Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 86

A pork shoulder roast, big one, 10 pounds. Somebody said in the comment— comments yesterday, maybe Gideon shouldn't have to go. Because he clearly does not want to be part of the farm. This is true. It's not about that. I'm not trying to get them to want to be a part of the farm. More what I'm trying to do is not leave a child up to their own devices. Hey Gideon, what would you do if you didn't go on chores with me in the morning? Watch Henry or play. Could he opt out of farm work and do a job like watch Henry instead? Theoretically yes, and I would actually have no problem with that if he would do it. Needs a little bit more maturing, responsibility, whatever you want to call it. 1 hour to PT, buddy, so you better do your little chores. If you're leaving in 1 hour, are you gonna make breakfast before you go or need me to? Yes. I'm gonna try milking on Wednesday. How's your finger? Okay. Starting to feel better? Yeah. Can you milk instead of Lily? Sure. I believe Lily was 8 when she started milking. Note to self: do not leave dog food out when it melts. Hopefully today is the day we can be back to clearing land. I think it's been over a week now. We've made a lot of progress on the 100-day challenge, especially with getting our water line in. Did you look in the house for your coat? You did look in the Lego room in the car? Yeah. Okay, now you think You think it's at Grandma's? Yes. Get Sally warmed up. Okay. Nothing feels more like progress than a good hour, hour and a half on a chainsaw session. No, your coat's not here either. Maybe in the basement. I don't see it. Wouldn't Grandma tell us your coat's up there? No. All right, let's go. Okay, go see if she's got it. It looked like he's found a coat. Nothing? Nope. We've looked everywhere. It could be outside. It's just— you must have overlooked it inside, Gideon. Is this working? Why is that like below zero? I think I put the fire out when I shut it with its lid on. Perhaps I got something this time. Lid's wide open, bottom's wide open. We're eating breakfast. Yep. You making fire. You ever find your coat? Here, Gideon, just put on this other sweater until we find your coat. Hey, good news! Everybody sing hallelujah! That was the last bag of our alfalfa mesh. Back to alfalfa pellets. Don't play over there, you're coming to help. Go get Henry cart and go get it loaded with wood, okay? I'll give you 15 minutes. Good choice. Time to herd everybody out but the milk cows. Come on, sheep. Come on, sheep. Hey, hey, come on. This one's limping pretty bad. Floppy, we'll look at that hoof later, okay? She's great with child, just barely limping around. You got some alfalfa we can give her? There you go, Floppy. What's wrong? You don't like the pellets? You want to go ahead and milk Flossie? It's funny, they didn't like the mesh at first. I don't think so, she didn't kick me at all when I cleaned her. Uh-oh, Gideon, get over here please. No. Okay, great, but now come over here and help me milk. Yeah, come help. You can, you can have all afternoon to play in that sandbox. Well, she never really ate the pellets, but she did stand there for me. Part of it is this alfalfa hay. They're getting a lot of alfalfa. How'd you do on yours? She left a bunch of hers too. We'll save a lot of money, although you need the protein from the alfalfa for more milk. I think they're getting it from the hay, so I'm not too worried about it. You guys want it? Joe Salatin asked me once, given I make content every day, hey, do you ever run out of content ideas? I said, Joe, Do I ever run out of problems? He laughed. Here's the problem now. This has been knocked off. Looks like we've put in mucho screws. Josiah is trying to find a bolt drill driver so maybe we can do a bolt action. They don't seem to mind the alfalfa. You guys want some alfalfa? Poppy, where'd you go? There you go. We'll come get you in a second. Just had— literally had a drill bit. I guess I suddenly set it down somewhere and we don't know where that is. Maybe that'll buy me some time so I can clear today. Good morning! You out playing with us? Josiah watching you now. A little over 300. Let me turn it down a hair. Lily, she's playing soccer. All right, let's go, let's go clear. It's just gonna be us three. Josiah's watching the baby, Jonah's at PT. Homesteading is a tricky business. There's always something more to do on the farm. I could