A Day in the Life of a Lunatic Homesteader

Happy day and welcome to another day in the life of a lunatic homesteader. My mentor and friend Joel Salatin, who's a farmer, farmer, like market farmer, calls himself the Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Yeah, because I learned so much of my things from Joel. And but I'm a homesteader, like not doing this for a market. I'm not selling eggs. We're doing this for our own consumption. I'm going to take homesteader because do things so different. I got to clip these wings, but we'll talk about those different ways and how I think they're better, uh, throughout the day. It includes sheep and ruminants, sheep and cows, chickens, and we got lots of tests surrounding these things, like 15 tests. It's gonna be exciting days. Sunday seed day, garden, lots to do in the garden, life. Pigs first up. These chickens have been jumping up. I think these are the ones right here. These are the ones. They've been jumping up on the banister and getting out. Full spread of wings. You want to clip wings, go where the pattern changes. See the long tips there? Go down here where it starts getting more layers and clip it. It's like fingernails. Doesn't hurt them. I'm a little nervous about this. Last time I got in my mouth— 38.

Oh, what?

I got chicken poop in my mouth. You know, it's weird enough to be a homesteader, right? But we're going to take it a little further and be lunatics because we're not going to do it just like regular old conventional farmers in our homestead. We're going to manage animals in two ways. They're gonna be on deep bedding. I'll show you this because these guys are on nice clean deep bedding. We'll shoot it, never stinks. Look how clean their eggs are. You've heard me say this if you've watched this show before, like a broken record. Absorbs there. I'm turning this with their scratching, the sun, the— look, just wood chips. They'll scrape on that, and that's the combo you need for compost. A nitrogen, which is the poop, a carbon, which is the wood chips, and that breaks down over time with the rain and then turning it with, which is air, and you get compost. You get this underneath, underneath the wood chips. Okay, got another posse to take care of. The other management option people have is— or animals have— lunatic homesteaders have is moving, rotation. So deep bedding or rotation. Austin, you're gonna have to roll a clip. Of us rotating the cows, because we're not rotating right now. We are in winter and we're on deep bedding. Josiah, I'll come help you in a second. I need to go wash my hands. Can you put a garden stake right there? Okay, well, let's get this one chicken back, so just hold off and we'll get that chicken back. Let me go put the scissors back and wash my hands. This is driving me crazy. I think particularly because I learned it's actually possible to keep them in. When they were in the high tunnel, nobody got out. We got to get that gal in, and we're going to keep them in today. That's one of our missions, because remember, everybody wants to eat a chicken. We're just trying to beat them to it. And then being out, they're gonna get got. Open this gate. Hope nobody gets out. I'm trying to herd this chicken back around. She keeps scooting over in here. Let's put you guys right here, and then maybe she won't jet into the cows right here. Ah, she missed it! Are you kidding? She went right around. Really? This could certainly be it. And now with clipped wings, they're especially more likely to get out through the bottom. When I first got into homesteading It was for my lovely wife Rebecca. She got us into the health movement, eating healthy. And then it was me saying, oh, we could buy this stuff, which is expensive in the store, or grow it ourselves. And we had more time than money, and so we grew it ourselves. But to learn how to do it, we stumbled upon all the right people. We stumbled upon Joel Salatin We end up doing a regenerative way. We stumbled upon Elliot Coleman for gardening, who did it organically. Okay, learning how to do these things from Joel, but then hearing him talk about how to do it regeneratively, you know, the benefit of rotational grazing, how that increases your pasture, increases your productivity, but also makes the earth a better place— that was very appealing. And now I'm just doing that on a micro scale. It's important to me because we're wanting to leave a legacy. The biggest reason we're doing doing this now is to leave a legacy for our children. And so we want the land, the livestock, to be better than when I was around. We're a little off this morning because Jonah's feeling down and we're all having to make up for it. You're gonna do that, I'm gonna do the other chores on the cows and sheep. A little poop in that. But turns out when you take care of the animals You end up doing it regeneratively and you end up getting a better food product, which is then healthier. Problem is the deep bedding has built up and the trough sunk down in there. Wish you could feel this deep bedding. It's nice and— look, it's already starting to break down into compost. Let's get this tidied up so we have a better flow when we pour this water out. Okay, got the hoses up. That looks a lot better, especially since we're having guests today. Somebody's coming to get their pigs. I'm trying to do all these impossible lists of 15, 20 things this morning because we're officially launching— it's been up now a week. Hopefully we're doing good because I am nervous like all get out as we launch my next big project, the chicken tender. That helped us wash this down a little bit. Let's wait on Josiah to turn this compost pile. This wasn't even on my list. Maybe this shouldn't be on the list because it— whenever it needs it. Okay, Austin, flash up all the things I have to do and we're gonna cross them off as we go. Okay, flash them off. Okay, well I thought I had the chickens in. Unmark that, Austin. Let's get this guy in. It wasn't through there. Let's secure this fence. Josiah's turning the compost pile. Let's get that chicken back in. I'd love to be watering that while he's turning it. Maybe I should do that because I can fix this fence when he's gone. All right, I'm gonna leave the water running on that. You want to water it until you think you've watered it enough. And then you double that. Yeah, a lot of water. Pretty high up off the ground right there. This is one of the only nippy spots. Let's just go get a couple, and, uh, there's maybe a spot or two right there. Okay, somebody gets out of this. I'm not going to try to fix anything. We're gonna have to do a stakeout and see how they're getting out. Back to finishing the farm, the cow chores. That'd be enough. We gotta move on with our life. That's gonna be a thing about a lunatic homestead is you're gonna be diverse. You have a lot of different things, and some are gonna— just like in the garden, you have failures and squash one year and tomatoes the other, but It's okay because you have a variety. So we master this art of going back and forth between the two. We're jack of all trades, but we're still a master of one, and that's permaculture. Having it all work together. Like this bedding, this deep bedding I just picked up today, this mess, it's going to the cows' bedding, which then comes out here, which the chickens mend. Turn and turn into compost. Then we put it on the field, which improves the grass for the cows and the chickens, etc. It's a big loop. Austin, mark cows off the list. No, don't mark them off the list yet. We got to feed them a bit of hay. We're down to round bales, which are a bit of a pain. So what we do is we turn them In here sideways. I'll show you this thing. All right, Boston, mark cows and sheep off the list. Forgot to mark the compost off the list. Mark that off the list. So what, we're down 4 things? We're gonna need to start prioritizing because I don't know if I'm gonna get all this done in 2 hours, which is going to be securing the greenhouse and planting onions. Oh shoot, and before that we got to do the pigs.

