THE HOMEMADE FLAG POLE! A DAY ON THE FARM WITH THE MRS..MUST HAVE CHEAP TOOL FOR HOMESTEADING!!

Stand up. I'm trying to too short. Hold on. One second. Oh, yeah. Thanks. Here you go. Oh, this is going to be tall. Hey guys, this Josh Downey Ridge Farmer and guess who I brought out of the closet here. Mrs. Stony Ridge. Mrs. Stony Ridge is going to be helping us out a little bit today. Got a couple of projects going on on the farm. Small projects, nothing special. Got a tool I want to show you. Hang on. Sneak peek, okay? That's all you get. I'm going to show you a little bit later on how this fancy tool right here works and why it's essential for every homestead or anybody who's into not wasting. First we're going to change out the flagpole here. We got a little bit of firewood to gather up down on the creek and we'll talk to you about that and we'll take you up last of all and show you the new essential tool and tell you why you need it. And we'll do a little bit of science talk, too. So, come on with me today, guys. Come on with us. All right. This is my flagpole and it's homemade. I'll tell you a little bit about that. First, I'm going to show you how I get it down. So, it's essential to me as an Air Force veteran to not let this flag touch the ground. So, Mrs. Stony Ridge is down here spotting me. We're going to lower it down to the ground. The entire flagpole has to come up and out. So, Mrs. Stony Ridge has got some good arms on her. She's hefting this thing up. And if you look, our flag is very tattered and worn. Very, very important for me to respect this flag. So, we're going to take it down and we'll dispose of it properly at a later date and we'll strengthen my wife's shoulders while we're doing this. Let's go get the new flag and I've got two flags to put up today. Both are the same size, which may be poor flag etiquette. I don't know. Guys, leave me a comment down below. I have an American flag and I got another surprise flag. All my neighbors I think will like it. Uh so, the design of this flagpole is a little different than anything you've ever seen. I'll hold it up for you, honey. I'll give her a little break. So, right here on the end, this is a piece of irrigation pipe, okay? So, this is a long piece of 20-ft long piece of irrigation pipe. So, I made a flagpole out of it and I saved several pieces of this irrigation pipe from when we bought the farm. It was just kind of laying around. Flagpoles are expensive. I don't know if you priced them lately. It's hard to find one that's decent for under 150 to 200 bucks. So, this guy works great. So, the basic design concept here is I took a little piece of cable and wrapped it around the top where this lip is and we'll raise it back up. And this down here is the little clamp where we clamp the rest of the flagpole. So, we'll be clamping the new flag onto here under these two little clips. So, first let's just take this thing down. And these are little brass clips. Friend of mine gave them to me. Okay? So, we got the old flag off. Mrs. Stony Ridge is going to hold this up. You got it? Got it. Got it. So, our new flag isn't quite the best quality flag, but uh it'll do until I get a new really good embroidered flag. I really like to fly a a very nice flag. But, this is our new flag. We'll get it in place. These little pivots right here these little things swing and pivot. So, they're never kind of out of place. All right. Now, you see right back here in the background, that is a piece of 2-in PVC pipe that the flag slides over and it slides down into a concrete base and I'll show you that after we get the flag up in the air. So, we're going to raise it up. Up we go. Number two. Up. Up. Up. All right. You see we got our flag up. What do you think of the new flag? Don't have much wind today, so let me show you the rest of this flagpole how I made the design and we'll be building a couple more flagpoles like this. I think I have four more pieces of irrigation pipe, so my plan is to build a nice flag area right above where the new Stony Ridge Farm sign's going to go. Looks kind of nice, though. Here's the flagpole base and basically I just took some concrete right here, mixed it up and made a flagpole base and I set that 2-in PVC right here. I set that in there and made a little sleeve for my flagpole to set in. So, now I got a nice 20-ft flagpole for I don't know, $25. Pretty good. Once again, guys, we'll be folding the old flag and properly disposing of it out of respect to the fallen heroes of our nation. So, we're down here on the creek right here and we have a bunch of firewood that we cut down. We had a forestry mulcher come in a few weeks ago and I'll post a link to that video up here, but the forestry mulcher came in and basically opened up this whole area of woods back here behind me. It's kind of difficult to show you on