Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 94

Happy day! 94 of 100 days building a homestead. Today is a special day if the rain holds out. We've got a little bit of moisture. We're gonna break open some brand new Premier One fencing and move the pigs. The pigs are a newly worked area and they have been working to till up— till it up so that then we can come in behind them and plant pasture seed. Speeds up this process exponentially. What process? The process of building more pasture so we can have more cows. Our family is getting nothing but bigger. They're growing up, and we're needing to eat more and more ruminants— beef and lamb, grazing animals. How's it going? Good. Water working over at the forest pigs?

Oh, I don't know.

Okay, let's get everything done here and we'll get to it before it rains. What's going on? Maybe it's giving birth, or maybe something's wrong. That's floppy, isn't it? Oh, maybe nothing's wrong. Hold on, somebody might be in— I hope they're in labor and not something's wrong. Oh, they're all okay. She's just laying down. That did not look right though, did it? Besides, said the boiler's full. Should not be full, I loaded it last night. Refill. Okay, what in the heck? See, why is there coals down there and nothing burning? I don't think you can reach it. Okay, I guess That doesn't make any sense. Water's dropped down to 87. Supposed to be at 185 at least. Okay, at least we're off a refill. This next number is the gasification stuff. That's heating up fast. That's a good sign. It's already at 452. My tube must have just been clogged up and just unclogged it. Everybody, let's go! Come on, let's go get milk pails and alfalfa. Is that a good one or a flat? Okay, let's put it in the trash then. Actually, can you put it in the metal stall? Okay, thank you. Pretty good on feed. We have 4,000 pounds more feed, 2 more totes coming today. I had wished our truck loader had come by the time the feed got here, but it's gonna be here one more time on old Lucky, hopefully. Hey, what's going on? First breakfast? Yeah, come on, we're back and we've got the milk supplies. I thought we had them. Well, Pete's got them, our assistant videographer today. Did we bring the alfalfa? Um, I didn't bring it. You can bring it.

I didn't bring it.

Okay. You want to get them in? Uh, about twice that much. Look how my friends treat me. This is when I need a kid, and I don't know where they all are. This keeps the hay off of my body. This hay is really fine. I pick it up with my hand, it gets all over my— all over me. Plus, this is handy. I'm able to reach up there with this pitchfork. Can I get the whole slab? Nope. And I wonder where the other fella is. How was your lesson? Good. You ready to move some pigs? Kids, get in! Go now! There's some milk. Okay, hey, don't go in too far. They're cleaning. Josiah, let's see if hopefully these Premier One batteries come charged. We want two slow blinking green lights and we've got it. So we're charged. You want to set up the clamps, Josiah?

Sure.

