Bad News about the Grocery Store | We're Doing This Instead

What's this? Y'all see the resemblance? What? What was this, 16? Is that when we met? No.

Um, what is it? A picture?

It's like Jonah's age. Okay, Henry, we're going. Just call us when you're ready to go, okay? Come on, get in. Mom hears his clothes when he's ready. Get in or leave, and it doesn't look like you're serious about going, okay? We're all over it. We're all over that garden today. Happy Sunday seed day. We are quitting the grocery store. And 2024, next year, is going to be the year of growing food for us. It's going to be incredible. We'll have our remodel done. We aren't doing traveling events. Actually plan the garden. We need to get more than more feed. There's two empty bowls. One of the keys to successful gardening and farming for that matter is to not only plan ahead but work ahead. It's fall of 2023. Oh boy, you want to pick that up before somebody steps on that with their bare foot, that's a broken glass. Look at this. So over the grocery stores, uh, Whole Foods adding what you call APEEL. A-P-E-E-L. Even organic produce has lost— is down to like only 15% of its nutrients.

Look, Hannah's in shorts.

Ah, we have this renewed conviction to grow what we're eating into eat what we're grow— growing.

Where'd you go?

I went to get some cat food. Oh, he's out. Is he in shorts right now? We gotta get you out of your beets. Say it. Be it. No, no, you, you really want to wear beets? You don't want to wear pants? Can I put these on you real quick? No, no, no.

Let's go up one of these while we're at it.

Okay. How are you not cold? I wasn't cold. Shrug those shoulders. Hey, look, you Your feet are on backwards. That means we need to eat this. We grew this. Butternut squash, acorn squash, root cellar full of pumpkins. We printed out 3 pumpkin recipes for next week. Soup, roasted pumpkin, and what was the other one?

3 bowls for 3 cats.

Oh, a pumpkin pie, like a keto low-carb pumpkin pie. So to eat, eat more nutrient-dense healthy. We just have to grow it ourselves. Organic isn't even good enough anymore. Better, don't get me wrong. Doesn't have the pesticides, doesn't have as much glyphosate, all this and that. Doesn't have the GMOs.

That was quick.

Good. The only option is growing it ourselves and getting it locally with who are using natural organic practices. They We don't have to be certified, but we do like those practices. Hey, are you ready? Okay, here he comes. Yeah, Whitney, can you start and warm up? Salmon, here's the trick for eating like that. You've got to plan ahead. You got to work ahead. It's fall. We won't plant until the spring. We won't eat until late spring from it. Mom says she's gonna make these one day. Until then, these are clutch. Hey, you can't fight every single battle all at once. We'll get to it. I think we'll grow lots of strawberries, lots. We have blueberries, we got persimmons, so— and we can freeze them. We'll actually freeze our raspberries, and those will be snacks for you guys. We're gonna put a bunch of apples on our root cellar, and y'all are gonna pig out on apples when it's apple season. Got it again. They finished this whole lower front. Shoot, they finished the whole top yesterday. You didn't see yesterday's video. They also put in the skylight. What do you think? Cool. So bright in there now. That man, mucho trabajo. He loves to work. Works 7 days a week, they tell me. Gets upset when he can't. You gotta love that. Gotta respect that. Wonder how far they'll get on that today. None of this side is covered yet. At their relentless pace, I won't be surprised if they get most of it, if not all of it, done by the end of this video today. Our fuzzy garden's really been bothering me. We need to mow around this, make it look pretty, pull up our old spent plant, harvest potatoes, pull up the weeds around the potatoes, shape beds. We made our own compost this year. Oh! We need to put that on it and then cover it with silage tarp. 400— no, 48— no, 3,600 square feet of gardening. 3 1,200-foot patches. I mean, we've got the greenhouse one too, but we're gonna leave that mess for the chickens this winter. Although, does Beauty have some tomatoes? She definitely has some cherry tomatoes. Look, this whole chair is just buried in here. You know, the cherry tomatoes apples get crazy. The good ones, the plump, the apple-sized ones, the ones you like, they don't get that crazy. You want to ride? Hey, you guys want me to help you or start setting up the garden? Okay, don't forget apple cider after chores and after we get all the supplies ready for the gardening.

