Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 38

You can wear these hair accessories every day as a reminder to yourself and everyone as you do your dream goal. Maybe Dad will give in come spring and better weather.

Oh, it's a horse. The horse craziness continues. I know, I know. It's inevitable. A horse for Lily. I know. At this point, it's just timing. Lucky— well, she's lucky if she starts right now. She doesn't have a working alternator. We're working on that. This new battery she's on is eventually going to wear out, so we're going to put an EverCharging battery charger on it. Have one less problem with Lucky. It would be nice if we had an electric pole right there. Nope, we're gonna have to get a drop cord later. Come on, man, let's do chores. Uh-oh, what happened? Somebody didn't finish cleaning up their milk. Let's check this sprout of grain first. Definitely warmer in here. We confirmed it with the HVAC guys. There is a return pulling in air from the house down through this one, this one, and this one. House air comes down through these returns into the system, into the furnace, and then pushed back up into the vents. This is our wood boiler. It's very hot to the touch. It's heating this coil going through that one return. House air is getting sucked through here and here, but it's only getting heated through one. Two-thirds of our air isn't getting heated. No wonder it's only coming out at 72. In other news, it's enough to keep it warmer in here. I wonder if it's too much and this is going to dry out. It's still wet. We might have to rinse it every day, maybe flip it like this. So this is— it's been one day sprouting. Let's see, has anything sprouted? That pea is really soft. The corn, not so much. No wonder they aren't eating the corn. We're working on getting them to eat the corn. In maybe 2 days this will sprout, and I think it'll make the corn more edible. Pretty sure I know it'll make the corn more edible. Uh-oh, the chicken's laying an egg right now. That chicken's been laying eggs in there every day. The root cellar is coming along. I heard them talking yesterday, they're gonna pour on Wednesday. Not sure what they did yesterday. They laid this in there. Heard them say they're gonna cut this to size. It's a big heavy piece of metal. They're gonna concrete down into the blocks and the roof. Put some wooden framing in. Got a vent in. Got a vent down there. Gideon, show them that vent. Gideon, point to that vent.

That one?

No, well, the one behind you that they can see.

That one?

Yeah, now move out of the way so they can see it. See it? There you go. Put vents in on one side down at the bottom and on the other side at the top, and it creates a flow there. Whoa, let's go! You going with chicken? You're with us? Laying down? I guess it's gonna just go with us. Well, we came back because Henry's out and ready to go. How's it look, cute baby? Dead serious. We need these cages to catch the sheep because we gotta castrate two lambs this morning. All right, castrating these two male lambs so they don't start breeding their brothers and sisters and cousins. Look how close she's getting. Plus, you reared her head back like that the other day and hit me. I'm thinking we put you on a We need to get her calm enough to where we'll be able to walk up, put a collar on her, and then eventually walk up and grab her teats. That's gonna take a lot of trust. I see you've made a mess, little Henry, with the zip ties. You little stinker.

Hi.

Let's go. Thanks for the milk. This is ideal. The joint for opening the fence is right there. It just so happens to be— that's an old logging road or something. It's flat here-ish. Okay, we got our cage set up. Well, the calves are going through already, but let's get them out. They don't need to go through. We need to get the sheep down, everybody, and then we can herd them up. And we have the sheep net extending out, it's a bit of a funnel, super smooth. Okay, block them from going out. We didn't even have to get alfalfa. Good job, Lily. Castration of choice for lambs. Well, and, uh, cows for now, for steers. Banding. We're gonna catch these little guys, put them on their hind end, put it on this tool. We open that up, testicles come through, we let that off and pull the tool out. It's as easy as that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Now you gotta make sure the testicles don't come down. Yeah, we're gonna have to set them up because it's hard to get the testicles to stay down. Now they're dropping down. Gravity.

I'm catching them right now.