This is like— this is a homesteader's Christmas right here. Big old order from Premier One. Oh, look at this. Okay, so this is insulated wire because you guys know I love the grid. Solar energizers are great in a pinch for remote situations, but eventually we're gonna run electric wire. This is 1,000 feet. Next, another energizer. We don't need that right now. These will be for the mobile poultry out in the field. This, this feels a little different. Let's make sure that's an energizer. It is. I see the grounding rod. This should be my favorite pig net. Let me show you. Okay, we got a fault finder. Did we get an extra battery? Look at that, they sent me an extra battery. That was smart. I think this might be the wrong stuff actually. I have these nets, I like the thinner net. It might be what they had. We're going to have to get it back in there to be able to send it back. All right, I have plenty of that style of nets. It's great for young piglets. It's not so great for big pigs because it's hard to put power to that whole fence because there's so many nets, so many strands. You might be a redneck if you still have your Christmas tree stand in your yard middle of January. I will move these buckets when we get down there. This is the only thing that's going to stay in Sally, okay? So we'll put it towards the front. Everything else is put here and go unload it, okay? Thank you. Can you help load it? Did you say no? Yeah, at least you're honest. This is the net I was hoping for. There's only 1, 2, 3 strands. That magnet seemed not Oh my gosh, that's not going to keep in a pig! Wouldn't you want 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9— 3 times as many strands? No, because that means that's 3 times the line the electricity has to run through. So this is actually going to be hotter. And fences for pigs are more psychological than physical. They could technically bust through that no matter what if they put their mind to it, but they won't because they don't want to get shocked. So you want more shock, and this is great for little pigs. Because see how fine that is at the bottom, how close those leaves are together? They, um, it's harder for a little piglet to get through. But now these guys are not piglets, so ideally you have both fences. If you only have one, you probably need to do this one if you're going to have little tiny piglets. But if you're buying feeder pigs, 2 months old, I like that fence. And we'll have to figure out later what that fence is called if there was an accident, but I'll get the info to you by the end of the show. We're gonna go— we're going ahead and setting up the new net. It's best if you have double the net you need, because while the pigs are in the old net, you can put up the new net and then move the pigs over, and then you pick up the old net for next time. And you've got them trained to a bucket, you could just have one net system and just pick it up real quick, let the pigs be hungry, put your feed pan where you want them to end up, and then put a fence around. Enjoying yourself? Let's go get some stakes. Actually, there's some right here. These help you establish a corner maybe where there isn't a corner. It might make it. You want to hold that for me? Oh, what, this fence? You're, you're, you're pretty close. Yeah, great. You want to spot me right here, Josie? Pull it around the corner. There you go. How's that? And we won't— it's gonna be awful close. It's gonna be annoyingly close because we'll have to get a whole nother line for just 30 feet. Well, let's see if we even think that'll do it. We could cut it further down here. I have to build a new— I have to get through this now. We're moving the fence a little closer to us. We're only like 20 feet away from connecting it, and our nets are 100 feet. So we don't want to do that much overlapping if we don't— if we can help it. Be a pain to run in a whole nother 100 foot— that's a whole nother 100 feet to power. Go to the end of that tree, give me the end, and we'll make the ends touch, and then we'll make it happen. Blue stakes are also good for when you have to climb a hill like that and It drags on the ground. You guys ready for a move? You ready for a move? Exciting day for y'all. Look at this kill job you've done. You've done amazing work. Put the stake on top of the hump, then you can put your fence up out of the way. We're ready. Let's move some pigs. Josiah, you want to get your feet in here? Put my new fence up where the old fence had a joint. That's so I can open up a gate. I'm just gonna see— I'll move this, open this up, and we can get the pigs through. I'm gonna do one at a time though first. I'm just gonna open up this very wide. It's hard to herd pigs. And remember what I said about psychological? Even though this fence is going to be removed, they're going to be hesitant to walk over it because they remember that there was something there that shocked them. This could be bad if they hurry down here and start eating and getting tangled in this. Rinse off. This is also not very heavy yet. It's about a tenth of a way full. See how flimsy? Oh, that's pretty heavy once you get it on the edge. Big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big pig. They're very curious, and they have no Internet. Sooner than later, they're gonna find this hole and get over here into this new, exciting place. We are gonna get this feeder over, let them run out of feed. They got everything that they spilled. They're hungry. They're gonna be looking for something to eat. Another reason you want them to run out of food is so you can move this feeder. Big pig, big pig, big pig! We wanted to set this close enough where he can drive up here. Don't worry about that right now.

What?

Oh gosh.

Yeah, throw and bust that off.

Okay. All right, you're on top of a stump. That stump has gone up through the plastic. Go get your chainsaw and helmet. I think they're all just about over. Come here, pig, Pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig. Fig. Love it when they come over. They're just barely interested in the food. The land is so rich. They just want to explore it, get the real goodies. Before they get this drained. Joe said I accidentally backed over stump shorter. It's jamming up through here. If we don't get that out and we back up, who knows where it's going to end up going underneath. It's already broken this— looks like the air filter system. I think we can get that back on. My idea is to— I don't think we can back up, it's just going to tear it up even worse. We're gonna have to cut that with the saw underneath. And then maybe we can pull it up through. I think because that end is thicker, it's harder to pull through. There we go. Twisting it helped. Now let's fix our filter. Where do you think that goes? Just say, will you finish feeding them? Because we need to be mindful our fences are off and it doesn't take long for a pig to figure that out. Now how to get this to stay in here. This says— huh. Oh, it's broke. It was connected right here, but this plastic is broke off. This is not gonna be a cheap fix. Maybe we don't have to fix it. Shut the fence up and we can turn on, then we'll worry about it. Let's go put the nets back up before before they start going back to their old pattern. Our water tank has filled up enough to where it's laying level and flat now. That's good. Pigs have a favorite place to poop. Old fence off of it. Rest of this corner. So turn it on. For the sake of time, we're going to leave the old energy— well, let's see if it's working fine. Too, too slow green blink. It is. And so it's right here. I don't have to move it. I'll just keep the new one for the farm sitter if he needs it. This is just too easy. Put it on the second strand down. I'm gonna get the hose out of there though. Look how the hose is going right through the paddock. Like I said, the pigs don't have the internet and they get bored and they chew— they'll chew this. They have no delayed gratification either. They don't care that that's where their water comes from. Okay, let's get the Sally out of there, load up our tools. We had 20 minutes, we might start picking up old nets. Let's see if it's cleared. He cleared another stump. Well, let's look where we're going. Should be able to back up into that net and get out just fine. What's up with that, man? That's my boots.

