hi I'm Mike 2018 is all but in the books only a few hours of it left and as we
head into the next year today we get a chance to look back at the highs and the
lows the numbers and what the future holds for our Wyoming life
and bulb police and the award for the most viewed video on our wining life in
2018 goes to with three hundred and ninety thousand views most of them
gained within the first two weeks of being released before it was stopped
dead in its tracks 1.5 million minutes almost three years of total watch time
the most viewed video for 2018 for our wining life was putting the Bulls in
with the cows the original uncensored version wasn't that a kick in the gut
you know when I watched that video kind of start to climb up in the in the
rankings and all that good stuff I was ecstatic the the first week 170,000
people saw it by the next week it was a three hundred and twenty thousand and I
kind of got to thinking that it was going to be the video that might put us
on the map might give us some really good exposure
to agriculture and then hit ball came tumbling down after being reported as an
appropriate of sexual content it was shut down and laid to rest still barely
moving under the rule of hear no evil speak no evil see no evil that was a
tough one to come back from but we did and once again we filled up an entire
year from the ranch bringing you along for every last bit of it that we can now
we go to only a few minutes with you a week but we always try to bring you the
best of what we have sometimes it's not rainbows and unicorns but it's all real
and it's meant to bring us all a little bit closer to something that does matter
and that's our relationship with agriculture where our food comes from
and the families behind it with 2018 and it's the last throes of
life I look back at this year and what made it special the good in the bat
stick around because we're not only going to look back at some of the
highlights this year we're gonna look at the numbers behind YouTube and what the
future holds a life that we never would have dreamt for ourselves a life that
when it really comes down to it is all thanks to one person and his name was
Gilbert Otto Kelvin and he was my father-in-law this year we really got
the chance to dig into the history of the ranch and all that started with a
video back in April on the anniversary of the death of the man that got us here
in the first place my father-in-law Gilbert later in the year we decided to
go farther down the rabbit hole and bring more from the early history
showcasing not only how we got here but how those long before us settled the
land
these kind of videos are a little different from the norm but we really
wanted to show people why the ranch was so important to us one of the comments
we get occasionally is why don't you sell it all and move away retire and
live on a beach somewhere well it would be easier but then not only do we lose
our connection to the land that means so much to us we lose all the history
behind it and our hope is that someday our kids will be right here working the
same land that I and many before me have a sweat heart over and that they can
appreciate it as well but it's not only us that appreciate it it's you
throughout the year of telling our stories the YouTube channel has it grown
by leaps and bounds On January 1st of this year we had 8500 subs today we're
over 65,000 on average we gained 4700 new subscribers to our community each
month in fact each month we gain more new subscribers than we gathered our
entire first 10 months of making videos that just blows me away
but it also proves to me that people do care as they should about where our food
comes from and the families behind it but subscribers are only half of the
equation when it comes to YouTube and what matters even more is views we'll
take a look at those in a minute but first let's look in at some of our
in-person visitors to the channel this year
okay ranching can be a very solitary activity in fact most of the time you're
off by yourself whether you're checking fence or feeding cows but it's nice to
bring in new blood and new faces clear back in January we had our very first
guest on the couch during a live stream Blake from another Wyoming youtube
channel called guy in Wyoming but it didn't stop there
Aaron invited her friend and the county horticulturist Hannah out to help prune
apple trees taking sections about a foot apart and the idea is that you're
wanting these branches to grow out and so that you have layers and we have
friends stop by from North Carolina and as they learned if you stop by get put
to work our friends Dave and Tammy are here visiting and luckily for us they
find it fun to help us with our work we put them to work hooking up water and
Lane irrigation hunters came in to visit during another live stream Bob is here
hunting this week you guys got your opening day we've got here on on Sunday
well yeah you got here on Sunday but you started you started fucking day when it
comes you know we have a lot of questions a lot of people asked about a
little buddy if you have a question for Bob feel free to throw it up there
because I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any question that you have
and even the owner of our local feed store couldn't escape the camera Jessica
van and I am the current owner of Govans permanent supply in Gillette Wyoming
normally known as ours beep as she let us go in and take a look around and get
to know her store 1877 I started working here in 2005 over 13 years came to work
part-time here I just went from being part time to by the time did you see
yourself as owning the place back in 2005 are you coming in like probably not
