2020 changed everything | Day 9 Surviving off the Land

Look who's here, our mechanic Jose. I'm gonna fix that trailer. Happy 9th day of living off the land. If we don't grow it, we don't eat it. Tell you for sure, something here— that one's working now, and that one's trying to work. Getting steady. I believe you got it. Those two wires I was trying to connect yesterday have nothing to do with it. See that? What's that? Those two wires aren't even connected. They had nothing to do with it. Looked like I was trying to connect two cables that don't belong together. I need you guys to get the other trailer out right away. They're almost done and they're gonna need more work before they leave. There were two cables loose. He did connect them. It was still working because, well, that was the hazards. It may not be connected to— those aren't the hazards, this is the parking light or something. I think we had the parking light on. This got jerked out. So the cable came out and I hooked it up, but I could have done it wrong. How's that different than a multimeter? Well, this right here will check, uh, check the hot and the ground. You decided to go with this one? Well, yeah, I have a hot— I have to have that other one. You hook it to the battery. Oh, and it— and then you can tell if you've got a— this is a multimeter? Yeah. You're testing every one. What reading are you looking for? Got 12 volts. Got nothing. Which I might not have a ground. Does it matter that you put the right color to the right code? Um, I mean, I looked it up and did that, but just curious. Little tiny things. That red one's on— oh, I see it right there. Uh, EB, electric. Electric brake. Electric brake. Oh, the white ones just came out. The white ground just came out, Mark. There's 6 colors. The maps we're finding online are for 7 with a blue. We don't have a blue, so there's a confusion between red and black. We're gonna switch those, see what happens, because it'll say, well, red can be this one or that one. So I think it's safe, we can switch them. Yep, on that side. And then yellow and yellow. Yep. And then what? What? And the blue, which we don't have there. Nothing on that one. There ain't nothing there. China. No parking lights. That's the brakes. That's the hazards. They're both working. Looking at the owner's manual now. Trailer is important to our food growing journey because, well, we'll go pick up animals if we're buying something or something, moving them around on farm. If we have a big move, sometimes we use it. Of course, Lily uses it the most for hauling her horse. While they're doing that, let me go see where the boys are at with our box trailer for vacation while the mechanics are here. Let's make sure that trailer is working too. What's the problem? It's stuck in a hole. Okay, and you're trying to move it by hand, get it out, because it was— it was pulled in there. If you can just help us push this, uh-huh, just a little bit, and we can swing this tongue. Okay, that's the front, and then we're out. We're out, we're out. Is that the hazards? Yeah. Okay, well, let's take it to Mark. The left The left one doesn't work, so let's get it over there to Mark. Is it normal that trailers don't work consistently? Their lights? It feels like it's consistently not working for me. I'm not surprised when I hook that up and it's not working. I'm actually surprised if I hook a trailer up and it's working fantastically. Is that normal? Hey, what'd you do? You got the parking lights working. Jeez, I just had a 20 amp. Oh my gosh, we put it— we put a 20 in it. Uh, we need to put it— get a 30. I didn't have a 30. I have a 30. Let me show it. Show me where it is. The thing on the top's broke. I have to get up there and bend it back. It's got to be right or it's going to get wet in there, right? Yeah. Okay, it's been under the shed so it's not wet, but what happened? It got hit when it was going into an under a thing. Is that where the fuses are? Yeah, we're trying to get the top off of them. What do you need? Turn the knob that makes this thing go down. Okay. Oh boy, whoa! Yes, we had to throw it all in the back so that we could pick it up. Man, you guys really— I don't know if this is gonna be waterproof, guys. It will. All right, we got it shut. Hopefully that'll work. Don't put anything delicate under there in case it rains. It's probably gonna rain, it's Florida. That was beyond me. I don't think I would have thought to check fuses. There it is, there's a 30. Uh, that one's too wide. I'll go see if we have some thin ones. 30 amp end up too wide, but they make a— they make a more narrow one. See if we have a narrow one. Okay, I feel like you need to be in 3 places at once. I couldn't find a fuse there. We've got a milk. I've asked Josiah to set it up. Uh, he wants me to help him, but I gotta do this. And Jonah wants me to help him move the fire pit, and I need to load the wood boiler, I'm sure. Will you also load the wood boiler, please? With the Suburban, you guys just jumped right to the fuses, huh? Yeah, and it was blown. Yeah. Now how do you see if it's in— what do you call them, uh, driving lights? How do you see if that's working? Well, this one here on this plug, you can see it's blinking right there. Yeah. And then if you turn your lights on, turn the blinker off. So you have to turn the lights on. Okay, you should have a solid light. And this has— that's an indicator. Yeah, you turn the right blinker on, it'll be the