Good idea on the categories.  I would suggest 3 groups.  A episodes, shorts, and specifics.  

The specifics should be your single topic video like the mower.  That could actually be a longer and unedited video.  If someone else had a mower that wouldn't start then explaining while showing the fuel system, spark system, what the starting fluid can looked like, going over the basic checks, the basic maintenance would be good.  

Shorts would be a quick update such as a minute and half getting the mower started and a quick status of other projects going on like how much the chickens or pigs have grown.  Maybe a specific giving the complete run down on your chicken setup.  

Then an episode that ties it all together as a complete over view of all the things that happened in the week or the interesting things that happened in the week.  For example going to a farm auction, explaining what you hope to get and why, the bidding, and then follow up on if you bought anything.  Wrap that content with your intro and homestead status and follow it with what you will need to be doing next.

To get the episode footage you will need to long unedited parts that can be used in the specifics and that can be chopped way down for the shorts.  The only extra work is filming and explaining everything as you do it.

As I prefaced my comments, I spent countless hours watching those things while growing up.  So for me that section was way too long with too few details or it could be one the specific videos mentioned where he made it even longer and explained things more in depth for those who have never seen the process of starting a stubborn motor.  Just trying to give constructive feedback on the video, which is what the thread was asking for.  A shorter short or a longer specific would be more appealing, at least to me.

If you need starting fluid then the motor has a problem.  It is still a useful tool and is part of the process though.  I rented a large tiller over the weekend and followed the directions I was given to start it but it wouldn't start.  I broke out the starting fluid and same result, not even a hiccup from it as it tried to start.   As his video showed the starting fluid should at least make the engine jump if it is getting a spark.  Since it didn't jump that told me it was missing the spark. I looked over the entire machine and found an on/off switch on the side of the engine that the rental place failed to inform me about. 

@SWIRE

To the why: Why not? I am actually trying to figure out how to format and make an introduction video that explains this, at least somewhat. Neither my wife nor I are completely alien to food production. She grew up on small acreage with small livestock and market gardens, I grew up on a large crop farm (well, it was large for its day). 

My wife and I married and had children young, with no regrets I may add. Things were the typical struggle of a young family trying to become established. We had a few laying hens, and that was all. After 4 years, I lost my job. This was deep into the lack of jobs period after the 2008 collapse. There were no jobs. At all. Anywhere. We were living in a mobile home at the time in my in-law's back yard (Don't EVER do that, BTW. It was a rock/hard place kind of thing that put us there). We were making ends meet by using up the small cash savings we had to pay credit card minimums, putting more on the cards to buy food (not the best idea in hindsight), eliminating bills we didn't need, selling anything of value we had of value, and living off the absolute least amount of anything we could get away with. Income was first in the form of scrap metal, but when prices tanked to $30/ton soon after, it was no longer profitable to haul scrap metal (fuel costs more than the scrap metal check). I would also work odd jobs of whatever I could find, and eventually I had to kill my pride and ask family for financial help. Before and during all this, we still needed to move. Again, never install a mobile home at your in-laws' . Live and learn.. Amazingly, we found a house on just a hair under 5 acres in the country. It was a foreclosure, and since the housing market had crashed completely by this point (prices were at their lowest), it was going cheap. It was old, run down, over-grown, and needing significant investments in sweat equity. But we were still broke. We had one ace in the hole: my Grandfather had started retirement accounts for us grandchildren years back, and he contributed regularly. While the entire $44,000 that the house costs wasn't in that account, enough was there to be close enough where I was able to beg, borrow, plead for enough from family to make up the gap. Our top dollar offer of $40,000 was accepted, and we closed on the house a few weeks later. Keep in mind, we still had no income at this point, and we had sold everything of value that wasn't absolutely needed. Even sold my truck. Things were financially tough, but I have to tell you: at that closing, I felt like the most blessed man in the world. We were just given freedom. I can't adequately describe the immense joy my wife and I felt. 

So, we were sitting there, at our new home, OUR HOME, completely free. Free to let our son play outside. Freedom. I suffer from long term memory loss. I can barely remember the days when my sons were born. Unless the memory was incredibly strong or I think about it all the time, I loose it after about a year. I can tell you the entire story of my childhood and teenage years I remember in about 45 minutes. Dirty secret: that is half of the reason I am making these videos; for me (I also keep a written journal). I wanted to share that because 6 years later, I can still FEEL the joy and freedom that we felt that first day at our new house. It was that important and life changing. We spent our first 2 weeks sitting outside in lawn chairs letting our son play in the grass, just to enjoy feeling that feeling. Its a tear inducing kind of awesome.

