Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 3

Day 3 of 100 building a brand new homestead. These guys have totally crushed it. Look at the work they've done. We set them in here yesterday and now we can get in here with a chainsaw. Now that they've underbrushed this, we're gonna put them to work on another patch. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. We're gonna then work this up with the chainsaw. Yesterday we mowed and cleared in here, got snagged up on that and lost our chain. I'd say we cut down about 5 trees. Guys, we got a lot of work ahead of us. Things have got to start speeding up. Hopefully that can happen today. By the end of this 100 days, we will have established acres of pasture, found water, and built access. That's the goal. Well, we found out why there was evil chicken poo on the deck last night. That's why there's poop all over the step. It's because the chicken has is sleeping on it. It's got its wings clipped, but it's still getting out. Put her in the butterfly-proof high tunnel. No more, uh, pooping on our steps. Yeah, and if we get everybody in the high tunnel, ain't nobody gonna be out. Heated up my jacket because it's like 25 degrees. Out. Not only is it 25 degrees, it's windy. Let's see if Gideon put up the bar. He did, and it looks like it works. See, y'all are pushing on top. Okay, one little turdlet right there. See, a few little dry things right here. Hey, that means we don't have to go wash this off. That's what it looked like before. Now they're getting it down to this. We can actually come in here and get our clips off and cut these strings off. Look, the chickens have totally eaten this, and they'll destroy it at its base, and these tomato plants will die. You guys found some peppers? Well, no more deaths. So if anybody was sensitive to tomato plants, they're gone. I've kind of forgotten about this chicken garden. I gotta get people in here to clear it out and see if we've got any fruit. Enjoy your greens, ladies. I've been getting a lot of stuff ready the day before so that we can get chores done and hit the 100 days building homestead. Yesterday we got 5 trees cut. Yeah, that, that pace is not gonna do it, so we're gonna see if we can pick up the pace today.

How come we're trying to get chores so fast?

So that we can clear land. Cold days like this, you have to fill up their water for tomorrow yesterday afternoon. That's what we've done here. And then you just break the ice. This auto water isn't going to work in the freezing morning. Little lamb's adorable. Come on, Joey, let's go. I keep telling myself it's miserable out here, it's so cold, and I just want to go get by the fire. Then I'm also telling myself, no, wait, cold exposure is good, and so is getting work done. I think that's the difference between a thriving homestead and a surviving homestead. A thriving one, you're able to push through somehow when you don't want to. Rain, heat, sleet, snow, wind.

You all right?

No. You want to go get warmed up for a minute?

Yeah.

Normally when we do a 100-day challenge, it's growing food and it's in the growing season. We started this 100 days at the start of winter. Day 3, it's 25 degrees. Fire's out, or going out. Wait, why is it— is that how you did— is that your face covering? You need a ski mask. Hey, wait, is that all you got? You open the door for 2 logs, same amount of cold air comes in whether you bring 2 logs or 10. Normally I'd be super stressed out about having to cook lunch right in the middle of morning chores or right before we do the clearing. So cold. I'm enjoying a bit of a respite. Oh my, it's a health nut explosion!

It's a little notch.

You got homeopathy, you got essential oil, you got herbs. Yeah, pin you down. No, and I've got like You got energy stuff somewhere.

It's my herb, my acupuncture stuff.

Acupuncture. Over there. What are you missing?

I don't know. I'm sure there's something out there I'm missing. But this is just like my— I would say that this is kind of like our healthcare.

I'm gonna go brave this blistering cold.

Yeah, I know. Sorry that you have to do that. I'm enjoying the nice warm—

Yeah, home. You do that. Yeah, for me, 20 till 9, I'm gonna try to get everything ready so when Jesse is done with his lesson, we can go at it. Oh, that'll be good. I think we do have to move sheep, so that's going to slow us down a bit. But actually, that doesn't really slow us down, that puts them to work for us.

You can take Lily too.

Okay, because sure, and Gideon will stay and kind of watch, just play with Henry. Okay, cool.

That's using, uh, our units.

What's going on? You're gonna get up? You want to get up? Let me get warm clothes on and come watch us. Hey, looks like we're gonna be working in the sun up here. They've done it! They've done it. We can easily get in there, Birdo. And maybe because that's a smaller paddock, maybe for our soul satisfaction, we get these sheep out, we put them over here, they'll work this, and then we can saw up the— I think we could do that today. I think we could saw up this paddock. Now mind you, we're leaving the big straight stuff for the logging guys, which are visiting tomorrow. It's a very nice surprise. It's probably not what you're thinking. Logging. It's very unique. Think, think animal power. Think that she's gonna be really excited. How about we'll surprise them at the end of this video when we announce our visitor tomorrow? Hey! The kids got this up while I was doing that. Why don't you guys come all the way with this fence?

I thought you were going to cut a path up.

