Small scale regenerative farming..here's how I do it!

all right hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to another gorgeous day here on the Stoney Ridge Farm we're out here in the pasture with the cows and they're grumpy they're mad at me right now I'll tell you why they're mad at me they're mad because the grass quality on this side of the farm is not as good as the grass quality on the other side of the farm and it's been really dry but we are preparing for a hurricane so we're going to talk a little bit about that today we're going to talk about the cows and what we do out here on the farm mob grazing intensive grazing and regenerative farming you guys are going to learn a little bit if you're deciding to start farming on your own or if you just want to see how a small cattle operation goes so come along today as we have a little bit of fun out here on the farm with the girls and boys right here on the Stoney Ridge I ain't afraid to play afraid to get the job done the dudes with my own damn ways afraid of lie times like this if you mess with my freedom I'll tell you this what you can kiss welcome back to the Stoney Ridge Farm if this is your first time here please hit that like button subscribe the channel love to have you back here all around us is 150 acre first generation farm and today we're going to talk about farming so we talk about a lot of stuff on the channel we do tool reviews we do all kinds of cool stuff we even travel all over the country and visit other Farms which you'll see in a future video but right now I am preparing these lovely ladies for a hurricane we've got a hurricane coming up the coast right now and I've got to put a lot of thought into what we do so we've got a solar well set up over here the solar well Powers all the water on the farm for the cattle what happens when the Sun goes behind the clouds is the solar well doesn't work so there's a big water tank a water cistern 1500 gallons of storage for the cows now they don't drink as much when it's cool and when it's rainy and they also get a lot of moisture from the the grass itself that's right girl so we don't really have to prepare so much for the watering but we do have to turn on our water cistern so that water falls down to each of our waterers all throughout the farm this whole system is fed by gravity which is really cool I'll post a link at the end of this video to some of the Water System videos they're really really good and educational so when I bought the farm this area right here that you see did not look like this so this was all overgrown in brushed and Briars and mess and it was about I don't know 12 feet tall that shop building wasn't there there wasn't a fence on the farm not a stick of wood nothing like that so we cut timber on a hundred acres of land I'm stepping over the electric fence hope I don't get shocked we cut timber on 100 acres of land we utilize that money to clear the land so we cleared nearly a hundred acres of land on this 150 acre parcel so it's been a huge huge chore and these are my girls so earlier this year we had about 45 cows hey this is freedom right here number five and this is sweetie my favorite cow sweetie hey sweetie pie what are you doing girl you miss me today give me cow kisses yes you're a good girl very good girl I don't think I'll ever get rid of sweetie she's going to be the cow that stays the longest oh man love I don't know if you can love a cow but if you can that's the one so guys looking around all you see here is a regenerative Farm we move these animals every 12 hours to a new Paddock of grass and we're going to be moving the girls here in just a few minutes so you guys can see exactly how easy it is and how this works the cows follow me basically like kittens Right girls so we'll just walk out here and we're gonna move them you can see that we are on a pasture but we are not on a strictly grass pasture so there's cerisi lespedeza in here there's clover in here there are all sorts of wild grasses there's this grass we call Purple top there's the undesirable grass right here this is what we call broom sedge or broom straw around here you'll also see Fescue and all sorts of various wild grasses we want our animals and this is also a little bit of ragweed common ragweed we want our animals to graze on pastures that are multi-species in other words I don't care how much you like spaghetti and ice cream you can't just eat spaghetti and ice cream or you're going to get sick and the same thing goes with these animals so you see them walking in here behind me they're all big fat old cows they haven't had any medications or antibiotics ever in their lives they have not had any wormer in their lives there are several cows out here that haven't had any warmer in their entire lives so what we're trying to do is build genetics here on the farm pastured genetics and if we have a cow that doesn't do so well this is Wooly Bully and I don't really want to get too close to Wooly Bully but if we have a cow that has genetics that doesn't seem to favor grass and not being wormed and medicated then we get it off the farm okay so we're building genetics here on the Stoney Ridge Farm more than anything and we're building soil so instead of cutting hay off the land and a lot of people have a hard time understanding this on a 150 acre piece of property with about 85 Acres of cleared total cleared and fenced pasture if we had to fertilize and lime this land and cut our own hay it's going to cost us upwards of thirty thousand dollars a year to feed these animals I can buy the hay for under ten thousand dollars per year and put it on the land so we've got really poor soil here and if you're buying a piece of property there's hope if you're buying a piece of property that has really poor soil we're rolling out hay bales on the land all winter long now in the summertime mob grazing intensive mob grazing so we're putting a lot of pressure on the grass and the way we do this is by moving them every 12 hours to a small Paddock this is about an acre right here 35 cows one acre or even three quarters of an acre is enough we want them to eat one-third trample one-third and leave one third and these guys do a full 60-day rotation they know they're moving check them out they do a full 60-day rotation on the farm and it's just super easy super simple once you get your setup and let me show you how it's all set up so the girls are going to get loud in a second because they know they're moving but this is called poly braid it is a poly wire polyethylene with a metal wire inside of it probably about eight metal wires inside of it and this is called a strain right pigtail step in post right here that's what we base the entire Farm off of so if you had a piece of barbed wire you wouldn't be able to just tie it in a knot like that so this is a splice pretty simple this conducts electricity [Music] throughout the farm this is Cody the firstborn on the end on the farm he's a spoiled brat we're going to go over here we're going to Open this gate so the way this works and we'll point it out to you there's a water out there in the middle of the pasture that waterer has a wagon wheel looks like a wagon wheel so that would be the center of the wagon wheel and strings go off of that Center all over this is a five acre pasture it's divided into six different paddocks as we move the cows through they were on this grass eight days ago and you cannot tell that they were there at all in fact this cow's still eating let's tell you about what nobody told me the integral part of your farm the most important part of any piece of property if you're deciding to raise animals like this