But you keep delaying it. Next time we'll be done when we're done doing our project.

I'll go get the garden stuff while you guys finish chores. Oh, can you take the milk?

I don't want to.

We're not going to do apple cider until we've gotten all the garden supplies together, and I'm the only one who probably knows any idea where they're at. Are we letting them out? We should catch that one and get her hooves. That was easy. How you doing, Nacho? A little slow, but you're getting by. Well, I went to pour the skim into a bucket. This bucket works fine. That other bucket didn't. I ran it outside. Really? Saying really, really, really the whole time. That bucket didn't do so well. Check for cracks before you pour the skim milk. I'm hoping to set up the garden supplies before sweet cider time, but that— this might have put the nail in the coffin. Oh, you're gonna film it? You film this, okay? You be the filmer. It looks like milk is falling in between you. Yes.

Famous's baby going in it.

Or whoa.

Next time we see you, Henry will do his exercise.

How does he know what to do with that? Because I taught him. How do we ever do that for our house?

Doing jumping jacks. See you at the gym.

Hey, are y'all coming or you just want to catch up? Just catch up. Gramps, forget finding this stuff for the garden. We've got to treat the sheep. I remember we still got to get the eggs, and now we need to find Gideon and Henry. The boys said they are gonna go start gathering supplies. Wait for me! I'm waiting. Apple cider in 15 minutes. These little feeder lambs have lost 3 of their brothers and sisters. We moved them from where they were in case it was something poisonous. That one's gimpy, right? And I'm gonna herd them into this corner. Wow, that's easy. Low stress way to do it, wasn't it? Animal Synergy products for these little guys. 10 cc's, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

Is it good? This is like sweet for sheep.

I think they do like it. Now, hey, you need to hoof this, this, this fine one. Sheep are so underrated. You can just get in here and handle these guys, put them on their butt, and they're totally submissive. Overgrowth on this hoof. That can be causing her limp.

Aren't sheep, um, both exact same as deer?

Maybe.

Can you feel that?

Can the sheep feel it?

Yeah.

Uh, I don't think so. Not— it's like fingernail, so if I don't get too close, they're not gonna feel it.

At least you don't have to do this to her horse.

Yep, it's a good practice for the sheep, isn't it? You hooked them. And gave them their herbs. Day 2. Do it one more day, hope for the best. They would try to find a way to garden without Mini X. They're gonna load the compost into the wheelbarrows with it. Cider time! Local North Carolina cider. How's your thyroid today, Bex?

Um, tired.

How long is it gonna take for the medicine to catch up? A couple weeks. Or your thyroid was off. So your medicine was off.

Well, it's because of nursing. Quitting nursing. Because I was doing just fine before that.

Um. It threw it off, huh?

It did. And I also started low-dose naltrexone.

It takes a couple of weeks to get you normalized?

Um, so we're gonna do labs again in 4 weeks. And I should be feeling better by then.

Okay.

For sure. It just takes a while to build up in your system.

Good. Your friends are coming at 1 to 4 to help us. Do you have any office work you need to do? No, not Sunday. Sunday is— Sunday seed day. So one day we get to dedicate it all day to the farm, right? You could do your office work and then we could work this afternoon. I probably have to approve a vlog, but that's it. We got rebar to mark the corners for your little tomato trellises. Did you find twine? You did? Did you find the long measuring— long measuring tape? Oh dude, we're ready. You got the shovels, flat shovels and spade shovels? Maybe gloves because we're gonna weed. We'll have new potatoes. We'll have what you call new potatoes. Hey, if we're gonna grow our own food, we've got to eat our own food. So instead of rice for a starch, potatoes.