fix that rail for the cows. We could tidy up, we could get the pigs some minerals, uh, put— give them some more deep bedding. The list never ends. Can I change though? No, you can't change. Sorry, buddy. Uh, Sawzall? Yeah, maybe not. Let's, let's get you home and brushed first, then you can graduate that and you can run the Sawzall. I can keep going. It's just like video editing. Ben could keep chopping and adding graphics and Uh, he could do subtitles and all kinds of crazy stuff, and we could just keep on going. But at some point, we just have to hit publish. And homesteading is the same way. At some point, we're gonna have to accept the chaos if we're going to expand. The best way I've found to do that is time blocks. Do chores, get chores done as soon as we can, make a little bit of improvements, make sure we're getting by, make sure nobody's gonna die, everybody— all the animals are taken care of. Oh shoot, that reminded me, uh, Floppy. We really do need to take care of her before we do this. That's one thing we can't leave in chaos— an animal limping. Got it, our sheep tool, our cleaning hoof tool. Get out of those boots, you silly. Why? They're hot enough for me to walk in, let alone you. You should do it. I wish you guys could smell this. That's part of the fun of smoking. And working outside is— you get to smell that all day long. All right, let's go. You still wearing those shoes? Oh my gosh, Poppy, that's lucky she's right there. Come here, come here, come here. I'm gonna clean out her hoof, make sure there's nothing there. I'm gonna trim it. Does that hurt? No, I don't think so. I think it's like clipping nails. All right, maybe that was something that was bugging her. I don't see anything that like would harm her. It's gonna be a little raw, but I don't see any like briars or anything. Was that it? Yeah, that was the last one. How's that feel? Good. How'd he do, Beck? Yeah, good. He's free to be himself again. Yeah. What's going on with Floppy? She's limping. She's limping. Let's check the forest pigs. I hear water coming in. I don't see it overflowing out the top. I see water going out. We're good. Good. Cool. What do you think I got you? You got all you can eat buffet over there. Let's go look at how much we got left. We have cleared so much. It's amazing what you can do when you commit 100 days, come out and clear as much as you can. Like, we haven't even been out here in a week, but for the most part, doing an hour a day can really knock something out. Starts getting pretty steep right there. There's a barbed wire right there. I think we kind of cut up where this barbed wire did. It's a little thinner right here. How about if we mark it? We're finally getting started. Half an hour. It's better than nothing. Wow, it's amazing what you can do in 20, 30 minutes. That brush pile added more to that brush pile and more to that brush pile. There's our yellow tape, broke it there. Let's tie it back together. I don't know, we did 1,200 square feet easy, 1,300. Lily, you're a trooper. Jonah, you're a trooper. I'm gonna call the graders. That's out of my control. I've been on the graders for a couple of weeks now. We're gonna get the bigger trees. We're gonna do everything within our control to finish this. Thank you for tying that up, Lily. Look what I got here. We got Joey back, and this time we asked for 25% fat. I think there might have been a mix-up. It looks really fatty. There might be more. It's probably delicious. Hopefully not too fatty. I'm excited though, since burger is like a staple in our house to go to when we don't have leftovers from the night before. I want a sizzle. That cooked a lot like lamb in its fat consistency, so I don't think it was too, too much fat. We're gonna try the taste test now. Let's test it. It is good. Very flavorful. It's very beefy in its flavor. That's a Jersey American milk and Devon Cross right there. Everybody like the beef? I feel like that's going to be an acquired taste. It was good, uh, looking forward to more, but I think as I eat more and more, we'll want it more and more, and it'll be harder to go back to the other stuff. Kind of like Honey with the alfalfa this morning, a little hesitant, but she's going to soon be addicted. A little content planning for you guys. I think January is the perfect time to plan, definitely perfect time to plan out the homestead. 