful, but the problem with warm water is that it also freezes faster because of some science that I don't really understand. Oh, oops, I almost didn't leave it on. We gotta keep this baby a running to keep the pipes from freezing because those things are not buried very deep. Our frost line here I think is like six inches or something like that. And I definitely didn't bury those pipes that deep. Lucifer, are you ready for your breakfast? Wow, trudging out into the snow. I'm ready to get your foodies. Lucy has got some sweet new digs, also courtesy of the tornado. Her house literally blew off of her while she was sleeping. And unfortunately her little paw got hurt in the process, but we're working on getting that all fixed up. But even as a tripod, she's still just as cute, funny, and a cranky little bee. Look at this beautiful wonder though. It truly is actually kind of amazing what pallets and a little garbage can do. Look at this service, Lucy. If a human was making noises like that, I would get up and leave the room. But for whatever reason, Lucy eating literally anything is pretty much the cutest thing I've ever experienced in my entire life. Oh, see, look at them. That nice warm water fills the soul. Also, I never really noticed that they drool so much when they drink till now. Okay, boys, I'll bring you some hay in a little bit. Free range, local, organic, GMO-free hay to give my fat little lards over here that are on a massive diet. We'll deliver this right on the free pew I got from our local church. Enjoy. Heidi and Bella are really enjoying the fact that they get a whole bunch of straw bedding in their temporary Polar Vortex home here right on the front porch of the School of All Trades. And definitely learned a tip or two from Clark Griswold as I was putting all this stuff up. Hopefully it comes down as easily as it went up. I gotta get some chaff. I was gonna have to get a UTV if I wanted to do anything with animals on this much property. And I started with a very trusty golf cart that I traded my truck for and quickly burned it out on the hills here. It is a little funny though because I have to have this seat all the way up so I can touch the pedals. But then when Adam drives it, he turns on all the buttons on the dash with his knees. So every time I'm in here, I'm like an 85-year-old on the freeway with my blinker on for seven miles. Hey, buddies. Calories, calories, calories are what keeps them warm. And cows are no different. So while the cows will normally only get chaff and grain when they are at the milking stanchion, because it is so cold and these cows have never been in weather this cold, we're giving them extra treats all day-er day and they're loving it. You remember maybe from I tried to milk my feral cow and I will say that ever since that endeavor, she is much, much kinder. Queen Reva, my very first cow, is such a perfect specimen of an animal that one cow quickly turned into 12. And as of this summer, thanks to little Willie Nelson over here, we're gonna have 18. Frank over there is my favorite and he is the future Dexter Bull that will father so many babies for us, hopefully. He's so little, that's why you don't see him. He's standing back there. Sammy here is the one outlier that I'm most worried about during this polar vortex because he had a horrible case of summer pneumonia this year and with the massive temperature swings, I just wanna be super, super conscious of how he's doing health-wise. Okay, we have a pretty big test for the artesian well rinky-dink water trough setup thing that I set up a couple weeks ago because, I mean, it's eight degrees. I think it was one degree last night. There's no way that I'm not gonna be carrying buckets of water. Oh my gosh, this makes zero sense. Well, I mean, it makes kind of a lot of sense, but there's literally no ice even in the trough. This is incredible. Considering the fact that it is possible that those cows would drink up to 150 gallons of water a day, that is a lot of buckets and that was my biggest concern coming into this polar vortex because that's also a very long way from my kitchen slash bathroom in the office. This is why, though I was very dubious this would actually work, the water system is still working. I used one of those old mineral tubs and filled it with rock wool insulation and then I put it right over the wellhead cap and then pushed snow all around it to insulate the whole kit and caboodle. Worked like a charm. Woo! Hey, chickies. You guys ready for some foodies? So the biggest thing is keeping their bedding dry, keeping the chickens dry. If you live somewhere very, very cold, have wooden roosts, not metal roosts. But I would love you to examine my handiwork. I found this bent ladder on the side of the highway and turned it into their roosting system which they very much love and appreciate. I harvested these bad boys from what is now the pig coop and it's a nice place for eggs. The funniest thing about freezing weather is that the eggs will themselves freeze and water, when frozen, expands so a lot of the eggs will crack. So you have to be really careful to check the eggs before we actually put them in the cartons and stuff because if they're cracked and then they defrost into the carton, you're gonna have a problem. Also, yesterday when I was lifting