1st Time Making Sauerkraut! Is It as Good as Bubbies

Kenan didn't get eggs yesterday and we need eggs. I am not used to this. I've been waiting probably 20, 30 minutes. Chickens need out of their coop. I want to get going, get going on this work. Yeah, this is why I don't know how to get in to do it. Nest boxes need material. They obviously need to be cleaned out. Cows stayed in. Ding ding ding ding ding. I've only felt this weird distable movement in my shoulder one time today. Tightening up the sling. Walking slow. Trying not to twist. It seems like it's when I twist. We've got to move these chickens because they're cooped up. They got to move across the creek before there's a cage fight. Kill each other and— Whoa!

Whoa!

Whoa!

Whoa!

Did you not see me?

Whoa!

On top of the chickens, we need to harvest some cabbage all by 9:30 before the beautiful one needs to leave for her acupuncture. It's 7:45. They say slow down. Well, I'm slowing down because I can't help not to. I need that. Why not? Nice shoes. You help me and then I'll help you. Now empty the water and put it in there. This is good for him and me both. Me, a patient, and exercise. But did you ever think about like, why do we say, oh, this is good for my patience? Because why do you need patience other than to have to be patient? I don't want to practice patience if that means I'm gonna just have more trials of patience. Nothing has changed. In homesteading, you just get as much as you can get done. Hopefully it's the most important thing. And if your shoulder is dislocated or if you're in premium fitness, same rules apply. Hey, if that's not a testament to the Chickshaw build, I don't know what is. You can get the build— the plans for that at homesteadbuilds.com, my book. By the way, we sold out of our first batch our first printing. After I say we've sold our first batch, do a cheering. The next batch should be in any time now. Let's go get the pool bar for this thing. We gotta go up through there, over across the creek, and back behind the pigs. You know where the arm is?

Yeah.

Can you get it? Oh, there it is. Okay, good deal.

Good morning.

I am trying to get outside. I'm having to do a lot of dental care to keep my wounds clean in my mouth, so I am getting— gonna do some laundry. I'm gonna do the laundry and get things started in here. I'm gonna head out and do cabbage and green beans. So both of the machines are going. I'm about to go outside and meet Justin.

He's already here.

Got us all in here.

We're going over there behind the pigs.

Oh, okay. We're putting, uh, leaves on it to keep the seeds from drying out unless you think it's gonna rain soon.

I feel like it's supposed to rain, uh, this like tomorrow, and then it's supposed to rain like every day.

Gideon, get that stainless steel pail over here. There's a stainless steel pail. That's mine. Justin and I got that when we were first married. Can you please get that and put that inside?

The rain comes, it's gonna wash it away.

I don't want it outside.

It's a, it's an ash bucket. I wanted it so bad.

We did use it a lot.

We did use it when we had the wood stove.

That made it easy, didn't it?

It did.

Even a gimp like you could do it.

Whoa, that is—

I'm gonna film you because somebody's got film.

Well, Daddy can't do nothing. Do I do the outline of the—

yeah, unroll it first. I think it, I think it unrolls this way, Dar. This way rather. Wrong way. Okay, I'm not— I guess you did good. Just so you know, because there's no soil here.

There's no soil and it's a one spike.

Yep. So just get in a little bit and get in. You're gonna have to come with a, um, A rock. No, stay on, stay. Yeah, there you got it, right on the line. It's too much for Rebecca. All right, can you help me? I let the poor birds out.

All right, we're out in the garden.

Look at this.

This is so cute.

So these are like mini cabbages forming off of this one cabbage stem that we left. All right, we're just gonna start harvesting. We don't have a knife, so we're gonna twist and pull. Corn is doing fantastic. Oh wow, we've got heads! Our corn is doing good. Too bad we don't really like corn. Oh my goodness, we've got tadpoles! Tadpoles in this water.

Becca, do you want to see the buckwheat experiment cover crop? Yeah, this is nothing. And look at how it's coming up around the onions. We ought to put this on the list tomorrow to harvest, cover up before it gets crazy. This is all buckwheat right here-ish. There's some other stuff mixed in, but that's nice, right? We were just talking in here. I think we'll, we'll pull up these pigweeds. That's pigweed. We'll pull up the pigweed, cut buckwheat down, harvest these onions. These onions will get out any weed. So there's a big old weed right here, and then we'll cover it with a silage tarp. I don't think we'll get away from the silage tarp anytime soon. Do you think—

no.

What we could do— are we going to plant in here in the fall or anything? If not, we'll just plant. We could pull— we could pull the silage tarp up after a couple of weeks and plant cover winter cover crop. That'd be neat. And then our Silo tarps wouldn't wear out as fast. Yeah, but they're good to put on it for a couple of weeks to get it supple again.

Well, and then once we want to kill the COVID crop before we plant into it—

yeah, we will.

I mean, we could do that in the corn because all you do is just do this and then plant your corn.

Yeah. Are you gonna sauerkraut the purple ones too?

I would like to.

