Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 35

Get in. You have so many eggs. Let me empty this and you go get the eggs. It's probably gonna overflow your thing.

It probably is.

Yeah. All right, go get them and you'll just make 2 trips. How you been today?

Busy.

You staying warm with those socks?

I am.

The wood furnace is keeping us warm, but Mark is here. Back— no, I meant— I— yeah, I meant the— I meant the wood stove, the Yodel. Jodl?

I know it's not Jodl.

I mean, it kept us 62 in here. Yeah, I put wood on it at 1 in the morning.

We have oil heaters in our bedrooms.

Yeah, now Randolph said he could run the line from the propane to the furnace.

It's a whole thing. The propane company's telling me that they have to test the whole system, the AC though.

Yeah, the HVAC people are saying they're not touching their thing, they're testing It's a whole process, so we better not touch it ourselves.

I don't know what to do with these people. They're so dogmatic in their areas, and I'm just like, just work together.

This is why you have redundancy. We have the wood boiler, we have the wood stove, and we're gonna have the propane heat, and we have a whole house. That's why we have— and we have— we have lots of redundancy. Check it out, Josiah's leftover pizza from his birthday. Oh my, that looks so good. Carrie Vitt, delicious. Look at this, look at this book. People want you to write a book, cookbook, but I'm like, why? Just go get this book.

I know, we have this one. This is a good book. This is a good book for Thanksgiving.

Between this book and— do you do Eat What You Love for the cake maybe?

Yes, I do.

And then do you do Against All Grain for some things?

I do.

Between that and— oh, look, you've worn out Celebrations.

Celebrations is a good one. Actually, Nourishing Traditions. So we don't—

You don't ever get a recipe out of that. No, no, no, no.

I've been looking in it because I needed to get something else out of it and I some recipes caught my eye, like lamb. I have a lamb recipe. They had some really good recipes in there that I'm like, why am I not utilizing this? So I'm gonna start cooking from Nourishing Traditions more. I do do some from Nourishing Traditions, but it's not like my go-to.

No shame, no homestead shame if you don't use Nourishing Traditions. No, no, it's because it uses wheat. Yeah, I know, and sugar. We're not into either one of those. More margarine, Fritos. So that's Danielle Walker and Carrie Vitt. What did you do, Henry? Oh, you playing in the salt, huh?

He looks sneaky.

He does. Dinner's here. We didn't know if it would come in time. Wild Alaskan salmon and whitefish, cod, what? I don't know. Fish is really the only meat and animal we don't grow ourselves, but it's nice. It's nice. It's nice to have a break. Fishy Friday. You never have to worry about what we're gonna cook on Friday, and it's good. Today's vlog is a little different. We're changing things up a little bit. I'm actually shooting this on Friday instead of Saturday because we take rest on Saturday and the show, I just think, ends up being really lame because we just lay around and watch shows and just get chores done and that's just about it. So I thought, you know, let's just get you guys— let's do a project Friday afternoon, document that, and that will be that day's show. Gideon got more eggs. I don't know if that's all of them, but we'll go with it. Did you go all the way around that high tunnel? No, there were two spots, one in the corner and one on the side.

Okay, okay.

Mark just asked me, he asked me to turn up the heat. I've got it on. I think that thermostat may be right. So let's see if the fan is running. Wood boiler's going. Okay, so it's at 156. That's close enough. You see this? Now look, water's hot. TC1, that's thermocoupler 1, which you want me to show you where that's at? You open it reaction chamber. That wasn't shut all the way. Look at all the ashes came down. Oh, I've had— I hauled 4 buckets out of there, out of that firebox. So what we need to be happening is the furnace fan to be going too. Randolph, we got another mind on the project. All right, between all 3 of us, maybe we'll figure it out. This is not running. So let me go mess with the thermostat. So that hot water comes in from the furnace, goes into coil, and this fan's supposed to be running. That water's hot. It's hot. We also— it comes over here and heats our hot water heater. That can be as hot as all get out, but if air's not pushing through it, it's not going to get to our house. It's not going to matter. I think this has to be on. Blowing cold air. 66, 65. 64, 63. It's getting colder. It's just coming down from the room temperature. It's like 61, 62.

