CLEARING MORE LAND! FOLLOWING THE FARM DREAM!

welcome to the farm blog today we're unloading the track loader this is a caterpillar 953 seed we're going to be doing some work here on the farm I'll take you around today I'll show you what we're doing what the plan is and over the next few days we'll show you the progress this is awesome good stuff it's a little bit hairy unloading that machine alright hope you guys have fun and enjoy the video [Applause] [Music] so the guy that was hauling the loader is Chad and Frank is the fella that's gonna be running it these are a couple guys if you follow the farm blog you know we've been here for about four years and these are two guys that we met probably within the first five days of owning our property because this is how we got our driveway built Chad hauled the rock and Frank built the driveway for the house and cleared our first spot of land for the house so first step in this whole procedure is take him over and show him exactly what's got to be done basically we're just dressing up some areas that were cleared last fall about this time last year I guess pretty cool you guys will get a full aerial shot of this I'll take the drone over fly it over you'll get a before and after probably over this whole week we're gonna give you guys some drone footage imma talk it through and walk you through what we're doing before we go look and all these spots that were clearing off so let's take it to the air this is shooting right off the front porch in we're headed over to the other side of the farm this is the big side of the farm that you're seeing in front of you it's about a 90 acre tract and what we're doing is cruising over top here the tree line that you see right there is a major creek that we have running through the farm you can see the fresh mowing grass directly below us that was yesterday's video what we're doing is flying over here we're gonna give you a little bit of an after shot we're gonna flashback to a before shot here this is what it looked like before and he's working over there I'm mowing actually and then this is after so cleaned up really really nice you can see those three stripes that he drug across there that's to help control washing so in other words if you have the loader dragging down the hill or up the hill up and down it'll create troughs for the water to run so we want to slow the water down before it gets down in those bottoms we're gonna swing out to the right here we've got what I call the deer sanctuaries what we're flying over right now this left side that you see is a part of our property - that's all been planted back in pine trees that's a loblolly pine so that'll be part of our retirement in about 30 years we'll be able to harvest those trees or we may clear it to field also if the cattle operation proves to be successful what you're seeing here there were big brush piles down in these bottoms that's the biggest bottom and then up into the right I get a little bit lost on the drone right here but up and to the right we're right seta another substantial Creek we're basically flying right over top of it this is our smaller bottom area and Frank is actually over here working he's pushing off the stumps so all this was like overgrown forest but it used to be pasture so we took it back and they used to plant corn and stuff down in these bottoms directly behind where the camera is now is where we're gonna go in just a minute on the blog it just dumped two inches of rain in like 15 minutes here a road is flooded out we're going to take you around we'll show you what we're doing with the excavator crew with the loader and we'll show you what happens when it rains like this here on the farm when you're living in the city no biggie a rain storm like this goes right in the rain gutter when you're living in the country on a farm it's hair stuff up let's go for a ride fire up the Kubota here we're in our Kubota 1140 X I think it's called the X 11:40 what does it call yeah X 11:40 great machine so far we're gonna be doing a video comparison very soon with our Kubota and our John Deere Gator we're gonna tell you what we like about each one each one has its own little quirks its own little things that we like me some little things that we don't like but that's the Gator right there we're going to be selling the Gator so obviously we needed some the size of this Kubota let's go for a cruise here and show you what's going on man farm is a disaster right now and the deep seats were definitely wet while we're on our way we'll stop and look at the tomatoes guys I've never seen Tomatoes produced like this these Tomatoes we're rock stars this year and what the difference is is the rock dust that we put in the garden right around here where all the tomatoes are so we've got way more food I've called a food bank to come and pick up all the tomatoes they can pick I'm just waiting to hear back from it's kind of gotten to that time of year where we kind of need to take the garden down and go ahead and let the chickens have at it so we'll be fencing the garden in with our premiere one fencing pretty soon electric poultry netting and we'll let the chickens just tear this stuff up man our road flooded bad down here it's kind of subsiding right now but it looks like we've got another storm on the horizon frequently my garage will flood too got lightning striking right around me this might not be very smart but we're going to do it anyway so we live on a hill this was overflowing the road just a little bit ago and you guys can see some of the stuff we put in here to slow down the water but it still pulls up really really bad water's starting to subside a little bit right now but this ditch just can't hold all this water this can't hold it [Music] so this is what happens when it rains like crazy here on the farm man we are getting ready to build a pond right up here to slow this water down you can see the amount of water that's coming through here this ditch just simply cannot handle two inches of water in 15 minutes it just can't handle it I've done all that I can to contain this water to make sure it sits on the land and it doesn't do this running off but there's only so much I can do I've made sure I've established forage out here pasture land I've established grass so it doesn't wash but this water is coming off this hill man it's just rushing off the hill this goes up approximately a half a mile so a half a mile of water two inches deep he's coming down here to this ditch and that's kind of the problem it either runs to the creek on this side the creek on that side or into this ditch so you can see the creek is still rising right here because all the water is rolling off the land and I got a minnow trap I just saw a log come through I have a minnow trap in here let's pull that out oh we got us a snake in there so we got some minnows and we got a looks like a copperhead in there the snake was a little bit of a surprise I'm gonna set the camera down and dump all the crawfish out of the minnow trap we went fishing yesterday and finally got a little recreation time and it looks like we've got quite a bit of critters in there here's our minnow trap we got a lot of minnows in our Creek it looks like two copperheads let's see here let's get our minnows back in the creek you little guys yeah we got two two young baby copperheads all right there now I'm no snake whisperer snake charmer but you want to be careful when you got a poisonous snake like