Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 47

Day 47 of 100 Days Building a Homestead. Today we must clear 1,300 square feet to stay on track. If we succeed, Jonah gets to open his early birthday present, his chainsaw. I, like most of you, have a job and need to do that job in the afternoon for my— I'm an entrepreneur for my own business, Abundant Permaculture, but Definitely like all of you, you have other stuff to do. So for everyone, time is limited, and that's no different for us today.

Can I please have chocolate pieces and yogurt?

No, let's do something easy like apples and peanut butter.

We don't even have any apples.

Go look out in the loft. Skate out there and see. Now I know what Gideon's going through. I only got one. I probably won't find one shoe this morning. You found some apples, didn't you? Yeah. Okay. We need to clear 1,300 square feet according to my calculations every single day to stay on track to finish in 100 days in enough time so that then we can focus on remodel. Lily's got horse lesson. If training's at 10, can we get done and be working by 9? That would be our first half. And then after training and while your mom's taking you to horse lessons, we have the second half. This is like the homesteading World Cup. We had two halves that are about an hour long. Good morning, crazy hair don't care. How you doing? Good. Good morning. Did you guard us last night? I got no weird disregarded raw meats, Winnie, so I'm gonna fail safe. Tender and true. What's wrong with the wood boiler today? I'm guessing it didn't burn down the wood. Wood. 79 degrees. It's supposed to be 185. Fan's running. Full load of wood. Inverse. Why is it not burning? I'm gonna need to build a fire in there. Yesterday we got us started on our soaking sprouting system. Shoot, we need to strain these. More on that in a second. I hear Gideon acting like a maniac. Hear him? Gideon, let's get some socks on the show. You're gonna need socks.

Okay, can I get my boots?

What does that mean? No, you need socks first.

I need boots too.

He's wanting to bring them inside to warm up. That's a little late for that. We've got our own dedicated one of these. All right, you ready?

Yeah.

I got some buckets yesterday at Lowe's. I think we'll add a few because it's gonna take things a long time to germinate. Oh look, we got Jonah a chainsaw for his birthday coming up. It is so cool, guys, when your kids get to a point where they're asking for tools on their birthday. Yes! Hear that? Okay, we need to go check that fast. I put that wood out. Hopefully it hadn't caught on fire. I was scared to death this wood had caught on fire at the bottom. This ain't getting air or something. We open the door, it lights up. Then tomorrow she'll feed this one and then that one and then that one because we're going to get all the lip fluid out of this today. We just got us started. So what we'll do— and we can do this in there, so we already have this out. So here we go. Then we'll bring our water out here and just pour it down the drain. Tomorrow she'll take that. These will all scoot down. Flossie's calf is in. There's no down fence. Oh, we got one less cow to milk today. Friendly gal, you friendly gal, you're so friendly. Look how they pugged this up. Gosh, because it's been so wet and it's winter. Mmm, that's why we deep bed in the winter. Soon. Wow, no, you friendly cow. Put you on a short leash. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We'll get you some more. We'll get you some more. Calm down, you're crazy. Good girl, good girl. Yeah, you can lick me. Let's see, nothing happens. This might tell us how this one got out. Probably right there. You think that's vulnerable? We don't want to train them to go over the fence. We did have to let them out for a minute to get this gate open. Now let's get them back in. The reason we move these fences in the afternoon— it's going to be 50 this afternoon. It's 20 out here now with the wind. Lily, you making breakfast?

Yeah.

Holy moly, where's Mom? Want eggs? All right, thank you. Sauerkraut too, huh?

Yeah.

Thank you. Gideon, can you come pick up your peanut butter? That's rude. That's my kryptonite, guys. What's the reward if we get done, if we get our 1,300 square foot quota today?

I can have my chainsaw early.

How about you can have your chainsaw tomorrow if we get done early today? I'll give it to you today though. You could queue it up and all that stuff. Okay. Can we get done?

Yeah.

Okay, well, we gotta hustle. We're behind. Two chainsawers and one brush hauler. Okay, that's unbalanced. You really need about one chainsawer and three brush haulers. 109. We're cooking. Let's dirt some more and get some good oxygen. I'm gonna mark our goal, and we make it or we don't. And the time is hard. We got to be more disciplined in our cutoff times. We do have other important things to do. Road of dinner on this side, the cluster of medium-sized trees on that side. We're already at 11 feet right here. Holy crap, this is maybe not going to be as big as I thought. That's, uh, shoot, that's 38 feet. That's 38 feet across. Let's say 40. 1,300 feet divided by 40, I think 32 feet. We only need to go that way. You can see our line there. Look, we found a spring! Somebody has built up rocks right here. You guys, we have that washed out, and I was wondering what that was from, if it's just from washout. We're sitting on a spring. This is awesome. Somebody way back in the day has put some sort of rock here to mark it. We have 15 more minutes and a half.

Let's knock on—

Jacob gets here. Technically, I should probably be leaving, give myself some margin. We got 1, 2, 3, 4 medium trees. I really think we should get this rhododendron since it's leaning over so much. It's not technically in the ribbon. We could probably fell these trees in 10 minutes. We wouldn't be able to work them up. We'll come back at the second half. Those big trees are difficult because they're only taking up 1 square foot of the 1,300 square feet, but then you have to work up all this. Going safe. I like it.

Woo!

