Bringing All the Animals Home for Christmas

This is the Christmas Eve special.

This is an exciting vlog, a lot going on. Happy day! It is cons— con— consolation? Well, that's not it. What's it called when you compress everything down? It's as simple as consolidation. Consolidation day. It's actually Christmas Eve too for us. Hope you guys had a Merry Christmas. Uh, yeah, y'all are leaving soon. We are going to mom at the grocery store. Make sure he's got shoes.

I make fudge and Rice Krispie treats.

It's Christmas Eve. The animals still have to work. The animals still have to be milked. I'm gonna call it consolidation day because our project this morning is to— let's get the rest of the chickens down. We're gonna have to off that goose. She killed another one. Let's get all the chickens into one posse. And then Jonah's convinced me to go ahead and bring the animals into the pole barn. Then you got a special treat this morning. Raw chicken heads and feet and necks. Plenty of stuff for chicken broth. We're swimming in chicken broth. Go ahead, Winnie. She don't want to eat with me right there. Okay, all right, you can start getting the milk supply and I can start moving the chickens. Or you can help me move these chickens. Uh, Breakfast Posse is going down to the—

let's move.

No, because they're cooped up, man. They're gonna be cage fighting. I get these cage fighters out before they kill each other. I've known males to do this. Males get, I'll say, sexually frustrated after a few years, and then they start trying to mate the chickens, and it kills them because they're so rough. I don't know if she's trying to make dominance or what. That's the third one, and that is actually two too many. I should have done this at the first one. We're gonna have to kill that goose a little later. Turn it— pig food. Access gate is not going to open up because we've had to put a board over it to secure it, just to stabilize this after the hurricane. I made it so that you could get a dump truck load of wood chips in here if we wanted. I think I can just roll over that by myself. Without crushing it. That's a little bit of a retaining wall to hold in wood chips. I'm gonna need some help lifting it over that. I could come here with a poultry cage and catch them all. I don't want to catch them all. I just want to roll them down there and let them out, and then we can store the pretty shaw in the bash shed.

Hey, oh, can I have that ladder?

Does it work? Yeah. Can you guys show me how to open this ladder? Your mom's starting a ladder project. That might make it go up and down. What do you I don't know. Everybody likes these ladders. I see a lot of people using them.

It's durable and it's like carrying me.

Oh really?

Now it's locked in place. Okay, so really you say— Oh God, Harold, are you okay? Actually, I didn't have it locked.

Do you unscrew it? No. There it is. Okay, vacuuming her bed way up there. Yeah, we probably need to change those filters. I don't think it matters. Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Kind of need 3 people. 1 to hold right there, lift it up, and 2 to lift up the back. But Josiah needs to spot Mama on that ladder work, I'll tell you that. What? Lifting this thing? Whoa, I don't know if I should do that.

Hey, we did it!

All right, two roosters got to figure out who's boss. Oh, and the goose is breaking it up. That's good. Look at that. I can't say I've seen that before. I hate introducing roosters of the same size because they fight it out. Sometimes you think somebody's gonna die. It's pretty neat that that goose broke it up. They're not sure they're gonna break it up though. That was the most peaceful rooster introduction I've ever seen, thanks to the goose. So you win some and you lose some. We got one goose killing people— sorry, we got one goose killing chickens, and we got another goose protecting the roosters from killing each other. Oh look, a couple hens scrapping it out. They won't hurt each other like a rooster will though. All right, we switched this out. Get the pretty shell out of here. Put the trim somewhere. All right, we're gonna have to come back and get this later. Actually, let's get it out of sight at least. Put your head up a little bit. When switching out coops, you gotta put the old one out of sight. I'm trying to go back to it. I don't need pressure on that fence. Both of my sons are requesting an audience with me. We're gonna extend that garden bed 100 feet. So we're going to extend that garden bed as long as this high tunnel to run that fence right up to that plastic and then straight down here through here. You're leaving that path, okay, right to there. We'll leave the pig port. They can have a shelter. And then run your net pretty much right here, right along this side of the pig port, okay?

Why the heck do we need so much garden?

