48 Hours Without Food + Chores in the Dark Before Ian Hits

36 hours without food. So doing surprisingly well, not hungry. I don't know if it's this cold or not. Starting to feel better. Feet are feeling better. Well, let's do the barefoot on the hard wooden floor test. Wow, it's not acutely annoying. Acutely distracting. My man, up and at 'em reading, getting it over with. Good for you. Halfway through that book?

Yeah.

He's not quite yet reading for fun, but reading for school. That's a start. You awake? We got errands this afternoon, so— It's Tuesday. We normally do Taco Tuesday, but we're gonna be getting just back in time to prepare supper. That's gonna be a lot to then go to prepare that. We want to see if we have some sort of roast, and preferably it'd be something that doesn't tempt me. Like, better not be short ribs, because outside of hamburger, short ribs are my absolute favorite. Good morning, beautiful one, and happy day to all you all. Can you say happy day? Nope, you couldn't say goodbye yesterday either. So he does—

he's on his timetable with his talking. Yeah, he does. He says exactly what he wants, which is tractor all the time.

Or Papa. Would you say Papa? Tractor, he says.

Hey, uh, and he's got tractors.

We don't have any. I like it. You like those tractors on your shirt? Are these tractors? We have no roasts, so what do you think about bratwurst?

That's not a terrible idea. Would you be tempted though?

No. Eh! Okay, got the bratwurst. This is super easy because all you got to do is cook rice and fry up some onions and peppers.

Should we do 3 packets?

I always do 2 for us, but I could do 3. 3. I would say don't have salmon or short ribs right now. Those would tempt me.

Oh really? Those are your faves?

Yeah, but I think I'm gonna easily make it till tomorrow. It's just tomorrow night and we can have shorts, right? We're gonna want something, some slow roasted, easy to digest meat with lots of broth in it to break this fast. I don't know, I have to ask Mr. Google Pants about that.

I'm pretty sure that would be great. That would be a great way to break your fast.

Yeah. Good morning, Winnie. I heard you barking. I heard you barking. I heard you barking out there this morning, getting the bad coyotes away. You good dog. What are you up to? You keeping the rats at bay, or are you begging for food? It's amazing how I haven't eaten in 30 hours. Mornings I'm never hungry. I'm still not hungry. Usually starts hitting me around 10, 11, and the hardest part being after supper around 6, 7. You enjoying your smoothie, my man? What you got in this magic smoothie, babe?

I put this one, bone marrow, liver, magnesium, probiotics, colostrum, and then a gut and digestion blend.

How is it, guys? Can you taste all that?

Not yet, I haven't tried it. Yeah, ready?

Hey, you ready for your birthday in 4 days?

Tuesday.

Yeah, we got you some stuff last night. You're gonna get unbelievable amount of socks and underwear. You won't even know what to do with it. All right, I gave it away, I gave it away. Now you can look forward to it.

I don't have to wash underwear socks again.

That's right, much less laundry every year. Yeah. All right.

Henry, you'll get to see outside.

Too restricted. Mr. Brown, where are your shoes?

I don't know.

Let's go.

My toes will freeze off.

Oh, okay, well that's why we gotta find your shoes. You would, you would have taken them off somewhere fun yesterday. Started out with them, started having a ball, and just kicked them off. Where do you think that would be? Probably the dirt mound. Let's go look there.

It's cold out here, but I'm not cold.

I'm not too cold. It's like 46 or something. It's freezing. Were your shoes in Sally? No. Okay, well, let's keep looking. Those are good shoes. What did I say? Dirt pile. Well, there's one. Oh, there's two. Lily too.

Where were they?

Where do you think? The dirt pile.

Why were they there?

Well, you got playing, it started warming up, you started Getting excited and you just kicked them off.

Can I go put these inside?

Free yourself up. Sure. And get on socks. But how are you gonna come out with them on if they're inside? I will.

This—

okay, hurry up. I think you almost have enough food scraps for the pig. Let's put a little skim milk in it. I ain't definitely got enough. All right, good night, Josiah. Why are you so puffy? Oh, you got your motorcycle outfit on under there?

It's too cold.

