24 hours with a Wood Chipper (save our farm from Helene)

Hey, happy day, boys! Guess what's happening today? I don't know. The wood chipper is coming today. We have to go get it. Let's get the chores on and let's go get it. You can drive. Want some practice driving? Sure. Let me be free. They always act like they're starving. Like, really, guys? It's the skies in the morning, sailor's warning. Finally, our wood chipper is here. Hopefully the weather holds out. It's not our wood chipper, we're renting it. We're hoping to get it done in a day, maybe two. If we need 3 days, we might as well keep it for a week. It's the same price. The hurricane repair was not in the budget. Excuse me, that's Winnie's. They're acting like they're starving. Are they? Okay, so y'all need wood chips something awful, but this is so nasty. Sorry guys, chicken run should not be a nasty place. Okay, yeah, that's, that's— yeah, you're out of food. It's 7:30. Let's have a go. I'd really like to get this thing about 9. I could just take this and not bring the bucket back. Coming. Sorry. I'm excited and also nervous. It is the most, the most dangerous job you could do on the job. You could get caught on a limb and get sucked into one of these things. Party on, party on, because it's soon gonna be over. We're gonna soon situate these chickens We were thinking the high tunnel with wood chips. We kind of need them to mow some pasture or till some gardens for us. We're gonna quit the grocery store 2025. We've got to have a bit more gardens. Are we still doing that? Yeah, you want to? No.

Why not?

Because I like good food. What do you like? Chocolate. Chocolate. Okay, how about this? How about in 2025, probably August-ish, we have a 30-day challenge and we see who can go the longest, make it the whole 30 days eating only our food? That does not include chocolate. He's right, you cannot grow chocolate in North Carolina. What do you think? And that way you could technically quit at day one. You could.

Huh?

Yeah. Huh? But maybe there'll be a big prize at the end for those that make it. Should we do— should we have fun like that? I mean, I'll make it. I've eaten just meat from the farm for 30 days, so get to add in onions and garlic and— wait a minute, wait a minute, chocolate! We're just quitting the grocery store. You could get chocolate dessert or shipped or something. That's the case, maybe we should get the grocery store longer and we should have a hardcore challenge and just eat from the farm for 30 days. What's your kryptonite? What? A day? Rice. Yeah, see, rice. How are you gonna live without rice? I could grow rice. Okay, you better think. You better be learning how to do it, buddy. Eat what you grow 2025. Oh no, remember those red skies this morning? Rain. It's gonna rain all day. Come here, Jonah. Hey, where are the boys? Boys, everybody left. Really, boys? We're trying to go today. Didn't know what the camera was rolling, but I was catching And gotta invite the community to our annual Christmas parade this Saturday. Every year we do a 2-mile parade. It's the greatest parade that no one ever sees. Well, except for last year, we actually had some people come out and see it. This is gonna be really cold. To stay safe in the wood chipper, we're actually going to use the Mini X to load it And so maybe it's okay that it's raining. Is it okay that it's raining? You take turns on them. I was actually going to check the weather and then got caught up in the parade. Are you going to do the cart?

What?

Yeah, because that may happen today. She's coming around this area. I just blew 30 minutes on the Christmas parade. Break a record just like 30 minutes. I'm excited. Pigs, chickens getting new bedding, building soil after the hurricane.

That's weird.

What is she doing? That's never happened before. Come on. Oh, she's— look at that baby. Wow, Honey has never left. While she still had alfalfa. I have to finish milking her out because there's no calf to finish for me. Oh yeah, that's too much excitement. I think she's a little anxious because we've been weaning her from her baby. She's calmed down a lot though, so this is a little surprising. Here, maybe if I get the sheep acting like they want it, then she'll compete and won it. I didn't bring the pail, I'll just milk her out into the ground. Look at this. Good job, good job. Make me look good. We're done. 8:22. Can we get out of here in 8 minutes? We'll try. I doubt it. How's it going in here? Fine. No problems. You about to weld the nut on? Henry! Okay, second batch of bread complete. Let's defrost. Man, if we defrost this, it takes 2 hours it's saying, maybe the beautiful one can actually use some real food in here. Okay, we're defrosting. Drains out of this tube down into this bucket. Henry, pick 4 cars and then come with me, okay? Oh, is this the invitation to parade?

Yeah, I don't know what's going on.

Okay, invited all our friends, okay?

Oh good, okay. Um, let me ask you—

and the neighbors that we have phone numbers for. Okay, here's Randolph. He'll have to teach Jonah how to do the cabin. He's got to teach Jonah some things to do for the cabin, the outside of the cabin. How much longer on the cart? Many minutes. You're wanted in many directions. Randolph's here and he can show you what it's going to need to be done on the outside of the cabin. Jonah's like me, he's, he's wanted in multiple different places all at once. I think the cart lesson might be happening today. I'm not 100% sure though. It does need to if Lily's gonna ride her cart in the parade, but I'm not sure if that's happening today. So Jonah's got to do the cart and learn how to do this on the cabin. Josiah, can you help him pick 4 and then bring them out? Sure. Is that what he thinks he's— okay, I guess he can bring the whole basket. No, bring 4 or 40. Oh, it looks good. No. That looks so good. Yeah, we'll put that in the mailboxes this afternoon. I'm going. Okay, we'll see you later, baby.