Because it's December and we already ran out of potatoes. And we're gonna run out of broccoli, and we could have ate more cabbage. Yes, what you need, buddy?

When are they gonna start working on this?

Why does it matter?

Well, I need those to work on their side so that we can double the bank down.

Legally, it has to stay where it is. The property line was on the creek, but I asked the surveyor, and in a big event like that, the property line stays where it was. It don't move with the creek.

If I bevel it down, it'll just push the creek up, and that's what I want.

I'm pretty sure that'd be illegal, and two, I don't think it would raise the creek. Okay, I think the creek would—

I guarantee—

dig it all out over time. What's wrong with doing that?

That's fine.

That looks so nice, right?

Yeah.

Well, that tree's gonna have to go.

It's like the only surviving tree in this whole path.

Is it?

Yes. What's wrong with having a tree in the garden?

It shades the garden. You want full sun on the garden?

Uh, the sun's on that side.

Not in the summer, it's straight overhead in the summer. You're thinking of winter garden.

You know, I would really appreciate if I could have shade while I'm gardening. Yeah, in August.

Well, plant it close by. Shall we go milk? Yeah. I'm sorry, you have to keep killing all your ideas. Good plant.

We're gonna get a BCS.

Cool-loving crops like lettuce under that tree. Okay, leaving the tree. Not my idea, but I want it to be your farm one day, so I gotta let you have a say. Josiah's putting up the net for the pigs. I haven't known big pigs to do that great of a tilling. Oh, but I just said we need to go load that wood, boy. Been having a heck of a time with the central boiler. Does anybody know why the fire would go out? It's been going out. I got a bed of coals right now. We loaded it full last night. This morning I had to pull all that out. Start a new fire. I know our insulation is good and it's not even having to call on it to heat our house. Just the fire going out from just lack of use. Taking the cows to the pole barn. By cows I mean technical cows. They've had at least one heifer— or calf. You're not a cow unless you're a female and you've had at least one calf. So you're not a cow until you've had your second calf. They're all cattle. We call them cows in general. You hadn't had more than one calf is a heifer, and a male that's been castrated is a steer. Do we decide the sheep are going to the pole barn too for a minute?

And the bulls go to the pole barn.

We're gonna do one hay bomb. So Blaze then goes with the youth group. Blaze, you gonna be the youth pastor? You're a bit naughty for that. He goes, bosses him around, doesn't he? I guess. What are we doing?

What is he trying to do?

Well, he's kind of like you. He's a teenager. He's testing the, uh, testing the limits. We're gonna go over winter management in our Raising a Family Cow workshop. Ever-flowing milk on tap. That sure came in handy in the hurricane. Comes in handy all the time to get— what are we getting from these guys, Jonah? 2 gallons, 16. That's kind of a low because they're about to have babies. Milked Dwayne's until they have babies. We're gonna put them in on their end of winter operation. You have two choices. You can deep bed, which ends up turning into compost. Let's get you guys ever flowing. It's not as hard as you need to— it's not as hard as you might think. It doesn't have to be as expensive as you think. I've got some frugal ways you can get started if you've got more time than money. Deep bedding or hay bombing are your winter options. We're going to talk more about that January 5th in the Abundance Plus live workshop. Well, they went shopping after, uh, the alfalfa got put away. Speaking of shopping, I let myself run out of electrolytes. They let themselves run out of popcorn. All right, well, let them get their bellies full and then they'll They'll get herded easily. Let's process that milk and move the pigs. We got to get wood chips over here for the pig port. I'm wondering though if we should, because we could just do leaves. Leaves are right there. You want to just do leaves or hay in the deep bedding for them to have something to nest in, and then hopefully they'll poop out in the, the yard, the garden there. Okay, let's, let's open this up. Beauty is also going to Lowe's. In our journey to be more self-sufficient, she's getting a siphon. We're gonna have to siphon again. And starter fluid. I've seen Mark use that starter fluid a lot. That could save us a lot of trouble, helping us getting machines started sometimes on our own. Just found out that our electrolytes came, so that's one thing we can mark off the list. She can go to a grocery store now closer to Lowe's. How are we gonna get them through there? We really gonna walk them and hopefully don't walk on this plastic?