My boots got wet yesterday.

All right. Look what you got. I know, instead of being inside having this office meeting, I know we decided to do it in the sun. This is the plan. Any changes? How many times? This is the third round.

Yeah, I might just have a couple changes. We're going to talk about it.

You know what I learned at my permaculture course? It's easier to make mistake on paper than in real life. This is the bottom floor. This is the garden kitchen. Slash commercial kitchen. Jonah was just asking me if he could render lard to sell it after he found out how valuable it was. Because could he do it on these 10 pigs? Well, you can't unless you have a commercial kitchen.

Commercial kitchen, which we would have to have.

And then he could render and sell lard, I think.

You know, I do wonder if he could— I'm not saying we're gonna do this, but there's that catch for animal consumption. We label it that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you might be able to do that.

I'm not saying—

Label that lard as animal consumption only.

I know, it's for dogs.

Yeah, dogs.

This is all what I want it to be.

There's the milk parlor.

This is the milk parlor.

It's just a place to wash the milk pans.

So there's the ice machine.

There's an ice machine.

We're gonna have the dishwasher. I'm thinking we're looking at a commercial.

Why do we need an ice machine in the milk parlor?

Because it can't be where it's at.

Oh, okay.

Just has to be somewhere.

Okay, that makes sense.

And then it'll be easy to get it, to access it. So that makes the most sense. This I'm really excited about, the lift where we can put things in and send them up to the kitchen. Mudroom inside the garage. Go pull my car in the garage, go in here. This is the mudroom.

Our new entrance and exit. Your garage— your car needs to be over here out of the way then.

Okay, we can park Sally here.

Double mudroom. Yeah, yeah, we come right out here, hop in Sally and go.

We were messing around with where we would place freezers.

Oh cool.

Um, so he has freezers here.

That's not a bad idea.

We could actually put another freezer probably in there. We got the washer and dryer. We got more freezers, our chest freezers, put them in here.

That's down there in the garden kitchen.

Now this is one thing—

Is this a walk-in cooler or freezer?

Walk-in cooler.

Why did he put the door on this side?

Well, I was gonna have him put it on this side. Yeah. But then that's where we put the freezers.

We might want to rethink that.

Well, no, so that's something I want to rethink in general is do I just want to get a commercial fridge? Like a 4-door commercial fridge.

Yes.

And put it along here.

Yes.

And then we could just flank it with the freezers and then we would just have an entryway coming through here.

Do that and then we can access our fridges. Well, why does this even have to be a wall?

It doesn't. It may have to stay stay somewhat a wall because it is a wall right now. We just have to figure that out once we get into it.

All right.

I mean, so I look at these plans as an idea, but when you're remodeling, sometimes what you want to do isn't what you actually can do. We could put freezers over here, like along these walls. So imagine a long fridge here. I don't even know if it'll go that whole span. I don't know what that, that is. So I was looking currently at— I just looked up commercial fridges and it was 81 inches long. So how many feet is that? Um, 7 feet.

If we're gonna hang a meat— hang a— hang a beef, we're gonna have a walk-in cooler up by the butchering shed.

