7th DAY OF CHRISTMAS

Inside this, a bunch of goodies from— this is included. I got to put this back in. We're going to give these away. Super Cubes. We're going to talk more about what that is later in the show. Let's get people on. Why don't folks this time, why don't we say what in the world you're doing today? So say what you're doing today. And then it's fun to see where everybody's from. So for example, we are, well, we're looking at a pony today. So we've been going back and forth via text and looking at video. And prepping for a possible pony. Pony for Peaches, let's get that hashtag going because y'all been— y'all have been— hey, Black's Tropical Homestead in the house! Welcome to the show, guys. It's good to have familiar faces in the crowd, some of our number one supporters. What'd y'all do today? Okay, somebody's— Nick Nicholas is cleaning the cars. Uh, My Land Is His Land went to church this morning. Allison Day is hand sewing. Graham, are you in the house, my man? Yeah, he is. Pop some of these up. There he goes. He was working on a new hashtag, Pony for Peaches. You know, y'all were honest to get Lily a horse. It was a year and a half in the waiting, and then you were— and, and, and now you're honest to get the horse a buddy, which is live— to your credit, it's Livestock Husbandry 101. Species are not to be apart, you know, they're supposed to have a buddy. Hi from Florida, getting food ready for bonfire tonight. Oh, that's what I should ask everybody while we're waiting for folks to get on. Let's, let's say what you're going to do tonight. Do you stay up till midnight, or as homesteaders, do you go to bed as early as possible so you can get up? Uh, Rebecca and I are in the second camp, our kids are in the first camp. They like to stay up till midnight. They'll be at some friends and we're gonna be, Rebecca and I will be honking our shoes going to bed 'cause we're gonna have a big day tomorrow. Ponyin' for peaches. Okay. Yep, I see some hashtags, pony for peaches. Bedtime, 8:30, doesn't matter if it's New Year's Eve. They also say, how about this question? They also say what you do on New Year's Day is generally reflective of what your year is gonna look like. So what do you plan on doing New Year's Day? Boy, Graham's harassing me in the— Graham is the, the man behind the curtain throwing up the comments, and he keeps on going for the hashtag, uh, #ponyforpeaches. Black-eyed peas for New Year's dinner? Yeah, I've heard of that. Uh, we're going to some friend's house. We've made friends in the community. You can walk there, actually. Literally, Rebecca and I are going to walk home. Oh, somebody's playing— gonna do football on Monday. Steve Seed Starting. I think, I think, I think, let's hope the first day of the year is telling of what you're going to do all year. New Year's Day is our 18th anniversary. Yay, Graham! Highlight the seed starter. Tim from Facebook. What did he say? What flew by? Sorry. Tim from Facebook, my birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday, Tim. My, my, uh, dad's birthday was on New Year's. He was the firstborn in Henderson County in 1933. He was the first one to be born in 1933, uh, in Henderson County. Regarding— we got Allison reorganizing poultry and laundry room for a new year. Justin Moore from Facebook, my birthday. Another birthday, bunch of you birthday. Okay, let's get right into the content. So, uh, thank you guys for all your comments. I wanted to speak to you about goals here. So our goal has been to get 10,000 people in this member map. The idea is that with that many people, a lot of folks can connect, and we're aiming for the moon. We're, we're aim for the impossible and then extraordinary things happen, right? But let's not lose sight of the big vision. I've been reading this book called Drive by Daniel Pink, and he talks about two different kinds of goals. There's that really specific, like, tangible, uh, numbers goal, uh, you could call it a profit goal. In this case, it's not a profit goal, it's just like Let's get 10,000 members. But there's a different kind of goal that we could have and maybe should have, and that would be more of a, I forget what he called those kinds of goals, but it would be more of a, maybe say a purposeful goal or a reason, why am I blanking on that? But