right away if somebody it's willing to join us
we're more than willing to put them on camera and for us it's a godsend because
I know all of you get tired of looking at me pretty quick but someone is still
watching and a1 staggering statistic that's worth looking at is the number of
views on our winding life and how they add up fast
this year we received 6.7 million views leading to 43 million minutes of watch
time 43 million minutes equates to about seven hundred and thirty thousand hours
over 30 thousand days or 83 years of total watch time on our wining life in
2018 that's a long time to be watching and even longer to be staring at this
mug lucky for you there's a much prettier face that you can be staring at
and that's my wife Erin over this year she's really come into her own on the
channel I think the episodes for me that are the
most fun are the ones that seem so off-the-wall doing the lip-sync
challenge was a huge step outside of our comfort zone seen all this lip-synch
challenge stuff that's been going around on the Internet
No what do you got look our local camel County Sheriff's Department did a
lipstick challenge to Shania Twain
that's the way
yeah for some reason watching Mike blow up his summer hat was oddly satisfying
mostly because that thing stinks and I'm always happy to see it go at the end of
the summer
but my favorite episode this summer this year was cow tipping snipe hunting and
the elusive Jackalope it was really fun to go out and try and film Mike tip
Bambi over she's always such a nuisance and she's
such a loving friendly cow that it was such a challenge to try and get her to
stay in frame and for Mike to be able to try and tip her over and she obviously
had no interest in being tipped the odd and the bizarre and also the curious
every state has their oddities in Texas it's a chupacabra which might be a
coyote with mange in New Jersey it's the Jersey Devil a creature with
bat wings goats legs at the head of a horse which seems like a great thing to
a mahaki team after this year also saw the project list come into full swing
each and every Tuesday we have the chance to do something around the ranch
together and cows need water and this morning we have a very serious problem
with a hydrant that supplies water to them and we have to get it fixed
some successfully and some not so much but no matter what we do we definitely
learn along the way Ned wrap is a petroleum-based product
and apparently the net wrap that we didn't get into the incinerator last
night when the girls were loading it was a bit too close to the incinerator and
got too hot bursting into flames flooding it burned for a while as long
as there's somebody here to watch it and once the net wrap is gone we can douse
the ashes with a hose I guess with over fifty six thousand new subscribers
coming into the fold this year we can expect to see some go to and this year
we lost 8,000 subscribers through one race or another but as things go it's
sometimes just part of ranch life hi I'm Mike and this is part two of saying
goodbye to the pigs it's time for them to go and it's not going to be easy in
many different ways today is bubble the Bulls last day here on the ranch and
today is the one paycheck the year that the ranch gets its sale
day and even though friends come and go there's still plenty of work to be done
as air and I tackle the ranch and usually it's just the two of us this
board here on the ground is our spacer board the garage door that needs to go
in here needs to be nine feet so the board will make sure there's nine feet
in between these two inside posts today is actually our 10-year wedding
anniversary and I can't think of a better wedding gift than a completed
high tunnel 99% complete hi I was feeding I made it I did it no nothing
broke I didn't run into anything and they're eating so from good food now
here's a very important question is the cake the best part
do we even like carrot cake or do we just all love cream cheese frosting so
much that it makes the carrot cake tolerable to good work his mom has left
him he's alone and cold and sick cows just like most animals can sense
sickness in their offspring when they know it's something that this
life-threatening sometimes they'll just leave their cows to die but we can't let
that happen it has truly been our honor to have you
along for the ride this year even if this is your very first video with us
and if it is please consider hitting that subscribe button and continuing
with us into a whole new year what's it got in store well we have some idea
calving is coming up soon so where farmers markets hang tractor maintenance
fencing doctor and cows eating and a whole lot more in fact this year we
invite you on to the ranch itself on August 24th we're hosting the very first
ranch roundup and you have a chance to come and hang out with us for the day
and with each other we're gonna have food from right here on the ranch games
tours special guests and a whole lot more including a live stream in front of
a live studio audience or you can come and sit on the couch
with us speaking of our next live stream as we kick off the new year is gonna be
January 3rd that's Thursday at 7 p.m. so come and
join us in our brand-new livestream studio and chat with us in real time ask
your questions or voice your complaints either way we love having a chance to
get to know you so that's it
2018 is all but done another years in the books and I'm happy that we got to
share it with you here is to another great year not for us but for you I'll
see you next year and until then have a great week and thanks for joining us in
our Wyoming life