The secret to a happy life. Plan your homestead deer fencing, orchard, honeybees, and garden

Hey guys, it's Josh, Tiny Ridge Farmer. Welcome to the farm vlog. Today, wanted to take you around. We're going to go down the chicken coop, check on the baby chicks, see how they're doing. Actually, are not babies anymore. They're kind of big chickens now. Nobody's laying yet. We're going to see if anybody new has started laying. Going to walk around the farm a little bit. And I just want to talk to you for a second today. I want to talk to you a little bit about happiness. Okay, a lot of you guys might be struggling, might be arguing with your spouse, you might be struggling with your children. You may be struggling with a few things in your life. And I just want to talk to you a little bit about it. So, come along with me here on the Stony Ridge Farm. We'll check out the chickens and do a little talking about happiness and about life. All [Music] right, Stony Ridge. In case y'all didn't know, this here is a big old rockidge. Hey, little chicken friend. Guys, we keep some chicken treats over here by our chicken coop. If you got a chicken coop at home, I encourage you to keep some treats by your chicken. There you go. Talk to them a little bit. Birdies. Birdie birds. Hey, birdie. Birdies. So, let's go over here and check out the egg box and see if we got any new chickens laying. guys, looks like we got one egg. We'll put it back in here. So, we got one chicken that's laying and the rest of them haven't started laying. They were born in December. So, we're January, February, March, April. We should be getting pretty close to the time where all these hins should start laying and hopefully some of them will start sitting on eggs because I got white leg horn hens that I ordered from the hatchery and I'd like to hatch out some good white leorn mix hens. So, you're watching this channel and you're thinking about having your own little homestead and your own little farm and that's cool. It's a great thing. It's a good way to live. But I want to talk to you a little bit about finance. Okay, look behind me. Tractor, tractor, mower, truck, trailer, another truck up here, another truck back there. Guys, the infrastructure that goes into building and maintaining and making something out of a piece of land is expensive and you need to consider that. Okay, we don't even have a barn built yet. We've got all this equipment. I have to maintain this equipment. If you don't maintain it, it's not worth buying. So, think about that when you're getting ready to buy your place and when you're getting ready to homestead. We were originally looking for about 10 acres and here we are buying another 40 acres to make it a full 190 acres. So, think about this, guys. This is going to be my full-time job soon. It's taken every waking hour that I have just to keep up the farm equipment and build what we want out of this farm. So, we haven't even made a dime yet. So, guys, think about that. It's a little bit of food for thought, okay? Something I haven't really exposed a whole lot of you guys to is my orchard and also my fence. I made a couple videos about the orchard and how we came about everything, but basically, I'll tell you right now, when we first bought our property, I knew I wanted fruit trees. I knew I wanted them and I wanted them right away. So, we searched and searched for fruit trees and for a good deal on fruit trees. Never really found it until we went to Tractor Supply late in the year and we found that they were trying to blow out all their fruit trees for half price. Well, we went in and bought every fruit tree they had and it was about 52 fruit trees. We've got several varieties of peaches, apples, pears, and also plums. All these fruits will ripen at different times and you really want to think about that when you're getting ready to buy fruit trees. our apple trees. Some ripen early in the year, some of them late in the year, some in the fall, some even into winter will still have apples on the tree. The second thing we need to think about is where are we going to plant our orchard and how are we going to work this out? This is a north facing slope. I purposefully planted these trees on a north facing slope because the weather is cooler down here in this valley. And hopefully this will keep from stimulating the plants to bloom early. I want them to bloom late so that they don't take so much of a chance of getting frostbitten after they bloomed. Another thing we need to think about was deer control. See that right there? That is our fence controller. Okay, we have an electric fence with a solar electric fence controller that stays energized year round to keep the deer out of our fruit trees because the deer will come up and nibble off the buds and blooms on your fruit trees and break the limbs of them and everything like that. And until our fruit trees get well established, we don't want deer around them. Also, our garden is strategically placed just above our fruit tree. So, when we water our garden, the runoff from the garden comes down into the orchard. Well planned. We had to think about this stuff, guys. When you're starting your homestead, think about the most logical way to do things. Fertilizer is going to roll downhill. Okay? So, we have a lot