camera, but you see that brush pile right there? That's all the brush that we picked up after the forestry mulcher and after we cut the trees that are undesirable that we don't want. So, me and Mrs. Stony Ridge are going to pick up all this firewood and stuff that I have laying around down here, so we have our area nice and neat. And I'll show you this burn pile right here. So, the way you got to think about this is we want to keep our big, beautiful, nice trees. This is our brush pile right here. We've got it over a stump for a reason. When we burn that, hopefully the stump will burn. So, everything here on the farm has a purpose. If you look back here, you'll see some of the trees grow this way and grow that way. They're all twisted up and we don't want those trees. We don't want those undesirable trees cuz what they're going to do is fall over in the field, fall over in the creek, fall over in the woods and we'll just have to get them up later. So, we want to leave our big, healthy, beautiful trees so that they hold the creek bank back and they help to filter all the toxins before they get in the creek. And we're also plant some flowers and stuff down in here and make a nice, beautiful area. So, when we drive down our driveway, have a beautiful place to look at. A beautiful farm. A well-planned farm. Let's get this firewood up. I know what you're thinking. Why doesn't he just back the Gator up to the wood pile? It's only like five sticks, so we just walked it. Get some exercise, right? Yep. Right. IT'S KIND OF HEAVY. THIS is uh sweet gum. Normally keep a hatchet on the Gator. Right now, no hatchet. There we go. Makeshift hatchet. So, we got all the firewood up here. It's not that much, just one Gator load. I'll take these big pieces up and I'll cut them up and we got a cedar post. We need to load that up, take it up to the cedar post pile and that way we can put our new mailbox up on the new cedar post. Looks good. All right. Back there's a cedar post and I'm not carrying it that far. So, folks, I have expressed my displeasure with the John Deere Gator. This is kind of where it shines. When it comes to running around and getting little errands done and watering the goats and and taking care of business like hauling wood, this is where it really does shine. There's a few little nuances that I don't like about the John Deere Gator and I've talked to a guy from John Deere about them. And I've also emailed Mahindra and I've emailed Yanmar tractors to see if they're interested in letting me try out one of their machines here on the farm for a year. So, we'll let you know what we think. We'll let you know what they say. It's probably a joke. They probably never give me one, but you know, got a little bit of influence here having a YouTube channel. Like to let you guys know what's a piece of junk and what's good stuff, right? Yeah. She likes free stuff. Any of you guys ever pick up firewood with your wife? I'm pretty lucky guy, aren't I? She likes her lumberjack and her slumber Josh. So, the other week I neatly, nicely stacked all those cedar posts up and look at that. They must have just like just fell over. I don't know if like some ice got on them or a little bit of weight got on them, but man, made kind of a mess. We're going to throw this other cedar post on here. We don't have to worry really about this, but it's a matter of neatness. So, we'll probably neaten this up a little bit. We're going to throw this other cedar post on here and let it hang out and dry with the rest of them. This stuff lasts for 60, 80 years. Sometimes a cedar post will outlast a pressure-treated post. A lot of times they will. Got it. Man, it's nice to have a wife that'll help me do this. And over? No. Up. Always nice to have a good pile of spare fence posts here on the farm. We're going to build our hog pen out of these fence posts. Awesome. Let's go drop the firewood over here and I'll tell you about the farm tool/toy that you'll really enjoy having if you've got a little homestead or farm. So proud to have a wife that'll help me like this. I'm not going to carry it all. Down. Coming. Come on. Come on. Come on. Why is it stuck? Come on. Come on. Come on. Good. There she goes. Now, this firewood here is wet and this firewood here is dry. So, what we're going to do is we're going to move some of the dry firewood over here and put the wet firewood down so it'll dry up for next winter. And this is the firewood that we use in the shop and the firewood that we use for our little campfire area when we want to hang out in the summertime. I'll come on up here in a couple days and we'll cut this all up into smaller pieces. This would actually probably have to be busted in order to get it in the wood stove or this would be your all-night burning log. We're just going to toss it to the side. Just see what a determined husband and wife can get done in like 20 minutes? Yeah, easy does it. Good stuff. So folks, a few weeks ago we came out and we turned these two compost piles right here. And these compost piles are probably 25 ft long by 5 ft tall, maybe 4 ft tall now. If you look, you can tell this one closest to me has shrunk a lot more than the other one and there's a reason behind that and we'll talk about that reason, okay? And the new toy I have here, I say toy but the new tool, is a composting thermometer. And guys, if you don't have this in your arsenal at your homestead, you really need it. There'll be a link posted down below to this guy. