Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 8

Day 8 of 100 days of building a homestead. We are looking at our pond. We are looking at possible house sites, maybe one just up the hill from the pond. Can we clear a view to get an idea of what it would be like if our house were right up there? I don't think you didn't got the eggs last night. Shoot. That means the chickens pooped on their eggs last night. Yeah, you probably— yeah, look, just surrounded in chicken squat. I might have to find a temporary solution for this because it's not Gideon getting the eggs at night. I'm thinking we'll cut one of these boards or something and put over those nest boxes. I remember why that won't work, because they'll just poop on top of the nest box and it's not draining them to nothing. We have to put like an arch over it. Maybe I'll just do that. I was thinking we'd get Randolph because I'm so busy building this homestead, but I might just have to take time to do that. It's just that Randolph would be so much faster. And I'm so busy. It does look like they are, they are perching over here. We solved most of our problem by just getting in the perch on the turkey shaw. Look how much they've cleared in here in just a few days. Ah, look, more eggs. Big distraction. Cleaning poopy eggs. No way! You guys fell off this roof. You can see the indention where the camera was. And it's still working? Well, can you hear the mic bouncing? The plastic stand for the mic is broken. That's it. Mr. Brown, we gotta go.

But I can't find my shoes.

Oh boy. What do they look like?

I don't know.

Did you have them on yesterday and take them off when it warmed up? No.

Yeah.

Gonna fly it as fast as it goes. Dang, that's real fast. Do you know where Mr. Brown's shoes are? You coming with? Oh good, did you find something?

There's his red ones.

I don't want to wear those.

You gotta wear them. There they are. The homestead potential across the creek gets sun in the morning. The homestead site potential across the road does not, but it does get sun in the evening.

I'd rather have sun in the morning than sun in the evening.

Yeah, I think for passive solar house design you want sun in the afternoon and evening because then it captures that heat and stores it and releases it all night. I could be wrong. But I think that's how it is. Well, no more November 2nd. Should we clean up what we started at Grandma's? Just like, there's some trees down.

Yeah.

I was hoping she wouldn't say that. I wanted a full day to see how much we could get done over there. View to the pond. We are going to attempt to get this mineral sled or milk sled up around this tree branch and back down in. You stopped. It doesn't seem like it because it's still dark, but it's like 10:00, 11:00. I was hoping to have started 1 hour ago. Oh, let's get the pans. We try— We tried just milking them in the field and not moving this. That didn't work. Flossy was too antsy. We are making an observation over there. One of the original spots we eyed when we first had Austin out is across the creek. It's on a knoll, so it's up above the valley. It's across the creek, and I believe it's gonna get morning and afternoon sun. Our little spot over there has finally got sun. It's 10 o'clock. You want sun on passive solar from 10 to— is it 2 or 3, something like that? Well, it's not even the dead of winter and it just got light over there at 10 o'clock. Observation is going to be the key. I mean, I can clear a view of that pond all I want, but that's not where I'm gonna have a site. I mean, it won't be the end of the world because that's where we are gonna have pasture. I guess I don't need a neat view to convince us. View is like It's, it's, it's nice, but it's not— definitely not the top priority. Sun is. Okay, we're getting it. Just chill out, Lily. You can, uh, wash her off. This move would have been a lot easier without that branch. I just love that branch that comes down and the kids play on it. That's important too.

While Justin is outside, I have gotten some lunch in the oven. We have acorn squash. Is that hot, Henry? Hot? Are you being shy?

Hot? Hot?

No, we're gonna keep it shut. We have some fish that I'm gonna cook up, um, because Justin is still out there. I'm trying to help him as much as possible. So we can actually get out and get started actually doing something outside. That's not sure, but we slept in this morning, which was much needed.

Hopefully we don't clip that tree. I'm starting to lean towards not clearing so much for pasture right this minute. But clearing for possible house sites. And if we clear the house sites and don't use it as a house site, it's not a big deal because it'll be pasture. Remember, during this 100-day challenge, we're finding a house site, we're clearing for pasture, we're sourcing water, and we're creating access. Well, Beck, we weren't gonna have all day. It's now 11 o'clock.

I just got dinner at lunch in.

