1st time Lamb processing Uncut + Real Moments on Farm

Happy 7th day of Grow 30, where we discover the abundance that's all around us, giving our homegrown food, local food, the priority. Boys and I are going to cut up the lamb from yesterday and an old lamb we had in the freezer. That's going to be exciting. We've never parted a lamb on our own. Doesn't look like the cows got out last night. We're on milk. We're too— we really need that if we're gonna get that mozzarella. As you can see, it's just getting light outside. I've been milking at first light to make sure we get our milk. There's a lot of pressure on the cows. The cows are about as far away as they can be on our farm. We really need that milk for our milk, our cream, our yogurt, our butter. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. How? We had this at 4.5. We reinforced the stakes. I feel like the— there's a, there's a fence laying— they're in, but there's a fence laying on the ground, and I think the calf's over. Please say it ain't so. Why? Why? Come on, come on now, get— how? The trough, it was staked though. This one's tearing through. That's not bad. We are in trouble. You're not going to get this fence out here, way out here, to hit more than 4.5. Everybody had water, there's plenty of grass. This fence was knocked down. I just put it up to her not get through. Let's try to figure out some things. She probably knocked that over coming over. She's in a bad habit. We're gonna have to physically put her in a physical holding. The water was like this over— we had two stakes in it. I think though they were on the— there's one. I think it might have been right there. It really needed to be right here. Nobody got out unless that calf went out this way. Maybe it busted through there after He-Man had tipped that calf trough. And then we're in the main cow's paddock, and what's this? And why didn't they get out? It's good. The good news is they didn't bust out. It's only the calf got over. So although we lost the milk we'd get from Honey this morning, the calves didn't get out and terrorize the farm. I mean, the cows. Why you keep knocking over that water, boy? We can make 2 more stake posts for those water, make sure they get posts nailed all the way in. It's like they tried it in their old habits until it was really hot. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. You have any milk left? You should have more pressure. It's fully on. Could be that depressurizer. That would be it, if it only— if it reducts it to 12 PSI. I switched it around, washed it out, but now that I'm seeing— yeah, 12 PSI. Yeah, it would just trickle into the tub. The grass is always freer on the other side, isn't it, honey? Come on, let's go. Let's go. Come on, come on, let's go. Let's get back in here. Come on, let's go to the truck. Come on, we got treats for you. Let's not even do this with her if she's empty. She tricked me, made me think she had some milk in here. Maybe a tablespoon. I'm gonna keep the calf separated. We're gonna come back and milk honey after lunch. I have an experiment that might be easier than a physical cattle panel for that calf. Pretty soon this calf will be keeping up with this milk. How'd she do it? How'd she do it? How'd she do it? She just broke over. How was it? Walk through the fence. There's no fence down. Another news, Villanella's not standing still for me anymore. I'm gonna let her roam. She can't get to the mom. Boy, she really wants that mom. She's full. She's drinking all this morning. Putting a lot of pressure on these fences. We need to retrain her to an electric fence. I got an idea. I want this milk. I want this cheese. You know what? This is crucial. And we've been. I told Austin. Austin told me, you know, Justin, you're doing the grow365. You really. You really are living it in regards to milk. Here we go. Let's let the sheep over. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. I don't even really have to call. That's just for fun. Well, it's actually to associate sheep, sheep, sheep with something good. And even though they're coming over to something good, I'm calling sheep, sheep, sheep. They're coming anyway, but I'm saying sheep, sheep, sheep. So then when I want them somewhere that they're not going, there's a better chance they'll come. We got the grocery store on milk. We won't drink milk from the grocery store. It's pasteurized, homogenized, who knows what's in it. Oh shoot, that gate's open. They will get out. Goals during this Grow 30, it's on our bucket list is to make cheese. We are buying cheese because you can buy organic, really good cheese, and it takes quite the craftsman to make good cheese. So I don't even know if we mind. We got a buddy across. That can't be good. That'll put pressure on the fence. I'll have the— I'll have the boys bring that buddy back. The cows are the centerpiece of our farm, which they are. It makes sense that I get them done very first thing in the morning. Hey, sleepyhead, come on, I'm already back. I'm gonna start breakfast, dude. Come on, bro, you're supposed to be out there by 7:30. How do I get you up? Hey, happy day, Gideon. I hear Henry. Hey, sleepyhead. Hey, sleepyhead. I don't know where Rebecca is. She must be already up and at 'em.