these little nest boxes over the fence, Adam heard me yelling and it was because I accidentally crushed a whole pocket full of eggs right in my coat pocket. This chicken is actually a little cold right now so we're gonna disregard what I just said about sub, sub-zero temperatures and we're just gonna take her in and put her by the heat lamp for a little while because she's, she's quivering. And even as much as I dislike birds of all kinds because they terrify me, they are unpredictable and they, you know, poop and stuff. We'll take her into the Ant of All Trades Animal Hospital here. You can just hang out right there. See, that's what I get for being cocky. This darn egg broke right in my hand. These ladies need more oyster shells in their diet. I've made a mess. Good spot for you to just warm up for a little while, buddy. Our alpaca food comes in these giant boxes which make for perfect little animal hospitals when we need them. And then when we're done with them, we use them to line our garden pathways so we never have to weed. All right, next up, we have a temporary barn resident who is really stinking up the place. Jeffrey, this little disaster right here has had to move inside from his previous pen with the alpacas because it's a little crowded out there in with the goats. And the thing is, does Jeffrey wanna actually be with the alpacas? No, he does not. Goats like having goat friends. I'm raising a little weather, one of his proud sons, to be his goat companion in his own separate paddock so that they can keep each other company and then pregnancy can only happen when it's actually wanted, unlike this year. Jeffrey needs a little bit of hot water. So let's run in and grab that along with the rest of the milking stuff. Where it coming, ladies? Much like me, goats hate being cold and so giving them hot water with little molasses in it encourages them to drink even when it's really cold. And we balance it all without dropping it. Let's break our pinkies and try. Hey, my handsome little prince, are you ready for your breakfast? I'll take those eggs off in a second. All right, little man. One thing I'm insanely worried about having animals in the barn, especially when it comes to having hay, straw, and heat lamps, is barn fires. Last year on Christmas Eve, our next door neighbors had a barn fire caused by a heat lamp and it was because basically too much bedding got pushed up against it and it caught on fire. I specifically use ceramic heat lamps from Premier One because the risk of fire is much, much reduced by the ceramic casing. And the way that I've hung them is just with these clamps and a little cotter pin, which will stop it from falling off down into the hay and actually igniting a fire, hopefully, but that's also why I'm sleeping in the barn this week to make sure that I'm here to hear the fire alarms. So first up with milking, we do Baby, then Brenda and Aretha. My favorite thing about milking is that each one of the milking moms knows their name so I can literally be over there and call them over and order. Except for Baby, who needs a little bit of persuasion because this is her first year and she's not fully used to the routine yet. I know, everything's weird. Everything's weird, okay. So I only feed goats and cows, for that matter, grain when they are nursing because making milk takes a lot of calories. Kind of crazy thing happens when you first start squeezing out the milk. The brain releases oxytocin, which is the happy hormone and you wouldn't be able to tell it by her shivering right now, but she's very happy. All right, check this out. My favorite thing about milking goats is they know the order. So it goes Baby, then Brenda, and last up is Aretha. Aretha is my oldest goat and she is just like, wait a second, everything has changed. If you look around me and you saw my last morning chores video, you might notice there's so much more room for activities in here. And that is because the wood shop finally moved out to the school where it belongs, which happened just in the nick of time to have more space for shenanigans like this during this polar vortex. Jeffrey, thank Jimmy DiResta for moving my enormous, very heavy tools so you could have an indoor prison this week. Thanks, Jimmy. Oh, that's my two thumbs up because right now I have a lobster claw. I'm a lobster. But if it can squeeze a teat, I'll take it. Aretha's udder is like the candle that never stops burning because it feels empty when you start milking, but there just is more and more and more milk in it. My friend Tyler says the udders are kind of like a river, not a lake, because if you do this slow enough, you could probably do it for 24 hours straight because they'd be producing milk or they'd be producing more milk as you are emptying it. But eventually it is actually empty and then we're ready to be done. Let's start this little boy off with some bad habits, shall we? Little cappuccino foam for you, sir. Ollie, come get it, buddy. Okay, Oliver, you want your cappuccino foam or what, buddy? Here you go, mister. Oliver really likes it up there. Also, sometimes when I'm peeing in the bathroom in there, I hear something stomping around above me and I'm like, Oliver, always there. And now it is time to release the babies. My, you guys are making a lot of noise in here. Also, look