This is the Christmas Eve special.

I like it. This is an exciting vlog, a lot going on.

You need to have Austin make it really hype in the beginning. The Christmas Eve special.

Oh yeah, viewers, that's why there was such a hype up in the beginning. Awesome. Jonas request of Austin. Why did this get left out here? Hey, maybe our chains are buried in here. Still gonna work. Let's just— we're looking for this.

I don't want to deal with these pigs. He's such a pain. It's scary.

Well, what are we going to do with them then?

Bang!

How are you going to get him over? What?

Big sausage.

Yeah, soon. Better do something because everybody's out now. The sheep too, and they're probably just gonna be all right. I hear the machine, Jonah. No, I get the pig board. Jonah insists that they go together. I feel like it's better to herd them one at a time. I've been wrong before. Uh-oh, she's gonna go in the house.

She's like, it's warm in there.

Okay, she's not. Don't run them onto the garden. Do not let them on the garden. They won't hurt the garlic just going through it one time. Look at them going right through the path. Uh-oh, there she goes. Oh wait, we got them in line. All right, they're in line. Hopefully he's not destroying the tarp. He's almost in. He's in. Good job.

The chicken had a really bad day.

Oh no. Whoa, it's gross. A chicken fell in the tub. Oh, that's gonna be so disgusting. Oh, that's stinky. You gotta cover it with— bury it. Pull, pull up the wood chips. Put it all the way down to the bottom, right? Yeah. I'm not gonna feed that chicken to the pigs. Who knows how long it's been dead, and it stinks. All right, you lowering the hay? Yeah. Sweet. I want you guys to start from over there inside so we can start getting us a way to get to this easier. Okay, Polyface Designs troughs are amazing.

That's great, perfect.

You can winch. No, let's keep going down. Look how tall this is. Look how tall this is. No, they like to— they really like to put their head down. How many eggs?

Mucho.

All right, can we grab them in our hands?

No, I'm gonna try that.

You're gonna swing from that one to that one?

That's like, it's like 6 feet.

I believe in you.

I believe in me too, but I've got gloves.

Look at all these eggs.

What? I just threw them all down there.

Mucho huevos. That's kind of sad. It's kind of sad and exciting.

What?

Sad we're leaving the pasture. Exciting we get a break from moving nets.

What, how many did I put in there?

4?

2.

Yeah, He-Man's coming in here, then we do 3. One for them. Beefcake, we gotta clean out his water. You know what one of our big hurrahs is gonna be? Getting that bridge built. We're coming into a vision. 2 culvert pipes, 4 feet each, riprap between them. Or is it riprap? What's it— I forget the name of it. That kind of rock. No, you got to get it delivered. Were you okay?

I hit myself so hard in the shed.

Retaining wall for this, this, this built back up. What's the plan, Jonah?

Beefcake is water. Pick up the nets and get those water ready for the cows and then get the cows.

Okay, hopefully this water will reach out there. Geez, they're big! Oh wait, why are so many chickens out?

They're not—

there's so many chickens out! If the fence wasn't left open, those chickens are getting underneath it somewhere. I said before we left, we got to get this lean-to out of here. They're going to knock it over. They've already knocked it over. Hey, she's dug some. Where'd they get out?

It was right there, but it's how you had it set up. Oh, hold this up like that.

You went like that. Oh, okay. Yeah, and there was a hole in the bottom. Let's get this water going while we put surround out here. Gotta get the boards out, we gotta get that gate off, we gotta get this electrical line out. Get the gate off. You can roll these up. Jonah the appliance repairman wants me. It's Christmas Eve. Both of our dishwashers in our kitchen are broken. Hopefully it's to show me just something simple that happened that I can— so I can fix it next time if it happens again. I let life do the teaching. I wanted to get the animals in Before we picked up the stuff, Jonah wanted to pick up the stuff, let them graze. Well, okay, well, and then they— it was nice for a little while, and then they just kind of went everywhere. And now he's saying let's put them in and then pick up the stuff. She wants to go up to the youth group, pick up her kid. They are way up in the woods. Up, they made it to the youth group. Oh, he's determined. He's trying to run and cut them off. Let's see if we can help him. Oh, we found He-Man. He-Man's exactly who we need to keep away from the The youth group, they're going to start coming in their cycle and he's going to want to breed them, but we can't let him breed them. They'll stunt their growth. You don't— you don't have this hard of a time moving the cows. That was too much excitement.