We need to be really efficient.

I think we'll be real efficient. We'll plan to plant right after we harvest. We're gonna write that out. We're gonna say this week such and such gets pulled out, such and such goes in.

I do not When I've just grown in the past, you'll be fine because you have your raised beds.

You have like 6 raised beds too. Do square foot gardening there.

And I want to do something—

could do like 70 plants in this.

I want to do more along this side of the chicken run.

This is something we could do too. And like, if we can't grow enough potatoes or onions for ourselves, then just let's make a deal with Casey. Hey, we don't need 100 chickens for ourselves this year, we got so many. Well, we could raise chickens and trade. Lily has also caught wind of a horse for sale. It's old. Do you know what old is? How old?

It said it's older, so it's probably like 1920.

The horses only are good to what, 28, 30? Is pushing it.

Miss Lisa said it depends upon how you take care of it. If it doesn't live a happy life, it'll probably die soon.

Getting pretty close to getting some sunshine on our canvas this morning. Morning. Our gardens, things will be warmed and nice when that happens. We got to get things ready because we've got a crew of kids coming this afternoon to help, and we need to be set up so that everybody can have a job to do. You want to go? Enrique's here washing the machines. Let's get them to him. Not ready to drive it by yourself yet? Okay, then steer on top of me. It's good, it's good. You're being careful. You don't want to drive a machine if you're not comfortable. You gotta do it all by yourself. I'm not gonna help you at all. Okay. You got this. You did a good job. Yeah, you did. Hey, even the boss man's here today. They've got the flashing in the skylight. Just having shingles for just installing the skylights probably saved us $10,000. Hey, making it a Isn't it much brighter in here now, guys? Here I am all bundled up, about to freeze to death, and you run around barefooted. Hey, you convinced him to come. You convinced him to wear some pants. Gideon, you see what he's doing? Yeah, you got to get all these weeds out.

See these dead weeds?

Hey, this is potatoes. Leave it. Look, Mom was worried we're gonna have little potatoes. Yeah, they're probably gonna be about like that. I'll do this while I mark the line. I interrupt this vlog Only to say, I got a bonus for you guys. If you guys want to do this fall garden flip, I actually broke it down into individual steps. I had Austin grab some screenshots at each step. I had, uh, Amanda, who's part of our team, put together a nice PDF for you guys. So don't scramble to take notes as you watch this video. If you actually want to do this or get the tips, uh, the books that have inspired this type of gardening those kinds of things. I've got a PDF for you guys, link down in the description. It's totally free, it's free. You're joining my list, you're joining my email list, um, down, down there for free. Or you can go to abundantpermaculture.com/fallgardenflip. So abundantpermaculture.com, uh, fallgardenflip. Good job, Henry, you're helping! He found some potatoes! Yes! We're gonna have to refind our corners. This year, I swear I'm gonna dig some corner posts and put in like a locust post there with a bird, bird nest on it or something, birdhouse, and we'll have it permanent. And all we got to do is draw our lines. We've got our corners marked with rebar. We have to get our silage tarp off, our sandbags out of the way. They're weeding, and Josiah and I will start shaping beds. What do you have here, you little Prince, you little, uh, princess cowgirl. You got your toad. Oh, you be nice. Be nice. I don't care, we're coming into his home. No, don't do that. Be nice. Jonah loves gardening, right, babe? Oh, he's got a frog, but he don't want to pick it up, so you're gonna have to go see it.

I'm not picking it up.

Wants his mama to see it.

It's in there. Oh, it's a big one. Is it a big one? Well, you don't want to pick it up?

Lily picked it up.

You pick it up. You gonna pick it up?