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 bucks, maybe even less than $15. But, let me show it to you here. We're keeping it in its little case cuz we want to take good care of it. Let me show you how it all works. This is from Kate's Garden. I picked it up on Amazon. Like I said, I'll post a link down below. This is a composting thermometer. It's a 20-in long giant cooking thermometer, pretty much. And the temperature goes from 40 to 180°. If you look at this thermometer, it says warm, active, and hot. And hot is up underneath right there. When I came up here today, I was going to come up here and show you turning the compost again but I decided not to show you the turning of the compost because I checked the temperature in it and the pile furthest away from me is a whole lot cooler than the other pile. So, let's show you what we've got here. What do you think this manure pile, this compost pile, is doing? What's the temperature like? So, let's just check the temperature together. We'll take this and we'll drive it down into the manure and check the temperature together. Now, we'll pick a spot and we'll slide him in there and you can watch the temperature gain. So, it slowly starts to climb up and we're not getting very far. Not a very good working compost pile right here. And we'll get down in there and you look, it's starting to move a little bit faster. We can get up to about 80°. So, what we're seeing here is this compost pile which has a very high ridge is not doing as well as the compost pile that I made it a point to have a very flat ridge. Now, let me show you the temperature in this compost pile, which you can clearly see is a lot shorter now. It's like a foot shorter. So, let's stick this guy in here. So, clearly this one is active. I kind of want to get right in the middle in the nitty-gritty there and you can see it really climb. When I came up here to look at this compost pile, I noticed this gray. This gray is a sign. That's a sign that the compost pile is working. There's some gray material right in here and that tells me this compost pile is hot. So, what this little tool right here tells me is that this compost pile is still active and that this compost pile is almost gone dormant. I need to come up here with a rake and knock the top off that, let a little bit more moisture get in there and hopefully it'll start breaking down like it's supposed to. It's very difficult to keep a hot compost pile in the wintertime. But, this guy right here, he's cooking right along. Hopefully we'll be able to use it in the garden next season. That'll be nice. Compost thermometer, a tool you never knew you needed on your farm or your homestead and now you kind of know you need to have it. For the price, it sure is nice to have. It's neat to be able to check your compost pile or check your wife's temperature. So guys, thanks a lot for joining me and Mrs. Stoney Ridge today on the farm. I finally got her out of her shell. Her hair braided like a little pony. I got her out of her shell. I got her out here on the farm and we got to play in some poop together. So, thanks a lot. Come on back and see me. Don't forget to click the like button, click the thumbs up, leave me a comment down below, and if you're not subscribed, subscribe. We'll talk some more about farming and trucks and tractors and all kinds of fun. Come on back and see us. All right? Thanks a lot. Woo! Woo! Well, come on down to the Stoney Ridge. Bring your wife, bring your kids, we're living life pure and sweet. That's the way it's supposed to be, Stoney Ridge. Woo! Guys, I totally forgot. We've got some grounds, coffee grounds, that we got to throw in our compost pile. These came from Starbucks. Look down in there. So, most of your local coffee shops and Starbucks or whatever will give you these old coffee grounds and it's just basically black gold to add to your compost pile. We got quite a few bags and we're going to dump them on here. Grounds for your garden. They smell really good. So guys, every day when I'm in the city, I stop by my local coffee shops and I get bags full of this stuff. They know me, they know me by name, and they know me by Stoney Ridge. It's a good thing.