You can't have the heat on because there's no fur—

like, the furnace doesn't work, right? But I turned it down to like 55. It would have to get to 55. Oh, you mean I could turn it down even lower? Rebecca just had a good point. She thinks because they haven't— maybe they haven't completed the setup on the heating, which they haven't because they still have to pick up the propane. Does that mean this isn't engaging like it would normally? It's running now. It was like 62, but yeah, because I took every bit of everything out of that stove. What'd you do, clean out all the ashes? Yeah, that stuff, that creosote was about that thick. Was it? Yeah, that was maybe causing the air not to get in there. It might have been because it was really bad up towards where that air was coming out. Well, let's give this some time. If your heat box out there is still rising— okay, so yesterday they both weren't open, just one. What does that mean? Uh, it means it's working, I'd say. I mean, I would guess that that's, uh, since you've turned that on. Yeah, it's calling for it. This should linger at 185. That's the first time I've seen that. That's how much it is right now. That's right. Yep. I'm gonna turn this down to 160 and see if it— when it gets to 160, if, uh, if the fans cut off. Oh, so you can't go below 170. How many buckets of this? Oh my gosh. Yeah, that could have been clogging it up, huh? That looks good, nice and bright. Yeah, our old lights are— went out. Hey, where are you going? Okay, all right, let's see if this is heating up at all. Okay, feels like it might be getting warm. Okay, we got a 71 room temp. 72. Probably takes a bit to get the warm air going in the HVAC, the fan going, the cool air that's already in there. That's what I'm hoping. Seems to be working. Hey, no spring, because baby Henry is asleep. Are they going to the beach?

No, they're racing.

Hey, did you boys get hoses? Did you get hoses?

Yeah.

Wait, they, they got water out there? Do you have water to the pigs?

What?

Do you have— do you have water to the pigs? That's no good. Why is this ripped? Is that Winnie? Winnie? Oh, naughty. We need to get all the hoses that we can. We have to run hoses from this spigot all the way to the high tunnel. They've got two water lines going through. I think one of them was to the wood boiler. What's the other one to? Looks like it might be going to the pigs. I thought I asked him and he said no. It's a dead end, but there's a hose right there. Can we go from there to the end of the high tunnel? Here, grab the, um, let's get this untangled.

But there's holes in this, so they had to tape it.

Oh, that tape doesn't work. This works. We can test. Plug it in right there. I swear Winnie is eating these hoses. Don't do it, it's broken other places. I think we have one of the pieces to fix that. What do you say, Jonah?

I got some, uh, hoses from the field and they're not chewed up.

Nope.

Okay, because this one chewed up at the end.

We hit—

there's one that's chewed up twice there. We burnt the end of another one. 3 hoses in need of repair.

Yeah, I don't know, uh, they're unrepairable.

Okay, where's the ones you brought down?

They're over here, the size of—

Okay, sweet. Things are going good for us. The hose is on and running. Looks like it's long enough. Here, I'll spot you. Go ahead.

Where do I take it?

Take it all the way to the end. I wouldn't take it through the greenhouse. Take it to the other end. Hey, if you're gonna spray it, spray it even. Where are our cables? There's supposed to be a cable here. Just run it through, I guess, all the way to the pigs. Okay, Gideon, can you get it through? You want me to? Hey, Lily, we go shut that door. They're already going for it. A little dusty in here. Wouldn't hurt to water it down every once in a while. Snake it through. That's good, huh? Can you shut the door on me? Get in. Oh great, we left this door. Oh, oh yeah, you could hurt him back in, Jonah.

I'm trying.

I got the door. Bring them this way. Don't step on my bed.

They know you're around that corner. Okay, look, they're going straight back to where they got out.

Let's go, let's go shut it. All right, let's see if we're lucky. I'll start this time. Just sit here a minute. I don't know if that helps. Let's see if Mark can help us. Thank God he's here.

Why don't you just hire him full-time?

Yeah, I know, right? Hey, what are you doing in there?

I want a ride.

You a pig going on a ride?

Come on. What is that?

Is that diesel?

Yeah, diesel.

That's weird. It just puttered out again. Let's try the gas trick. Can you do this without getting it on you?

Uh, I could try.

You ready? Yeah.

Put it below it.

Put it below it.

Here?

Down in it, I think, right?

Yeah.

Ready? Do it, do it, do it!

It's not squirting. Off squirt.

Hold on. It's weird how it just turned off while I was driving. See these filters? That's where it's going to suck it in, so you got to squirt it up into there. Okay, you ready?

Yeah.

Squirt it up into those. Oh, what happened? We're here, but we forgot the ramp.

Please try it without it.

No way, way too high of a step. Jump off there, Lily. Show them how high the step that is. Yeah, no, those two are gonna be easy comparatively. I think we're gonna lead them over with an empty bucket because we forgot grain. Sent Jonah for some, but I don't know if he'll be back in time. Lily, can you hold this up? If you hold it even, it's not heavy.