You're brave with this. He ain't picking it up. From the past, Mommy's running on the rows. He just walked right over the row. It's 11 o'clock. Homeboys are coming at 1, so we got 30 more minutes till we have to make lunch. Somebody— anything to get out of gardening, huh? Do you know how to wrap it around that tight? But temporary, not tie it. Drawn our line to be able to do our bed. We put a cross line going across so we could measure. So we measured over from this corner to here, 30 inches on both sides, and then we draw one line and that's where we shape. Okay, now we've got our line. So then I have my line here that I can go off of and we get a nice straight line. You're going broadfork, he's getting the hoe. Good. See how she's wiggling it sideways? You want to wiggle it, uh, front and front because those tongs— you just go back and forth. There you go. And she doesn't lift it up all the way. We don't want to flip the soil, we just want to aerate it. Keep going all the way down. There you go. See, she just— our soil is getting better and better though, isn't it? Oh yeah, guys, we used to have to drive this with a sledgehammer. This Meadow Creature hoe is good for this, Josiah. It's basically a mattock that you stand up with. You can kind of see this grass needs clipped. He's handing it to me. No, yeah, I guess you will, won't you? Anything with that. Look at this lunch. Yeah, okay, talk about eating what we grow. We will have 100% of its nutrition. Out of our progress just before lunch, we've done one garden, 1,200 square foot garden plot. And that includes 6 garden rows. This one you see, we've got to dig to this right side of this string. I'm gonna use this Meadow Creatures broadfork. It's basically a— or not a broadfork hoe, it's basically a, a mallet that you don't have to bend over on. You get to stand up. Well, that made a breeze. That hoe is useful when you're like trying to get up sod You don't really want to hoe with it, like weeds. Got one garden plot done before lunch. We're in the motion, so I don't think it'll be hard to do this one. Your friends, hey, they're coming and they can start— everybody can start dropping compost. These guys have made it further than I imagined. I'm thinking they might get done today. The one dude didn't quit till like 7:30 last night. Nice. So they might get it done. I was kind of— honestly, I was kind of thinking we'd get 3 plots done by this time. I always kind of, uh, underestimate the job. How clean, Josiah! You've cleaned up nice. How are the potatoes coming? Good. Is that exciting or what?

So exciting.

It looks like you didn't use a big enough pan.

I let Lily take the lead and this is what she chose.

Yeah, no Burn It Up cooking show action. You know, it's got 100% of its nutrients. We didn't lose any. To the grocery store.

That's right.

How do you like that? I love it. Number 1 reason we're growing our own food is health.

I've learned that the grocery store produce has got like 15% of what produce picked fresh off the vine at home has. So even organic is not more nutritious. It just has no pesticides or less.

Got our milk at— yeah, when was the last time we had to buy milk? 3 years ago?

5?

And we're working on making butter. The same story.

In the— oh, in that— in that time I've only bought butter and occasionally cream when we only have—

I think one calendar. I mean, Mom and I were talking. What do you want to bake?

Can I make ice cream this afternoon?

It depends if Because your mom wants to make an apple crisp.

No, I just want to make any type of ice cream. I'm so hungry for ice cream.

I know, but wouldn't it be so good with like an apple crisp? How are those potatoes?

They're delicious.

Are they not? Billy, how are those potatoes?

Good. Do you need underwear?

So fresh. They were just picked. Hey, you gonna be a big boy now? No, he says. Well, we're gonna try. You're gonna turn 3 in February. Come on, back to the garden.

Wait, you want to trade?