Well, I wasn't, but we can, uh, build off this one. That's the end. Well, the other end is up there about 25 feet. That's exactly why we have 50-foot nets, because can you imagine running 100 feet just to cover 20? Getting those lambs trained out. Falfa. Judy's lambs even coming down. Best part of our day. Animals to new paddocks. Buddy knows what up. He came right over. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Let's train him. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Come on, Buddy, lead the way. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. See, do these lambs hearing this? Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Here you guys go. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Good. Look, they're crushing it. The cool thing is we'll go inside, they'll still be out here working. That sun is doing its duty. I'm hot. You hot? Jose. Saw it on a rope. I'm finding myself kind of slowing down as we get near chainsaw. Got about an hour left. I don't know, I'm just getting tired thinking about it, but maybe an hour is perfect. Let's start with small stuff, work up from there. We ran both chainsaws out of fuel. We didn't bring fuel. Gosh guys, we got to bring fuel next time because we could go another 10-20 minutes. We got twice as much brush as we did yesterday.

So you've got 6 trees.

Funny, funny guy. As much as I want to hurry up and go do that, I need some margin in my life. Perhaps we'll come back. I was gonna come get these. These ought to be fun. I'm gonna come get those these after— this afternoon. Yeah, this stump we shortened up earlier though, that was a big— that was a big accomplishment. That was a third of our fuel right there, probably. Look at that thing.

All I want to do is just stand without crutches on two legs.

Yeah, you know she's gonna make you ease into it, right?

Yeah, but yeah, that'll be hard, I guess, because I just want to go.

I'm feeling that chainsaw after you. I'm out of chainsaw shape. Boy, it feels good in here. Dare I open this? Oh, look how organized. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

No, don't do that to the top one.

Oh, okay. Let me see that shirt. Yes, you can. It says I can move mountains. That's encouraging. We can clear mountains. We can clear mountains one tree at a time, Beck. One tree at a time. I've been eyeing these persimmons. So, Syd, you get some? Yeah, they're supposed to be good after a frost. Last night definitely frosted. Do it into the pig bucket, bro.

Pig bucket?

Yeah, they need the skin. I love the skin. Looks like he wants one too. I know, right now, meat and tater lunch. That's right, meat and taters and butter. We have an hour or two, get some more work done. I like it. What's the idea with the rocks?

So he can't get his nose under it to flip it.

And then you strapped it? Yeah. They can't tip it over. You think it's gonna work? Okay, let's get him up here. Big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. All right. Here you go. There you go. No, don't get up, don't get up, you don't have to get up. All right, look how beautiful. Come on, here we go, here we go. Look, piglets are eating grain. Got a little icky in here. We're a little past due for a move. Supposed to move every 5 to 12 days. It's probably been 14. Try not to make a habit of that. All right, this is our batch. I would say that one, but what if it falls over onto the sheep? We'll wait on that one for sawmill. How about this cluster of big trees? Big-ish. This one would have to go first. Hopefully it doesn't get caught up. It might, it might get caught up right there, so we would need to get those. So maybe we don't get these clusters today. What if we went this way and then we got some of those big ones, bigger-ish ones? Get that one. Yeah, we could go like this. Chainsaw got jammed. I was making a wedge. What you do is you make a wedge and then you cut a line from behind, but it— I made the wedge too big and it started to fall. So I'm gonna try to do is snap it right there and hopefully it'll fall over. That one's going to hit everything here, so we need to get that done. But first, let's work this up. Look at that! That's better. That's more like it. And tomorrow— hey, we don't have to move sheep tomorrow, so we can dedicate it a couple of hours. Dude, we can clear that tomorrow. Yeah. And dude, we're like on an endless gas. This thing was just keeping going. We just have to quit because we got to go supper.

I thought the chain would fall off before we quit.

I just can't quit looking at this. We did that, guys. We did that. And you guys worked hard. Everybody worked a little better this afternoon, didn't we? Me too. Beck, it went so much better. Good. I don't know if it's because we're getting better, it's the afternoon, spirits are high, weather's good. Boy, it smells good in here. Good. It's Taco Tuesday. I missed you today. This is the way the lady rides, the lady rides the lady. This is the way the lady rides all through the town. This is the way the gentleman rides, the gentleman rides, the gentleman rides. This is the way the gentleman rides all through the town. I see you've been opening my packages.

Give me a leg.

Look how heavy duty. You hook this to the tractor, the chain, and then that's— you open it as you pull. Yeah, you open that, put that around the tree, and then as this pulls it just makes it tighter and tighter on the tree. This one, unlike the stick one, has good, good, uh, ratings.

Yeah.

How about this? Tomorrow we try to pull some of these trees out by the roots. Okay. What do you think?

You have to leave some stumps out.

It'll be fun.

You have to leave the stumps up.

Well, I can only get a tree that it'll go around.

See, you see, you cut it off at the— you cut it off when you cut it off. You cut it off, you don't leave the stump.

Oh, that makes sense. You cut the tree off and then you pull that up. Yeah, that makes sense. Then the tree doesn't fall all over you.

This one you can attach to the bucket and just go in.

Yeah, that's cool. Henry exploded it. Tomorrow, the big surprise guest, a horse logger. Yes, well, he's not bringing us horses, but he's coming tomorrow. We're going to talk about it. His shtick is to harvest wood off the farm to build the homestead house. We have our designer coming tomorrow too, and we're gonna meet, we're gonna look at lumber, and we're gonna see if this is a thing. Because wouldn't that be cool to do a lot of this clearing with draft horses? That's what we're talking about tomorrow. That's gonna be good. Join us, join us for day 4 tomorrow. Thanks for joining us today. Love and appreciate you. See you then. This is the way the cowboy rides, the cowboy rides the cowboy. This is the way the cowboy rides all through the town. Woo!