Anyway, none of that euphoria changed our financial situation, and being the man of the house, the bread winner, the bringer home of the bacon, I was doing an excellent job of failing miserably. One day, in our new house, we ran out of food. My son was on a medically required specific diet and he had his food, but there was a can of cream soup and one other thing in the cupboard for my wife and I, nothing that would make much of a meal. And that is saying something considering we had been living for 3 years on 2 dishes: porkchop soup and mashed potatoes and hamburger gravy. Nothing else. Credit cards were maxed out at this point, we had no cash. It was a horrible feeling for me, the polar opposite of the euphoria I had felt before. My wife called her sister, not to ask for anything but just to have a shoulder to cry on. I went outside to be alone with my thoughts, figuring out what to do next. This had been going on for 2 years now, but I'd run out of credit at this point. This was the first time I called family for help paying the bills. Of course they were there for me, they knew what we had been going through. I didn't want to ask for anything after what family did to help us move, but there I was. My wife's sister came out that evening with a trunk full of groceries (not because we asked, she and her husband just did it), and a check arrived from my uncle a few days later. 

That day changed me. The look on my wife's face that day of having nothing to cook for supper changed me forever. It shook me to my core. I pledged then and there it would never happen again. My family would always be fed, or I would die trying. 

Since our financial situation wasn't improving much, I decided to press our blessing into service, our new house and land that is. With only garage sale hand tools (and primarily our bare hands), I set myself to work in the soil. What started as a small garden has turned itself into over 3000sq ft of garden space, fruit trees, berries, chickens (meat and eggs), cows for dairy, and pigs coming on Saturday. This year, a lot of our investments come together and start making "profit". We have stored foods for emergencies (over a year's worth of calories are stored for us), and continually produce more food. I had soon after that day started a new internet based business, which while isn't making us wealthy, is finally paying the bills these last few years. We are now keeping ourselves afloat financially.

In our years of struggle, we had learned many lessons. The pledge I made those years ago drives me still today. Producing as much of our own food security is what guides me. I have set us up now that even if things get financially horrible, we would be OK. Our house cannot be taken from us. We can produce our own food. We would need extremely little income to get by if needed. And none of that is on accident. 

Modern society has forgotten the benefits of old fashioned work. The basics of food and shelter are lost to most; its all taken for granted. We don't take anything for granted anymore. Part of our supper prayer is thanking God for the work he has given us the opportunity to do. I give thanks for the opportunity to work as hard as I can, to produce what I can with what He has blessed us with. When I am outside sweating and busting my a$$, waiting for the Advil to kick in, I will thank God for giving me the work to do. My son still looks at me like , but he is only 10. He will get it one day.


And yes, I was ragging on the starter too long. That thought was going through my mind constantly while I was turning the key .

I do appreciate the feedback. Admittedly, I'm not the best at explaining things. I tend to think much faster than I talk, and lots of stuff doesn't make sense outside of my head I'm told. 

I knew from experience from when I got the tractor (the fuel check valve was faulty) that it takes a lot of cranking at full choke to prime the fuel system. I don't generally like using starting fluid at all, but like you said, it can be a great diagnostic tool. I was using the starter fluid to run the engine to hopefully fill the fuel system w/o needing to crank on it with the starter. I quit the fluid when no fuel was coming up to the fuel filter, leading to my fuel shortage discovery 

Thank you for explaining.  That is a great story and you definitely need a "where we came from" or "how we got here" video.  I can relate to some that of that through personal experience and that of friends and family.  Always being able to provide makes perfect sense now.  I think a lot of people can relate to your story and to see how you came out on top through hard work should provide others struggling with encouragement.

Part of my question was where do you see it going.  I understand how you got to where you are and why you are doing the things you are.  It seems that you are always looking to improve/growing; is there a point where you have everything you want and are content or do you see yourself always expanding, growing, adding more things, and doing more?  The fact that you are making videos, besides to remember things, tells me that you have higher ambitions.  For example will you always stay on that 5 acres or would you look to expand or even move to some place larger so that you can do even more?  That was part of the why.  My parents upgraded parts of the farm but never seemed to have ambition to grow or expand it.  It was a family farm and a way of life, so they lived in that little corner of the world.