Got that guy. Yeah, tried the first one. I swear there's only one testicle in there, and I'm not experienced enough to be sure, so I just want to make sure I'm getting it. So I did the second one. Sure enough, those testicles were obvious. Right here, right here, Lily. Just like this. Hold his head, hold his head. Maybe cover his eyes with his, um, ears so he can't see. Yep, got them both. Wow, he's really holding those up there. Okay, double check. All right, we got them both in. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Pig panels are worth their weight in gold with animal management. That's the thing, when you do a pasture-based system, the animals are pretty wild and free. So when you need to captivate them, you got to be creative. It's only 9 o'clock. That means we can go clear for a couple of hours. Y'all's chainsaw stuff ready? Yep. Mom, you on mission to cook Thanksgiving?

I've already got sweet potatoes in in the oven.

Oh wow, okay, good job.

That's just the beginning.

Where are we clearing today? Uh, let's keep going where we're at. What do you guys think, getting all the stumps out where we've been doing? What do you think? What they want to do is cut big trees. They're acting like they want to do this area. Not bad. We're going to keep that tree. I like how it's stumped in there. I like that bank that is its roots. We could get this area. This would be a good 2,600 square feet. We just got to get the brush saw and get this stuff down. We leave this little locust, we get this big cherry and just a little bit of stuff down there and a poplar over there. This might be doable. And what we got, an hour and a half? I say we get in there with the brush saw first, and then anything that the brush saw can't get, and then the finale, that big cherry. We're probably gonna need my chainsaw for that cherry. We ended up expanding out of our goal area because if we fail this cherry, it's going to fall up on us in there. So we got to get that clear out or we're not going to be able to access it. This is property we've not seen before, you know what I mean? On our farm, we've cleared it, we've never had this view. It's just up in a whole new world. This is so exciting, I love it. He hit some barbed wire. Let's look at it. Look how it wrapped it in there. Holy smokes. You're definitely gonna probably have to sharpen it after that, huh? Yeah, sure enough, definitely was before it got to us. This parcel of land has been only in our family 30 years, unlike the main piece that's 90. We have weird stuff like barbed wire right through there, and that block building which we call Rich Mullins— it's interesting. It was said to be a hunting cabin. Man, wrapped around that. Hopefully it didn't break anything. Should we keep that cherry? It'd be a shade right there. The road's right here, and then we got this massive root system exposed. This knoll, that's a cool feature to drive by. See the barbed wire? They had run the barbed wire on it, which is a big no-no. Look at that, it's been in there 30-plus years, that barbed wire. They would have put it on this tree when it was just wee little thing, and it's grown this since they've done that. This is a snag, isn't it? Should I get the saw and get going on stuff?

Sure.

You don't mind if I cut your stuff? No. You sure? Yeah. Okay, I'll leave that poplar for you. How about that? Okay.

Ah! Ready?

Lily has ice cream going for dessert on Thanksgiving. We have Sweet potatoes roasting in the oven for sweet potato casserole. I have cornbread stuffing— well, this is the cornbread for cornbread stuffing in the making. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna make the gluten-free biscuits because you just put those in the freezer until baking time. All right, my sweet potatoes are finished roasting. I've got all my cornbreads back here, and over here I have my cream of mushroom condensed soup that I will use in green bean casserole.

This is a good safe tree because it's already leaning way over. There's no way it's going to fall a different direction because of vines. It could make this tree go funky, so When it starts falling, you run up the hill. Okay.

Okay. All right, come up the hill.

Woo! Took out that other tree over there. I think that was a maple. Wow, good job! Hey, you cut down two trees in one. We had to get Mom out here to see it. What do you think? It's beautiful. Views we've never had.

We've never had this view.

That's cool.

It is cool.

And is this tree cool?

I think if we thin out those rhododendrons—

oh, I was telling Rebecca on the way up here, this, this bank, it's a bank over there, but we're gonna clear it anyway to let sun through because that's south. This is the best part of doing something. Showing it off, right? Look, Mom. Mom making some tea. How'd Thanksgiving prep go?

Good. I have a couple more things I'm gonna do after I'm done with tea.

Like?

I'm gonna make hibiscus tea. And I'm gonna make the biscuits.