anyway, the idea would be, maybe instead of just, like who cares if we got 10,000 people to sign up for the map? But what we really want is people to make some connections. So what we really want is people get in this directory and actually contact somebody else. And like I'm fixing to do, go have a New Year's Eve with friends down the street, dinner, and then our kids are gonna stay up till midnight together with some of the adults there. That's what we want. So it doesn't matter if we get 10,000, I would rather have a dozen, you know, if it was choice, that a dozen people would actually get together and do something out about this. So some ideas for you guys getting together, go to links in the description on YouTube, links in bio on Instagram, or you can comment directory. You can go to this thing, it has this map, and we'll show it later, 'cause we're gonna randomly pick somebody from this map. So you wanna get on it now. It's abundantpermaculture.com/map. And once you get on, we're gonna unbox this Super Cubes box and we're gonna randomly pick somebody and give these Super Cubes away to whoever's nearest, okay? That area. So you wanna get on this map and contact those around you and say, hey, let's do a tour for tour. Or if you have a bunch of people around you, let's have a potluck and do it in January. How about making that our New Year's resolution? So forget, you know, we could still, let's still aim, let's still aim high. We're at like almost 4,000 people on this directory. So that's amazing. But that doesn't mean anything unless say 400 people actually connect. So get on that map, be ready to get connected. Oh, look, yes, tell me, okay, so, Hiking cancer. I'm kicking cancer's butt. Good for you. I got contacted from somebody on the map. Yes. Okay. So let's hear these kinds of chats. Let me know if you are committed to contact people on the map or you've been already, and I'm going to shout you out right now. Pinky's Garden Adventures already connected with 3 people from the map. Yes. Okay. So, so, and how meaningful is that if, if, if just 2 people connect? Put a price tag on that. Put a, put a gold tag on that. There's none, okay, that, that's worth it. It's priceless. I would like to find the people from our, uh, last Abundance Plus get-together. Yes, you know, and sometimes, um, we've done these, uh, we've done like the American Farm Tour anniversary where we had premiere across the country. We had 77 people host across the country and people got together, uh, to watch The Great American Farm Tour, a good reason to get together, get together, watch a movie, have some snacks. And then some people have continued that on. And, you know, I'm not spewing out too many ideas because I want you guys to have your own organic ideas and do your own things. You know, here we host a party once a quarter. So we're going to have a— we had a Christmas party, we're going to have a dance in the spring, and then we're going to do a Fourth of July, and then we're going to do a soup-off. And then every week in the summer, we have a soccer, a pickup soccer game every week for anybody who wants to come local. And then we just did a Christmas parade, like a week, you know, Saturday before Christmas, gathered all the local people and said, you wanna be in the parade or watch the parade? And we're out in the country, so it's like this ludicrous, ridiculous thing. More people are in the parade than are watching it, but that's what makes it so much fun. I've been reached out by 2 different people within 50 miles of me. Habitual hobbies, I love it. So I will say this, you know, we're at the 7th day, so we got 5 more days. If you aren't seeing people around you, just give it a wait, give it to 12 days, but also let's, Lucille, there's a few within 25 miles from them. So give us some time, but also share this, share, share the map on, on your Facebook, to your email contacts, to your, uh, any of your socials, and just get the word out and say, hey, you know, you might want to put yourself on here or go have a look and see if you can't find anybody, or let's find somebody together. All right, uh, so let's unbox this thing. So already we've got these 2-cup Super Cubes. They're silicone, so it's food safe. Plastic lid. I'll tell you what they do here in a second, but let's