right one. Okay, heck yeah. They've stepped in this. Is that why you turn the water on? You know, we're on day 9. Oh, I had some hard cravings last night. Craving peanut butter and chocolate last night. Nothing was hitting it. I ate like 2 bowls of yogurt and blueberry preserves last night after I got done vlogging. I thought about getting the camera out, but I want to see irritable Justin. It was the first real hardcore craving. He managed to touch in the water again. Oh, already? Yeah. Did you spray him in the nose? He doesn't seem to care. Get in, we're gonna go check the overflow waterer. Let's go. The 9th reason for growing your own food, which became the most popular reason in 2020, was food security. In 2020, it entered our vernacular for the first time— those who are my age or younger— food shortages, supply chain issues. These were all new things to us. Quarantines, we were made to stay home. It sure was handy if you had a little something growing in those instances. It just gave you a sense of security for one of your most core things. I mean, what's more important, water, food? I mean, yeah, no, water, uh, air. I feel pretty good about fixing those guys coming and doing the trailer lights. I feel like I learned so much. I'm gonna check the fuses next time. It was, it was what was wrong with Both of them in that case. Hey, that looks good, Josiah. Washed it. Looks good. Looks good, buddy. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for coming out with me. I enjoy you. By the time 2020 came, what have we been doing this? 12, 13 years? I don't know what it was. We've been doing this 19 or 20 years now. We had a lot of systems in place. In fact, everybody, you know, everybody we get online and everything's new to them, you know. Now they're having to do school at home, they're, they're having to work from home, they're doing church from home, they're everything from home, and it was a big adjustment. I said, hey, these quarantines, welcome to the club. We've been doing everything from home for 15 years. It's a great day to work on this overflow water because, uh, it's— it didn't even freeze last night, but we're about to get cold. I mean, the weather guys, I mean, they— you'd think a blizzard was coming. It's since chilled out a lot, so we're not gonna have as extreme weather, which is good because we're going to be gone. It's still going to warm up-ish in the day, at least enough to thaw the line, which is key for water lines. Okay, let's— can I pull it up? Get Hendrick, get in. Thing about food security, if you're doing it for some food security, you can't wait till 2020 to happen. Guys, everything's kind of went back to normal. Like, our channel blew up in 2020, sales for all our stuff was just skyrocketing. You can't wait. And I was telling you, things, things skyrocketed. Everybody was interested in homesteading all of a sudden. Go to the chickens! Why can't you think about that? Go! And if we don't have any eggs in the chickens, we don't have any. We're gonna have to go. It's gonna— this is gonna not calm down. Let's go help her. I went crazy to start growing some own food, but geez, it's too late. I mean, well, I mean, you could quickly grow a set of meat chickens in a couple of months. You could grow a radish in 45 days. But if you want some real systems like lamb, well, we got on a year-long waiting list to get our lamb. And then when we got them, we didn't breed them that first year. We waited a whole nother year. And then you got to wait 5 months until they have their baby, and then you got to wait 10 months until they're ready to eat. So that was like Is that 3 years? Chickens, you want— order your chickens now. They don't cut— the chicks don't come till the spring. They're not laying until the fall, almost a year from now. Oh no, you didn't— you didn't even try, honey. She's just out there yelling. Why wouldn't you think to just go look in the chickens? Just do. Hey, well, we're keeping chickens in. That's good. Let's go grab some breakfast. I don't think we collected them in a couple of days. Yeah, we got lots of breakfast, right, Lily? Completely out of hay, and I'm gonna have to wash these. Okay, we got eggs on tap, ever flowing. Funny one's back. That was your Christmas. It flies by way too fast. Day 9 eating. Let's do it right, right, right. You guys don't want to see me just eat burgers all the time. Although I wouldn't mind potatoes from the land. Brunch. Eggs we just harvested. Thank you, King of the Mountain. Back at the youth group, we've got to get this going for the farm sitter. This is important because it's water to the animals, and for the large part, mostly water unfrozen and low maintenance. You should be able to Shut the water going down the mountain. There should be water coming out of here. A lot of air. Okay. All right, we'll take it. Hopefully this will reach. I don't think it will. Come here, Henry. Gideon's up here. All right. Kids are the chore, right? Kids aren't in the way, they are the way. If I knew you wanted to be carried, I would have brought the Ergo, bro. Wow. Okay, we were 30 feet away. You want on the rock? Here you go, be on the rock. Just give me a second. If this is two hoses, this is going to be our drain hose. We only need one. We can, uh, find a non-poopie Aria to roll this up. I can take one hose to extend the supply line. I'm going to take the other hose to drain the Everflow waterer. You getting up there on Table Rock?