Now I was thinking though, it would be— it might be good. So, okay, it's good to talk about it and work through it right now. Yeah, so there's so many things. So 7 feet across this wall could be a fridge. It's 72 cubic feet. So 70— that's, that's, that's enough. 72 cubic feet, that's quite a bit.

Yeah, freezer, a box chest freezer is $20.

Aside from the fact that we wouldn't be able to hang a beef in it. So when we plugged in that walk-in freezer, our electric bill— yeah, shot up substantially. Not like just a little bit, $300. Like, well, that was because it was— it had a problem and then we got it fixed and now it's only $200 a month, which is ridiculous. Which is so ridiculous. And I just don't know if I want to pay that. So my thought was I contacted a friend who I know has a commercial fridge and I was like, when you put plug that thing in, is it— is— does, you know, are you seeing a huge substantial jump? Because when we started our cool cold room, we did not see a huge, um, substantial—

or not?

I don't know, I haven't gotten back. She hasn't gone back to me yet. So that's, that's part of the, the thought. My other thought is, if we're gonna cut up a beef in this kitchen—

yep—

wouldn't it make most sense to have it hanging down here as opposed to hanging over here?

Not necessarily. You're gonna have to either haul the beef from up from the shed down to hang it, or you're gonna haul it from here and plop it on the table to cut it up.

You would haul it this way.

Okay, come on, come on, come on.

I need to give them my card.

I'm getting outvoted, and I think that's okay.

What are you getting outvoted?

Well, you're wanting a walk-in cooler down there, so we can hang the beef down there.

The only thing is, is how do I find this out Can— how far? Maybe I'm gonna call Ben Holler and ask him a question.

Well, here's the thing too. Okay, so we're gonna— we, we— okay, we harvest the steer. It could be 2 steers. Actually, it'll be 4 steers next time, and it could be up to 10 ewes. So where are we gonna hang all those?

That's true.

Is that even gonna be big enough? We might have to get a bigger walk-in cooler outside. I don't know. Let's just think through it all.

Should we do a walk-in trailer? Cooler, and then we can rent it out when we're not using it. Like the trailer that was your dad's that's no longer, right?

Yeah, box trailer.

The box trailer. But let's just look at that trailer. Why don't we turn a trailer like that, we park it up here when we need it, and then when the beefs have hung, as long as they're gonna hang, we just bring the trailer and park it out here and then get the beefs.

Is that a thing?

Yeah, yeah, Jason Contreras has one.

I know, but he made it little. It was a little one.

You just have to get the correct air conditioning unit along with the cold bot.

You've thought this through.

And it has to go— I like this. He's got a bathroom so you can come in from the outside and use the bathroom, or you can be in the garage.

Yeah, good plan.

I like that. He gave me some skylights.

He gave you some windows?

Yeah, so here's windows.

Okay.

And then he gave me some skylights.

Okay, good.

So I'm probably gonna put in commercial sinks here. These are probably gonna be commercial sinks and possibly commercial dishwashers. I haven't decided 100%.

You might have to have a commercial one to have it to code, won't you? Commercial kitchen.

Oh yeah. Yeah, I didn't think about that.

You gotta find that out.

I don't think it has to be commercial grade to be commercial kitchen. It just has to be inspected.

Okay.

By the commercial kitchen thing, cuz remember we were foster parents and one of our kids had a speech therapist. She had a commercial kitchen at her house cuz she was a chocolatier, and I think it was just a regular kitchen. She just had it inspected.

You might want to double-check on that.

I will, I will make sure.

Get that stainless steel stuff.

I'm going to. I do want stainless steel stuff in there just because it's gonna be easier. That's okay for the crazy stainless steel people.

Stairs.

Okay, so my washer and dryer and utility—

that's coming upstairs from down in the bottom.

So, and this is screened-in room, and we have a drop zone right there.

Screened-in room right there. Yeah, it's shady right now, everybody. In the summer, that's going to be real nice because the sun is going that way, and that means dinner time on this cool side of the house. We're making this as passive solar as we can. Taking advantage of the sun. Just show me what else is new.

Um, this right here. So the utility room, he made that. I'm so— I'm in love with my sink.

Is there another mudroom up here?

No, this right here.

I was gonna say there needs to be something. Is this a way to get in here?