How's that? Does that hurt? Does that hurt if you crash? A lot of people wondering why— hey, why'd you use concrete when you did your pole barn? Well, this is why. Look at this. This is easily scraped up. You just put your bucket flat down on it, there's no guesswork. You're not digging into the earth. There's no possible way for leaching, and it just gets it done. Look how clean this is. We use cedar, rot-resistant, non-toxic wood, and look how these have held up for 2 years. So I'm pretty impressed. And this is the first time we've emptied out the deep bedding system. We ran it for 2 years. I think that worked. We might have went 3, but we're going to start getting up on the cage And you could, but I do think— I think this would probably start bending. So seemed to work out because look, it's mostly composted. The temporary fencing in the front worked. It was, uh, easily removed and now easily accessed. Just straight in, straight out. This pole barn has been a good deal. Why does this floor I think that's a chipper. This is Randall, right? Right. Yeah, I think that's a wood chipper. Out from the pole barn, our sacrifice area. Didn't grow any veggies this year either. Boy, this must have been really compact, really field dirt, and it's gonna take another year of wood chips and cows and sheep on it, and we'll see what it does next year. Come on, Mr. Brown, let's go milk. What you got left?

I'm only on one chore.

Okay, I'll move your sheep. Don't do sheep on the hill because we're gonna move them today. We'll go do them after milking.

If you want to help, you can move those sheep.

That's what I'll do. Which way is she going? Both ways seem untreaded. Her wheels are pointed this way. Why did she make a shift and go that way? How are you guys? You making it? Awful skittish. Did she come from here? I think she did. I see the grass is cut. Okay, so we need to go down one more length. Let's go down that way now. Timeout. I interrupt this normal vlog to say this. You're not gonna believe it, guys. Well, we're gonna look for Winnie's, uh, tray again while I talk to you and update you, but there is missing footage. I don't know if I lost it, it's just missing. We have all the files in the folder. Dan went to edit, he said looks like there's a lot missing. I went and looked There's a lot missing. I don't know why it didn't get transferred over. It didn't. We can't find it. The story of our life. Can't find the footage. We can't find Winnie's bowl. Why do you run off with your bowl? So this is what we're gonna do. Dan had an idea. He said, oh, you got the morning, you got the evening, but you're pretty much missing all the homestead chores. Could you go tomorrow, which is today. It's gonna be confusing for you guys, which is, which is the day after what you saw earlier in this vlog and what you're gonna see later. I know it's confusing. Maybe you're as confused as I am, but maybe I'll reference tomorrow's show. Yesterday and tomorrow's show. Oh my gosh, it's a mess, and I don't see Winnie's thing. Hurricane rains are coming today. I'm up super early. CB's coming today, a filmer for us, helping us do a learning series for Abundance Plus. Let's go this way. Oh, there it is. It was right here. It was right here this whole time. So yesterday, which is tomorrow's show, Uh, we prepped for these hurricane rains. We got the sled out of the way, the, the big— I mean, we did a crazy move with the mineral sled. And hopefully, hopefully it's not a crazy move today. It's 5:30. I need to be done. I'm not waking the kids. I need to be done by myself in an hour and a half. Here you go, Winnie. Here it is. There he goes. I've been hearing her bark all morning, which I'm happy about. Keep those coyotes away, honey. You keep those coyotes away. Savage Sabina climbing up. You can do it, honey. You can do it. You can do it. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I figured you guys would rather see some— Dan was right, you guys would rather see some homestead content, even if it's on the wrong day, out of order, than none at all. So here goes nothing. Let's do the— let's do the chores in the dark. Everything I need. 2 reservoirs, 2 buckets, hot water, need some cloths, need some alfalfa refill. I'm honestly surprised it's not a little colder. Yesterday it was very cold. I'm also a little surprised it's not raining. The hurricane rains are supposed to be here by now. I thought they would be. Here, but you can definitely feel it in the air. They're coming. Sorry, I keep blaring you in the eye, don't I? Okay, that better? I'll try, I'll try to be more mindful. It's a lot, chores in the dark alone shooting a vlog. It just so happens that we lost Jonah, which Josiah's stepping up amazingly. And we're at the hardest pastures, we're at the hardest moves, we're the furthest away from the house. The sheep's eyes glowing, can you guys see that? No, you can't see that. Look how dusty it is. We could use the rain. Uh-oh, we got a water leak. We've got a water leak. And I think the tractor's in the way. Good morning. Oh boy, oh boy. Uh, that's different. The quick connect has become disconnected and the water's just been running all night. Uh, and we're still still on the wrong side here. We've got a dash in there and it's not gonna— it's not gonna stop running. See that crack? It's gonna fill up to that crack and just overflow. It's gonna be no good time to do this, so I might as well do it at 5:45 in the morning. Got the quick connect on, got it turned around. We're good. This is kind of fun and spooky at the same time. I don't know, it's still, still steep. You'll see in tomorrow's show, yesterday we pulled this thing way up and it was crazy steep. We had to use the tractor. It was exciting. Hopefully today's not as exciting. I'm thankful that we're beating the rain. It's almost impossible to pull down these hills if it's wet, gets muddy. Hey guys, I know I don't think we've ever done a move in the dark. I hope you can see better in the dark than I can. Sorry to wake your slumber. Sorry to wake your slumber, but shall we? Let's go. Let's go. They don't seem to care. This is the excitement of the day. Let's go, let's go, romance, let's go. Look at this fibrous poop. Yeah, we are in a brambly part of the neighborhood. All right, come on, let's go. See it? You can see it. Maybe you can't see as good as Dad, he's running in the hedge. Oh boy, he's going the wrong way. He's going the wrong way, and the sheep are gonna figure it out, I'm afraid. We had to put the sheep in here with the cows to make a flirt. You'll see why in tomorrow's show. Water's filling up nice. Okay, it's going pretty good. Look, they're eating as usual. Josiah set up this mattin'. He did incredible. He's doing so good. It's kind of sparse, but he made up for that. He just made it bigger. He's doing so good, Josiah is. He's really stepping it up. Took him about a week and a half, but he's really stepping up. I'm proud of him. It's probably gonna be a problem with sheep in here because they're gonna catch wind of this alfalfa. And I have to open the fence to get Sally in, and we actually have it on a corner here, and the people will be able to get out if they figure it out, which they will. You know what, I don't have to get Sally in. She's right there until after I milk, so let's wait on that. It's going incredibly smooth. She's come up, nobody else has. All right, come on, Floss. Good girl. She's laying poop, I swear. You love to lay in poop. That increases the wash time at least by twice, if not 3 times as long to wash. I'm, uh, doing a class on making pork rinds, and so we wanted pork rinds in all the different stages. Where's Sally? And I just set some skims to boil and it's on high and I meant to turn it down before I left. It's probably boiling over. So 6 o'clock, that's normally when I wake up. I've been up an hour and a half. It's not necessarily noble, I just couldn't sleep. Woke up at 4:30, a lot of my time. The kids will be nice and Surprised I'm doing chores. Okay, it's not too bad. It's not too bad. We can turn that down now. Okay, we got lucky. I wasn't 100% on this, on this name, but I'm thinking Abundance Plus or Abundance University or Abundance Plus University. And we're gonna do a series of fall-related classes for Abundance Plus. Yeah, I think that works. Call it Abundance University for Abundance Plus. I think that works. And so we got a local filmer. We're gonna do pork rinds today. We're gonna do how to do pork rinds. We're gonna do how to store onions, braid and store onions. I'm back, Flossie. Thank you for your patience. She's giving so much this morning. Look, Josiah's up and at 'em. She probably gave a gallon and a half of milk. Come on, come on. Good, we're doing good on time. Good. Thankfully Honey is clean. Josiah putting up fence, come on, pooping some. But was able to get maybe half of it. So good little score between the two cows. Oh shoot, my little clip— forgot to shut it and it's pulling apart. All right, if this pulls it, we're good. We're actually going to be on time. If it doesn't, we have the tractor. I'm afraid we're gonna break that, uh, carabiner. Here we go. Ready? Oh my, we're doing it! We're doing it! I love the grid, and chances are you do too. You're just afraid to admit it. Let's admit it. But especially when it comes to Energizers, you can get so much bang for your buck and so much more consistency, but you've got to run your your power out to them. Guys, I got my fact checker down here for this one.

