Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 67

Short ribs for tonight. Get out when you get eggs, okay? Come on. Sally's gone with the alfalfa bucket. I didn't expect her to actually be in the stanchion, so I took advantage of that. But I need to get to know these guys. Where's the tumbler? Oh, they did? They took it? How does he think I'm gonna milk, uh, Flossie? Are they gonna milk honey? Yeah. Did they just come on the porch and get it? I just set it down. Apparently the boys came and got the tumbler. They must be wanting to milk honey, which is a good thing, except I need the soapy water. Did you see him get it? Yeah. Hey, you ran off with my soap. Yeah, get a different soap. Okay, what are you doing? Well, I gotta get at least some rags with some soap on it. I'm excited that you're milking her. Thank you. Oh yeah, you want to clear early again? We gotta first hike the mountain and detach the water catchment on this side for the freezing weather coming, and then we'll clear. If that all goes well, that shouldn't take but 30 minutes. Gideon, can you grab these pails? He was right behind me. Cross our fingers she's not She's not poopy. She's not poopy, thank goodness. She's thirsty. We could try her 50-gallon trough if you don't think they'd poop in it. They probably would. We could do an automatic waterer on that too, although she's sticking her whole head in. And the auto waterer freezes at night. Hey, will you put that back so we're not looking for that? How do we get those clamps off, Jonah, that aren't ratcheted? There's hose clamps like this that are bigger. They go over the 1-inch that you can screw with a screwdriver or a ratchet, but we use the kind that are pinch— pinching. Here it is. Okay, you want to hike that up the mountain? Yeah, sure. Okay, now one thought I did have, we could cut the line where it would drain more in the creek. If we drain it at the tank and water's flowing out of the tank right there, it's going to eventually wash things away right there, I think. And then every year we would disconnect it at that spot, at the spot that we cut. Yeah, and we could put screw-on clips on it. Henry, you want to go hike up the mountain? The more I think about it, the more I just want to go snip that line. It makes sense. We can put the water where we want it. Well, we only have to bring one tool up there right now, and next spring when we hook it back up, we'll just do a male-to-male with a screwable hose clamp. Where are we going? Okay, you're the third person to say this. I am so sorry I'm not communicating this well. We are going up the side of the mountain to disconnect the water so that the water that stays in the line unmoving doesn't freeze and unfreeze. Bees nest and break stuff. Will you open that? We're going up. There will be no bees nest this time of year. Let's go get our hose cutters. Tool for the top of the mountain, tool for the bottom of it. Okay, you have turned it on. Let's disconnect our hose and we can see it coming out. Almost 1,000 feet of line coming all the way down here to the top of our Well, this was our pig gland. The line goes way up and over to the mountain. What's the problem? It's already frozen, isn't it? See, water sits in this and it's what, 25 degrees? It's on. That tells me the water is frozen in the line. Eric said we'll need to take this pressure regulator off because it'll— it won't let all the water drain out. Okay, good, it's coming out. We'll take our nice pressure regulator and keep it warm. The thing was 75 pounds of pressure by the time we get to here. You're gonna bust fittings and hoses, hose nozzles and stuff. So put this pressure regulator on it. We got it down to 35. Wait, is this not even working? It's not even working. It's disconnected right there. Oh well, that'll do. I hate to see what it would do washing that out. Should have brought a line up. Why is this barely working? This would have been on that. Got 5, 6 inches of silt in it. Oh yeah, we do have water coming in, in from the catchment. That's good. We don't need to fix this right now. We just need to winterize this right now. Best thing to do is just to cut this right here and put the hose— is this how the outlet back— oh, there you go. Put it, put it over in the creek. Now this could be poured out just so it doesn't freeze, unfreeze. Hey, look at all that silt in there. Golly, so creamy. It's got a bug, Lily, look! Yeah, we'll take it back. Why does it need to be out out here in the weather. All right, that's level 1. Now we got one at the top of the mountain we need to go check out, and it's the one at the top of the mountain that is feeding the pig gland at the up parts of our pasture that has all the water line in it. So it's the one that we most definitely needed to do. That one would have had minimal damage. You go ahead. You go ahead. Or not. All right, I'll go. All right, so our water tank— the question is, is it working? We want water to be flowing in and out of it right now. It's working slightly. This is our outlet. Wonder if there's a shutoff over here. Now that would be cool if There was already a shutoff in the creek, draining into the creek. Uh-oh. Why? There's no— there's no water coming out of this, and there's no shutoff at the end of it. Oh wait, are we empty? No, we're full. This is a mystery. What's stopping the water from flowing out that? This should be draining. This must have gotten clogged. Okay, running out there, but why not more? I see why. The water outlet It's coming out as fast as it should be. It's actually working. It's coming in pretty slow and it's going out just as slow. What we have to do at the bottom— water is also going to be in this line that comes down and feeds our livestock because it's shut off down there, and we need to drain that. If we're going to drain that line, that means we do have to have this empty. Let's go see why this isn't flowing more. We're going to keep it connected. We're going to need it to flow more so it doesn't freeze. So always be moving and it won't freeze. I guess our water catchment has gotten clogged up. Doesn't look like it. Maybe these leaves are preventing— yeah, it's gotten in some of these holes, these leaves. That shouldn't matter so long as this tank is empty under here. Some crap has probably got in it and filled this up. I do not have the tools to disassemble that right now. It's gonna be a spring job. So it looks like I'm not gonna be able to get this flow going faster, so let's just drain the tank. Should just be able to lift the PVC. There we go. Oh yeah, let that drift