is your water system so guys don't have the cows on the trailer before you have your fences and your water system you've got to think about good fencing we have what's called Tornado wire out here on the farm that tornado wire is a woven type wire I will post the link at the end of this video to our fencing series if you want to see some of that water fencing and land we have to think about where the water is and how do we get it to our cows and we fenced out all the waterways so no cow gets in any Waterway here on the farm that's to help our streams to be healthy and to help us have healthier animals when we mob grades when we move our animals on a every 12 hour basis that's Mona over there moaning by the way when we move our animals every 12 hours what that does is it allows them to poop and pee on a spot intensively Hooves actually stimulate the grass to grow and it's even proven that the saliva from a cow will actually help the grass to grow so pretty interesting stuff guys you can research it a whole lot deeper than what I'm going to go into today so the cows are on multi-species pasture they're on the rule of a thirds eat one-third trample one-third and leave one third so when they come back through we don't have to worm them because they're not eating right beside their own manure so the cows noses never hit poopy and when they never hit poopy we don't have to give them a dewormer which is awesome we don't have to give them antibiotics we do have to get that bug off my head though you never know what's going to happen out here we don't have to get them antibiotics now if we've got a sick cow we treat a sick cow but we don't treat an animal that's not sick and the difference in this beef that you see right here is that this animal and this animal and that animal is raised with care just because these are beef cows just like butt head right here just because they're beef cows doesn't mean that we have to be cruel to them and we have to be mean to them these animals should live their best life the most wonderful life possible so that our food is the best and most wonderful food so guys we should all be so blessed to live a wonderful great life with one bad moment isn't that right girl and it breaks my heart sometimes to think about that and to think about these animals as food but it also breaks my heart to think about what's happening in feedlots over medicated animals waiting belly deep in manure that is what breaks my heart and the consumer just doesn't know that if you think that the beef that you're buying in the grocery store is out on grass like this on pasture you're dead wrong guys you're dead wrong unless you're buying grass-fed beef you need to think about that just because somebody in some office says it's certified organic doesn't mean that that cow this beautiful animal hasn't been waiting belly deep in its own manure I mean it's just a sad sad thing so we're gonna go ahead and move the cows that's my soapbox about feedlot beef some feedlots are ran differently I will tell you I've visited a friend recently and he had had a feedlot and it looked clean as a whistle so again the animal's health is our major concern and our health and the health of the people that are buying the beef from the farm is a major major concern it starts in the soil it goes to the animals and then it goes to you it's all cyclic so let's open up and get these cows on this next piece of grass when I move them to a new Paddock I sing my cow song every farmer has their own cow song listen to their reaction foreign [Music] come on girls all right we're gonna open her up this is that poly electric wire it is hot in other words it has an electric fence charged to it it will not Shock you because I have a plastic handle right here I'm going to take this right back and hook it on this post right over here hook it right onto that post and that's it we're going to open it on up and these girls will come out onto some new grass come on girls foreign [Music] come on everybody this is freedom number five that's Butthead right there my favorite ones all have names you'll notice there are some flies here guys our cows don't have systemic fly tags in their ears in other words I don't want to eat fly spray do you want to eat fly spray you put a systemic ear tag in their ear and it leeches a chemical end that helps keep the flies off I don't do that guys I just don't do that when we move the cows every 12 hours like this they move faster than their manure and then flies can keep up and therefore we don't have a heavy fly load the fly load only becomes a problem when it's causing a health disparity with our animals and that's my girl that's sweetie right there all these little calves you see were born right here on the farm we bring a bull in every year on the 4th of July we leave them in for about three months and Tammy Tammy is a curiosity Tammy is a donkey and she is a guard donkey she is here to protect those young calves in case of a coyote attack or any kind of Predator attack so that's Tammy right there go ahead Tammy Tammy does not let me get near her you can see how jumpy she is I want her a little bit wild I don't want her to be a tame animal so every animal 35 cows and one donkey all just walk through this area and you can't even tell that's what I'm talking about right there so we're talking about regenerative farming we're also talking about prepping for the hurricane so in preparation for the hurricane I have a water cistern filled up over here we're gonna have some really cloudy days for about five days each cow during that time will probably drink anywhere from five to 12 gallons of water on a hot hot summer day they might drink 25 or 30 gallons of water so you've got to be prepared for that you've got to think ahead moving them every 12 hours takes about 25 minutes per day and if you tune into the live stream channel I'll post a link down there in the comment section I'll also post a link in the video description you'll see me go out and take care of these girls every single day preparation for Hurricane we don't want the cows in the woods because things can fall down on them we want them out in open pasture open land and they'll have plenty of water because it's going to be raining like crazy the wind's going to be blowing about 25 20 25 miles an hour out here and the cows will be safe so guys come along again here on the Stoney Ridge Farm with me I just wanted to take you around talk to you a little bit about what goes on here on this regenerative farm and the way that I think animals should be raised in probably the same way that you think animals should be raised they should be raised in peace they should be raised in a stress-free environment they should also be raised the way you would want to live okay so treating our animals with respect caring for them and giving them the best life possible that's what this is all about regenerative farming and raising your animals right guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge Farm the sun's about to set absolutely gorgeous I've got a catfish Pond right over here and I'm going to go over feed the catfish guys take care thanks so much we'll see in the next video please hit that like button subscribe the channel I'd love to have you back here on the Stoney Ridge regenerative Farm see ya bring your kids [Music] that's Macau song Take Care guys if it will pause maybe it'll pause suddenly silver I didn't have great chest hair before I bought the farm this beard was all black it's so stressful time to stare directly into the Sun and pretend like my eyes aren't burning hey sweetie you need a little getting a little rough aren't you