That's good.

We got more hose here. Lily, see if you can find a pan and we'll see if we can't trick them. No, that joint right there, that'd be too easy. That's too easy.

Hey, Papa. I think it's over there. The joint's over here. Big, big, big, big, big, big, big, Big, big, big, big, big, big.

You got a pan? I should get the pig board and push him along. Pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig. Look at that. Are they really gonna just go up on there? No. Okay, here, keep them in just so— good. We probably don't need so much. Do you think we have to fortify this? It's crazy. Whoa, why is that ramp so jacked?

He did that.

Who did that? Oh, he did. Okay, now let's herd him in. He's not going in.

What do you bring?

Ha!

We got you, big fat pig! Go a little right, a little right.

Tractor had died again. I think we're gonna keep it idling on high. Don't let that fall down. We'll never get it up if they step on it. Okay, look, get in. You hold that gate. Down there.

Okay, all right, you gotta stand right here.

Do not let them pass you. She says, hey sister, hey man, hey handsome, hey pretty. Happy pigs united and together again, drinking. We are missing one waterer. Well, it's broke. Lily came back in to make ice cream. That's fine. Hopefully chocolate.

Chocolate chocolate. You need some mint chocolate chip.

How about chocolate chip chocolate?

How about no chocolate?

Okay, how about one of each?

I mean, that's not a bad idea.

All right, we got Beefcake and the cakes together, uh, sharing water. We'll get Beefcake over once we get a water figured out. I have some ideas for an Everflow water.

Can we have mint chocolate chip?

Really important stuff right here.

She's like, that's no problem.

I know, she's our little cooker, isn't she?

When are you coming in? It's Friday afternoon.

Aren't we supposed to be resting?

Uh, yeah, I was gonna be in by 4. I was thinking I would get an hour of clearing. Look at this, it's been staying up to temp. We have that problem worked out. On that end of the boiler. Now we'll see if we have the— time will tell if we have the thermostat issue fixed or not. I think we do. Josiah's grinding. We got about an hour. We're gonna see if we can pull off 1,300 square feet in an hour. That's what we need to do every working day to stay on track. For us, there are 6 working days in a week. Sunday we usually have longer, so there'll be some days that maybe we could do more. Maybe, maybe we do less. If we do more, we can adjust the number and we don't have to do 1,300 square feet every day. But if we do less, we'll have to do more. What do you think? You got all queued up?

Yep, sharpened it.

Okay, gear up and let's go. Just gearing up, that's, that's, that's something to be considered. Gearing up, chainsawing. We've got our field up there, guys. This bank From here to there, that's easily 1,300 square foot. Now we are getting just the smaller stuff for right now, gonna save the big stuff for either the pros or the machine.

What's wrong?

We're done. Yippee-ay-ay! We did it with 10 minutes of margin to spare. 1,300 square feet doesn't seem like much, but times 2 of those and you have a day's paddock. You pass it 4 times a year. So we just gained 2 days of pasture right there, guys. Good job, good job everyone! Let's go home. You guys want to do where the sheep were next? Yeah, because we need to put the sheep on this. Yeah, let's just give them a big old paddock over here. A lot of, a lot of dead pine that's laying down in there. Did the cows get water earlier today?

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And next thing, okay, the pigs, they all have water and food? Do we ever feed Beefcake and—

Yeah. No.

All right, can you guys do that? Hey mister, did you come out and say hey? 47 and barefoot because I'm gonna move my train.

Okay.

Oh, that'd be great because it was 21 degrees this morning. Feels balmy out here at 47. Okay, temperature's higher than here than it's calling for. All right, our body heat and that wood stove going, so we're gonna let that wood stove die out. Tonight is the night to know if that wood boiler is fixed. IKEA arrived today. There you are. Oh shoot, I gotta get the fish in unless you did.

I'm about to do it all.

Okay.

I was about to put it in. I'm starting the rice.

Give us a tour of your shelves.

They're just shelves. I have a, um, a desk that I'm hoping I can attach to the wall right here.

Yeah.

It normally would attach to the shelving unit. So we'll see what happens. If I can, if I can make it go right here, that would be better.

We did it! We proved we can do 1,300 square feet in an hour. I think this is doable. We need to stay on pace. And plus, the next video, it's our work day. It's going to be Sunday. Let's just see how much we can do in a day without distractions. Well, hopefully we don't have any surprise obstacles. Come on, happy day! See you guys then. Start it up. There you go. Well, you got to let it warm up.