Our local Dairy Farmer saved the day

Good morning everybody. How you doing today? My name's Andrew. I'm Matt. I'm Jeff. I'm Pop Pop. I'm Daniel. I'm Petey. I'm Izzy. I am Gally. And we're some of the Veggie Boys. And I'm Gale. And we'd like to thank you for stopping by. If you're new here, please consider subscribing because we can grow a lot of stuff on the farm, but one thing we can't grow is this channel without your help. Hey everyone, welcome back. It's so nice to have you. We've been fairly busy this morning. We've got all our chores taken care of. We got the farm market all set up and we already put together a pretty large order for the local supermarket. Even though we've been busy, we've got a pretty large day ahead of us. Many of you will know what that piece of equipment is. That is our silage bag filler or silage bag blower. We're gonna be loading silage into that later on in today and filling up one of those large bags. Also, the local wholesaler is needing us to help them out quite a bit today. We've got fair season in our local area and helping out the local wholesalers with fair season, it's a big job for us. So when it comes to those two things today, getting that silage bag filled and helping out the local wholesaler, oh, it's gonna be a fun one. Now that we got the back grate taken off of the silage bagger, what we're gonna be doing is taking our bag that we had ordered and purchased and putting it onto the bagger, getting everything set up and ready to go. We're not gonna be filling just yet. Jeff, one of the local dairy farmers that helps us every year with our silage harvest, he is gonna be coming over to chop for us and we just wanna have everything set up and ready to go for when he arrives. And I got a special guest. How you doing, Ronnie? He's like, all these tractors, all this equipment, this is the best thing ever. Now we just put our large bag onto our bagger. What we're gonna be doing is taking this outside row of plastic right here and pulling it back and tying it in a knot. And then once we bring our wall, I don't know what other word, our blockade over here and put it against it, as it fills up with silage, we get everything hooked in place. It makes sure that we have a tight pack of silage inside the bag. And having a tight pack of silage is very, very important. We want as little oxygen in with our corn silage that we're putting in because the oxygen could cause it to spoil. And we don't want spoiled silage, right? Say no. No, yeah, good job. Hey, can I get a high five? Yeah. You know, I think the word that I was thinking about was backstop. Yeah, backstop. We now got our backstop put into place and we're just about set up and ready to go. All we need is silage. Now we just got confirmation from Jeff. He's gonna be coming around noon. So hopefully we can get all our other chores taken care of, all our other work taken care of this morning. And then we can focus on this this afternoon. We've got one, two, three, four, five bins that we're gonna be filling with sweet corn. Hey, I know what you're thinking. That's a lot of sweet corn. And I'll agree with you, that's a lot of sweet corn. But as I mentioned, it is fair season. And since all the fairs are coming into town, that means there's a lot of stands that need sweet corn. And we're gonna be one of the farmers that's providing sweet corn to the local fairs. How exciting is that? I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'll go to the fair and eat some sweet corn. Probably not, but you know, I like sweet corn. We're figuring on exactly what we need to get picked. We're hoping to get at least 500 ears of corn in each bin. These ears are a little on the larger side. The variety that we're picking is Montauk. It's usually pretty big. But how's it taste? Most important part, what do you say, Matt? Pretty good? Oh yeah. It's looking like we've got plenty of corn here, which is a very good thing. But we're thinking four heaping full bins will be perfect for that order. Because altogether we need 40 bags of 50 ears in each bag. So that is a lot of sweet corn. Another thing that we need, the wholesaler also needs a bin full of 300 ears. So we've got the four bins at about 500 to 600 ears a pop. And then we've got the extra bin that we've just got to put 300 in. It's nice right now, we don't have to worry about counting. We'll only have to worry about counting for that bin of 300. But once we get all this corn harvested, we're then gonna have to separate it out into bags, which isn't as much fun as picking it. But hey, it needs to be done. Thankfully the picking has been relatively easy. I haven't been finding that many worms in the corn. Oh, I think I just found one here. I would like to give you a little demonstration. When I take my fingers and I reach at the top of the corn, when I squeeze here, when I'm picking, I squeeze my hand, I can feel if that tip of the sweet corn is rounded off. There is no bug damage there, but