look in this box. Let's see what else they give us. This is a really cool company. They have given us 10% off to anybody who's in Abundance Plus. So if you guys are Abundance Plus member, you get 10% off the Super Cubes inside there. You can get a coupon. Okay, we got 2 more things to open. So let's show you these. These may, these look a lot the same. They are the same general size, but they have a different function. So Super Cubes, and I'm not super like S-U-P-E-R. Ah, Pinky says I love Super Cubes. They're soup, like you spell soup, or cubes. See, it's clever, right? Super Cubes. This is a 1-cup one. Yeah. It even has measurings on it. So what we do, uh, I've put, I put butter in this one actually. We, we do our butter and we'll put it in here and freeze it. And so say you have then 4 things of butter that are individual, and then once that's frozen, then you can put it into a Ziploc bag to get Ziploc bag and it won't like stick together. That comes in real handy with soup or broth. We use a lot of broth in it. So, you know, a lot of recipes call for 1 cup of broth Well, you know, the little frozen cube is 1 cup. You know, the big frozen cube is 2 cups. Actually, we do, we tend to do 3 cups of broth if we're going to make 4 cups of rice. So we will make, um, we'll grab 2, one of these big cubes and we'll grab one of these. And normally, if we're on top of things, we actually, after it's frozen, get it out of this and put it in a Ziploc bag. We don't always, and sometimes we're just getting it directly out of this after it's frozen. It's fine. And maybe that's what I just need to do, is just get more Super Cubes and then it's less work, you know, less to do. They store— it would store better. It would be more efficient if you took it out of there and put it in, put it in bags after it froze. They also sent us, and I didn't even know they had this, Oh, that's cool. So these, these ladles have a special hook right here that it can hang on to the pot. That's cool. Free. Somebody's gonna win this. So if you're on the map, that's all you got to do to win this. And you've also joined our email list, which will send you out some goodies every day this, this 12 Days of Christmas. I know people are probably— you might be sick of Christmas, but We ain't halfway done. I don't know what happened, how we started celebrating Christmas so far before the actual Christmas Day, but it's 12 Days of Christmas, guys, in Uncle Justin's house. What is it? I actually have no idea what this is. I just asked them, just, hey, would you be willing to send more than $100 worth of gifts? And they said yes. They're a really cool company. Okay, plus they're getting a lot of publicity right here. I don't blame them, do you? Right, like some of you are going to go out and buy Super Cubes, and I don't blame you. I have these in my house, okay? Which, by the way, I wouldn't— I wouldn't endorse or show anything I didn't use myself. I get lots of contacts every day, 4 or 5, half a dozen emails. Would you promote this? Would you promote that? And I never do. I, I, I go— I do it backwards. I get something I like, and, and we might reach out and, and say, hey, you wanna, you wanna give a discount to our members? Do you want to give a giveaway to the whole community? Oh, look, it's stoneware, a 5x5 dish. So I guess you could put your— you, you take it from here Frozen and put it in there and warm it up. That's what I would imagine. That's awesome. Rebecca, where's you at? Matt says that's awesome. Yeah, so it's oven, microwave, and dishwasher safe. So yeah, that's what I'm gonna— that's what I'm gonna assume this does. And that's, that's really handy. And so it's, I guess, porcelain and, uh, food safe. You could— it's the size of your That's neat. Okay. So it's a way to heat it up. Hey, one less step, guys. Okay. Who's going to win this? And if you left your number, I hope I gave you guys some time there to get yourself listed on the directory. I'm going to put this back before I— Sorry if you get this. I ripped it open. It's not because I used it. It's because I just opened it and looked at it. Showed it off. Okay, getting this ready for shipment. Who's getting it, Matt? Who's gonna get it? Somebody on the East Coast? West Coast? This random selector has been kind of heavy East Coast lately.

