I Found a 200 Year Old Tree

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:01]Welcome to another beautiful day on the homestead. This is always an amazing time of the year because it's when everything's growing really good. All the gardens have been planted and even though we had a good drought already, it has been raining pretty much off and on for the last two weeks. The okra is in the ground.

[00:00:35]And so that is making everything green.

[00:00:41]And you know it's really busy on the homestead when you have just about every movable chicken coupe filled with chickens.

[00:01:00]We have about one week left and these guys are graduating. And these ones we're going to be putting in our farm shop.

[00:01:39]This week we learned something the hard way.

[00:01:42]This netting that I put up, it's chickenproof, but it's not sheep proof. We had the sheep on this side and they just pretty much just bulldozed their way inside the high tunnel. They they trampled on some things, but it wasn't too bad. They really didn't eat. You know what they went for though? The onions. They love the onions.

[00:02:04]Um so they ate a little bit. Um it's mainly they kind of trampled on stuff.

[00:02:11]Doesn't look too bad, but now I know.

[00:02:14]Now I know.

[00:02:27]I'm thinking Freckles, our mama, she might be pregnant again.

[00:02:34]She had this big old boy over there in February, but she's kind of looking big.

[00:03:13]3-w weekek old pigs.

[00:03:17]And they're already starting to eat mama's feed. Don't eat too many much.

[00:03:22]She doesn't like that.

[00:03:24]She will flip these pigs over.

[00:03:35]Cooney pigs for sale now. Um we've got two males, five females.

[00:03:45]And if you want a bore, if you want to breed some pigs and you want a male, you got to let me know because I'm about to castrate them.

[00:03:57]It's the least fun job I have. So, if I could cash not castrate them and sell them instead, that would be great. Healthy healthy babies over here.

[00:04:09]Look at these guys.

[00:04:15]They're hot tamales over here. Look at this little pork rockets.

[00:04:26]Last year we sold out on all the piglets.

[00:04:29]We sold all of them last year. So, don't think we're going to keep any more this year either.

[00:04:37]When you could walk and do farm chores in the morning, it's easier to observe the land. Plus, it's more peaceful. I'm always looking to see what's out of place. Maybe a tree has fallen down.

[00:04:51]Maybe a bucket flipped over. Maybe there's some trash on the pasture.

[00:05:29]Cornish crosses should be lazy.

[00:05:32]They should be just sitting there laying there saying feed me. But not these corners crosses. Movement. You got to move them. Gives them exercise.

[00:05:47]We are full here.

[00:05:49]We are full, guys.

[00:05:52]Uh so we got h about 2500 gallons of water that we have saved right now. And we're topped off. We had about less than 200 gallons from the drought. This was a few weeks ago. That's the lowest I've ever seen it. This is my rain gauge. And then now a matter of one or two days, we're filled 1,000 gallons. One of these days, I'll put another one next to it.

[00:06:20]And both of them would be filled should be filled all year long. It's so satisfying to save rain.

[00:06:32]Something I am observing about these sheep is that they are clearing out the bottom half of these trees. Whatever they could reach, they will eat. Now, they don't devour these tree leaves, but they will eat them and browse them.

[00:06:53]This is one of our bigger trees that I have left that I saved from the forestry mulchure and for shade. It's just strictly for shade. And usually this tree is all overgrown. You can't even see the trunk. But they had cleared away. Our wild plum tree. Now I don't leave them long enough cuz they might destroy the tree eventually if you just leave them in the spot, but we move them around. So that's another benefit of doing that is they're not too much in one spot where they're going to destroy something because these sheep are more destructive than our pigs. Like Lorraine got him some lettuce from the garden.

[00:07:38]Organic lettuce.

[00:07:42]Yeah, pigs or vegan.

[00:07:46]Hey Lorraine, what you doing in here?

[00:07:49]>> We're harvesting cabbages. Cabbage cabbage day.

[00:07:52]>> Yeah, but they're not looking so good.

[00:07:54]They got a lot of um slug and beetle damage.

[00:07:58]>> But we have at least one beauty over here. This one looks really good and it doesn't it didn't get attacked too much.

[00:08:07]>> Yeah.

[00:08:08]>> Yeah. I don't know. Well, this cabbage is not ready, but this Chinese cabbage is ready. But um some of it could use a little bit more time. Some of it's ready. Like this one, if I let it go any longer, it's just going to get eaten by bugs.

[00:08:23]>> It's funny. Last year, we didn't have a good time with cabbage.

[00:08:26]>> No, >> we didn't. It wasn't the cabbage year last year, but the year before that >> Oh, yeah.

[00:08:32]>> was cabbage year.

[00:08:32]>> It was.

[00:08:34]>> So, this year, I don't know.

[00:08:36]>> This year I >> Looks pretty good.

[00:08:38]>> Well, the best it grew, but the bugs the bug pressure was bad.

[00:08:43]>> Yeah. So, this might be the year of the onions >> even. Let's check out our hot peppers, guys. We got hot sauce coming. That's the plan still. So, hang in there. Your hot sauce is coming. But it just takes forever to grow hot peppers. They just take their time. Even though they love the high tunnel, but they just take their time.

[00:09:08]Let's give some Zeke some cabbage. You like cabbage, Zeke?

[00:09:29]Yeah. See cabbage.

[00:10:13]So, let's check on these meaties.

[00:10:17]These chicken nuggets.

[00:10:26]Some chicken teeth.

[00:10:45]All right, let's keep going, guys. Every time I look at this area that we cleared, I'm amazed by it. It looks totally different now that we trimmed this big oak. And so I did some measurements on this oak and I believe it to be 200 years old.

[00:11:07]And from what I'm reading that that's pretty rare for an oak tree. Usually they last about 50 years, but on occasion in the right conditions it could last 200 years or more.

[00:11:19]But I'm still a little worried about it.

[00:11:23]I don't want it to fall in the house.

[00:11:25]But so far so good. We have plenty of room left in the dumper. So I really need to fill that up so we can get it out of here. Let's keep today going.

[00:11:36]Uh my other job is we're renovating this house. Hey R's in charge of sweeping sweeping all the crumbs. Heat. Heat.

[00:12:31]It's mostly mold that I'm getting out of here.

[00:12:35]This is behind the shower.

[00:12:44]The bathroom is finally demoed. I think the uh closet is not so bad except for down there that I took out, but it's mostly all gone now. The moldy, crusty drywall. Feel like it's taking forever to demo this house.

[00:13:00]Uh we've also tried to started demoing this room here.

[00:13:05]I may leave that top part of drywall cuz it looks really good.

[00:13:10]Um outer walls, no insulation, but we just had a few hours to get out here and and keep moving keep moving forward with this place.

[00:13:25]All right. Yeah, it's a favorite time of day because it's dinner. Hey, Lorraine.

[00:13:30]What's for dinner?

[00:13:32]I've got some fried rice. So, the cabbage that I harvested this morning, I thought I would make it into some fried rice. We have some um some of our sausage that we sell. And then we have um carrots and cabbage and onions, all kinds of goodies. Our our ginger that we grew last year. So, we have tons of this ginger. So, it's got ginger and garlic.

[00:13:59]It smells really good. And that was a busy day on the homestead. End it with good food. Thank you guys for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video.