You ready for your order?

I am. Let's see.

Oh my gosh, we have bread, we have biscuits and cookies, croissants, and then fried donuts. And what are we thinking?

Oh my gosh, this is not good for my diet.

Ew, don't swallow it!

Why did you make it with poop? You didn't make it with poop, did you?

Fresh from the ground.

I just bought hex head bits and they're gone, and I don't see the drill. Where's the hex head drill bits? I had just gotten some. I got in two different sizes. Good news and bad news. I found the drill driver. It's up at the, uh, track loader. We're doing a— we're fixing something on it. Bad news, I did not find the bits to drive these in, so I can't do that even if I did find the drill driver. But more good— another good news, Rebecca tells me Annie secured the height, the greenhouse. But before we go mark it off the list Let's go double check. Yeah, she did. Good job, Amy. This, in the summer, we, we open and vent it, but in the spring we want to keep it down. Like, it was 32 degrees last night. Show you guys what's in here. Brassicas under mosquito net. We got peas coralling. I don't know, I don't know what Beauty's up to here. Look like peppers or tomatoes, but they could be Flowers. Grandero. No cherry. I guess they're tomatoes. We did do a little space here last night since— I guess it's tomatoes. Turn it off. The auto water is not shutting off. Fixed. What is this, a drive-through?

I'll be your cash register. Is that all, sir? That will be $6.99.

What'd you order, Henry?

2 cookies and 2 fried donuts.

All right, thank you.

Here you go. Have a nice day. Bye-bye, sir. Have a nice day.

Okay, they're going to do the breakfast posse, which is helpful. I'm gonna do the compost posse. All right, we got broth, old eggs. Orange peels, a bit of rice, a little bit of fish. Two of these are leaving today. We're keeping the other three. We'll have to this week get people out of here. Mom needs to be weaned— no, they need to be weaned. Mom needs to be dried off. She needs to stop eating us out of house and home. I guess we're gonna put you to work on hurricane relief. They've teared that pig panel off. We really ought to fix that even though they're getting out of here soon. It won't take them long to absolutely tear that up. Farmer's best friend, zip ties. Hey, can you spot me in the pigs? I got a zip tie their cage. Come spot me. Grab the pig board. Really got them some grass. That helped them.

Let me show you a way to wash your hands Okay, get some water.

I went and washed their hands in their water.

Get some dirt. Best sanitary everything. Have you ever pooped in the woods?

No.

I do this every time after I do it. You ever go to the bathroom in the woods and wipe your, uh, butt with leaves?

Yeah.

Wash your hands with dirt and water.

Okay, good to know, you Appalachian child. Get more diaper. Bad smells, mismanagement on the Looney Farm. We're waiting on Mom now. Austin marked off pigs off the list. We're waiting on Mom for the, uh, where these onions go, right? And I feel like that's the most important job today. They've got to get in the ground. They just shipped to us. They shipped to us Friday. They've been sitting in the box all weekend. I don't know, that's what she's in charge of. She knows where So we're kind of waiting on her. The wind has blown up our silage tarps. I want to wait and cover them though until we know where these onions go. Beautiful one, beautiful one. There you are. Okay, actually this was on the list. Beautiful one's taking care of it.