It's like a giant table to eat on.

It is, there's a giant table to eat on. This can be the downline. Run it downhill through the branch. It needs to get dropping downhill as fast as it can. Just hooked up the drain line. Water will fill up and then it'll start draining out of this pipe. Hopefully catch another gravity-fed motion and go off to the creek where it came from. Here, keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling it, bro, keep pulling it down to the creek. Got a short hose. Did you turn it on, Gideon? Water's flowing through there nicely. Here you go, guys. Water coming off the mountain through the supply line and then fills up, comes out our filter here, our homemade PVC filter, gets another fall to get some gravity going, and then goes off back down to the creek. Now I think we can begin official hardcore prep for vacation. Hey, how do you get away from the homestead? Well, take a vacation in the winter when chores are a lot easier. It's easier to arrange for a farm sitter. Then you get a break in the cold. Hey, you guys are getting serious. You got to air dry those out though. I know, they're drying right here. Cleaning the car on your own accord? Heck yeah. Do not get in there. Get in— there's no mats down. Do it here. Yeah, it is. Why? Just transferred some. We put some in bulk storage to go with us. We put some in our snack pack for easy access on the way down. Does it take anybody else? 2 days to pack for vacation, 2 hours to unpack. We're extra, you'll see. I'll show you some of our extra-ness. For example, we take our own toilet so we don't have to go into the gas station. We take our own water, we take our own meat, we take as much milk as we've got built up. Hey, are we having room in the container for this stuff? No, some of that stuff's going down. I feel like we had more cookware and dishware than just this. Where do you think The other ones are— I don't know where they are. In the last 2 years, we lived in our house, the holler house. We lived in the cabin, and then we lived in the farmhouse. It's a long story. You're gonna have to go back in the vlogs, but we were remodeling our house. I had a grease fire in this— our guest house. And then we ended up in the original farmhouse, 700 square feet, 5 kids. It's like my dad grew up, he had 4 brothers and sisters. At least we had running water. And electricity. Maybe in our storage downstairs. Nope, nope, nope. Ah, the carboys and a pump. We're doing good. Yes! No, that's the one I brought over. Oh my gosh, I'm a dweeb. But it's kind of pathetic. In most Airbnbs are not well equipped. Expect you to go out to eat. They have Teflon cooking pans. You don't want to use Teflon. So we pretty much have to bring all our kitchenware, and we used to be in good order about this and used to have bins just for travel and going to Airbnbs. Of course, we haven't traveled in well over a year. We're rusty. Lily, get off the iPad. It's only for trips only. She'll be posting while we're gone. She's dedicated. You're getting dedicated to your channel, Lily. Somebody else's too. As of today, 2 videos in a row. Yay! Meatloaf. Annie's got some beef stew going, and you have—

I bought myself a moka pot. Well, I don't know, nothing's happened so far yet. Hope things work.