of manure in the garden. Down below the garden here, the grass is just flourishing and so is the orchard. So, we got to think about that kind of stuff. Guys, let's talk about the electric fence setup right here. here. And I've got a video right here. Boop. How to keep the deer out of your garden. I'll post it right here. Uh you can check that out. But we'll talk to you really quickly about the fence setup. So I have standard Tpost right here. And then I have these little cheapy plastic Tpost out here. I've got one strand out from the main fence. This is 36 in out. It's 18 inches up. The first strand on this fence is 18. Then it goes to 36. Then it goes to 54. This has been successful at keeping the deer out. The deer cannot negotiate this three-dimensional fence system, or at least so far, they haven't been able to negotiate this. I found this information on YouTube and I applied it and it worked. So, it could work for you guys. If you got a deer problem, try this out. It may work. Now, I'll take you for a little walk through the orchard here so that you can kind of see what we've got going. If you look behind me, you'll see rowby row. And you need to plan this out. Okay? Take a piece of paper, plan it out. Write down what your trees are cuz you will forget. You will not remember what all your trees in your orchard are. So make yourself a map. Put it in a safe place so that in 10 years you'll know exactly what kind of fruit tree you planted. So Stony Ridge farmer, what the heck are these black plastic things doing around your trees that are ugly? Yes, they're ugly. But we had an issue. We had rabbits coming into our orchard and chewing and gnawing the bark off of our trees. These little plastic pieces of pipe will help keep the rabbits off of your fruit trees and also will deter deer because a deer wants to take his horns and gouge them into the tree. Well, when he hits that plastic thing, that's not a tree. He's like, "H, what is that?" And he stops. Another part of deer deterring and a part of keeping rabbits from chewing up your tree bark. So, while we're walking through the orchard, I want you to look back over my shoulder right here. Beehives. Okay, we keep our honey bees pretty close to our orchard so that we have success with our fruit. And also, boom, our garden's up here. Okay, this is all about organizing your farm. Okay, you want to organize it in a way that makes things convenient for you. Okay, our garden is right beside our chicken coupe. The chickens provide manure for the garden. We don't have to move things very far. And that's what I want you to think about when you start homesteading is movement. the time it takes to pick up a wheelbarrow full of manure and take it 200 yards off when all you'd have to do is take it right here to the garden and get your compost pile started up right beside your garden. Guys, here are honey beehives. I'm going to do a little zoom in right here so you can see the activity that the bees have going on today. Man, they are rocking. So, tomorrow we'll go ahead and get our second trip into the beehive on the farm vlogs. Okay, so stay tuned. Tomorrow, the next day, there should be another video popping up and we'll show you what the first look into the beehive is like this spring on the Stony Ridge Farm. While we're on the subject of bees, guys, we lost four out of five hives. These hives were still full of honey, and I really don't understand what happened. We had several very cold snaps. So, the weather would get up to about 60 and then drop down to 20, 15, even 10° this year. And I think our bees just froze up. But when we open the hives, there might have been 20 bees in there. Very upsetting. We've ordered two packages of bees. They'll be here next Saturday, and that is when we'll make the video of how to introduce your package of bees to your beehive. But guys, thanks for watching me, the Stony Ridge farmer, here on the farm today. I hope you learned a little bit of something. Hope you got a little bit of advice. There's not a whole lot going on today. It's just really pretty outside. Me and the dog are just kind of hanging out, having a little bit of fun. Just thought I'd take you around and show you a few things. So, one final thing, guys. Don't forget to be humble, okay? In everything you do in your life, ensure your success by being humble. You're not all NFL players, okay? Being cocky and knowing everything and thinking you're the best is not always the best policy. Love yourself. Treat yourself with respect. And humble yourself. Humble yourself in your marriage. Humble yourself with your children. Humble yourself in church. Humble yourself with your dog. is everybody out here has something to teach us. Okay, so guys, thanks for coming to Stony Ridge Farm today. I appreciate you. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Leave me some comments down below. Thumbs up. Hopefully not thumbs down. And we'll see you next time. So come on down to Stony Ridge with me. All right, come on down to the Stony Ridge. Bring your wife and bring your kids. We're living life pure and sweet. That's the way it's supposed to be. Stony Ridge. Woo. We're ordering more bees and I'll make another video. In case y'all didn't know, this right here is my rock Bobby. Say hey, Bobby. Thanks for watching,