Headed out to get tomatoes because I am making salsa today. 7 quarts. Of it. I like Ruth Ann Zimmerman's recipe. It's just really great. You know, when you're picking hornworms, I feel like, you know, you're like, well, did I already get that one?

Maybe.

Some damage on a tomato. Like, I'm terrified that a hornworm could be like right here. They won't hurt you. They're just gross. You know, I got one big boy right here. I topped this tomato and I think a lot of them have ripened, which is so nice because I feel like these Granderos— I did, I did look it up and they are like, you can pick them and then they do ripen more after picking them, but they pretty much get like nice and red, so they're almost ripe. And then if you're buying them, like, they're good for like market, say. I feel like it's been so long that they've still been so hard. Yeah, we're coming along nicely. There's still some hard ones, which is fine. Okay, so I don't have any monster squash that I missed. Well, there are some yellow ones, but that's fine.

Getting a groove here, speeding up breakfast. Last night we soaked the potatoes cubed Already ready to go. So honey, we're already frying potatoes. They're gonna be a lot less starchy. What'd you do, sift them through this? I'm gonna leave Lily to it. Yes, we're smoothifying things. I got our sausage recipe down. Now I can leave things to Lily. Look at that hornworm. Did you show the camera that already?

I did.

Mom's tomato, you're gonna get eaten alive. I think it's give out again, huh? We don't have enough screws in it. You got one persimmon. So is that normal that this die back, or did it die?

I don't know.

Or it would have been fruit.

It aborted it. The plant did because it was too much fruit.

There's one, there's two. Something's happened to our persimmon the last few years. I think we—

4, 5.

I think we pruned them too hard. Looks big enough. What's the goal in here right now? Um, red and mushy.

Um, yeah.

Incidentally, Rebecca and I just had a talk. We're gonna keep doing Grow 30, but we had originally thought we might vlog every day. I don't think we're gonna do it. We need to take a day of rest. We'll vlog 5 or 6 days a week during this challenge, uh, at least 5. I feel like that's our sustainability zone. I also want to be thoughtful of the viewer too. Once we've started posting these, uh, I survived off the land for 30 days, the views have gone down on the videos. I don't know if it's too much for people to keep up with, with content, so we're going to slow that down. I don't want to be burning myself out for no reason if it's not being well received, popularly received, commonly received, what do you want to call that. So when you're overwhelmed and there's so many things to do and probably not enough time, start with what you already have, taking care of what you already have. So that means before we butcher these lambs— well, that is kind of what we already have too, isn't it— minerals to the cows. Bring it this way! Cows need minerals. It's been, it's been too long without them. Our mineral stall there. The boys are bringing it here. That's good. They only needed BBC. Could be that they were just hungry for minerals, not happy in their paddocks. Have you ever met a cow that is happy?

About their paddock?

No. I've literally seen a cow get out and go eat where they were. They love their freedom.

Lots of salsa. We've tested it, it tastes great. And so I'm gonna cook this down. I have started putting— I've got 4 jars done and I still have a good bit in there, so I think we're gonna hit the 7 quarts. Which is amazing. Um, and then I can do it all over again, or what? I don't know. I did get 7 quarts. I'm so excited. I was a little worried. I was just concerned that it wasn't gonna be enough, but it was, so yay! I used Ruth Ann Zimmerman's, um, recipe. I doubled it to get 7 quarts. I think I'm already past what I had done at this time last year, so goals are happening. Remember to take a letter out to the mailbox. And on my way back in, I couldn't help but notice all my calendula. I have been working hard at harvesting my calendula. These are all volunteers actually from the year prior, and I think my goal is to save enough calendula to have calendula oil to make salve and to use also in my lotion, my body lotion, throughout the whole year till next year, to make it through to next year. I have never succeeded in doing that, and so it seems like this year I might be able to do that. So what I do is these are dehydrator trays that I have from my Excalibur dehydrator. They're the stainless steel ones. I love them. I'm actually designing in my pantry when we do, um, we're going to finish it. And in between the two cabinets that I'm going to have on the, uh, the bases, the base cabinets, we're going to have little slide-ins so that they can go in there. I'm so excited. I love these trays. Um, You can just buy them if you want to. Anything can work though, really. So what I do is I just take them and place them like this upside down. And I'll show you, I'll show you my calendula already soaking in oil, but then also just dried calendula too. One thing about the calendula that I have found is that there's little bugs on it. So what I do, and I'll just go down here a little bit, what I do is I go like this. I just take it and I tap it on the counter, and then I look, and if there's any little bugs, I kill them. And I just do that a couple of times. I found— finding that now in this season, this, this part of the season, I'm having less bugs. I don't know if they were— they were like super intense in the beginning. This is dried and it's ready to go. I, I'm probably just going to put it in jars. This is what it looks like in the oil. I'm keeping this in my pantry, in the back of the pantry, and I started this 2 days go. I have more to do. I don't think I'm gonna do more today because it is already 3 o'clock, and wow, so it's been over an hour since I've been doing the kitchen. Lily cleaned the kitchen downstairs because that's where we, um, cut up the lamb, and I believe we're gonna do lamb broth. I'm pretty sure the bones are in there. Justin's at acupuncture for his shoulder, and Yeah, the mineral feeder has gotten—