The freedom you mentioned is real and amazing.  I still go back to visit my parents and everything is wide open to do whatever I want.  Growing up in that environment had many great benefits, including learning to appreciate hard work.  You are right that most of modern society doesn't understand hard work.  It does create great opportunities for those of us who don't mind getting our hands dirty.  I will start a thread shortly on the historical fixer upper that I bought last year.  It doesn't need that much in materials but it needs thousands and thousands of hours or sweat equity.  There as only one other bidder on the property because no one could come up with the cash nor did they want to put in the work to fix it.  This spring I'm clearing out brush from the over grown yard for a garden.  I don't need a garden and it is more work than it is worth but I never want to be 100% dependent on someone else. Also part of the reason is I do not want to lose the knowledge of growing things plus I still like to work with my hands.

As for an into video.  I would suggest continuing to work out your current video structure and editing.  Then once you get that down you will have a better idea on what format you want your into video to be.

I immediately knew what you were doing with starting fluid when I saw the video.  I would have done the same thing.  It showed there was spark and hopefully the fuel would flow.  Did you rebuild/clean the carburetor when you worked on the engine?  If it sat for awhile or had bad fuel in it that will cause problems starting.  The mower did sound like it ran great once it was running.  If you find you need to give it a little choke to keep it running smooth then that suggests the carburetor needs to be cleaned. 

I had rebuilt the carb last year, but I drained it for the month it was off the engine. The stock fuel pump for these Onan engines provides about as much fuel as needed to run, little more so priming the fuel on these via cranking is painfully slow. I guess I could have pressurized the tank a bit, but I was worried on the age of the plastic tank if it would develop a leak.

The choke being on is part in how these carbs are designed. All I had to do was about 1/4 turn of the idle jet and it was GTG. Just choke for a second to start it now and it idles beautifully. I do need to re-adjust the idle stop though, it idles a little too low.

In a perfect world (not so perfect as I win the lottery, but..), we would move to about 20-60 acres and start an organic Dexter dairy operation. Dexter milk is almost as digestible as goat milk, so many who can't handle regular cow milk can handle Dexter milk products. My current business ideally would be able to mostly run itself, so we would have two streams of revenue, neither needing to make a full income, but complementing each other. If we were to move, we would likely do organic beef until we had the dairy side up and ready to go. Beef herd takes a LOT less labor than a dairy herd.

Growing up on almost 1000 acres, even 60 isn't much, but I would be very happy with that.

All that being said, I won't put us in a financial position where the mortgage is essential. With current prices, we could possibly get 20 acres and the payment would be about equal to rent on our current house. I will NEVER sell our current property. It would be our fall-back. If things flopped and we were facing foreclosure, we would simply not renew the tenant lease and move back here. We do consider that, but we have to pay down debt first. Living for years on the credit card stacks up, so we are working on paying it down. According to my forecast, we should be debt free in about 3-4 years at current payoff pace. I have another business up my sleeve I'm working the kinks out of, which may make for a nice income which would expedite our efforts.

I wish I could fully convey the scope what we were blessed with in getting this place. Not just to do things how we want, but to live. We were in a bad living situation. It was that moment our family really began. Its hard to explain, but it was more than mere property. It was like being let out of jail.

Keep pushing on.
I've forced myself to get our small garden cranked up....screw store bought crap.
Great story.

Great plan.  I would suggest you incorporate some of that wisdom and lessons learned into your video.  Actual financial planning based living at/below your means and building up to a better future.  Compared with "buy the biggest house you can afford" and work like a dog for someone else all your life to hopefully have it paid off by the time you are too old to work.  

The fixer upper I bought is part of a long term investment strategy.  I plan on keeping my current house, it will be paid off in about 8 years (I'm 41 now), and will be rental property for supplemental income.  The long term investment property has lots of potential to be many things, not sure which direction I will go with it yet other than just fixing it right based on a plan that will give me the maximum flexibility for the property.

I used to be terrible with my finances.  We never had much growing up so once I started making money I spent it.  Even after I knew better I just lacked disciple to live below my means.  It wasn't until my current g/f started talking about moving my direction and buying a house; then me missing an opportunity on a unique house with 12 acres that went dirt cheap before I finally took my finances seriously.  At the same time work provided us Dave Ramsey's course for free.  I went from up to my eyeballs in debt, to knocking out 90% of debt other than my mortgage over the course of two years.  That put me in a position where I was able to swing the purchase the fixer upper.  I wasn't able to pay cash but I was able to leverage some assets to help and had cash to put down and start some of the repairs.  Now I've been trying to balance materials and tools to repair the house while not going further in debt, taking a disciplined approach.  

That type of investment planning and finances was never really discussed by my parents.  They taught me how to keep books but they never explained their finances and how or why they did things.  When you are young you don't never really think about "what happens if things go bad" and why you should still be disciplined in life even when things are going great.