They came right back, Papa.

There you go. Good, good. You want to help us get the sheep in this one?

Sure.

Can we do a little bit of management?

What? No, they'll go in.

I'm doing a little bit of magic. You stop them from going that way. You stand down there, stop them from going up the hill. I'll stand up here, stop them from going up this way. Pulling rocks off the mountain for our retaining wall around the pole barn. Hey, I'd come hug and kiss you, but we're about to put these sheep in. Hey, watch them. Get in. Can you go around, make sure they don't go around that gate? There you go. Good boy. Yeah. We're not in the clear yet. Lily, what'd you make us for Christmas Eve?

I made fudge and Rice Krispie treats.

That doesn't take them long to settle in. They'll manure on these wood chips. That wood chips will capture that, uh, will manure spread it out onto our field, or we'll make compost piling it up here and let the chickens help us turn it, and then we could— then it'd be suitable for the garden, which is probably what we're gonna have to do because We're gonna have so many new garden beds. Jonah, I thought we had a third trough somewhere. That one of these troughs have cracks on both sides, not gonna work.

Oh, this one wasn't jacked up.

That trough's cracked up towards the rim and it won't let the water get high enough to stop the automatic water stop. I like that you're adamant about picking this up right away.

Well, if we don't pick it up right away, it'll literally never get picked up.

Yeah, I like it. Is there a trough over here? Can we bring the mineral sled through here and get the machine out? We might— can't— we might can fit right through here. Hey, you found it! What if we just gave them 3 minerals during the winter? Kelp, salt, maybe just kelp and salt. If they do kind of crush those minerals, uh, in the winter, it could be boredom. I know Greg Judy doesn't do his mineral program during the winter because of the amount they eat. Of course, he's not doing a milking cow program though. Maybe that for the sheep and that for the minerals, or we put that out. We would never do that. I'm gonna go grab those, drag those minerals out and have a cow run there, because if we do that, we're gonna have to buy two and we're gonna have to buy another one. Let's take what we have on this salmon to the cows. We're trying to make do with what we have as well. We have a perfectly good mineral feeder, and I don't like withholding the minerals from the sheep either because they're about to give birth. They need the minerals. Oh my gosh. All right, you did it. That's so heavy. Oh shoot, it is 12:15. It is quitting time. No wonder I'm so tired. I don't think this will take too long. Gideon, do you know where the water splitter is? Where'd I put that stuff from Lowe's? Did we bury the Lowe's stuff in there? The reason I'm asking is we need water hoses here so we can fill up the— the sheep can have an auto water and the cows can have an auto water, and the auto waters are always full. Otherwise they knock them over, bust them up, or somebody runs out. Just like what's happened to the Track loader bolt is coming off, so can you just tighten that up? Yeah. Okay, okay, shoot, there's still so much to do. Okay, um, boys, we still got to kill that goose and feed them to the pigs. So if you've got that on, you want to grab— we'll grab a splitter real quick. There's a splitter in the plumbing stuff in there on the gray shelf.

I'm not scared.