I grab this one and I feel a dent in the corn right here at the top. So my finger is pushing in there. So let's just pop this open and see. Yeah, I already noticed there's worm dirt there. Look at that. Ah, yeah, see, that's what we're looking for. Now we try to mitigate how much of this we actually pick, but this corn is perfectly fine if we just take this top off. I don't even need to take that much off. So it's not really that big of a problem, but we do our best to not harvest any of that sweet corn that has that worm damage or that bug damage with it. But hey, you're starting to get into the late part of September. This is to be expected when it comes to having sweet corn. Anybody that has raised their own sweet corn knows how much of a pain the bugs can be. Nice and sweet. Just the way I like it. There you go, princess. She really wanted some sweet corn. We just got our third bin of sweet corn picked. We're moving pretty good. We're going through the field. We're not having too much trouble. We've now moved from Montauk to a variety called Allure. Something to keep in mind is that we plant so much sweet corn on this farm that we like to do a few different varieties. That way, every single planting doesn't ripen at the same time. You can see this sweet corn that we've got in front of us. It looks absolutely gorgeous. Got some of these top ears that are ready to go. Some of these bottom ears are just about ready. So as always, we have to be very selective. There is a few more plantings of sweet corn here. So once we finish off this one, we can just continue moving down through the line. And for whatever reason, this sweet corn we're picking at doesn't have near the crop damage that the sweet corn in the later plantings did. So that's a good sign for us. It means harvesting is going to be a little more enjoyable. Now, there are quite a few interesting facts about sweet corn. One big thing is that timing is everything. So sweet corn is usually harvested at the milk stage when the kernels release like a milky juice if they're punctured. But if you wait too long and the sugars start turning into starch, it makes it less sweet. Now, sweet corn is often best picked in the morning because believe it or not, it's a lot easier to pull and the temperatures are cooler. Another thing is that the sugars are more concentrated and it actually helps the corn to stay fresher for longer. Now, speed is important, not just when you're picking, but afterward, when you're harvesting sweet corn, it needs to be eaten sooner rather than later or stored in a cool area because the starch will begin to overtake the sugars immediately. Another thing that's very important to remember is it is kind of like a longstanding hand-picked tradition on smaller farms, but they do have large pieces of equipment for larger farms. Now, it does damage the corn a little bit, but that's why we do the hand-picked method. We're not too big of a farm here. There are so many interesting facts when it comes to harvesting sweet corn, and while we were filling this bin, I just wanted to share a few with you. Well, you can't complain too much about the way that corn looks. Glad we were able to get it all picked. Now, the fun part. We gotta put it all in the bag. Maybe it's not the fun part, but it's gotta be done. I'm just happy we're able to get all that corn sold because if we weren't able to pick it all and sell it, it'd just be sitting in the field and what good does that do us? For lunch today, it looks like we are having tacos. Taco Tuesday. We had a full work crew today because we had Miss Callie, we had Mr. Ronnie in the back, and we had Miss Lily, but now it's time for nap. So we're all heading home, right? Say nap time. What's up, Chief? We ready for a good day? Hi, ho. Oh, it's gonna be a good day. And there we have it. Our first load of silage heading back to the farm. Daniel and Joel are gonna be rotating through wagons. Daniel's gonna be running the one wagon back and forth and Joel's gonna be working with this one. That is one happy boy in that tractor. Joel, he loves driving for silage wagons. It's not getting too dry. You think it's gonna be one of the here. Jeff takes care of us. I'm riding with Jeff and we're just talking about the silage, but you know what his biggest concern is right now? He's got to can pears tomorrow morning. How many pears have you got? Yeah, and that's not enough. And it's crazy. Yeah, and you know, the pears are so nice, he says. He just needs to can more pears. He's gonna be canning pears in the morning. That's a real difference. You know, milk is a good thing. Oh no, it's falling out. We're losing it. Oh no. That's what happens when you really fill it. What we're really looking for in here is that everything is chewed up really nice. We can see all of these kernels are crushed. He has a special piece of equipment on this chopper to make sure that every kernel is crushed. He's just trying to maximize the amount