Yeah, I mean, well, there'll be stairs here and then there's the stairs there. So we put in the boys' walk-in closet over here. Um, they have a little bench right there to collect junk, I guess. And then their bedroom— their bathroom is in their bedroom.

Sweet. I love that.

So there's no—

Where's Lily? She got her own bathroom?

Lily's bathroom is right here, which is also the guest bathroom.

Okay.

So when people are here, I was thinking we might put a little pocket door in here so she can close this, these, both of these doors and have access to her bathroom should she want it. This bathroom is completely, our bathroom is completely reconfigured, which I absolutely love. I only got one sink because we only need one sink.

We never use our two sinks. I know.

That's why I was like, we don't need two sinks. We're just gonna put in one, but our sauna, the sauna will be here. Here. I'm very excited about that. The toilet room. The toilet has its own room.

I can shut you off.

You're funny. No, you can go to the bathroom while I'm, while I'm taking my bath and there's no weirdness there. Shower in the entrance, it's moved as well to more in the middle of the room, and then we moved our walk-in closet from here to here, and so our bed is now in a different area. We're gonna move this window, it's gonna be moved down here though. I think that that's all the Good job.

You only have a few tweaks for him, babe.

Yeah. Oh, we should look at this. We did change the roofline of this.

The porch is then gonna be the sunroom.

Correct, and it's gonna have a different roofline with the peak in the middle.

Okay.

And so then he— do we like two sets of doors going out? Do we just want one set of doors still?

I still don't understand why we don't have an exit here.

We do.

Oh, we do?

We'll just put one there.

Oh, he, he can't just draw that in? I think the builders want the plans, don't they? Maybe they don't.

But you're the builder.

Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, then I want that though. Have him put some steps there. Uh, one door, two door?

Hmm, I know.

Now you could have glass doors. I say only one door.

Okay, what do we do on here?

In my heart I feel like there. Okay, our main entrance is up here, is going to be over here, right? Yeah, put it over there.

Well, see, because we need— and do we want it to be double doors or do we just want one door, and it's because that's going to be where your Green Egg is. Your Green Egg is going up there. What else will go over there? I mean, we'll have like some rocking chairs, some sort of something sitting there. Well, we're gonna have a griddle on our stovetop.

Good, I like that. Speaking of homeschool, he's out here scraping the sidewalk, listening to his audiobook. What are you listening to? The Hobbit. Too good for you. I like it. Is that a turd in there? Yeah. All right. Oh, you're about to wash this off? You're so good about this. Thank you. Did you do anything new to the water wheel? Yeah, let's see it. What'd you do to it today?

I put the gears on and made it a little more sturdy. What?

What? That is amazing.

I think another— either a pole run to the, to the, um, bank, or another gear will go to the, uh, adapter.

Wow, that is amazing. You generating electricity yet? No, I have to adapter. All right, you know what to get? No. How are you gonna figure that out? I don't know either. Did you look up any YouTube videos? Yeah, I'll look into it. Okay, you can figure it out. Jonah found a new way to get hay in there without getting it all over you and without having to climb up there. I tapped that one. One of the main overwhelming news stories this year, or for 2022, was Inflation. Just how much prices have gone up. Inflation hitting its highest level in, get this, 41 years. Siri's not available out here, but I asked her, how much did inflation go up in 2022? I don't know what normal inflation is every single year. It's some, but I do know that that's more than normal. Prices have gone up across the board. Hey, do you guys care? You care? Are you worried about that? Are the earthworms worried about that? Are you worried about it, stud? I'm not saying it's something that we shouldn't worry about. I am saying there is some comfort in realizing they don't worry about it. Elections— the earthworms don't care. They just keep on going. And that's a bit of the sanctuary that the homestead does offer. You know how a good movie is an escape? Well, the homestead is an escape for a moment. Every day you can get rid of all distractions. I'm not saying those go away and those aren't real. But for a moment there's peace because you're amongst the animals and you are the 5 people you hang out with. Well, I hang out with a bunch of sheep and gals. They ain't worried about it. Hang tight, I want to talk about how a homestead can make or break you during a time like this. That's critical, and it's critical to know the difference on how not. But hang on, I wanted to tell you, in response to the inflation situation, we decided Let's have an anti-inflation sale for our New Year's registration for Abundance Plus. Not 7% off, not 14%, 15% off. So more than double we're offering until January 22nd. And if you sign up by January 22nd, 1 PM Monday, you get my Homestead Design Workshop. It's a 4-hour workshop, 2 hours of lecture, cute, then Q&A. Finally, I'm gonna bring on some live calls and do some Consulting live in front of everybody. This got going. Same size at the same time.