Well, then do quick connects. I don't know, because then they'll drink that and He-Man will want to knock it over. That's why I want to always keep it full. See, we have a supply hose, then a fork, a splitter, and then one hose to the sheep and one hose to the cows. Let's go kill this goose. Let's get this knife. Okay, of course I cannot show this on YouTube. You want the education of how to cull an ornery goose, you're gonna have to go to Abundance Plus. Here's how you'll find it in there. There's a channel inside there, the Justin Rhodes Show. That's these vlogs. I'll title it the same one as this, but I'll put uncensored in front of it. Okay, it helps if you're holding. Can you hold him? I know what some of you are thinking. Well, hey, it's Christmas, you could have the Christmas goose. This is not the kind of goose you would bake for Christmas. You'd have to have a much younger goose. This would be really tough. Yeah. We could make some goose stew, goose soup. But to be honest with you, I like pork better than I like goose, so it is not going to waste when we feed it to the pigs. Got a treat for you guys, and you're chilling so nicely. Thank you. Get the heaters going in these things. I really need to do that if I don't want to do a project tomorrow. Maybe we never got that stuff up. I like to take it easy on Christmas, just do the chores, spend time with the family. Speaking of family, I need to get some time with them today. You know, we're not guaranteed tomorrow, so I'm gonna go see what's up. I could maybe break up my office hours this afternoon, come set up those waters, empty the dishwasher, get in. Yes, we got them both fixed! I never even updated you on that. Sorry. Good news is he fixed it. Unplugged it and plugged it. Please don't call me an idiot. We looked it up online, the error codes. It was saying all this technical mumbo jumbo. Nobody said unplug it, plug it. Okay, next time, unplug it, plug it in. Whoa, that's a thick piece of fudge, Lily! That's why you do it not thick. And what's this?

We have pizza crust happening.

There's a free pizza crust.

Yeah, so I actually take a focaccia bread and I use that recipe as the pizza crust, and it actually really works well.

The loopy whisk.

The loopy whisk.

Turns out the Chaney's are home, so they're gonna come over for Christmas Eve. We ever had a guest for Christmas Eve?

I don't think that we have.

Oh my, she's melting butter now. She's got pizza sauce going. The crusts are done. She's cutting up white onions, and there's a special treat. She's making, um, mozzarella sticks. Jonah, let's go see your job. He says he set up the waterer to the cows with only 2 hoses and not 3. Let's see what he's done. And if we real quick, I bet we can set up the pig. Then we won't have any projects tomorrow, just chores. Tomorrow is Christmas. How was it? How was it? Because You're seeing this later. Hopefully you had a Merry Christmas. We want to go on projects tomorrow, right? Come on, Rebecca, we're gonna have a warm Christmas. It's gonna be 52 tomorrow. I think it'll probably be okay, probably won't freeze like crazy. I do have a hard time relaxing, although I took a killer nap this afternoon. Although naps feel very productive. I'm awake, I have a hard time just sitting there. I should probably work on that. Nice! How did he do this? We have our supply line coming in. He's got it going. He attached the joint or the splitter into the automatic shutoff and then brought the other line to the other trough. Oh, he did! He got the trough heater in this— the cows. When it starts getting cold again, we'll put a trough heater in the sheep. You guys are getting used to it, huh? Honey, you love some hay, girl. Look how big you are. Okay, that's good. I hear that blowing. That's good, right? So what we're gonna do here— I've not had a problem with it before in the past, just like stacking it real tight. I'm gonna stack it a little more loose though, see what happens. Croc said it could be wet wood, you know, not well-seasoned wood. That could be the case. It could be stacked too tight. It could be that the air ventilation is not working properly, but I doubt that because we just cleaned it before the season. It's not pretty loose. You know what I think it might be? I just got to build up a good coal base. We're not having to call on this much at night. You know, we turn our heat down. We have such good insulation that the fire just goes out.

Will you shut that for me, please? Okay, I'm coming through, guys. Spit.

D and them denim jacket. How are these turning out, Birdo?

Good.

Mozzarella cheese fried. You're going for the cheese?

Yeah, a little bit.

There's a white cheese pizza too. Very Christmas. So good. You knocked that out, bud. Crispy treats, fudge. We're full from the dinner. It's a wonderful life every Christmas Eve for us. It's first time first time Austin's seeing it. Merry Christmas!

Look, Daddy, teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.

Ashley, first time watching It's a Wonderful Life. Give me a rating.

I give it a 10 out of 10. All right, it is so good, isn't it? Look at my letters.

Every Christmas Eve we write the children letters. That's their Christmas gift. It's a Wonderful Life. Happy day.