this right here I do believe that's a copperhead it's a copperhead you want to be careful with a snake like this it can still put poison in you after it's dead we're gonna toss them back in the creek let mother nature head back at them that'll make a meal for somebody cool let's go check out where the loaders been working I'll talk to you a little bit about what's going on I imagine there's a lot of mud over there so we'll probably steer clear of all that mud cool contacts yeah [Music] that's what you're getting ready to see is the results of intensive mowing and hopefully intensive grazing we'll do the same thing for our pastures but oh my goodness they are absolutely beautiful normally this time of year everything would start going into obsolescence in other words kind of the grass would be finished up and petering out and man it looks just awesome check it out beautiful beautiful luscious green fields can't beat that complaints it screws down this way guys offense is looking good you can see their wire ties on the tops of some of these posts I'll show you right here there's a wire ties right there on the top of that post some of this fencing we haven't tied to the post yet we've still got a little bit of work to go here this is the area that we're going to be cleaning up and receding next so all of what you see in dirt behind us will be what we're working on next to establish pasture this was overgrown pasture in other words there were terraces built into the land right here and this was crop land at one point but it grew up we cut the timber off of it we push this out we smoothed it out and we're going to turn it back to pasture our fence line which you can't really see because the Gators right here but our fence line goes straight this way and it's also going to go straight in behind you and separate our fields in other words there'll be a fence that goes straight through here and splits our bottom land which this is going to be bottom land with our upper land and there'll be many many more cross fences to go here on the farm we're working closely with the NRCS the natural resource conservation folks that helped plan farms and help plan water systems and help keep mud and manure out of the creeks so we're trying to do this right that's what's going on over here and that's why we're doing what we're doing as soon as we can get grass seed down on this and we're gonna seed it first we've got a disc it we've got to drag it probably three times this whole area pull all the sticks and rocks out of it come in here with a no-till see drill drill down seed this is one area and you'll get an aerial view at the end of the video we're gonna go to the next big area we keep our hay cutters over here on this side of the farm there will be a barn over here at some point now this pastor lamb that you're seeing right here that's beautiful in green was dirt just like we just looked at three years ago unbelievable unbelievable amount of progress here it's hard to even establish a lawn this nice a small lawn giving it that much attention this is really really awesome guys looks like my loader operator is over here he might have got caught out in the rain maybe he's working in the rain our fencing materials for this side of the farm are all over here - they're in a big pile still got a lot of fencing material to put up here guys we've probably got two and a half more miles of fence to build over here just for perimeter fence and another mile of fence to build on the other side of the farm where the house is this land was really really dry so it might be a little snotty for lack of better terms snotty on the top but he'll be able to keep on clear and I guess that's awesome even with two inches of rain it was so dry that you can still work rad now what you're seeing out there here is weeds that have taken over really rough land you see this big Paulo dirt and grass and all that stuff so what we're doing here is making a smooth area to work up and get grass seed in and plant pasture in this transition from what is pasture to what will be faster needs to be smooth in other words there was kind of a drop-off a ditch so that's what we're doing we're fixing this all up there's a big gully over on the other side right there and all the stumps and stuff were pushed over into that gully to help fill it in we've got some neighbors back here this land is behind some houses now for the educational part of this video guys if you're buying land and you're gonna clear it to pasture so if you bought forest which this was forest it was a young forest this was all covered in little pine trees and little bushes it was I mean I say little but they were probably 16 18 feet tall this was all covered in brush before we cleared it off same here except for this was Forest and it had really big trees so there's a wealth of information on the channel about land clearing there's a land clearing playlist and I'll post it right up here across there click that thing subscribe to the channel this is just great information and you can learn from where I screwed up when we first did this and that's awesome and I'll tell you what we did to screw up and I'll tell you what we did that's right this right here is going to be beautiful pasture next year just like this awesome stuff we can't put cows on this new land and intensively graze it so we're gonna have to take about two years to get it established really well just like this land and make it right cool I'll get you some footage of Frank working on the loader so what Frank is doing right now is basically skimming the top of this and this big pile of dirt and grass is really good topsoil so we're gonna have access to that it's actually going to be spread back the land when he gets done right now he's just smoothing over what we have not a lot of excitement not pushing a bunch of trees down stuff like that he's just filling in low spots and knocking off high spots and finishing all this stuff up it's gonna look absolutely fantastic believe it or not there were huge huge trees right here all this is smoothing out and this takes time just takes a lot of time to get this kind of stuff done so Frank's cost is around 125 bucks an hour we get a little bit of a better deal because we're going to be a repeat customer year after year after year here's the part where I gave you a call-to-action if you want tiny snippets of videos about what's going on in real time come to facebook follow us on facebook follow us on instagram it's just a good thing we can give you a little more personal intention in small videos so YouTube is I guess what I upload my showstoppers to or whatever now this is no showstopper all the videos that we upload here will be uploaded over on Facebook and if you follow us on Facebook you'll get little snippets of stuff like this little clips that you wouldn't get on youtube cool guys thanks a lot for joining me today we'll be back out here probably tomorrow the next day we'll give you some updates be sure you're tuned in to Wednesday night's livestream we're going to be giving away a three hundred and fifty dollar tool box super cool guys thanks a lot we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm post all the questions and comments down below that you might have and check out my buddy Chad and Shelby at north country off-grid alright during break [Music] we add some ways to be some degree good stuff glad I'm enjoying life anyway it's costing me my butt but I'm in doing it