You're funny.

Gonna—

oh, it's cold.

I know, right? Does garlic and onion store the same way?

Yes.

You braid it the same way and everything, so we can speak to onions and garlic.

You have to get hardneck garlic to braid it. Softneck, I believe, is just—

you might mention that inside when you're braiding it, or we might mention it out here. But out here, Rebecca, what we want to talk about is after you you get your onions and garlic— or garlic's off the ground, we'll showcase this rack. Yeah, we'll talk about building a rack for them and how to store it and for how long, and then we'll transition inside. Okay, that's not a terrible idea to get variety. CB, yeah, we did bacon the last time.

We've got to wait for the container to come.

What container?

To put our stuff in.

Oh, is somebody getting your container? I didn't know. you're gonna take them all in. I thought you would just maybe do a few, but, I mean, might as well do it. We had bacon last time. Cause we taught a class on how to cure bacon. You ain't seen nothing yet. Garlic and onions. No, no, no, no. Garlic and onions is not bacon. No. You know what does. You from the south? Yep. Pork rinds. Oh. Oh, No chips. Yes. Just say goodbye to CB. That's bonus footage for you guys. I don't normally film on this day, but Dan had a good idea. We'll— I'd like to get you some homestead content. So now we're going back to the regular vlog because we did get our evening. Somehow we got the morning and the evening. This was bonus. It's actually happened day after the video you're seeing. Right, I don't know. Anyway, back to the vlog. There's some content. Thanks for your understanding. We're back from errands. It went good. I think it went good. Yeah, we gotta spend some time together. This is our go-to, isn't it?

