100 Days of Growing Food | Challenge Begins

How'd everybody do? Particularly the turkeys. You guys made it your first night. I think everybody— yeah, you made it and you're happy. That's awesome. Big difference from our last experience where turkeys were more lethargic. Anybody dead under the brooder? Everybody's alive and well, running around happy. Next door, sea monsters, uh, starting to clear off our feeders.

Yes.

Okay, so I actually think there's more people that want to eat and can get around it. So let's add another feeder. Look, they've already eaten all their grit too, so we'll get more grit, add a feeder. Pretty amped by the excitement in there today. Cream separating day. There's something on my hat. Also pig moving day. Let's go see what everybody else is doing. Hey, what you doing?

Just getting your medicine ready for the day.

Thank you so much. Buenos días, Luchadores! It's gonna be a beautiful day.

Here we go.

What do you say, Daddy? What do you say? You getting excited? We getting excited? Are we running?

Are we running?

Are we running, huh? That's a lot of milk. Cream separating day. Grandma's down to help us. You ready for this cream separate day? Okay, feeling pretty good?

Yeah.

All right, are you ready if I get the cows and start milking? Uh, I need to hold off a bit. I could go maybe move the pigs, start at 9.

Yeah, do that.

Do that. All right, normally we milk a little early on cream separating day, but they're not quite ready, so that means we get to do our project which is move these pigs. You ready? You ready to go on the project with your new haircut? You look so different. Let's go, Mr. Brown. Where are you going? Hold him. You know what, I forgot we got to turn on the water. All right, Josiah's going to get our water on. Well, good morning to you too. Just looking around where we're gonna put them. They really need to go that way, but the tree service crew's still got some work to do and they need to keep them out of their way. They've already— we already had pigs here last year, but they could have done a better job right here. We could have done a better job. We, we could have more grass here like that. That's a much better job where we have more grass over the area and there's not so much right here. So we can totally visit it again and take advantage, turn this problem into solution, and rework some of the areas we've been before. All right, buddy, we have 30 minutes to do this. First thing we need to do is get their water in the new place and get it filling up. That's pulling this hose. Actually, this was still attached. I actually pull this over. I don't know if I can lift this up. Whoa, there's no way!

So I'm trying to—

I'm having to drain it. There's no way I'm going to pick it up. I'm going to see if I can't pop this lid off for a faster— yeah, we might be able to do that. Yeah. Whoa, are you dry, Josiah? Yeah. Good thing you were wearing rubber boots. Okay, now this— the water pushed this out. And warped it. I don't know if I can— we gotta fill that back up. All right, that did not fix this. We're gonna have to replace this, but we got to get their water filled back up so that then we can get the big pigs water filled up. The tree crew— there's our, our water line— piled brush on top of our hose, and I went to pull it out and it pulled that barrel over. I forgot that we had it attached. I like to fill the water up first because you want it to be so heavy that they can't knock it over. And you want to make sure it's filled by the time, you know, by the time you're done working, maybe it's filled up and you can just test. I hate to walk away it filling, but we're going to do what we can and just go— instead of doing nothing, we're going to go ahead and set this up. Okay, we're ready for the move. Josiah's going to turn that off. And I'm gonna open this up. Oh, shoot. I didn't open this side pick. They're mad at me. I didn't get it all poured out. There you go. That was easy. Now we gotta hurry and get the generator moved— generator energizer— before they figure out that fence isn't on. They're eating, so they're happy right now. You got that? All right, you get the charger. Oh my, that's heavy. Okay, heads up. Where's our hammer?

I don't know.

Let's try again. Ready? There we go. Two hands did it. Turn it on. Just that. We got 5 minutes to spare. Let's see how the water's doing up at the piglets. So these guys need water. Gals. Let's see if the piglets are filled up and if we can get that hose out. I hear it filling up. I don't see it overflowing. That's okay. Just, did we get enough? Yeah, we got enough. Let's get our knob off. Let's see if we can get this hose out. Brush. All right, let's hope it pulls. Oh yeah, okay, it's coming.

Yes!

Okay, we're about to hook this up, but it's, it's very tight. I think it's just enough.

It's pressure.

It's pulling it that way.

But if we can—

I'm gonna have to leave this, and hopefully they won't mess with this until it get— we get some weight in that and they won't flip it. We'll turn that off in about an hour. It's about how long it takes to fill. But look, they're munching on the grass. They're munching on the grass that's there and creating more, aren't you? Your ancestors created that. The ones that came before you planted that— got that grass going for you. All right, getting the cows down. A little late, but hopefully the beautiful ones. A little late too. Okay, good cows. The one in the stall— come on, Flossie. The one in the stanchion. There you go. I know you have to have your alfalfa. I'm getting it. There you go. Good deal. Got my milking supplies. I'm— for— I turned out I'm 15 minutes late and the beautiful one is not, so we've really got to hustle. I got my helper. Let's get it done, Lily. Okay, pressure's on. All right, we got her cleaned up. Lily's giving her the alfalfa. Lily, you think you can do this in, uh, yeah, 9 minutes? Okay, let's see. All right, Lily, let's call it on that one. That's just the overflow from this 2 gallons right here. And, and Lily, grab it before she kicks it. Let's go, let's take it up. We did that in 10 minutes. 10 minutes. That might be a record for us. Milk the cow in 10 minutes? Yeah. Whoa! So how are we doing, Rebecca?

We're doing really good.

So I'm not too late?