at this really beautiful repair I made to the door because someone who shan't be named kept figuring out a way to parkour right over the gate and have a nice little drink, emptying the endless candle. Look at that, such gentle little nursers. I always worry about actually hurting the goats when I'm milking, but then I watch their babies, those tiny little piranhas sucking the life out of them and I'm like, hmm, not so bad. So leading up to cold weather, and then of course during all the cold weather, we have to feed all the animals way more than we normally would because staying warm burns a lot more calories. I started feeding Chaffee about eight years ago and it is great for their gut health. They waste less of it and also it's easier to store because, Jeffrey, absolutely not. Absolutely not. We have had enough of your shenanigans for one season, kind sir. Out of this crew, I've already picked the two most winningest babies. Surprise, surprise, one of them's a ginger, Adam. Look at those beautiful blue eyes. This one's my favorite, don't tell the others. Just kidding, I tell them all the time. Helps them keep in line. Every year, I pick two babies that I will keep and then I raise them for two years and train them to milk and all that stuff and then I sell the older goats that are already trained to milk to first-time goat owners who want a really well-trained animal and it also gives me an excuse to keep some babies longer. Oh, Johnny needs his breakfast. The Polar Vortex has provided us with two frozen eggs. Now, Johnny's allergic to chicken eggs so he has to have duck eggs, which incidentally, these are. Oops, okay, the door's frozen there so hope you're skinny. Johnny and June love this snow. Hey, little muffin, you ready for a little duck egg in your breakfast? You're so handsome. Look at you, muffin. Hey, June, do you want a duck egg, buddy? There you go, buddy. Dig in your little hole in the snow. Little snow ice cream for ya. He's like, mm. I have chronicled the very meandering path that the last decade of my life has taken from being a total city slicker who'd never had a dog or a cat to today, where I no longer work in tech, mercifully and get to do things like this every day on my Squarespace website, annofalltrades.com. 10 years ago, I had no idea that I could build a business online and actually, maybe back then, it wasn't yet quite possible but when I first pushed publish on that first blog post, I had no idea how much my life was gonna change and I'm not a super tech-savvy person. Squarespace has made it super easy for a total tech luddite to be able to easily drag and drop everything that I wanna share with the world into a beautiful artist-designed template that then shares it with the world. Squarespace also makes it really easy for me to host my online store where I'm able to sell merchandise, project plans and also a few online courses as well. One of my favorite content creator gurus who has been wildly successful predicting trends over the last several years has said that 2024 is the year that blogs return. So if you're interested in starting a blog of your own, go to squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash AnimalTrades for a 10% discount. Brenda, let's not get a little naughty right now. Oh, well, while I was waiting for you, I decided to give Briggsie a little makeover because he's getting a new wife soon. I finally found him a perfect wife on Facebook Marketplace and after the whole accidentally bringing the wrong companion to Nashville in the trailer situation that happened when we moved here, I think it's a little overdue for handsome little Briggsie boy to have a friend. Look at that boy. So he's so floofy that he actually has to get a little eye haircut every couple of weeks so he can still see because otherwise he gets really, really surprised when you go to pick him up because he never sees it coming. Also, I just saw this lady on TikTok who was literally like actively spinning fiber as she was brushing it off her bunny. So guess what else I found on Facebook Marketplace? Hold please. Little dumpster dive after my last pick yielded this little beauty. All it needs is a few small fixes and we'll be making viral spinning videos. I'll make at least one strand of angora thread with little Briggsie's fluffs. Also, you'll notice the tattered remnants of poor Briggsie's little house because it blew away in the tornado. And this is what's working for the temporary while we build him a new bunny palace. I think we should probably even have like a bunnel, like a bunny tunnel that goes out over the garden and allows him to live his absolute best life. Oh, also while you were gone, Jeffrey tried to escape again and I just decided to fix this once and for all. Temporarily, of course, with a woodworking clamp. And so, you know, as naughty as young Jeffrey is, he really is just like the size of a medium to large sized dog that can jump like six feet vertically and parkour off the walls. But he's still quite manageable because if he's being especially naughty, I literally can just pick him up and move him. Unlike a cow, which weighs 1200 to 2800 pounds and are a little bit more difficult to move. And we just made a whole video about that. I would love to see you there. Cheers. God, Jeffrey, you stink so bad.