Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 30

62 in here. That's pretty good given it's 28 degrees outside. Lily's ready to go. You ready, Lily? It's so cold out there, but I do have an appointment at 8:30.

I was wondering why you're sitting down on the chair with the blanket.

Yeah, she came out with that sun right there by the fire. I don't know if it was getting up at Set an alarm for 3 to get up and put wood on this fire or what? I stand corrected. It's not 28 degrees out, it's 21. Can you wear enough clothes in 21 to be warm? I'm shivering.

We should wean this guy because Buffalo— because he, he's not weaned because he nurses Flossie.

Yeah, this big guy has just been adopted by Flossie, I guess. Let's wean him too tomorrow. It's probably hard on her, especially going into the winter. It's your trooper. That's another reason we're gonna keep you a little while longer. She can nurse two calves. Oh boy, I don't know if that fence is up open up there because she's running right by. I was hoping she'd stop down there where the cows are in the corner. She didn't, she kept going. She's crazed. You're full of surprises, aren't you, Floss? Let's go get out in front of her so she doesn't go down the road. She's got her eyes set on down the road. Go get in front of her. There you go. Good girl, good girl. Now she's heading in the right direction. Just walk up along the fence, you'll see the opening. Floss, hey, good. Go in there, everybody. Good, perfect. Yeah, we wanted to have this open. We didn't know because we wanted to keep Stud and Joey in there. We wanted to get this open before we moved the cows. But Flossy had different plans. Now that I'm thinking about it, how did Flossy get away? Did I do that? It's your trooper. That's another reason we're going to keep you a little while longer. I don't think I would have done that. She's still tied up. Maybe I did let her go. They were to stay tied up until we got ready for them. You're undone. I want to look at two problems this morning. This isn't the problem. This thing's actually working out. Well, maybe it is a problem. Okay, so let's look at 3 problems. This one's easy to fix though. This was filled up last night like it was supposed to. This morning you come in and you just break the ice and they have water. Here in western North Carolina, it usually warms up enough to thaw out the lines and we can fill up water in the afternoon. Uh-oh, looking at problem number 2. This is what I was afraid of. This is good. We want water to be coming out of that pipe. I I was thinking that's from the pond. I was thinking the water was missing the pipe, eroding around the pipe, but it's not. Somehow getting in the pipe. Let's go watch Henry. It's cold. I'm back.

It looks cold.

I wasn't awake before I went out.

Now you are.

I'm awake now. Rebecca did her classic bacon. In eggs. Just being up and at them, controlling the fire more. 64. That feels downright cozy after being outside. All right, let's go look at problem number 3 before I gotta leave real quick. Problem number 4: can't seem to keep those chickens in, but everybody needs to go to the high tunnel. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, sometime soon. I forgot to disconnect the hydrant, so of course it's frozen. It's going to take longer to thaw out all the water that's in this hose than it is the water that's in the hydrant. So I'm gonna try to disconnect this. That's not working. That is not dirt on my lens, that's some sort of water that has frozen. Sorry about that. We can put the water under here, and if we would have remembered to take this off, filled it up right there. Normally we don't have a hydrant in the paddock, but we're just lucky today. But we didn't take advantage of that luck. I suspect you have drink in the frost on the grass. You'll be okay. That sun will hit in a couple hours, we'll be able to get that off. Maybe by the time I get back from the oral surgeon. I just realized, how am I getting there? There's no car. We're a one-car family. I'm gonna go ahead and get changed on faith that something's gonna happen, that somehow I'm going to have a ride. Don't worry, I've got long johns under here. He only had these 2 x-rays to go off of. Of course, one like time spanning, and the angle of it was too drastic, and it did look like, I mean, a lot was left, but you could tell it was an angle. Because we don't have a before and after shot time, you know, over time, with at the same angle, it's probably worth getting checked out. Just texted Grandma. That's her. She's getting back to me.

I need—

Sure, come on up. Okay, she says I can borrow a car. Yes, the four-wheeler ride to Grandma's will be cold, but that's just temporary. Grandma's even warming it up for me. Nice warm car. This could be the difference between a good day and a bad day. Or months of rework. All right, let's hope it's nothing. Well, well, well, it's lower than he would like to see my gum line. He said we could watch it or we could go ahead and have a bone graft surgery. I said, what are my options if we watch it? Well, I gotta come back in January if it's progressing. For sure bone graft surgery. And if not, we can just keep on going. So hopefully the fact that I have no pain and that that continues and I have no symptoms is that maybe we're gonna get stable and be okay. Because that's the last thing I want is another surgery, more antibiotics. So let's just hope for the best. And we're back, and it's always good to be back.

Things that we already actually had that we had bought when you were doing the surgeries. Yeah, so this is like a pearl extract.

Okay.

Um, and so you need to be taking this.

That grows back, uh, bone.