Yeah, we should kind of maybe—

I hope for a West. Let's hope for out West. But we can't, but we're going to let it be completely random.

Okay.

I'll have to mess with that in a minute. All right. So Matt is going to share my screen and we're going to do a random generation selection generator. This is just from, this is just from Google. Let's— why did it do that? Okay, we gotta— yeah, that would be fun. We got some, you know, and you know, somebody's reached out yesterday, oh, there's only one person in Nebraska. You know, let's change it. Let's give it some time. Let's change that.

I just wonder why the US doesn't come up on the top of these kinds of lists.

Most of the time it does. Here we go. I mean, what are you going to say, dude? Matt, it's a free— it's a free— oh, we're going to Delhi Hills, Ohio. I like going to Ohio with this because I know there's a lot of homesteaders in Ohio. Uh, Delhi Hill, Ohio. So Let's say you're— look, ask Mr. Google Pants for the Abundant Permaculture Map if you don't remember what I said, but it's abundantpermaculture.com/map. Okay, that's actually our— that's worth saying— that's our blog. There's actually very many articles on this, and then there's also a link to Abundance Plus if you guys want to join our exclusive community, get discounts to these products. We have discounts to Redmond's, Johnny Seeds, Super Cubes, Sturdy Brother apron. I believe we're going to give one of those away tomorrow. You just go right here and join Abundance Plus. It's a free trial right now. Okay. Where did I say? Delhi? So say you live in Delhi. Delhi. Okay. So say you live in Delhi and you want to find some friends. Delhi, Cincinnati, Ohio, Delhi, Ohio. Okay. Let's do 25 miles, right? It's probably going to be a bunch. Normally it zooms in for us. What happened? Okay, let's try it again. There it goes. There it is. Okay, so there are a bunch of people. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So if you're in Delaware, Ohio, you're sitting pretty. Just 25 miles. I could have made that 50. And you still be an hour. It's not far from Akron. Okay, let's get, let's get down, let's get less to help us pick, pick it out. Okay, so there we go, there we go. Live Good Patricia, and you did not leave your phone number, Patricia. Okay, but let's see what Patricia's up to. Have experience with small homesteading and work towards getting into doing so again. As retirees to raise our own food through chickens, rabbit, quail, and Lord willing, goats. Oh Lord, oh Lord, or devil willing, the goats. We look forward to getting— hey, haven't you read, haven't you read the Bible? There's a separation of the sheep and the goats, okay? And the sheep are on the right side, okay? So Lord willing, I don't know if the Lord wills the goats, okay? We look forward to getting back to the homestead way of life. We love it. Okay, congratulations, uh, Graham. Capture that info, please. Oh, tell it, uh, Graham, capture that info for us and get it to Heather. And Heather is my lovely assistant. And then, um, Graham, pop something up on the screen. We'll answer a question or a comment before we leave tomorrow while you guys are questioning and commenting. Let's get, uh, let's talk tomorrow. So Sturdy Brothers apron is coming up, the Redmond salt is coming up. That'll be over at least over $200 worth of salt, brining salt, pocket salts, Easy Light or electrolytes. You are welcome, Alina. And then Alina's thanking us for the 12 Days of Christmas. This has been fun. Maybe next year I can start preparing for it early. We can get even more brands involved and get more bigger giveaways. If you guys really liked it, we'll see how it does. We almost got 4,000 people on this map. I would have— I thought, man, I could have gotten some of my friends involved who's got— who have audiences, and we could have just really shared this message. So if any of you guys feeling saucy, just share it with, with your followers on Instagram or, or YouTube. I know Black Tropicals Homestead, shout out to them. They've got a YouTube channel you guys might want to check out. They said they love Redmond salt. They're doing good things. We worked with them on some projects this summer on some film shoots with Abundance Plus, doing some homestead makeovers. What brand of couch are you buying for the remodel? Good question, Megan. Let me see if I can't get the best money can buy. It's my joke. Beauty must search. For— I, I laugh and joke her saying your search criteria must be the best money can buy. No, but seriously, she does her research, so whatever couch it is, it's gonna be a good one.

Are you looking for— for where—

because she gets— we, we— in a couch, we need, uh, wearability. It needs to be non-toxic, and because a lot of couches are really heavy and off-gassing and then it doesn't, so you don't want any flame retardants, stuff like that. What brand couch are? Okay, I'll ask the beauty. We'll see if she gets this, shoot. Okay, any other questions, comments, derogatory remarks? Send those derogatory remarks straight to Graham.

We got, uh, why doesn't the Rhodes family raise quail?