of starts that he can get into this corn. It really enhances the feed value and it makes this silage that we're gonna be putting in that bag so much beneficial when we're feeding there in winter. Plenty of nutrients for the cattle and they'll benefit from it a lot because of the special piece of equipment that he's got on his chopper and because of the way we're gonna store it. It was nice getting to spend some time with Jeff inside the chopper, but I've got to get heading back to the farm. The one thing I just have to say about this silage corn is it looks absolutely beautiful. And the way it works is kind of like making a corn sauerkraut for the cattle. It's cool. It's very cool. This is just ultimately gonna be so beneficial for the cattle. They can extract so much nutrients from this silage. And that's one of the reasons why we really like it. A nice cost effective feed for the animals. Pretty neat how this whole thing works. We basically have the tractor with the brake on just parked there. And this piece of equipment is literally pushing the tractor so that we can get a nice tight pack with our silage in our bag. Again, we don't want oxygen in there. Oxygen will lead to spoiling. So we want to make sure that this is packed as tightly as possible. And Joel's job is just staying right along with the bagger. So as the tractor and the bagger are pushed forward, Joel just tries, stays in line with his wagon. You know, we try not to make a mess, but occasionally there's a mess. We can clean it up easy. No problem. But the most important thing is that our bag is getting filled. While I was with Jeff and Daniel and Joel work on getting the bag filled up, dad and Matthew were over here getting corn put into bags. They've already gone through two bins and got two left. So while I'm here, I'm going to help them out with that. You can see though, this is kind of crazy. That's a lot of bagged corn. We got all the corn transferred from bins into bags. You can see we got three bins full of bags. And I'm happy to report, we got a little extra for ourselves so we don't need to pick any more corn today. Oh my word, look at this broccoli. Right from my seat, I see beautiful broccoli. Look at that, oh yeah! So excited I get to cut broccoli right now. This is wonderful. This is the broccoli you bring home to the woman. Oh yeah. Now get Lauren excited, that kind of broccoli. For reference, there's the broccoli next to my head. That's a big old broccoli. So I believe this variety of broccoli we're picking right now is called Eastern or Emerald Crown. It is a smaller broccoli, but due to us adding some water to it, the size of these heads has just blown up. And some of these are massive. I think everyone can agree that as farmers, we'd want to have really, really nice produce. But with the lack of moisture that we've had, it's been kind of difficult to grow things lately. But thanks to adding the irrigation, we're not having any problems now. There are certain areas out in this field when I could cut nearly every single head of broccoli. And that's good, because that's what I want. I want to be able to take all the broccoli and use it. Where are you starting to pile it in? Right here. I have a whole bunch of big heads of broccoli. So it's like, what a great place to start a pile. Like this one. Take a couple of these leaves off. Wow. I love it. We just got our broccoli all harvested. I want to show you guys, this is what it looks like. Oh my word. 10 beautiful baskets. Is that 12 baskets? 12 baskets of broccoli. And some of the broccoli on here is just massive. That is beautiful. This will sell quick. We were distracted for a little bit of time getting that broccoli picked and working on some other things. While we've been gone, they have made a crazy amount of progress. Look at that. I think I overheard Daniel mentioning to my dad that we need one or two more loads to finish. There have been years where we've done two or even three of these bags and it usually takes us a lot longer. But as of right now, we've had no issues, no breakdowns. Things have been going smooth. Which on the farm, when things are going smooth, that's a little weird. It is a little weird. And that wagon that we had just put in was the last wagon we're going to be doing. Not only for today, but for the year. We had one bag we wanted to fill and we were able to get it done. Okay, everyone. I am now home. I just ate some dinner. And who do I got here? My little trapped babies. You're trapped in here. Be nice. No pulling hair. Oh boy, it's always crazy. But anyway, I came over here to say hi to my babies and tell everyone that this is where we're going to end the video today. Lily, it's okay. It's okay. She doesn't want to end the video. And as you can imagine, it's been a very long day. We're getting pretty tired. And that means this is where we're going to be ending the video. I'd like to thank everyone for watching and I hope to see you next time. Buh-bye.