All right, I love you.

I love you too. Smiley one here to take over the farm, the, the cow chores, because we gotta go. Yep. How romantic. Jonah working on his future house, remodeling the cabin, doing the work himself. What a special gift to his future self, his future bride, his future children. That's really neat. At 17 years old. Parents, if you don't ever want your kids to leave, that's the trick— help them with a place on farm. And then they get older and they're like, okay, go spend a half million dollars on a, on a property and house, or stay on the farm and move next door to the folks. All right, I give up. He's buried in the cars. I just don't want it to wear out, you know. I don't want the excitement to wear out. Well, we don't need a car seat in the truck. Flag Randolph down. Randolph, can you flag him down and ask him what you can do this week? What? Yes, it's gonna be a warm week. It's a good week to work on the outside. Okay, so it's not all unicorns farting rainbows. He's still a teenager, still needs to be driven sometimes, but he'll be glad he did it. I mean, it's warm. I'm in short sleeves. It's time to do the outside cabin work. We got vacation coming. That's, you know, that's, that's when we don't do anything, right, Josie? Yeah. All right, let's go, because that— you know what this means. If he's on that cabin, you're gonna have to be on the wood chips. Hey, there's electric Mini X. It's a little tiny Mini X. Here it is, Josiah, your new best friend. We're here. Good brand. He said this is a $40,000 model. That's what's interesting about it. You think we can get a ball hitch like that for the track later? Yeah, just turn the key. All right.

Reach.

Try your best not to hit this. It's like an e-stop. If you hit it, it will shut the machine off. It's like a safety switch. Hey, we got us a wood chipper! The guy said go get them. We're gonna go get them. Does that machine feel heavy on there? Yeah, it's not as big of a machine as I thought. That's good and bad. Good because it won't kill us as quickly. Bad is it may not get the work done as quickly as we were thinking. Home sweet home. All right, drop yourself off here. You get the Mini X warming up, get the bucket switched out. That's how we're gonna stay safe. I have no idea how long this is gonna take. Hopefully not long. We want to chip it all in a day if we can. Got to lift up the stand. I just put up the stand. Okay, one reason I got insurance on this thing— tree accidentally falls on it or it gets crushed Max liability is $500. Oh boy, I didn't ask how to get open.

How do I open this?

Are you serious? All right, you better stick around and help me then. This is a safety shut off, so if some reason you were to get dragged in there, we need an emergency shut off. What kind of branches you reckon this is? Small, medium, or large? You kind of have to save the largest. Save the largest, set them aside or something, and we'll We'll have to set them on a different setting. Okay, okay, it's on medium. Where are we gonna have the wood chips go? It's going now.

We got wind shift. I'm going to need some gear. Looks like you can use an assistant.

We made our own wood chips. I know, turned a problem into solution.

Watching this, I'm like, is that a honeybee?

Are any bears leaving somewhere out on this warm day? These are great wood chips too. They are, they're fine. We're learning the nuances of this thing and the order of work. It's not going to do naughty things. Well, we didn't even try that big one. It's not going to do that, it's a walnut. The plants that these wood chips will end up in that aren't going to really like the walnuts anyway. This brumbly stuff, it's better just to— so hard to get it to go in, danger of tangling.

Yeah, so scared.

We're just gonna— that's just burn pile, and then we'll have ashes, which is also good for the soil. We can spread it.

Yeah, we also need to get the chickens down here, Justin.

Yeah, let me think about that because I'm also thinking about put them in a high tunnel slash getting them ready for a garden. Well, so it might be that we can have a little run to get them to the hot tub.

I was thinking about—

and they go in the high tunnel at night. We put their feed and water out in the run. We have all that, and then we probably have 4 times that over there, and then we have some up there. I should probably stop talking and start doing it.

How many hours did this take? Well, you are—

that's a good point. It's 11:30.