Yes, why doesn't the Rhodes family raise quail? Because we definitely do not need to. We like the— we like the taste of chicken and turkey and duck, and we like those eggs, and we have the space that we don't need to raise quail. I would think quail would be something that would be really good for somebody in a development or where chickens aren't allowed, or Somewhere small. I bought a new calf and she has a limp but is not used to people working with them. Any suggestions on checking her for an injury? Yeah, so you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to catch that. You're gonna have to get the mom. I'm assuming it's a milk cow. Might not be. Oh, here's what you'll, I don't know if it's a milk cow or not. If it's a milk cow, you're gonna have to, have the milk cow tied up, and you're going to have to separate the calf somehow. And then, um, in the morning after the calf's hungry, let the calf go to the mom and the mom can't get away, and then you can grab the calf. And it'll be so hungry after 12 hours, say. But, uh, let's say you need help getting the calf separated, or it's a beef cow. Well, you want to set up some sort of corral. You could do this with beef panel— beef or cattle panels and, um, T-posts. Or you— or if they're tame enough, you could do a net, some sort of an electric net, and then herd both mom and calf in there. And then it's easier to herd out mom, and then you've got the calf. And I say cattle panels and T-posts because that calf is just going to jump through the— so forget the electric fence, the calf's going to jump through the electric fence. Uh, so you need something physical, you need to herd them somewhere physical. Do you heat your small greenhouse? I do not. I start with, uh, cold-hardy crops. So we would, uh, start cold-hardy crops this spring, uh, 4 months— 4 weeks before frost date. And then at 4 weeks we can set the plants out. Now, for tomatoes and stuff that are a little more sensitive, we do— we will do heat mats. And sometimes the beautiful one, she's the crazy plant lady, will put a space heater inside our little greenhouse. So if you're growing cold hardy crops, you don't need to do that, but for more sensitive things like tomatoes, you might want to. Okay, uh, what was I doing? Oh, I was trying to text Beauty. This is going to be too late.

The world wants to know her couch choices.

I know, I like that question. Is the beautiful one going to make YouTube videos on clean cleaning? I know, I'm on her. I'm on her. Maybe one day, maybe when we get out of this young baby stage, that'll be more like it, because she's a wealth of resources in regards to clean cleaning, clean living, clean eating, and health. Oh my goodness, she knows so much about natural health. It's absolutely phenomenal. We gotta unlock that somehow. Okay, so, uh, oh, and I'm trying to kill a little bit of time here until— so you can just answer that couch question. Uh, she will give away a Chickshaw. So we're going to give away, uh, well, $600 towards equipment or product for a Chickshaw and Chickshaw plans. Excuse me, and then we're going to give a lifetime membership to Abundance Plus. When you will be in the remodel? Our hope is April 1st, and our hope and plan— we, we're just trying to stay on people, getting, you know, back-to-back contractors in there, and it can be tricky sometimes, and it seems like there's more work for people than there are people. Right now. So that's kind of the problem we're running into. But electrician— what? We're full. Yeah, it looks like I've cut out, but maybe that's just me.

No, no, you're on.