I got it. I'm gonna do the greenhouse too.

Any sprouts? Water in the rye crop.

Hoping that tonight, because tonight's not supposed to be super cold. Yeah, hoping that tonight gives it—

because I think what's happening, they probably need to be 45 degrees for a while. So I'm ready when you are. I'm going to clean out that glass from the Suburban while you do this. Do you know where these get planted? Um, and did you bring the onions?

The onions are inside the house. Okay, I did not bring them and I forgot to look, but I can look at my phone.

You forgot to look? I thought that's what you were doing. I did.

I looked. I did the test.

You have the seat time app on your phone?

I do have it on my phone.

Looks like the most important job is getting pushed towards the end, but not ideal, but that's how it's going. Let's fill in the blanks here while we're waiting on her. This is a little life. This has nothing to do with farming. Broken glass. Had to put it on the list though to make sure I got it done for the beautiful wife. But that's real life, isn't it? Tools getting lost, plenty of distractions. Homesteading, you'll see, isn't just about the growing of the food, the balancing of everything. And it becomes, it becomes a lifestyle. And you still do, even though you're a lunatic homesteader, you still do some normal things like Break a glass. This is weird, right? Because this is extremely normal, and I haven't done this in years, but it's March Madness right now, and I'm feeling a little nostalgic because Rebecca and I used to be crazy about that. We'd pull for Duke, and, uh, I know you have some of y'all here to hate me for that. Duke! Duke! No, that's not how it goes. They're playing today. That might be kind of fun. I don't know, getting older, 46, get a little more tired. I've been doing this for 19 years, still sort of established. I still feel like we have our— a lot of our systems in place, and now we're just kind of cruising. I like those prepared raised beds, baby.

They're so nice. It looks so good.

How do you like this, uh, bag of broken glass? What? What? You got it up, babe.

Was there that in my car in the first place?

Hey, if you asked why You're gonna drive yourself crazy. Don't ask why when it's around kids. Austin, after I throw this in, mark it off the list. Everything okay? Yeah. Okay, good. Hey, that's a bonus list. He's pulling out rocks for our rock wall for our graveyard. You pull them out with the Mini X and then you haul them down with the track loader. He's got a pile, but we got to fix the track loader. Just how you want to watch him? Sure. Okay, that's good. That way Mom and I can crush this onion project. You okay, Jonah? Yeah. Austin, go ahead and put a circle around firewood because Jonah was gonna saw and Josiah was gonna run the, the Mini X. That's not gonna happen. I'm doing her happy place.

Yep, so far it's doing okay. I mean, we've got some pretty bad damage too.

Roll back to that hailstorm, Austin. Yeah, look, golf ball size holes. 2024 was a weird year for storms, wasn't it? Okay, how much longer till we go plant onions?

Um, well, when I get here, then we can go plant onions. If you want to go up there and get the box of onions.

Where is it?

It was in the living room last time I saw it.

What's he eating? Like a smoothie? Like an icy? Yeah, icy smoothie. You like it? Get in, Henry.

Yeah, lucky me.

I'm not doing bad. We just got to, uh, cover this tarp and— or sorry, we got to plant these onions in order to be able to cover up the garden. 11:20. I just had the guts to look at the Kickstarter. We accidentally launched at 2 AM. Heather sent out an email at 2 AM instead of 2 PM today. We're supposed to launch at 2. Uh, so sorry if I disturbed anybody's church morning or anything like that. I know a lot of you go to that. So we haven't officially— but so we did make it— the page go live, otherwise it'd been a dead link. At about 8 AM this morning when we realized it. I got on there and without officially launching, I'm already— huge, huge relief. We're like already a quarter of the way there, like $2,500, and haven't even really officially launched yet. That's probably just the Kickstarter people who follow us on Kickstarter. Oh, and, and the super early bird Sunday birds checking their email. Hopefully you didn't order more than one bed. Onions.

Well, so I'm having the onions. See these two right here? The garlics?

Yes. Well, that's not garlic, is it?

It is.

I thought that was onions we left in.

Garlic and onion.

Oh, okay. Where's the onions go? So the onions go down here, hopefully right next to them, or for silage tarp reasons. Didn't we get more silage tarps from Farmer's Friends? So we'll be okay. Two beds.

Well, I had this bed is beets, but I think that we've not even eaten all the beets we grew last year. So I think we just do a bed of beets up there in the— okay, in the garden up there.

Do, do a whole bed of raised bed beets. Yeah, that'd probably be enough.

Did you order me the, the black fabric?