Thank you for taking the time to post.

I think it serves as inspiration for others who may be in a similar situation.

You also manned up and did what you needed to do to take care of your family and ultimately better yourself with blood, sweat and tears.

Too many people bitch and moan, poor me, yet do nothing about it.

I'm flattered folks.

Got the pigs yesterday, nothing much else going on this last couple weeks except charcoal burning. 

Didn't get what I really wanted at the Wednesday farm auction, but I did get perhaps enough fence posts (about 100 or so), double basin stainless dairy sink, round calf but to be used as a pig shelter, hydro pump, tire changer, kerosene heater, and 100 bales of alfalfa.

What I was excited about was a case 646 compact loader tractor. Went too high for the condition it was in. Way too high.

Going to be in a wet pattern these next 48 hours. After that, I'm going to plow the pasture and seed it. Today I'll finish up the pig pen, and the I'll also start on the disc and rake if the weather doesn't go severe.

sometimes that is the going thing at auctions I have been to a few and some things that look like they would be worth the weight in scrap only end up bringing huge money! and I have been to one and stuff was going for dirt

Really quick
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I put them in the mobile chicken coop, adding cattle panels to reinforce the poultry wire. We have about 2" of rain coming in the next 36 hours followed by a freeze, so I wanted them dry for this system.

I like weird

I'm not sure exactly what we are in for myself. 

I've only butchered pigs before. Never raised them.

Going to be a new adventure for us 

Bacon...and smoked bbq pork belly.....

Just sayin

Looking good man.

My wife is already trying to make it "my idea" to keep the female (as a pet) and sell piglets. 

We will see how she feels when they are not cute and cuddly....

Finished filming episode 1 of my landscape rake build. 

Here is a snapshot from the video:

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I just went for it. Apparently it's fine.

Lmao.
..

Step 1- wash pig
Step 2- put dog collar on pig
Step 3- put food bowls out for it
Step 4-  bring pig in when wife's out
Step 5- make it her idea that bacon sounds yummy

I will take dairy barn all day long compared to pig.  We had both growing up.  After the dairy barn you shower, change clothes, and you smell pretty clean.  After working in the hog building, you burn the clothes, scrub yourself with LAVA soap in the shower, and in 3 days you might smell tolerable.

Seriously pigs do smell that bad.  My dad is retired and rents out the hog buildings now but he is still the care taker to make sure things are functioning inside.  He will come here for a visit, shower the next morning, and when I walk into the bathroom there is a pig smell.  That is how deep that smell gets into your pours.  Of course he was probably power washing a large hog building for hours in the previous days but still, one or two showers will not remove that smell.

They will destroy everything.  If they get their snout under it, they will lift it.  If they can get their mouth on it, they will chew it.  If they are in a dirt pen they will dig with their snouts.  If your fence doesn't go all the way to the ground the will start working on it to either break the fence or dig under it.  Keep them well fed and they will cause less problems.  The best you can hope for is they become lazy and just lay around all day.

Concrete floor for the pen inside and outside, solid walls, and a strong fence will serve you well.  If they have any dirt they will dig a trench to lay in it.  When it rains they will turn the dirt to mud and lay in it.

LOL

I know protus was kidding around . I would NEVER bring livestock in the house. 

Well, I guess I shouldn't say that. First night we brought home our jersey heifer calf, it was a stormy night and she spent her feeding in the porch .


Interesting thing about farm smells:
I've found that most bad smelling animals come from the food. Example 1: Cheap cat/dog food. Example 2: Grain fed to cows. Cows eat grass, and very little if any grain. The only time the smell gets bad is if you let the manure pile up and start to rot, and then it isn't bad. Example 3: Confinement. Too small of an area and/or not enough cleanings of said area will cause a stench.

Pigs I'm sure will smell, but they will also forage a lot of their feed (hopefully) and less "conventional" feed. I'm sort of counting on them destroying the grove. I need that done, and I may as well have bacon when its done being dug up . I'm worried about the pen I made them, will be monitoring closely.

I'm not dropping money into cementing a pig pen just yet. If this year goes well, I plan on regular cinder block walls on a poured floor for a permanent solution. This year is about getting our feet wet with pigs, and seeing what the economics of it are when raising them organically.

Kitties:

I DID read Feral's posts. Informative.

Rat those guys are full of it.

Arnold from green acres never tore stuff up

What type of pen do you have?  I saw something previously about chicken wire but I didn't know of that was temporary or the permanent pen.  