out. Whoa, I shouldn't have done that. Okay, that wasn't too bad. All right, it's working, guys. I'm gonna head down. Didn't need my cutting tool. We already had a line draining into the creek. We're done for now. Let's go clear some land. Nope, wait, before we do that, we've got to go drain it at the bottom. You know what, because this is going to be drained by the time I get down there, I'm thinking— how many times have we— can open this and maybe when I get down there and open that, it'll draw any water that's in this. This is higher, so it's not gonna— there's gonna catch some water right here and it's gonna freeze and unfreeze all winter. But when I go to drying that out, it might suck that through. Probably not my catchment up there. Totally forgot about the spring box. Probably the same deal that's happening through here. Spring box getting clogged up. Is nobody gonna help me carry the spring box? I gotta carry the baby and the spring box. Help it, help Papa out. Don't know if we need these spring boxes anyway because It's for the livestock. Did keep all that silt out of the tank though, so it is a filter anyway, don't we? Thank you. Where's the other brother? Hey, can you help me carry some of those filters? Lighten my load a little bit, or carry this whole thing? Thanks. Clearing time and the sunshine. I do have a hard time conveying this, showing this. We have so much wood here. It's hard to get a good before and after sense. If I could set this in one spot, that might be the best before and after kind of deal. What do you think? All right, that'll cover a lot. That'd be incredible if we just— if we went to the bigger trees up there. Look at all this little stuff. Those two are not really in my line of time-lapse vision, but we'll get it on the GoPro here. Now your chain has gotten off whack. It's too tight to— you sure you want to do it that way? There it is. Midway snack. The energy levels have been down, so definitely want to not do intermittent fasting. Grass-fed beef steak, zero sugar. What do you say, Jonah? We got to about where we're gonna go, then we're going up that line maybe 75 feet and then over 300 feet and down probably 200 feet. We got this little triangle here behind us. Jonah's talking about, well, we should get the big graders out here to help us with these big trees. And I think so. For those of you wondering, what are we doing with this stump graveyard? We're keeping that. We're keeping that for when we get a Mini X. We're gonna try to pull them up. Try to pull them up? We're gonna pull them up. I like that attitude. You think it'll get a big one like that up? Might have to dig a bit. We've saved ourselves a lot of money not having the graders do this. Sure, it takes time, but that's what it's about. Getting out here today in the sunshine, working with your son. This land will have stories. We don't want the story to be we got killed by one of these big trees. So— and those machines are so much faster. We'll go ahead and line them up because they're probably weeks out. But what, we only got 30-something days left on this? 33 days. Henry, you're gonna let me do my swings, huh? Just us, no Jacob. Well, Henry had a fever last night, so he's fine, but we're just being careful, precautions, because he's going to see family. We don't want to infect people. But Henry snapped right out of it. Yeah, he's completely— she's back to weight training. Get into Lily on nachos, yours truly on short rib. Lard. I'd like to hear it sizzle. Let's try it again. Ah, hear that? What do we want to hear? Salt. Ooh, golden brown. Beautiful. Immerse it in chicken broth. Cover it in chicken broth. Do you guys see the haze? Oh yeah, you can see the haze. Wouldn't be Burning Up Cooking Show without some smoke. Since I only eat the meat taco, I need some taco, you know what I'm saying? Pork rinds will do. More chicken broth. Oh, you saved it so fast. Yep, I'm just keeping it warm in there until I'm ready for it. This is short rib, so it gets tender. It gets really tender. If this were a chuck roast, I would need to cover it completely. We've got 4 hours. Let's do 250. Henry enjoying the vlogs, the old vlogs. You enjoying the Great American Farm Tour? It's about all he'll watch, isn't it? And if I pause it, he gets upset. That's your family history, buddy. Mom, I guess we'll just have to do one again. 5 years. Okay, Great American Farm Tour Dos at the 10-year anniversary. It'll be 2027. Turtle biking. Afternoon chores and one last time treating Flossie for mastitis. How about you would feed this much to a horse in the morning and this much to the horse at night? Oh, okay. And how much do you feed to a cow? A lot more. Are we gonna be able to ice skate on the pond? Probably. The cold is coming. I only have so much time. Should I go clean out the barrels because there's a pool of water in them and that's going to freeze, or should I deal with the sweet potatoes? I could almost put them in here. This is our new root cellar. We got lights. Tour of the root cellar. We could totally put our sweet potatoes in here, but we don't have any doors. We need to get some doors on here. I mean, let's get our priorities straight. We gotta take care of the food before we gotta take care of the cleaning up. Let's hope— we've already had some freezing nights and it didn't make these sweet potatoes weird. That one looks a little soft. Look at the size of this sweet potato. Rebecca? Yes? We're at Fry's. Let's have sweet potatoes every third day, huh? Looks like you're cooking a southern favorite. I am. Collards. I don't even like vegetables, but I think you're tempting me. You would eat these. There was fried onions in that, fried bacon, put a gob of chicken broth in there. Yeah. And that's what you're cooking the collars in? And then I'll cook them down in this. Yeah, you're true Southern girl, aren't you? It's so good. Let's see it. He wants to jump rope. Yeah, doing good. How about we get the sweet potatoes up and clean out these barrels? Acorn squash turned out all right. I think it did. I'm just— passes the inspection. Yeah, I probably should have gotten the short ribs out 20 minutes ago. Not because they'll burn, but because they'll be so hot. I hope that was enough. Oh yeah, Rebecca's got me a little treat. This is a little something to look forward to every night. I learned this from Michaela Peterson, a lion's diet advocate, which is just ruminants and salt. And carbonated water. So we did a half a lemon, a little bit of salt, mixed it up, and then carbonated water and ice. It's refreshing. It's like a treat.