Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 54

You ready to go? Not with flip-flops though. Got some karma for you, Mr. Brown. Find Henry's shoes. Hey, is it the shoes or is it the socks? He is not happy with these. Is it the socks? Okay, I took the socks off, but I'm gonna put the shoes back on. Is that better? Is that okay? Okay, I got the socks off. No more socks. Okay, it's the shoes too. Okay, all right, we'll find your rubber boots. There we go, look at that. One. Well, lucky me, look at there. I got an abnormal obstacle this morning to find you guys' legs— the tripod. This is a first. Couple goals today. Long time family friend Benjamin is in family. Is coming and he's going to help us install raspberry trellis. And of course we want to keep on clearing a little bit every day over 100 days, and you accomplish so much. She got our spring. We've been having all kinds of rain. That's running a lot more. Trying to figure out if that's a spring or underground creek. But either way, it's definitely in line of a washout area. So when we do get rains, we're gonna get water off the runoff, and it's gonna be hard to keep that out of our spring water. This is where I thought maybe I left it. I do feel better. Let's get y'all's legs. That's better. That gigantic brush pile right there, probably 6 foot tall, one day's work. We're really knocking it out. This setting up of the camera and dealing with it It's kind of— well, there's definitely an obstacle for me, but it doesn't play well into the story always, does it? All right, Dan, we're getting a shot crossing the creek, going home. All right, let's go. People ask me, well, does the filming— how much does it slow you down? Maybe 15 or 25%. But does it slow me down? If you think of the farm as centerpiece production— is cows your centerpiece? Is chickens your centerpiece? What is your main primary focus that then everything else needs to complement? So on our farm, it is actually our cows, although we're starting to sell feeder pigs and some pork occasionally. We don't really sell farm products. This is our main farm product: educational and entertaining content. So really, we're not out here doing chores, we're out here making a movie about doing chores. I've got to remember to schedule those guys. We've got 2 pigs, 5-ish lambs, and 1 steer that we need to harvest, all in like one big— I said, Rebecca, should we do it in a day? Why don't we do it in 2 days? Okay. Good thought. Our water was hot this morning. Are we staying to temp? Oh, we're staying to temp. 182, it's just right. Oh, and this 351, that's new. You know what was there instead of that 351? The thermocoupling error. $1,300 for repairs later, only going into my third season. I think it's going to be worth it if it, if it hangs in there and does a really good job, because this is fuel that I can harvest off farm. The dealer sent us this cord to bypass the current cord for the thermocoupler. The thermocoupler thermometer that sticks in here, so it's down inside. It's actually in this reaction chamber. This is where I'm lost. But anyway, helps regulate the temperature in there. It helps us get into efficiency mode. This thing should be burning its smoke. Creosote should not be getting this kind of creosote on it. Out here when we open the door. This other temperature is how hot it is in the reaction chamber. It's not having to really kick in right now because it's up to 185. It's not hard to keep it up to 185. It's like 50 degrees out here. Last night he rigged up 2 more coils in our ducts. We used to only have 1 return, and the return air was coming through this coil. This is hot, guys, and it was heating up And it comes through here, goes through the furnace, and the furnace kicks it back out into the house. Of course it's warm. Well, when we got this new AC, uh, gas heating system in over the summer, they put in two more returns unbeknownst to me. I didn't understand, I didn't know the implications, they didn't understand wood boiler. And so it turns out we were only getting a third of our heat. Well, you're going to have to have a coil in this return and a coil in this return. Unfortunately, that's probably just the AC return. Maybe, and he thought it would have been better if they would have designed it to bypass it. But the problem is I don't think the HVAC understands the wood boiler system. Now air getting drawn through here is getting heated, air getting drawn through there is getting heated, and it's all going back up in there warm. We tested the register yesterday, it's like over 90 degrees when it kicks in. Good morning! Good morning! What's the word? I already yelled. I think there's Benjamin. Hey, our guests are here! Come on, where's his shoes? Where's your shoes? Who's this? Nava. What does Nava mean? It means beauty or beautiful in Hebrew. She's living up to it, isn't she? She is.

She's like, I just want to sleep.

You remember these, Benjamin? Yeah. I hope you know how to thin raspberries.

Oh, I do, I do.

Okay, good.

You got your primocanes, floor canes. You got to get those old guys out.

Show me those. Show me what's primocane.

So here you go. Um, floor canes. See this guy? It's already dead. Yeah, so that was last year. That bore berries right there.

Oh really?

Yep.

So it bears berries then dies?

Some, some raspberries— this is blackberries and raspberries, right?

Yeah.

So that'll be fun. But, uh, some raspberries, uh, bear off of every year the new growth, so you just cut those at the ground. Okay, but most of these it looks like are more of the primocanes, floricanes.

So, oh, you're going to cut all this to the ground?

Not all of it, no, no, that's, that's a different type I'm talking about. But you have the type that—

but these dead ones you're for sure going to pull out?

For sure, yep.

So the primocanes are the dead ones?

This? Yeah, yep.

And they're the—

are the newer ones.

And what are you going to do with the floricanes? We'll keep them.

See this right here? Oh, that is berries for next year. Usually, actually, the newer ones have, have this, like, uh, raspberries, they have the nice—

you can tell it's alive, it's purple.

Yeah, you can scratch it a little bit and see that's, that's alive for sure.

So yeah, versus it's easy to tell, especially this time of year, just by looking at it. Now that you point it out, do it anytime they're dormant.

Dead one, just don't do it.

Double check. Yeah, see how brown that is? We have 4 of them, 2 of them for the middle. So this is an end one. See, they got the O-hooks on it for you. Okay, we want you to try these, these ones first. The ones is not in the bag. That looks like a mean wire cutter to me. That's such a wire cutter. Here's the hole for him to run through.