I can tell you right now chicken wire won't hold them for very long.  If you pasture the pigs, in a huge pasture fencing becomes less important and they have all sorts of other things to tear up.  We had a small indoor/outdoor hog house initially, mainly for the sows and piglets.  I believe the market pigs had a larger area/field to run around in with a building they could go inside when they needed shade.  Pigs don't sweat either, they pant like a dog.  That is why they like to lay in mud, it is one way that they cool down.  Pigs will also sunburn. 

This is the type of fence paneling that you need for their main living area and they still manage to get out even if you have it.  Notice how the bottom section is very close together, close enough that they can't get their snout through it?  If they could get their snout through it the would lift and pry until they pulled it loose from the fence post.  There neck is very strong and they lift at least their body weight, probably 2 to 3 times actually, with their snout but most of the snout has to be under the object.  A pig can lift their snout about as high as their ears.  From the ground to the regular position of the snout, as seen in the pig picture, is where they are the strongest.  Notice below the snout level is where the fence has tight openings.  They can still life from the snout level up but it is only a fraction of the strength they have below the snout level.  It comes from their genetics and history of rooting through the ground to get their feed.  Since you want them to forage they will tear things up pretty well and get even stronger neck muscles.  

We had wood herding panels that we used to move them, usually they would just move right along.  However, if they decided they want to go through the panel, as Kitties said, if they get their head through up to their eyes, they are going through.  Also if they get their snout under the panel, even if you put your full body weight on the 50 pound panel they are going to pick it up and run under it.  

http://www.gopjn.com/t/2-215656-43737-137077?sid=j1iapzmccf00zk8a02lk7&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tractorsupply.com%2Ftsc%2Fproduct%2Ffeedlot-panel-hog-16-ft-l-x-34-in-h%3Fcm_vc%3D-10005

What type of feed did those cows get fed?  Rat_Patrol is right that it does affect the odor.  Our were fed the old traditional feed a few scoops of ground corn and oats, hay silage from regular cement silo, and dry baled hay.  Then they had a large pasture to graze when they were outside and not being milked.  The cows that get fed corn silage seem to have a much stronger odor than ours ever did.

Yeah, they are actually in my mobile chicken coop now, which I REALLY need for my 70 meat chicks that are in my office .

I have a large calf hut inside an enclosure made of regular hog panels (like you mentioned) secured to 3 fence posts per panel. Its only over dirt though, so we put some rocks in the (what appeared to be) weaker areas that may have been easier to dig under. They will only be confined to that area until I have the grove 'pasture' fencing ready, which is just electric so it will go up relatively quickly.

I'll be working on our pig adventure video soon 

Here is day 1 of the landscape rake build, in case anybody is interested.

@Kitties-with-Sigs: Welding video with my favorite little welder 

Sounds like the university was very negligent.  We had a similar setup but none of those problems.  We had a 40 stall barn and the cows all knew their designated spot.   We trained them to go into the same stall, that way we could put their feed out before they were inside the barn.  The concrete stalls were scraped after letting the cows out and if they had made a mess a bit of crushed lime would be spread around.  The main walkway would be scraped and crushed lime would be spread across it to dry it and provide traction.  Never once did we have a cow fall a break a pelvis.  Keeping the cow and the barn dry was a priority.  

What you describe with all the odors sounds like no one really cared, used too much water, too much disinfectant, and didn't care if things were damp or wet.  I guess that is the difference between how that university viewed them and how your father did.  When your family farm depends on the cows, you will spend that extra $1 on crushed lime so they don't slip and have to be put down.

Some of the few memories I have of my grand father and father are milk related as well.  We used to the large bucket milkers that required putting a strap on the cow to hold up off the ground.  Then when full you had to carry that bucket to a small collection tank that would pump it to the large tank.  At some point the neighbor down the road got out of dairy farming and we bought the pipeline that was in his barn.  That made milking fun.  A light weight unit that you just carried and hooked right into the line.  We had Holsteins and they did get dirty and they would definitely swat you in the face with a dirty tail on purpose.  I lost track of the number of times I would grab their tail and yell at them.  Sometimes that work and sometimes it didn't.  One memory of my grand father was him coming over to the farm every week carrying a miniature milk can that he would dip into the tank to get milk for him and my grandmother for the week.  

Thanks!

No the nozzle tip wasn't planned, just needed a new one.

The pin was held on by the arrow shaped magnet in the vid. Once it was tacked, it held itself.

Yup. Watch the video again where I weld the pin on. It's a welder's magnet.