Okay. Uh, how's Justin's health coming along? Uh, my, um, I also get the habitual hobbies advice on finding homestead property in North Carolina. Um, Find homestead property in eastern Tennessee. And I only say that one is to, to break you out of the, the mindset stuckness. You know, my, my permaculture tea— I hired this permaculture consultant really early on, and he came out and he said, first thing you got to do is get guinea pigs. You know, pound for pound meat consumption guinea pig is the most efficient land animal you can get. And he was saying that because it's true, but he was also saying that because he, he wanted us to get out of our normal thought processes. So really dig deep on why North Carolina. But, um, as far as looking for property, some hacks of course are, you know, the closer to town, the more expensive it's going to be. So the further out of town though, the less convenient and less networking opportunities you're going to have. I think the really sweet spot, if you can afford it, is 30 minutes. If you get an hour out of town, it can be super inconvenient. It can be super hard to have a mechanic. I mean, I have a mobile mechanic that comes here that's phenomenal. It can be hard to tap into a lot of the resources that you're gonna need from time to time. I mean, we, we, we in a pinch, we ran out of carrots today and had to go to the store. Well, if that was an hour away, that would have been different. And, and Maybe that's your tolerance, but for most people it isn't. But for most people, 20 minutes is okay, and you're far enough out that you're still rural. I call it rural convenient. So I like that half-hour mark, and then make sure that there's internet there. That's important these days. Internet is the new TV, it's the new newspaper, it's the new toolbox, it's everything. So check homeschool laws in that state. Although I say that, but laws change, and you might want to move to a state because it's blue or because it's red. It could go purple. It could change. So it's hard. And, and, and the mind— the homestead mentality needs to be long haul and grow where you planted. And maybe I should have answered your, your question of don't just stay where you're at because you know the problems where you are and grow where you're planted and you understand the problems where you are and you're only going to jump into a bunch of surprise problems going somewhere else. And definitely don't leave unless you've maxed out where you are because don't think you're just waiting on the 40 acres. I mean, I say God forbid because we've— it feels like we're full-time and we're just cultivating 12 acres. Okay, I don't see how anybody could do more and still provide for their family with a job. So, uh, then you're going to look for south-facing slope. Uh, you're probably going to look for raw. That would be another hack. You don't want to pay for somebody else's dream home, right? Somebody else's canvas. So you would want raw, I would imagine, and you would want to live on it for a while in a yurt or RV or something something that could be temporary until you figure out where you think you might want a house. And you might find out that's not— maybe not where we really want it. And, uh, I think it would be cheaper and better to build your own. So you're going to want some south-facing slope. Ideally, you want some— you want to be able to have a water source on there, if not the starting point, if not a spring. Okay, a spring would be really ideal. And, um, so those are some things to think out that people don't necessarily think of when they're going into land. So, you know, you want to be able to do what you want with your kids. So I could also say Missouri, it's one of the freest states in the Union. Tennessee as well. Um, Kentucky, Virginia kind of seem a hair underrated. Nebraska, certainly. My goodness, you can actually still afford land there. And in Missouri. So anyway, throwing those out there. But I— for— to give you credit, I did travel all of America looking for a permanent home, making sure, like, is this where I want to be? Because this is our family's land. I was going to have to buy it. Do I really want to do that? Something went wrong, Matt. Maybe it's just on my end, so I'll keep going. So, um just, uh, I did travel all of America with an open mind, and we considered things in Maine, we considered things in Colorado, and we— Florida— and we end up saying there's no place like home, and there's no place like Western North Carolina. So I should probably stop saying that because it's growing by leaps and bounds. It's not going to be the same. So if, if I wasn't born and bred a Tar Heel, I would be a Volunteer over in Tennessee, eastern Tennessee. So, all right, we'll see y'all tomorrow. Let me see if the beautiful one answered me. Maybe I'll have to answer you guys tomorrow.

There is one more question up on the screen.

Okay, if you've got time for it. Okay, real quick, anybody know how to get spring water tested from any property? Uh, how do you test spring water? So I asked Mr. Google Pants for that. And I ended up finding a guy who helps develop springs, and he tests our water for us. But just ask Mr. Google Pants. There's water testing services a lot. That's a big thing. People are testing wells, people are testing sewers, all this stuff. So just, um, you can get your spring water tested. Just ask Mr. Google Pants for a spring water testing or a water testing near you.

Are they just sampling it? And sending it off to a lab?

I don't know. I don't know. That's what happens. You have to collect it into a special cup and seal it and either take it there or— and they might send it off or they test it. Depends on what you got near you. So yeah, just ask— just search Mr. Google Pants. Ask Mr. Google Pants for water testing near me. It'll come up. All right, y'all have a good one. Tomorrow I will likely be on the road, so I will for sure go live on YouTube, maybe on Instagram if I can hold two phones at once. Uh, will not be in the studio. Matt, you can have tomorrow off because we are going to be #PonyForPeaches tomorrow. We will be on the road. All right, see you.