Butter's making, and you know, look at that butter.

You're making butter? Grandma and Jonah are making— yeah, you got to grab it on the top there. No, no, not on the bottom because it's been sitting on the stanchion. Right, so do this for it like that. Yeah, okay, good, good job, Grandma. All right, look at Jonah's idea.

So we have a food-grade hose those from the—

we used to drip it out into a— what do you call that? One of that? Yeah, 2-quart. And you'd have to pour it while replacing it with another and pour the skim in the bucket. But how's this working, Grandma?

It's working good, but we're—

let go.

You can't pull on this or it'll dump it over. So what we've decided is that this is an elevation. We're going to get a 2x4 and he's going to drill a hole in it big as the tube And there you can put two little pieces on it. This is the side view, and that way the hose will stick down through the middle.

Oh, that's good.

And it won't— but this is working great.

When you gonna do that, Jonah? Probably today. Okay, maybe tomorrow. Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, bro. Let me help you with that heavy one, Grandma. That's like 16 pounds. Ready? Oh, you don't want to pour into that one.

Oh boy, I'm glad you looked.

We're at 8 cups of 2 quarts. 2 quarts of cream already. We're nearly done. Everything seems to be going good up there. Everything's going good here. Let's switch out our cows and cow number 2. Look who gets out of her stanchion easier these days. Come on. Well, spoke too soon. Come on. Why are you interested in the towels? Come on, come on, come on. Come on, let's do it. There you go. Come on, come on. There you go. Get in your stall just for a little bit. Next. We are down to pretty much one teat. Jonah just came and asked how long we got, and we got 35 minutes. We're well over 2 gallons. Then I'm kind of fighting over this last teat. I see I'm milking, she'll kind of butt me out. She's going strong. Wow, they gave about the same. Phyllis takes a little longer. She doesn't give— it's like she's holding it back. But that's a lot of milk, guys. Probably together 4.5 gallons. Thank you, guys. I can go 7 out. I can carry 7 out. Okay, thank you. Carry this then. Thank you. How's it going in here? It's going great. You got 4 buckets full of skin.

I've got butter made. That's about to go into the dehydrator to become poultry cream. And then I have all of this to make delicious cream for our tea and coffee and ice cream.

Nice. Beautiful afternoon. Afternoon chore time. Look what came when we were working inside. Look what came. Premier One, we got us some more sheep net for our new sheep slash chicken system. Chickens, the fat hens, are staying in the sheep net, so we're utilizing one fence for two different animals. You just have to have more nets set up. So that's what that is. Super happy about the instant chicken garden. Just planted, put the transplants out a week ago, and they're jamming, guys. They're jamming, guys. What, what was it, 3 weeks ago? That was nothing. That was sod. Put chickens on it for 2 weeks, started seed during that time. Transplanted them out. There we go. It's totally best to do this in dry conditions. We're gonna weed this row and replant carrots. Teddy, I'm gonna let you go, and maybe you'll stay with me. If you want, the beautiful one will be out very soon. The boys are moving the sheep. It's an easy move today. Let's, uh, let's go ahead and weed this, see what we got. Well, there goes Teddy. But I do— I actually think I hear Rebecca coming. Okay, I did a little trial right there and it's bogus. It's, it's— I'm not getting enough of the weeds up with my rake and I'm getting too much of the soil in it. I want to get as little amount of soil as possible. Any weeds left with any kind of roots are just going to reestablish establish really quick in this wet soil. You know, it is a good time to weed by hand though, isn't it?

Yeah.

Should we knock out those onions or— yeah, it's so much easier to weed when it's dry.

Yeah, let's just do it when it's dry.

Okay, so what we do— so our farm day, Sunday seed day. Want to do this? Yeah. So what shall we do with this time?

Go fix this tarp.

Okay, we have some wind situation. Has this not been a wind?

Welcome to spring. I remember, was it— I think it was last year was this bad too. Okay, because remember when we had a picnic or we had a barbecue with everybody here?

Oh yeah, they all helped us cover our tarps.

Ben was out here putting a lot of dirt on it. He was, he scooped dirt on it so bad.

All right, let's get it covered. All right, Beck, we got it covered, man. I want you guys to call the Inquirer. Because you know what, it's Friday. We've gotten a lot done this week. We're gonna take a rest. Well, I think a rest for us is meaning we're gonna go on a walk.

I forgot to put my plants out.

Should I put them out now? Yeah, it won't hurt. Gotta harden them off.

Yeah, I know.

Something is better than nothing. You know, really, Rebecca, if we're gonna go on a walk and have a rest, we're gonna put— need to put blinders on because there's always something to do on the farm, honey. There's always something to do, and that's why if you're gonna take a rest or walk, you kind of gotta get off the farm. One last look at these guys doing good on food, doing good on water. How you colts doing? You guys are so fun. You're so fun this year, huh? You're so— look at these little guys. Are you fun? You're a lot of fun. Here you go. Incidentally, we only got 15, meant to get 20. Contacted McMurray Hatchery today, they're gonna send 10 more. So Rebecca, we could be raising 25-ish turkeys. That'll be some nice gifts come around Thanksgiving, won't it? My turkey shawls rated for 24 birds anyway.

Yeah.

So that's going to work out great. And then we can fail 50%, we'll still have our 1 turkey a month or 12 turkeys. Take some pressure off. Nice. Look at all that cream from the land. Not only are we gonna go on a walk, we're gonna have tea. We're gonna take tea on our walk.