What's so special about moka?

Well, it's a— it's M-O-K-A pot, and it's not espresso, but it is kind of. It's not true espresso, but it's espresso enough for me because I wanted to make a latte. I'm trying to do cheap lattes because I don't want to buy the expensive machine. So this is like a milk steamer.

Okay. All right, let me know how it turns out. Give me a taste. Been packing like crazy. You have another day and a half to pack. I've been doing some office hours, uh, texting, texting with members, checking the community area. It's thriving. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's just blowing up, guys. We had over 120 live on our cow class. Chicken class coming up February 2nd, Groundhog Day. Part of my office hours this afternoon, I'll also turn it into social— I'll get the answer for my members and then turn into some social media content on X and Instagram. Let's go on a walk. I need to take pictures of this. This is our tried and true milk sled. We've used it a couple seasons without having to change anything. A few seasons before that, to get it perfected, it started with a little shed that was for a car parking. We're like, what if we put skids on that? And was our mobile milking unit. We rarely use this stanchion now. We just milk the cows in the field, but this is still good shade, has their minerals in it. It's all in one, so we still use it. This is going to be confusing. I remember I'm gonna take a picture of this, but these bars are just temporary, like if you need to get a cow in there and take blood like we did. This is like the third time I've done this at least. I need to learn how to save those photos. So I can actually find them. Can I label photos like milk sled and then be able to search photos and find them? This is how much I love you, my nieces and nephews, my members. Abundance Plus. It's cold. It was warm in the house, but I love you. I want to see you succeed on the farm. You can homestead. I can help. Abundance Plus. What do you think? It's a giraffe. It is worth it. Yeah. Try it, Jonah. Do you love it? It's okay.

I did it and I didn't use the frother because it had plastic in it. The frother had plastic on it. I was like, I'm not putting my milk and heating it.

I put this—

I just heated some up on the pan and then I used my—

there's stainless steel frother.

My frother.

Okay, so what's the big deal? It's so good. Why does it What makes it so good? Did you put a sweetener in it or cream?

I put an egg yolk in mine because I didn't know if you wanted one in yours. And I put protein powder in mine too.

Now why is it so sweet?

Because I accidentally messed up. I'm still learning how to do it.

It has a sweetener in it.

Yeah, it has a little maple syrup in it. Actually, I gave him a little too sweet.

That is pretty good. Boy, he wants it more, huh? Is it bad to give your 1-year-old some caffeine? It's decaf. Oh good, you can have it. Look at him. Been packing, been doing office work. Annie helped us out today. Glad you're back, Annie. Yes, mostly from the farm. Yeah, so I'm gonna go heavy on the broth and the meat and potatoes. Yeah. Oh, onions, garlic, tomato sauce. All right, normally we wind down after supper. Full-on beef stew. We're going to town to say no to the development. This neighbor, into this community. Okay, hit it, y'all! This could be bad news that we found parking right by it. They want a bunch of people in here. We won!

We— so—

Jonah, give me those chips. One less development in our community.

That was fun, actually.

Yeah, that was fun.

That was— it was— you know what? I wanted to be like— I should have said Who are you people? Let's exchange phone numbers.

That's what I was saying with the people at the end.

I know, I'm sorry.

And y'all just rushing off. It was cool because people could sign up to speak, you could volunteer to speak. I did. People could speak and you could clap for them, and it was just showing the commissioners what the people wanted. Yeah, and they listened, right? Yeah. I mean, they already been— they might have been swayed that way going into it, but I guess because we all voted for them, but They listened. They would have gotten some boos if they would have not done that.

I told the kids I was going to start chanting, no, no, no, no. I was going to say, I say no, you say— and then they were supposed to say no, but then they said they weren't going to do that. They didn't want to chant.

We're on good moods. We won. We're preserving our community. What a good way to end day 9 of living off the land, keeping it as close as we can to what Henry had. Grandpa Henry. Happy day. Tomorrow, day 10.