Okay, nice. Well, let me pause the game. It was just a big upset. Saudi Arabia beat Argentina. Now we're on to Australia and France. What do you have planned for Thanksgiving?

Well, we're gonna have turkey and obviously gravy. Well, some people don't like them.

Really?

Then we're gonna have, um, sweet potato casserole, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, biscuits, sweet tea or hibiscus tea. Wow. Apple pie, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie.

When are you gonna make all that?

Vanilla. So like the stuff—

You're gonna be making the pies, aren't you?

No, because I don't have— I had to order flour that we're waiting on to come tomorrow.

We should probably do butter today. Lots of cream. It's time. We've made 2 batches of ice cream and still you can only eat so much ice cream. It's time to make butter. Good thing Beck came over because I'm using the wrong attachment. She normally does this, but Henry is indisposed. Coming along nice. 20 minutes, this butter broke. Look what happened, the butter separated from the— well, it's gonna be buttermilk. Hey, is that a treat for the pigs or what?

Yeah, the pigs will eat it.

Or you like buttermilk, Randall?

You gotta have just the right thing to eat when you got food.

My dad used to love cornbread and butter.

But hold on a second, your dad, because I gave him that once and he did not like that butter.

He didn't.

So this was all cream. Yeah, we whipped it past whipping cream to— then now this is the butter and this is the buttermilk. So it's milk with no fat in it.

What makes it taste so sour?

Well, they ferment it.

Oh, that's why my dad didn't like this buttermilk. We didn't ferment it.

Nope.

So what would we do to ferment it then?

Just sit it on the countertop, let it rot.

My dad preferred rotting. We're gonna clump this together now, rinse it some right there. Now I'm gonna do a trick I learned from Mrs. Doherty. Now, Randolph, we You got to get all the milk out of that butter. This isn't as milky as I would have thought.

So you're washing the butter?

Yeah, if you want to get all that milk out of it and then it won't go bad, then you can leave it on your counter shelf stable. The fat won't go bad. Yeah, look, we're not getting much out of it. I'm just gonna mash it out, any remaining milk.

So it's a place to churn in it.

That's it, right? Yeah, I did it with a mixer. These are 1-pound.

Yes, sir.

Here you go, Randolph.

It's pretty fresh. The cream's from this.

Pretty good, huh? That ain't even got no salt in it. It does have a little bit, just a little bit. Man, good, huh?

Don't get no better than that.

I haven't made butter in a long time. I'm really happy how that turned out. Yeah, it didn't taste gamey. It just tastes nice and neutral.

Well, Randolph really liked it.

Hey, it passed the Randolph test. Took so long, didn't he? Good for Randolph. France getting a penalty kick. Never mind, but they are ahead 2-1 versus Australia. Yeah, if you're watching this for coverage of the World Cup, don't. For one, we're 2 days behind, and two, this is the only sporting event, the only soccer tournament we watch, period. I can't name one player on either one of those teams, or even the US team, but it's fun to watch every 4 years. Cleaning up after a good day. We made big progress on the clearing job. Our goal for the 100 days of growing food— wintertime is a great time to clear. We are clearing 2 acres. We are accessing water on, well, the parcel of land over yonder, and we are— well, we cleared the access road over there. It's a wintertime project. It's a 100-day challenge. We go on vacation at the end of that, get a break from the farm, and then we need to come back from that strong going into the remodel. Now is the time. Now or never. Tomorrow, volunteers. We have some friends from the community coming tomorrow. Two adults. Afternoon. Well, we're gonna go see the doctor for Jonah in the morning, and then the afternoon these folks are coming And I dare to imagine with 2 adults plus Jonah and Josiah, myself— are you gonna help us in the morning, Lily? You're gonna have to milk by yourself tomorrow. Can you? Yeah. What cows are you? We left Flossie's calf on her, and so all you got to do is milk Honey. Okay, so you got to herd everybody over. Yeah. And then milk Honey. And then make sure you tie Honey up before you start milking her. Okay. And you can tie her with, uh, Flossie's. All right, that's tomorrow. It's gonna be good. See you then.