I'm gonna make these raspberries happy.

Okay, man, I'm excited. We've just kind of let this go to a jungle.

Gonna make it look beautiful. As soon as they lay down, they start—

there's roots right there. Wow, starting another one, doing it.

So, uh, it's pretty easy to propagate. You can have a good raspberry blackberry patch pretty quick.

Nice.

But gotta keep it contained.

You don't think we'll need to put, put a fence up for the Seminoles? You think they'll come? Yeah. And what happens if they don't? Uh, I don't know, we'll chase them back in. It's these Seminoles that I worry about. Look how skittish they are. 50 feet away and they're running from me. And we have to open the net here all the way to here, and we have to hope, according to the kids' plan, that the Seminoles don't go that way, they don't go that way, that they go right through there and they go straight right through there. We'll use this kind of as a wall. There's a wall on either side there with the pole barn and our house. There'll be a gap here, but once we get them in here, we have this electric net and Jonah's two-strand electric. We'll use it to block the road here. We'll use Sally to block the other road. Okay, I think we want to open this as wide as we can so they don't backtrack and get caught behind this fence. Hey, they're going! They're going with you, bird!

Wow!

We'll get the calves later, they're not as wild. Look at here. Oh, they missing it. They're missing it. Lily's pointing out that Ryder is getting thin. She's the one who had the babies, right? Yeah, she had the babies out of season, and she's the one who gave you hope. So Ryder's a good mom. Hope has never let— have never lost weight, but, but no, she looks good. Babies before, we need to take Ryder's lambs off. We need to wean her, wean them.

They are prime, prime, prime McCain's. They're, they're 2 to 3 years old probably.

You've done from here over?

Yeah, I might do a little more cleanage there, but pretty much looks good. A lot of these fell over. Raspberries especially are prone to like fungal diseases, so if you can keep the—

ah, keep them off the ground. Keep them off the ground is better, keep air flowing.

I noticed down there some of them just died, and I think it's because they, they were too wet. So, okay, that's one reason to really take out the old growth.

So the purple ones are blackberries, and the other ones are raspberries.

Silver bark, that's more the raspberry, but this is blackberry.

Okay, the blackberry is the red one. Yeah. Figure out how to fix your dirt bike? Yeah. What'd you do? Found this piece. You think that'll work? Yeah. Is that from your go-kart or something? Yeah. Have you tried it yet? Yeah. Oh, so it will work? I think it should fit on here. Okay, I hope so. Come on, air. These guys are your ends with the O-hooks. And the other two are your middles with just holes so that you can run your wires through them. If we have 30 feet, we have one on each end. You can go every 10 feet, put a post. Randolph, I'm glad we have you out here. He's got the thing set up on studs, get it even level. You even got a level out here? Yeah, I don't— I use it a whole lot. Well, this ain't your first rodeo with a milk sled, is it? No. Round 3. This is gonna be an easy one to make right here. Yeah, it is. You already gotten a long way. This is our mobile milking sled, third edition. First one was too janky, second one was too robust. This one's gonna hopefully be somewhere in the middle. Hey, you fixed your motorbike! This already looks so much better. Look at this. There's something we humans find beautiful. About control and order and straight lines. Good for you, Mr. Brown. Stick with helping him. It's been in there an hour at 350 for an hour. This should be done. Definitely reading that like 187. Hopefully it's not too done. Okay, that's better. Always a pleasure cooking on the Green Egg. Always getting better. Hey, you want some potatoes with that ketchup? Sure. Benjamin, you work up an appetite? Oh yeah. Okay, your wife made two-thirds of it. Really? High five, thank you. The green beans and the potatoes. And Mark's here to work on Josiah's motorcycle. Did you pop his chain? He had fixed it. He fixed it, but he put his, uh, he put his go-kart chain on there. Oh, is that what it is? There's a chain that come off of it. It just needs to be adjusted out, tightened up a little bit. You're framing, my man. That's satisfying work. Shade, minerals, and milking area all in one. You're saying I might need to use the Wolverine? Try to pull them out. Yeah, I might.

Wolverine will help. I'll just pop them out quick.

We're gonna try this Wolverine. It loosened it. There we go. I did a bunch of these with a shovel, but I'm thinking for the sake of time, how about the brush saw? I'm thinking hedge trimmers right through here, and we can lift these guys up. You cutting? Yeah. That's starting to look reasonable, huh? Now we're gonna direct the ones we keep, like this one, up in here back. Uh-oh, we're gonna haul this brush. We're gonna haul some wood chips. Okay, plan B. I'm glad it's acting up for him. That's what it's been doing for me. It's in good hands. Mark will figure it out. He got it. Maybe it'll putter out on him though. We're gonna need that Sunday butchering. I hate to take your spot out, man, though. I hate to get you up. Ben, you want to drive it up there?

Yes, sir.

See you up there. Yeah, it's really starting to rain. I'm gonna have to put you guys inside, get you on the GoPro. All right, let's go. All right. Shoot, it died on me right as we were about to get the mulch. We got the young man fork. Which is short and wide. We got the old man fork, long and narrow.

There you go.

You get to bend over, you get to bend over and pick up the heavy load.

Let me pull it closer. Are we putting it in here?

Just put it in there. There you go. Oh, you didn't give Mark a ride over here on your motorcycle? Sticking his truck. He says no thanks. All right, well, we'll take Sally and then we'll come back and hopefully the tractor will be ready. I like your matching jacket. It matches your boots. You're adorable. Just saw Benjamin off. The raspberries, that's a 3-year project in the wish list. Done. I love it. It's so good to end the day having taken control, progress this farm, and it'll be something everybody benefits from for years on end. That's a good day.