Okay, here's the thing. Jacob doesn't come, nobody's calling. It's Sunday. Yeah, we still have a big day ahead of us. We still have a big day. Look who's coming. We are across the creek. We keep going back and forth, uh, and it's not— I don't think that's incompetence. I think that's just being diligent. It's not like, oh, we decided over there. No, we haven't decided yet. Uh, so Big Daddy's house, this is one of— this is like the original spot over there and down lower. We came there with Austin, but let me show you, their line is closer than we thought. Rebecca, see the ribbon right there? You get to a spot, you observe the the corners. The line is like right here. You have to be off the line a certain amount of feet. And could they potentially develop that in 50 years? I don't know. The neighbor— well, second look up there, it seems too close to the neighbors. We've only got 30 minutes to lunch. As much as I'd like to get started, it's not quite worth it to get all set up, so Let's clean the house. Back. She's watching our video where we got pregnant with Henry. Sweet. I did get some pork rinds going and some lard rendering. 12:11. Can we have a goal to start at 1, work till 4? 3 hours. It'll be the longest stretch we've done yet. Can we do it? Yeah, clear from the pond up to that potential site.

We're clearing up there?

Yes. Okay, I think our mission is going to be clearing the different possible house sites. What do you think, Rebecca? Great. Dang, what's that, man? Ah, is that for safety sawing? You gonna chainsaw today?

Yeah, I hope.

Okay, let's do it. It's time. Can we hit it hard? 3 hours. You're gonna cut, I'm gonna cut, we're all gonna haul. Oh, honey's out. Did you ever turn the fence back on this morning?

No.

And if honey's out, they're all out. Yeah, I thought—

all right, you go work on that.

I thought you would do it while you were up there with the tractor.

Oh no. Here's the plan: y'all put brush where it's easy, probably just right there, because the grader's coming and that's going to be his first job, is to clean up around this pond. And if that brush is in his way, he can move the brush in seconds. We got the unsexy pile of brush out of the way. Barely doing any cutting down, certainly didn't cut down a tree. Now we're going to start having some fun. Just keep the saw blade in front of you, never saw towards your foot. Always be aware of who's around. That you have protective gear on, they don't. So just kind of be away from us. Okay. We're progressing well. Josiah's going at it. Oh, look at that view already! But what's it gonna look like from up here? Let's get some more before and after. Let's stand right here. Before. After. I'll come back here in a minute and I'll do that before and after sequence and we'll have a view. All right, let's clean around the pond too so that we can actually see the pond directly. Let's do it before and after here. Before. After. Hey, the blue barrel floating around is a nice addition. Shall we continue on up? With this big tree right here.

Did we leave this one on purpose?

Uh, I didn't.

No, I didn't get it.

Before, after. What do you think? It's pretty. You seeing the possibilities?

Yep.

Look at that.

This could be our, uh, our backyard one day.

3 o'clock. We got one more hour, but look at the brush pile. We're doing really good. Super proud of this guy. Proud of you, buddy. You're getting with it. We only got 30 more minutes, you know. I don't know, I don't know if we could win all day. I mean, this old man's getting tired. Can we get this section here? I'm gonna set you guys up right here. Yeah, that's gonna be a mean view without all these trees in the way, isn't it? And he just keeps getting better and better. Oh yeah, still got more to clear this way, but can you see it? Can you see a glimpse at the glory? It's gonna be real nice. We got pretty far. Let's see, we worked good 2 and a half hours from the pond all the way to here. Well, that's probably 100, 100, a little over 100 feet. I like it. We still got a long way to go. It's kind of neat to be this intimate with every foot of the pasture. Well, this could be the house site. Still, this is cool to be involved such an entry level. This house, wherever it's going to end up, is going to have one heck of a story, isn't it? Look guys, you can kind of see it and you'll be able to see it in the winter. Well, well, you have the barn at the pond, and then you have that gentle sloping— we used to be the mountain board course, now pasture— and we have a beautiful mountain going up. It's going to be quite the view, and we'd be getting the sunshine. These trees wouldn't block it. We're gonna have to leave big hardwoods like that, and it might be that their house— the house is in front of it, and so then that shade in the summer loses its leaves in the winter, and then you get full sun. But in the summer and the sun's overhead, you want that shade. That, like, I've never seen this. From here we're only going to be able to see one little strip of public road. Some of you might be saying, well, why are you leaving the perfectly good home you've got? Yeah, good question. It's 50 feet from a public road. The other thing is, well, could we use our house? It's more of a— I don't know what I've done online. More physical, have workshops and stuff like that. I don't know, rent it out and like vacation rental or something. Could it be a commercial kitchen where we process, uh, meat sticks, pork sticks, something? I don't know, this pork rinds is entrepreneurial mind. Don't worry, we'll find plenty to do with that holler house. I'm kind of thinking we continue to work on possible house sites. Til November 2nd till this passive solar designer comes and helps us get an idea of better sites. But it'd be kind of neat if we had them somewhat cleared, each potential site, so that he and us could have a better look-see. Let's see if my lard is just destroyed. It's actually not too bad, I don't think. I already pulled some of it, the lard. I left it going while I was gone. I think it's perfect. I am excited about this. We did this last night so we would have more time today. I actually seasoned our Indian chicken last night, so it will be soaking in. I think it'll be super juicy. Lily and Mom made raita. Lily made some rice. Cook some broth. I'll tell you what, I'm having the time of my life working with them. It's so fun to see little Lily, see little Gideon, even Mom getting out there and throwing the brush. This is very special. I'm glad we decided to do this. This is a good project that we can all work on together. It is. Think about that. A couple people sawing, everybody can haul brush. This is just really special. It is. And you know, sometimes I wonder because the machines could do it so much faster.