Time's up. All right, take a break. You get your saws ready, you get you queued up, you get the gear set aside in order and ready to put on. And as soon as Jacob leaves, we're out here. All we like is working up these big trees. We got those two trees too, guys, and that one. Just the plethora of water on this farm. Whether we win or lose with our 1,300 square foot today, Jonah, we won. Because we found a spring in today's patch. A spring!

Can I at least look at myself?

Yeah, after we get our gold today. Guys, got 10 more minutes in this session. You guys got St. Charles queued? Oh my, it's a hard deadline today. Haircuts at 12. It's 10 after 11. We're going into the second half. Been watching too much World Cup. It's 1,300 square feet a day to get done. By the end of 100 days for vacation and to be ready for this remodel of this house. Mr. Brown, you gonna help haul? Yeah. You guys couldn't have been gearing up during halftime? Come on. I'm geared. Well, our ribbon has fallen down. Look at this mucho.

You know, whenever it's time to haul brush, you just stop.

Definitely the fun part is chainsawing.

Get out of here. Twice as high chance we have twice as much time. I get my saw anyway, right? She's not working.

Are you helping? Yeah. Okay guys, we did it with 5 minutes to spare.

And it's all over.

You get to coddle your saw and you get to have it tomorrow. You think there's a culvert there? That does kind of look like somebody's built some kind of bridge, but why and where? Maybe there was a trail going up that way and then the other end of it would be right here. Yeah, and it's gotten buried. Why would somebody put a culvert in though? I do see remnants of a creek up above it. Yeah, that might not be a spring. Got a little nook across the creek over here for grazing. You're right, that's probably just an underground creek. Look at this grazing. I mean, I've known about this. Is this it? This is the start of the spring.

It looks like there was a pond here.

There might be more than 2 acres over here on this side. Here's where we're gonna put in the new road eventually. Much more gradual to get up to Big Daddy's and Grandma's.

You know, this goes straight to their house. Yeah, if you follow it.

I think tomorrow we should continue climbing and exploring this dried up creek. Maybe we'll find a spring at the top of our property. That would be ideal. Higher we can find up a spring, the better. Because then we can gravity feed our livestock and us. Do we want to go to the end of this logging road, show you where it comes out? This is a nice gradual grade. It needs to be dig more into the mountain. If you turn, you go up to Grandma's. There's Grandma's house right there. All right, the haircutting lady's here. We're gonna have to wait till after haircuts to go get your saw. Let's get a before and after, Gideon. Oh, you should smile.

You should have got it before I combed it out.

Yeah, you're already making it look So much better, man. Looking sharp. I like it. Hair out of your eyes now?

Yeah.

You're not gonna be too happy, huh? It's too scary? Here, you want to watch a tractor show? What about a monster truck? There we go. She's gonna hold you. Look what Randolph's delivered. Our laminated maps on frames. Oh, they're the exact same, aren't they? Yeah, the— shoot, I got you the wrong one then. I need one of them to be just this one. Right about here is where we found that spring today, and we're clearing up in here. Let's frame this one. He did it! He looks so cute. Before. And what do you want?

Just everything.

Just trimmed? You want to keep this epic hair, don't you? Jonah, looking good. You like it, Mom? You gonna have Lily get her haircut?

No.

Good. We got the thickest hair right here. Got the griddle going. The hot water has not heated up. We've got the wood boiler supposed to heat the hot water too, but it must not be keeping up to temp. I'm gonna lose it on this thing. Burn the wood. This is sad. All this wood we're cutting up on farm, fuel for our farm, it's no good to us for heating. We're turning back on the hot water heater because Mama and your truly is going to want a hot bath tonight. I'm so hungry. Let's get this cooking on. I cannot forget to go shut that wood boiler. Jenna got the old trusty wood stove going. Can we go to the chainsaw? We're going in just a second. Your kindness abounds.

Wow, I know what it's like to have a baby.

Our friends had a baby. You guys have seen them on the vlog before, the farm sitter Luke. This was nice. She, she gave them some fruit, some dairy, yogurt and cheese and sour cream and beef jerky and bananas. That's a bonus. Then they have a breakfast too. What inspired that?

Lorraine brought us food for when Jonah was in the hospital. She like made like breakfast the next day, like all sorts of things. It was very nice, and it was— it helped, like it took a huge load off. I mean, it was like 3 weeks ago. I signed up for the first available day I could to bring it.

Wow, they're taking well care of—

yeah.

And then check this out, good old Southern cornbread.

Well, I asked, I said, do you want cornbread or would you have rather have rice? Because some people—

what'd they say?

Cornbread.

Good Southerners there.

And then a salad and chili. The chili's already frozen, so then I can bring all the food. She can make whatever she wants. She can cook the dinner, heat it. It's not cooking it, it's literally putting it in a pan.

That's what I'm talking about. And a half a gallon of farm fresh milk. Okay, we're having to do this before she leaves because she'll take it. Yeah, then you'd have to wait, but that'd be okay, right? No, you could wait.

Okay.

Couple hours. Boy's excited. All right, you get to coddle it. Let's go. Oh, how's that feel?

Good.

So nice. It is so nice. You can, you can sleep with it tonight in the bed like a teddy bear. What are you gonna do with that thing?

Chop a lot of trees down.

That'll get a lot of work done, that's for sure.