I'll go garden while they do dishes. It's your day. Have the cookie crumbles, I reckon. Look who's coming. It's John, faithful John. Homegrown homemade compost. I'm excited. Lovely smell. Is it? Not really. It's supposed to be. What does it smell like to you? Um, like animal droppings that have been rotting a long time. Well, slightly dry now. Well, the animal droppings should be all burned up out of it. It's very earthy. He's gonna load the wheelbarrow with this. Excavator. Oh, that makes— this works. This is a pain with shovels, isn't it? Well, guess what? There's 30 of these that we got to do, at least. And once, if we have enough compost, we'll do 60. Do these rows, John? Yeah, there's 6 of them, 5 wheelbarrow loads each. Okay, you just go in a little bit, dump a little bit on the row. Does it take 5 wheels? That's kind of crazy. And there you go. It's pretty thick, huh? Look at all the metal collected from that. Oh wow, metal wasn't going to compost, was it? No, little shards of metal stuck to that. You boys will find a way to involve the, uh, machines, won't you? Yeah, that could be worth it. Oh, that's fine. You got— be more generous. You gonna get the track loader and get those out of here? Okay, this load goes to the chickens and that one goes to the pigs. We got a little hydraulic leak. Mark's here. I insist on Jonah hanging with him and watching and learning what he's doing. Look at these two rows. Show them, John. Guys, we used to barely dig into this. I bet that's because we put so much hay mulch on this. All right, 2 wheelbarrow buckets are bad. We're running out. We went too heavy. Are you helping? Can you say helping? Becky, getting out here in the sunshine. Yeah, look what we did in a day— 2,400 square feet of garden.

I feel like we need more. I feel like this is not enough.

Well, we got another 2,400 over there.

4,800.

Yeah, plus all your raised beds. No, it's plenty. Well folks, you found out a way to use the track loader too. We're gonna haul these weeds off. Why don't you come a little closer, Jonah? All right, let's do it. We got you a bunch of greens, guys. The only thing we got left is liming. We use our seeder for that. That's shooting it all the way to here. That's pretty good. You calling that a baby? That's lime. Is that your lime baby? It's wonderful working in the garden where nothing's toxic. This is just crushed limestone, pelletized limestone. Is that enough for us?

Yeah.

Fried green tomatoes, how about that in October? I know, late October. How do we get that? How do we have— how do we have green tomatoes in October?

I want to make that, um, that tomato dish that has the, um—

oh yeah, the cherry tomatoes.

No, you put the feta cheese in it and you put olive oil on it and then you bake it, then you mix it up. The feta is a little bit sharp.

What's the meat?

There's no meat in it.

You lost me. I was going to cover it with silage tarp. Wait, why'd it stop? Don't mess with it. Is that fun to you? Last thing we gotta do— I was gonna cover a silage tarp, then I saw how dry it was. I think this soil needs a watering. Microbial life will enjoy it more than worms, and then we'll cover it up and capture it. Doesn't get way out there in the corner. But it's wasting a lot less, isn't it? It's gonna fall. All right, there we go. Okay, now that reached the edge. There we go. Is this fun? Is this fun after a hard day's work? That was all our tools. All right, let's go put them back. We gotta put half of our potatoes in this root cellar. There is a rotten pumpkin way back in the back. Oh, it's Nasty.

Yuck.

Let me get the rest of that rotten pumpkin. Stinks. We should put the rest of that on feedbacks. How much did he say? Cebolla. Cebolla. In English, garlic. Cebolla. Ajo. Ajo. This is ajo. Te gusta? Oh yeah, it's for frijoles, para beans. Okay. All right, see, here you go. Okay, thanks, Chef. Okay, thank you. And cómo se dice onion? Cebolla. Cebolla. Okay, sí, cebolla. This is good. ¿Te gusta? Oh yeah, para beans. There you go. Okay, thank you. For the beans. Yeah, thank you. Beans. ¿Cómo se dice beans?

Beans.

Frijol. Frijoles. Okay. Mom went ahead and made salsa from those cherry tomatoes. Enchiladas. Rebecca, they almost finished the roof, but they ran out of shingles. They would have. She also made fried green tomatoes. What do you use if you don't use gluten?

I use cornmeal. All right, just cornmeal, but you can use like almond flour.

It goes good with this Mexican.

It does, actually.

You're still here? Thank you so very much, virtual Papa Bear.

Yes.

Okay, don't forget the fall garden flip PDF, totally free. Just join my list, uh, abundantpermaculture.com Fall Garden Flip. I'll also leave the link for that down in the description, totally free when you join my email list.