How do you know when it's ready? You kiss the cabbage? That was an all intimate gentle kiss. You ready for some potatoes again?

Yeah, I want potatoes. Well, potatoes are hard. I like corn, it's so easy to start the pot of water.

Well, you probably can get some corn, honey. Oh, you tried?

I tried.

Let's grab some of these broccoli plants, they're done. We've been feeding a little bit of these a day to our pigs. Don't feed it all at once, it'll just rot, which is okay, it'll go to compost, but I'd rather use it as feed. Yeah, there you go.

So we're in here, we're gonna get green beans, and I walked over to my tomatoes because we're waiting for someone to get a bin, and I was like, that is some big hornworm poop. Do you see it? Josiah, who's sitting right here, goes, he's right there. There's the hornworm. There's the gigantic hornworm. Special.

Here it is.

It's going in the bucket. This bucket will be for, uh, feeding into the chickens. Got 2 juicy ones in there. And this is after Sunday and Monday.

Right here.

Sunday and Monday I've been cleaning these out.

What are y'all doing?

We're getting hornworms. There's so many.

We've already gotten—

you have 30.

You gonna eat it like an apple? I'm gonna think I was gonna cut it. Good. Yeah, a big round of tomatoes, babe. Look at all those cucumbers. There's more. Try to beat Josiah's 2-pound cucumber. Holy mackerel, 2 pounds! Hey, what we're trying to do, guys, harvest the clean green beans first. If we can get green beans that are off the ground. We can freeze them as is in a pillowcase.

We're getting the ones that—

put those in bite-sized pieces. These ones are going to be so much easier. Just cut them, get ready for the plate, put them in a potato— put them in a pillow stack. Got the clean ones processed. Pillowcase incoming. Now we're gonna wash these green beans. We're gonna wash and cut and get them ready. Jonah gets with it. Josiah gets with it. You're getting with it too, babe. Hey, just don't actually cut one of those, uh, white, white beans. Now we're drying this out. It's hard to keep up with these kids. Tomorrow's tomatoes. Guys, this is our life for a while. It's one of the greatest hacks ever. That's why we might do, uh, runner beans next year, just to keep, keep them off the ground. We like bush beans, but you know what's short for Latin? Okay, take your green beans.

24 cents.

Oh my gosh.

Put it right in here. You're beating it up.

Mm-hmm. I'm cracking the cell wall so that the water will come out of it and mixes with the salt.

We missed it, but she just poured a— she just doused it in salt.

I did a tablespoon.

A tablespoon per cabbage. This afternoon it's been crunch time on The chicken tender, my upcoming book. Gotta get it written this week. Beautiful one. This time, purple sauerkraut.

It's still really crunchy.

I'm gonna say that might have been better. With Bubbies? Yeah. Bubbies is like our last foothold. Well, let's try it in this fridge that's not organic. Okay, it's a lot milder. Okay, so if we like that, we'll just get out of it earlier. I don't either. I like it so much more mild. Bubbies versus homegrown. Bubbies is the standard. What do you call that?

The, the gold standard.

The gold standard. We should have done a blind taste test and said which one we think tastes is better, cuz I want ours to win, obviously.

Well, well—

oh, oh, I'm sorry. Jeez, I caught him smiling.

Oh good. I don't know. I don't know. I want to say that one's the Bubbies. Don't give me any indication.

Do you want a water? Do you want You want some water?

No? Okay.

Oh!

Okay.

Yes!

Yes! I think the first one was Bobby's, but the second one was certainly close enough. Which one was it?

The second one, our homegrown.

Okay, it's good, I couldn't tell. Okay, let's see if you can tell. It's harder. I like how you cut it up, but I cannot tell. Okay, don't look. Do you want water?

Mm-mm.

Do you want to make a guess who that is?

I think that's homegrown.

Oops. See, see, it's hard to tell. That's a win. That's a win. Was the homegrown the first?

Yes. Okay.

But you can't tell. You cannot tell.

No.

Okay, I want to do a taste test.

We did it.

Lily's gonna do a taste test.

We did it.

Don't bite me. It slightly scares you, you're gonna bite me. No. Okay, which one was which?

The first one was Bubbies, the second one was our homegrown.

Okay.

Was that right?

Yeah, that was right.

Wow. In this one, tell us which one you like better, not which one it is.

Open your mouth, not your eyes.

Mmm, those taste the same. They both taste the same.

Which one did you like?

Wow.

They both taste exactly the same.

Okay, then which one's which?

I think the first one was Bubbies and the second one was Orhobro, but they taste pretty much alike.

Nope, opposite.

But this tastes really good.

That's a delete.

They taste like almost alike.

Wow, Beck, good job. I never thought we were gonna replace Bubbies. And dinner from the land, this time turkey, cucumber salad. I don't think you can ever get rid of— sit sick of that on a hot summer day. Fresh cucumber onion salad. Sweet potatoes. Oh, those are not from the land, but everything else is. We're doing good. We're excited about it. Happy day.