does it have any minerals? Unscrewed. Keep high so you can— this wheel doesn't get in your way. You're gonna pick it up? Okay, hammer it in with that thing. It's going good. This is when we need a hitch system for the meat shaw. A separate net. For her to be in. She's got to break out of this net. It's energized separately, so it's not a burden to the main fence. She's got to get out of this and then get into them, so she's gonna have to break through two fences. We're getting serious about our milk strawberry. Name of the game, just leftover London broil, just some leftover vegetables, some squash in there. Oh, I could probably throw some beans in here. The family would probably like that. Have a go at processing our own lamb first time. I think we're just going to cut the legs down for roast and cut everything else off of it for ground lamb. I've been to pick up Lily and you guys have done— got it done. Yeah, that one sheep is bad. What do you mean bad? That sheep, open it up and smell it. Oh, from the frozen? No, you're gonna not do it then. You don't want to get sick. That's sad. Making a broth from that lamb. The fresh lamb, basically no smell. The old freeze— the old cooler lamb, when in doubt, throw it out.

Got my apple cider vinegar. I'm just going to pour that in in there. This will help leach out the minerals from the bones into the water. Soup, 2 hours. And there we go, it is started. And in 2 hours— well, a little bit more than 2 hours because it has to come up to temp. I'm gonna put this in the pigs, um, in a little more than 2 hours We will have fresh lamb broth. So now I'm gonna wipe down our stove. It gets real gross. Like, real gross.

Just had a chiropractor appointment— or no, chiropractor— acupuncture. Okay, here we— I'm not kidding, I wish I would have done this 4, because I've seen the biggest progress. That was my reach. Austin, play the clip from yesterday of my reach. Wow, that's my reach after the session. It is so bad. It's basically there, it's just strained, but I got it. Chili. We're gonna try a beanless chili. We normally do beans in our chili. But we don't grow no beans, and we haven't found beans— well, we haven't even looked for beans within 100 miles. So we're gonna do a smaller batch. 3 pounds is a smaller batch for us as opposed to 6. I don't know if we'll want leftovers of it. Let's hope, because then we would have to— and beans aren't that great. Beans aren't that great for you anyway. Every ingredient it called for: tomato sauce, tomatoes, zucchini. Carrots, peppers, everything, broth, everything but the tomato paste. And we could probably do without that, but— Beck, look at this color! Oh, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini. I am just so proud. And orange and yellow. Oh my gosh, look at this color! We have arrived, we have arrived! Rebecca is leery of the soup. That's why I'm making it. Not a soup. It's supposed to not be a soup, but how is this different? It's supposed to be a chili instead of beans. This is healthier and from our farm. Let's hope she likes it. Onions, zucchini, carrots. Wow, this has turned out really nice. Okay, now we just simmer it. What do you think, Jonah? It's a chili. It's a beanless chili. Let's give it a try. That's no fun. I'm curious to see what Mom says about it. Why is it no fun? Well, Lily could have made you guys some rice, I guess. Henry likes it. Mom, I want to see you take a drink. Would you have it again? Yeah, instead of your bean chili.

I think they have their place.

All right, that's good enough. The kids are hating me. They—

we had like a soup for lunch.

So can you think about a better meal plan now?

I can't, but I have 5 kids that don't like soup, so—

Well, it's hard to be creative every time. Kids, it's hard to be creative every time.

This is the hard part. I'm sure there's 30 ways to make 3 meals a day for 7 different people.

For 7 different people. I think it's freaking good. I would have this over Bean chili. Do you know what would be good, Becky?

What?

A chip or two. Mommy, we got chips. You can make me some for the kids.

Not for me.

If chips puts it over the edge for you guys, get some chips. I'm still getting chips. Okay, we're calling it right there. Happy day.