275, nice. We're gonna sneak in here and take its temp. We're almost to 160. That's a good thing. It's only 1:30. We still got 3 and a half hours till dinner. I love it when the smoked meat gets up to 160. Your pork, because that means we just need to make it even more tender, even more juicy. We got to do a little trick. We all have a limit in time, money, energy, but you'll be surprised how homesteading— well, it ends up being a solution to, to a lot of those things. It could be a detriment or a solution. If you're focusing on the wrong things. But what are the wrong things? What are the right things? You want to make sure you're being efficient with your time, energy, and your space. You can do a lot. Like, guys, 1,300 square feet right there, and I swear we could grow half our, uh, food during the growing season if that was all we had. But you do that with what you call permaculture— design smart design. You don't build a house without blueprints, do you? Without plans. So let's stop building our homestead without plans. Let's open this wide open. You know, see, a lot of people missing this step. That's where Uncle Justin's coming in. I'm gonna— I'm gonna do a homestead design course. That's— that's me planning that. I'm also planning content for when we're gone on vacation. Probably won't be posting every day, but maybe we'll have few things we can toast. This tin foil is like one of those jobs that's stressful doing it, but once you've done it and you had it in this nice ball of foil— put the parchment down so we don't have direct contact with that, uh, foil, keeping in the juices. January 22nd, mark your calendars, gonna be a live event, gonna be an online workshop, not a webinar. It's gonna be a long workshop. Folks are gonna come away with plants for their homestead by the end of it. Okay, yeah, enough office work. The kids are begging me to go play soccer. I can't resist. The sun is shining bright. You're gonna make the, uh— see, he's in shorts. Okay, you guys— hey, Rebecca, you're gonna make the apples and onions? Yes, that'll go with the pork nicely. I don't think they beat me yet. I did beat you once. That's because you cheated and stopped the clock. You can't— there's no stopping the clock in soccer. Tell them, let it be known he's the cheater. No clock stopping in soccer, y'all know that. We'll focus on the launch next week. I did just want to mention that date just so you set it to the side. January 22nd in the afternoon for Abundance Plus members. Let's worry about that a little later. Just kind of jot it down in your calendar that that may be something you want to do. I'll teach you more about— I'll tell you more about it next week. For now, I want to give away a free sample of Abundance Plus, a nice 3-part course from the Dohertys. All 3 parts are dropped. I highlighted the part 1 yesterday. You gonna play, my man? Yeah, he's been with me all day, and now we'll go play together. Today's video It's called How to Successfully Homestead in a Recession. It could— might as well be called How to Homestead During Inflation. We've had like 6% or 7% inflation over the last year. Homesteading can make or break you during that. It can crush you or save you during that. There's nobody better than the Dohertys to teach that. It's free. I'm going to give you that course down in the description. Enjoy. Let's do this. Wait, who are you giving me? Barton, Gideon, and Justice. Okay, against Jonah, Josiah, Joyful, and Grace. 10-minute halves. 30 minutes was too much last time for this old man. Wilder too. Okay, great. Are you playing, Henry? Are you playing? Oh, I told you! I didn't think that was possible. I ended up getting them 5 to 1. Not sure how that happened. I worked real hard for that 0.1. They gave up right after 0.1, pretty much, I feel like. Look what Gideon found. Where'd you find that drill? Right there. Okay, come on, let's go surprise Josiah with it. We didn't need that to fix the cow trough this morning. We'll fix it tomorrow, but let's show him this. Look, where's it? I found it. What you working on, bro? My sword. Let's see it. Oh wow, I like it. Look at this beauty. Look how that turned out, Beck. And Mom made some apples and onions and baked beans. I want everybody to tell me how good that pork shoulder is. Good. Yeah, buddy. Is it good? Yeah. Is it good, Mr. Henry? What about you, Jonah? You like it? It's kind of smoky. Jonah, they'll tell you the truth, Beck. I think that's gonna be delicious. So good. Juicy, smoky.