I know.

So much safer. I thought it saves money, but it also creates memory. And golly, we built the homestead and the house. That's going to be special. The grader's coming tomorrow. We're going to get around the pond with those guys.

Wow. Actually, we should also say that we have had— we've been on Mark's books for a while.

How long?

I think they were supposed to come in February.

February? They're coming tomorrow. I figured we were gonna have them clean around the pond. We were gonna get them to do access pastures. We're not gonna get them to do pastures anymore, so let's just get them to clear around the pond. And, uh, we'll go from there. I want to have the surveyor— we need to talk to surveyor on Tuesday. He's coming too, because I just found out recently they can mark road— they can survey for roads.

They can, and they know how to do it. Like, yeah, do a good job with it.

The graders, I think, can do access roads, but not like— we want minimum contour. That's what they teach you in permaculture. The, the less steep the road, the better. And less maintenance over time. Jonah, do you know how to drain the pond?

Yeah, you just have to empty the pipe. You have to un—

un-nail. But do you know how to do that?

You just take a hammer up there and take the nail out that's holding the pipe up.

That's it?

Yeah.

And then how do you push the pipe down?

You just push it down and then it'll— the water will go in and hold it down.

And the pipe stays down? It doesn't float back up?

I don't know, we might have— we might have to tie it— we might have to tie a cinder block to it and throw it down.

All right, well, looks like we got some work to do after supper because they're gonna need to clean out the pond to knock it out. Henry, Henry, where are you at? You're not gonna eat? You want to eat? All right, after supper, let's go see if we can't drain this pond. Look who joined us!

Thank you for coming.

It's good, isn't it, kids? Yeah, chicken is super moist. Let's go check out this pond, Henry. We could start by getting the junk out of here, guys. Hey, they're gonna pull up the dock and everything, and we're gonna do one of those docks that go across here.

It's under a board.

Okay, see the pipe? This thing, it just pushes down. I don't think there's anything holding it up.

I don't know how we're gonna push it down.

It's just gonna have to I got it fully immersed. Boy, it's sucking out. I've already dropped it 6 inches. I got to make sure it's not coming out too big. That's good. There's a tub, so that's breaking the momentum. Uh-oh, it's too much, too much. It's clogged up the culvert here. Okay, we got to get it stopped, slowed down anyway. Just comes through went over it. Hold on, hold on, don't get— okay, yeah, but it might wash this out more. We're good here. Oh my word, shooting right across on this one.

Oh, I think it's digging out the side.

Well, it doesn't affect the creek that much. I don't know, it just had way more water than that.

What is Draining fast.

Probably drained a foot and a half. Sun is setting. It's been a beautiful day. Do come back tomorrow because it's going to be very exciting. Mark the Grader is coming and we're going to clear around this pond. It's going to be amazing what you can get done in a day or two with a big machine. It's going to be fun. See you then.