Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 27 Feb 2023...
Hey Y'all! Check out our newest YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2qJkJiZFQU
Happy Monday morning from Air2Ground Farms! The storms passed through overnight without much fanfare. The tarp was off the dairy cows hay bale and blown as far north as it could go, a dog crate tumbled a hundred yards or so, but that is about all. It is still quite windy but the sun is out and it will be nearly 70 degrees. Tomorrow is forecast to be over 70 but we're still tracking a possible snow event winter storm Friday. The animals are great this morning, and all seem to have made it through the storms well. Yesterday, we worked on the bar project, grouted the kitchen backsplash, and edited our next YouTube video, Join Us During Our Peaceful Morning Milking Routine. I've discussed our satellite internet issues and how happy we are with our current provider. We are getting relatively fast up and down load speeds. With that in mind, back to YouTube. We are obviously still learning how to do this. Currently we use iMovie to edit our videos and when it is time to save them, it doesn't give options of file type or any indication of what the file size will be. Being who I am, I decided to save this one as pro-res, highest quality to see what happened. When complete, the file was quite large and in a .mov format (means nothing to me) but I thought ok. I told YouTube to upload it and it started churning. After about 15 minutes it said 1% and I thought hmmm... About 12 hours later, the upload was complete and YouTube told me that the file type I uploaded is not supported. Oh well, I guess pro-res isn't for us amateurs! We saved it again, this time in amateur-res and ended up with a .mp4 format (still means nothing to me) and after only an hour and a half, it was uploaded and YouTube was happy. We published it this morning after rounds and even learned to add some of the neat things we see at the end of other folks' videos. We will hopefully finish the bar project today and start prepping for the meat chickens to show up in a bit over a week.
Fighter pilots are known for telling stories, but there is specific protocol that must be followed when telling the fighter pilot story. The most important of which is that the story must be at least 10% truth. It traditionally starts with one of two introductions: 1) There I was...; or 2) No S@*t, True F#*&ing Story (NSTFS)... There are also traditions of telling stories of other's misgivings, clown-act stories, or one can even preempt a clown-act story told on themself by telling a my-bad story. Today, I will tell a my-bad. NSTFS, there I was in the milk yard yesterday evening knowing that Betty didn't need to be milked so we will be complete in record time. I could feel my leather recliner beckoning, I was going to have peaceful minutes to relax at the end of the day. The only thing that stood between me and milking Happy was two of the cutest little heifer calves on the farm. No worries, I'll ask them nicely, maybe even say please, to calmly stroll into the loafing pen where they will spend the night separated from their milk source. Being heifer calves, they didn't immediately respond positively to my request and so I tried herding them gently to the opening. Well, they both thought that was absolutely the most fun thing they had ever experienced. They ran, kicked, bucked, hopped, and all of the other words that can possibly describe a calf doing what it wants but not what you want. After a few minutes of this 'fun,' I decided I would ask in a more forceful manner. Holly, the orphan calf new add to the dairy herd pics 2 & 3 above, went into the milking area, so I grabbed her and started to lead her by placing both hands on either side of her back to guide her in the direction I wanted, not the one she wanted. Sensing the end of the fun, she had other designs. She began to resist, which caused me to lose my footing, leaving me draped across her back like a Grand-Canyon burro. Her fun now transformed to fight-or-flight and she chose flight but couldn't quite get going with my body draped across her back. So she performed the normal bovine behavior of bucking, heaving me limply onto the ground like a sack of feed. No worries, my jaw caught my fall and my eyebrow padded the ground so her hoof didn't get scuffed as she performed a traditional rain dance on my face in her attempt to run. Shelley, seeing the kerfuffle but having no idea what was going on, rushed to see if I still had teeth since all she could see was my face getting stomped into the ground. To her credit, Shelley didn't laugh at me when she saw that I was still in one piece. Having had their fun, the calves decided to go on into the loafing area and we finished the task of milking. My jaw and eyebrow are a bit sore but other than that, I'm alright as you can see in the top pic from this morning. Now, Shelley is restricted from telling this story as a clown-act recollection!
Check out Shelley's YouTube Short for today Happy pigs in new forrest:
Check out our Milking Video:
Local Farm Report for 26 Feb 2023:
29 Chicken eggs
4Duck eggs
0 Goose eggs
6 Gallons of milk
Sales:
1 Gallon of milk
2 Dozen eggs
Cheers!
Rich & Shelley
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