Well, maybe—

what time did I start? 10:30. 1 hour. If I work till dark, he's like, come on. That's like he's rushing us. That's like, I got 5 and a half hours, babe. Okay, happy I remembered the hitch this time. All right, all that rain is not helping us. I'm stuck, and if I back up, I'm gonna say I'm afraid we're gonna get down in there and we're gonna be really stuck. Try your best to get a chain and he can pull me. We're supposed to be wood chipping. We have freshly graded soil. Almost called it dirt. I don't like to call it dirt. Um, soil is alive, dirt is dead. We have had fresh, fresh, fresh soil exposed. Lots of rain. It's winter, so it doesn't dry out. Could really put a damper on our goal. Okay. Oh my gosh, look! Oh my word, we slid totally off of that. I don't know if I'll try to go back through. I think I'll go around. Josiah got me out. It was a close one. Pile number 2, it's all this stuff we worked up just recently. Yeah, see all that tangly stuff's fine in the burn pile. This stumpy stuff is not going to go through like that one. I feel like we picked up speed on that one. A lot of that Josiah was just able to load. Uh, that was sort of the end of us chainsawing, and we were, you know, this was the last stuff we worked up, and I think we had figured it out by then how to get it ready for the machine. Where we're about to go is the most brush ever, and that's where we first started, so I doubt it's that ready for the machine, but we get in this groove where ID limb things. Not efficient to run the big, big, big stuff, and that's the hardwoods right there, so we just save it for firewood. We don't have to split that. Super efficient for firewood production. We get the poplars and run them through though if they're big, but that one was a little bit too big because poplar is not that great of a firewood. I am not going that way. I don't want to risk it. As much as I hate to drive through my pasture, we're going to make up for it. With all these wood chips. So I'm just gonna drive over and out. Remember how I said we're about to go to where we first started working things out? Yeah, this is not organized. It's not ready for a wood chipper. That stuff doesn't go in. We could have had that separated. There's a lot of knot— there's a lot of straggly stuff that could have just been put in a burn pile. This could be our— oh, he's gonna have to sort this. This stuff is not sorted. Did you know that? Okay, you're gonna start right here. Yeah, most of this ain't even wood chippable. I got it pulled up. You can sift through that pretty quickly though, I think.

One more pile down.

This is taking longer, but we are getting with it. It's 1:45. It's dark around 5:30. Let's just say 5:45. Let's say it's 4 hours. We can get this done today. We've got one more pile and what we call the 2 acres where the group— the youth group is. I think it's quite possible to get in one day. If not, it's double the cost. We go from 500 to another 500.

Let's get it done. Okay, 240.

I moved supper back to 6, gotten through maybe a quarter of it, although the pile does get smaller, I think, as we go. We gotta reposition. Almost as tall as me. Almost 6-foot pile of mulch. That's probably a $200-$300 pile of mulch if we were to have to buy it. Paid $500 to rent this machine.

Maybe we'll get 10 of these.

Did we just get $3,000 worth of mulch for $500?

315.

Not too far from the mountain. Feels good on I know right now that it's actually hot. Can you even hear me? It's so loud. It's not quite as much as I thought we were gonna have. I thought we were gonna have copious amounts. A lot of this we're gonna have to save for winter bedding, which is fine because then that just gets broke down into compost and then spread out ready to go, as opposed to just putting it with chips straight up. There's a whole set of logs right there that we're just gonna go around. That's good news and bad news. Sad news is not material we can grind, but good news is the less we have to do. And we're looking from just here to here, and there's a lot of logs right there. We don't have a dump truck, we do have a track loader. So one day at a time, just start hauling rocks. It stopped spitting stuff out. I straightened the chute, I pulled stuff out of the chute, we put it in reverse. We've got a lot of the wood chips Ow! Hopefully it's not clogged clogged, guys. Can it penetrate that? I mean, I don't know. It looks like it's on there so hard the metal is indented. Whoa, are we moving it or did we break something? We moved it! We're getting in there now. That may not be the trap to getting in there, and it may, it may be a big old mess. We can't handle. All right, well, Jonah is going to take the truck. He's got a shindig tonight. They said to get the jack off, so you have to have it on the truck. Oh, we could— we could hold it up with the tractor just to get the jack. Let's do that since the tractor's right there. We slick the jack in here and then put it in here and jack it up like crazy. What we did there was not an necessary. All right, go see if you can't help me figure out what he's talking about. You see anything in there? See if our YouTube guy gets— because the wheel turns this way rather than this way. Okay, I'm working on getting this chute off. One more boat We've gotten it off and cleared. We just don't know how to get it back on. You figuring something out? What was that, an hour and a half just that? 2 hours? We did it!

We're mechanics!

We worked till after absolutely dark. We couldn't see anything anymore. It's supper time. Jonah finished the cart. I don't know if that happened today though, the training, but the cart's finished. Would have gotten to our goal, I believe, had we not had that— it was probably an hour and a half fixing that thing. I wonder if they'll give me an hour and a half extension. I'm a rental. First light light. We'll have to get up and start working this at first light. We just slammed dinner. Mom, you've been busy. 6 quarts of lard from how many fat— how many pounds of fat? 11.

There's 11 pounds.

We have to do it too to make, uh, tallow, if you like.

Yeah, I would like to make some tallow. Um, I'd like to make more lard.

I heard we're getting the cabinets finished tomorrow. Toe kicks are coming in.

Toe kicks, shoe molding.

That's the last of the remodel stuff.

Well, until we do the rest of it. So we have to finish the— we have to finish the garden kitchen, put cabinets and furniture in places.

Yeah.

And I wanted to do some things in your— I want to make a, a like built-in desk, stuff like that.

Okay, scared me there for a second. All right, happy day.