Who?

All these steers. Yeah, we're gonna harvest them all in November. I was just talking to your mom about that earlier in our home design and our walk-in freezer. We could have up to 4 steers and 10, 10 ewes at once.

I don't see why we don't really raise all of our meat because we— you buy so much from US Wellness Meats.

No, we don't. We don't buy very much at all from them anymore. Now that we have a beef, we had to buy from US Wellness Meats for a while because we were shy harvest. Sometimes there's lulls, and that's why we're doing the 100 days. We're expanding 2 acres. We need more, we need more beef and lamb. Now in a time like this, homesteading can make or break you. Things— you have to buy things for homesteading. You have to, and that— those prices are going to go up too. And if you don't plan it right, and if you're not doing it right, it can totally break you. You can become overwhelmed. The time, money, and energy it took when I had— when I came across Lyme disease and had to slow down and realized there had to be a better way, I had realized my farm was taking more than it was giving. And if that's your case and you're going into prices increasing across the board, you're in trouble. You can be in trouble. And the homestead is not an answer, it's a problem. In that case, some things are going to have to change if you're going to make it work. I brought— I came over here, I didn't even bring the cart. Well, how do I— how do I make it right? How do I make the homestead serve me during this situation? Save me money. People are spending a lot of money on eggs right now. How could I be growing my eggs and it actually cost less, not more? It all comes down to good design. Want to know how to fix the situation? We start with a plan. I've been trained in permaculture design, been homesteading for 15-ish years. I've gone to the school of hard knocks, so to speak, and have trained thousands of people at this point in Homestead Design Concepts. Now, for the first time, I'm doing a live workshop where folks can come in, get an idea of how to set goals, how to prioritize those goals, how to stay on track, then what to do next, what order should I go about in the homestead. People will go away with a plan, at least Knowing how to make a plan— if you're really ambitious, you could jot a plan, knowing where things are going to go of your enterprises. If you've already started and if you're overwhelmed, knowing what to cut out, guys, that's key. If you're overwhelmed, chances are it needs to be cut out, and that can be difficult. A little quick win here then is ultimately you want to cut out the less effective things for your heart's desire. What do you desire? What does your heart really want? Your heart wants— yeah, your heart wants a lot of things, but we're gonna then bring in discipline and practicality and teach you how to decide for what your heart wants, narrow it down to the few things that will give us the biggest bang for our buck, so to speak, and make our homestead a solution and not a a problem to the current things we're facing right now. This is what Abundance Plus is all about. You can homestead, we can help. You want to get in by this weekend for the live show, live workshop? Abundanceplus.com. Hope to see you guys there on this weekend. One more time, 15% off till January 22nd. I have so much to do. Launch week emails to write, the Chickshaw 5.0 plans to review, and you want to play soccer with us, but the kid said, can we play soccer? I don't think I will ever regret that I took time out and played soccer with him. Well, he might not let me. Will you go to Leah? How am I gonna hold the camera and the baby? Oh, you'll go to Leah. All right, let's play. You can play too, okay? All right, come on. All right, he'll be happy. Watch, let me get ready. He's gonna have a blast. Too much. Holding y'all and him at the same time.

Somebody be bowling!

Liam!

With a baby!

I don't know if you saw that, but we just scored with a baby. It's tied up 3-3. Time's up. We're gonna do an instant death shootout. Are you going first? We will win. We will win if I make this.

Good block. You have to block this.

If I miss, you win. Now if I make it, I win. Y'all about had me. Good game. That was fun. Good exercise. I'm gonna have to make up for it. Tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Hey, where you be?

Come on, girl, it's time to eat. Short ribs turned out nice. Becca's acorn squash turned out nice. Green beans. Look at that diverse plate, Beck.

Billy, did you get that from Brayden?