It is.

It's a favorite. This is a good errand day. Just easy to make. Yeah, uh, bratwurst, fried onions, peppers from the land. Do you like it?

But do the kids You like it?

Yes. Everybody likes it?

Oh yeah.

Rebecca, I've only got— I'm resisting this. Yeah, so tomorrow— oh, let me see, let me, let me lay out some, uh, tomorrow. My favorite, and it's gonna be a perfect break-in. Mama's saying it needs to soak. We're gonna soak these short ribs. Okay, that doesn't look like enough. Okay, a little roast. Combine a couple of those, and then we got our short ribs. I probably just put it in the fridge like this. It's gonna be 24 hours, isn't it? It's been 48 hours. I'm not that hungry. I am sweating an ammonia smell. Is that a detox? Remember I did that on carnivore?

Huberman Lab was saying that when you fast, when you feast or when you fast, it hits your dopamine receptors a certain way.

Yeah.

And even though they're like very different things, they can— your dopamine receptors can change and within context if you believe that what you're doing is right.

Almost think this would have been a good 5-day run. I could have done it. Tomorrow's the end. We do have staff meeting. No, staff meeting's on Thursday, but I need to break back in so that I can eat with everybody. We have a once-a-year staff meeting, uh, dinner, and it's so much fun. We're gonna hire— we hire the hibachi grill We're doing that again, guys.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't want to miss out on that. That would be kind of awkward. I really— I'm helping clean it up. I really need to get rid of that. That's kicking in the taste buds. Kicking in the taste buds? I don't know if that makes sense. I think you guys know what I'm talking about. Kicking in the hunger pains. I don't know, my mouth's watering doing this. Make sure I'm nice and hydrated, especially going on the sauna tonight. Short ribs, I'm telling you, would have never— they're so delicious already. You know, they're like the most underrated beef cut, right? So they're almost as expensive as ground beef, and they're so tasty. Fatty. Half a cup of salt for half a gallon. Whoa, that's a lot more. All right, for a half gallon warm water, we'll mix it in. Yeah, it is. Then we'll put— then we'll do cold water, pour that in there, and then we're going to repeat until this meat is covered, which is probably about a gallon and a half, maybe. Just get it covered up. I need to put it over here so I don't forget. And put that in the fridge. Here, let's put a lid on it. Those two. Those three.

Whoa!

We're gonna do an unboxing. Stay there, it's very special. I am very excited about this. You guys, do you know? We're gonna come up with our own building plans book. And it's gonna take a while, it's gonna take a while, uh, but you know, we're working with a designer, or legit like, uh, graphic— well, engineer, also familiar with farming, and to get these plans made. Well, in order— he's at a point where drawing these plans, he needs a book designer We got it. We got it from the community. Same guy who designs the thumbnails. What we have to do— we have a book designer, but the book designer has to have a printer, so I'm gonna have to do all this what I thought would be last stretches. It's been some examples of their work. Okay, now this is supposed to be a lay open. And it's laying open. Uh, so you want— we want a book that you can put on the table. Hey, hey, hey, I'm vlogging here! We can put it on the table and it lay open anywhere we open it because we got plans. It doesn't just fall open, you know, right?

Since I've been down.

I mean, lay open-ish. Now this one, is this, is this something open? Wow, okay, this is better. It's lay open, dude. Look at that. Mine's gonna be more this size. It's probably gonna be about that size. Let's see, uh, 9 by 12. Probably gonna be 9 by 13. I think that's 9. Okay, so it's gonna be a little bit bigger than that. This is the one that was the original inspiration. So I think though this has to be printed international, and those guys are America. This is— I don't know, it's a super nice binding, so we might find out. Really liking that, but I'm thinking it's the same thing. Exciting stuff. Love this building stuff, having an idea, creating nothing, creating something. Like one day we'll have a design book, physical book, and it was just once an idea and then it becomes a reality. That's how much so many of these things are on the homestead, and I think that's why it's so satisfying. Because this morning the cows were in one spot Now they're in a totally different spot.

Papa.

Yes.

Are we gonna have to do the same thing with the book? This book last, like last time with the other book?

Which was what?

Like your book about that, like—

Like sign it? Yeah. And ship it?

Yeah.

Is that what you're saying when we were over at the barn? Uh-huh. Maybe. Maybe. It'll be a while before it comes out, like over a year, so—

I know.

We'll just have to see. Okay.

Yeah.