Oh, do you do onions for that?

I gave you a bunch.

I ordered all the stuff you gave me. Okay. Oh my gosh, look at me! Did you guys see that look?

Well, it was a lot and we didn't get a lot.

Oh no, thinking that you didn't order it properly. Uh-oh, you done messed up, A-A-Ron! We're not planting here. So is it these two beds? These two? Okay, now that we know where the onions are going, they're going right here. We're going to, um, cover the tarp. That's on our list. Have you noticed the haze? Yeah, we're in a burn ban right now and there's a fire somewhere. We actually drove down the road and to the left and realized it wasn't there and realized maybe it was more to the right. 3 fires in Polk County have burned more than 6,000 acres so far, but it's far enough away that We're not terribly alarmed, and we didn't want to get in the way being fire hunters since there's nothing we can do about it. We don't want to get in the way of the professionals, but let's hope that doesn't turn into anything. That's been very dry around here. Yes, we need to pull over. All right, we've got the tarp off. That was step number 1. Step number 2, let's hoe real quick. This is a newly done bed, and I see it hadn't been covered as long as I had wished. So some of these weeds, grasses, are— they're not snuffed out. So let's do that now again. Look who's here! We have a big family here for the pigs. Pigs for everyone! Can everybody say pigs for everyone? Oh yeah! Oh, ow! Take it easy! Oh, oh, you gotta take it easy on me. Hey, how's it going? Nice to meet you. Yeah, how's it going? Yeah, okay, you vlogging? Yeah, what's the channel? Uh, Homestead Process. Okay, nice. We're just starting back out. Yeah, okay. What do you think about your baby pigs?

Why can't they get— we don't have any pigs.

Well, today it's changing. Hey, let me see this. Now, did you know— can I see that in the light? Did you know that if you have a chicken tattoo, you might be a crazy chicken lady? All right, thank you guys. Looking forward to it. Yeah, and, uh, Yeah, best of luck. Pigs for everyone. Hey, you can't get 2 pigs with 4 kids in a minivan. You can. Look at this. Hey, you— if you have 2 pigs and 4 kids in a minivan, you can do it. You might be a lunatic homesteader. It might be. Step 2, let's make a line. Okay, here, take one of our— take this, take this. Kids got what, about half this bed? Done. I think there's 2 beds worth. We need one more row. 125. We were supposed to do a horse ride with her at 1. She's got a lot more onions. We're not gonna run out of onions. All right, it's a miracle what we're doing, putting in these little tiny onions, and they're gonna turn into something. Everyone is a little hope. We did it! Now we didn't make it quite to the end. We ran out of onions. Lily's soaking it down now because it's so dry. Give them a good start. They're stressed out being transplanted. Hey, you look like death. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. You feel like death?

Do you know how hot it is in here?

Huh? You ready to watch the Dew game later?

Yeah.

All right, this is what we do. Start at the beginning. I don't like to just sit anyway, so I prepped all this. Okay, shredded cabbage, diced chicken, half-moon zucchini, onions, coconut aminos, salt, butter, carrots, green onions, the spices.

Cabbage.

We're doing a low-carb, uh, chicken stir-fry.

If you do this, I'll go.

Don't be crazy. All right, let's put the spices in here, which is just ginger and salt and paprika and pepper. Got the chicken off for a second. It looks spectacular. Hmm, this has been real hard. Is this worth it? Chey Elliott taught us when we were there on the Great American Farm Tour, what's the point of having all this delicious food if you're not gonna like do your best to enjoy it? Keep telling myself that because I don't really enjoy the cooking, but It is nice to have a special meal. Garlic, do a little more butter, carrots, blend it up. Coconut aminos. Man, this is gonna be delicious. Are you serious? Don't you tell me that's not the best stir fry you ever had. Brought to you by Grok, my new favorite chef assistant. What about the kids? They appreciate it?

Yeah.

Are you scared? No, huh? It looks like your hair is scared. That was the best chicken stir-fry I've ever had. What do you think, Mom? Is it the best?

It was very flavorful. You did a good job.

We're gonna close out the meal with yogurt and blueberries. I'm telling you, I just go to Grok and I say, make me a stir-fry for 3 pounds of chicken, zucchini, onions, carrots, cabbage, garlic, and add any spices you think, and it comes up. Recipes have never been so easy. We're gonna top it off with some homegrown yogurt, some neighbor-harvested blueberries. This is among your last calls. 3 days left on the Chicken Tender Handbook on Kickstarter. We had a great first day. May I speak into the future? We blew past the goal. Love you guys. Appreciate you guys. You guys are serious about raising chickens. Making 2025 The year of the chicken. Let's go! ChickenTenderBook.com. Few days left. Lots of specials, exclusive offers that you can only get now as a Kickstarter backer. Thank you guys. Happy day.