It's, it's for bone. It's, uh, relax but rebuild and repair. So that's what we need to do is rebuild.

You got 2 months, babe.

And then this one is elk antler velvet.

Let's do it.

And this is also good for repair.

Later in the morning when the sun warmed up hydrant, I went to turn it on and the water came on but wouldn't turn off. The little rod that goes up and down in the ground to turn the lever off in the bottom had broken. The little metal pole that moves it up and down in the pipe, can you put a bead of welding on that? If the water stays in that line, it's just going to freeze every night.

Okay, hold on one second. I think there is one night— I think tonight it's not going to freeze.

Oh, well, maybe have a little bit of time. First things first, we gotta stop the water right there. Do you guys think you could weld it?

I need to lower this little bolt. Weld it like that, but you can't attach it to that nut. I'm saying—

yeah, that's what I'm saying. It can't bleed over to attach to that nut.

That's the problem. I have to lower that.

That is the problem.

I have to lower the nut or higher the nut. Oh, take it off.

I don't think it lowers anymore, bro. Well then, you could probably lower it. It'll probably lower that with you. You can't do one little bead on that and then stick this down? Yeah.

No.

Why not?

You can only weld it if you weld it to the next.

Oh, why? You can't do a clean weld like that? There's no space. The problem is I'm having to shut this. This is getting in the way open. And if I shut it, then water's not getting through and it's too hard. Let's look at the anatomy of this right here. This is a working one. This little— yeah, I think that reaches all the way down. That's what pulls it up, and that has broken. And based on this one, this nut is up. The other nut is all the way down, so there's no getting it more down to reach it.

And you usually build threads with this? But if we put it in there, we could pull out, and I'm pretty sure this metal is tough enough to not break.

If he could pull that off and we could turn it off, we'd be okay for a long while.

You got a Leatherman?

Because we could hook up to that hydrant over there. I gotta take this off so I can get a straight shot because we got to be able to let that rod get pulled up so that we can turn this water off down below. What we're trying to do is gain some height so so that we can keep this open while we get this temporary shutoff on. Okay, that'll work. It's gonna work. Yep, we got it. Hallelujah! Yeah, relief! Now the water's still up in the hydrant, so it'll be— this would be big bad news if it freezes. So we've got to pull this lever up somehow to turn it off down below. It's good to have you walking around again. How was PT today?

It was good.

Okay, don't lose any of that in case we get this weld. Can you go at an angle, or do you have a lot?

If I go at an angle, then you're like pulling out.

That might be okay. I don't think it's hard. Maybe it is hard. There's a lot of leverage here. We need a longer drill bit, I reckon.

I think Grandpa's got it.

Are you gonna take your dirt bike and go ask him? Yeah. I was heading in there, do a bit of office work, do a little hyperbaric, which is also good for bone building. That's over because Jacob will be here in 15 minutes. Maybe we can fix this in 15 minutes. I mean, we got it fixed temporarily till this afternoon. I really want to be clearing this homestead this afternoon. Did he have one?

Yeah.

Now he's trying his die. Is it working? Heck yeah! Do it, do it, do it till you can't do it no more. What, you don't want to rake it? Don't want to rake it? All right, pick it up. Oh, it's heavy. I pulled it up. Oh, you got it!

You did it!

Wait, watch. We don't know if I did it. Hold on, hold on.

How did you not do it?

Lifted it up. It helped us a lot because I could get a vice grip now and maybe pull it up. What in the—

You're going You hear it kind of shutting off?

Do I? All right, we're fixing a yard hydrant this afternoon. You think you could weld that now?

We could at least—

but it has to stay smooth because it has to be able to go down in there. Yeah, so I don't think so.

Let's start digging.

Yeah, I've got to go train, but the boys did say they wanted to start digging, so that's nice. All right, Jonah came and got me. Training was good for about 20 minutes. Jonah came and got me because he said the hydrant is leaking down below. Now boys, a dad couldn't be any prouder. I look out the window, all 3 of them in their big jackets digging a hole. You guys are some men. It is leaking out the bottom of that right here.

I see it.

That's to protect the weep drain, I'm sure. That actually looks legit.

Yeah, I know, that's why some people use a bucket, but that looks legit.

Gideon's got the right idea. We got to get it out of here. Hold on, that might just run down into the house.

There's a ditch right there. See the ditch?

We can ditch it out. We can ditch it out. You're right. Okay, let's figure it out. The boys are telling me they actually would— I don't know if it's an accident or on purpose, but they hit that thing. And there was it leaking before you hit it? Nope. So I'm afraid they might have actually busted the water line. So we've turned off the water. That means the water is off to the entire hauler. Uh, let's dig it out and see what we've done. The good news is we found our water line and it's teed off the main water line to this, and I don't think we busted our main water line.

That's a lot of gravel.

There it is, to your seep. Is leaking. I don't think anything's broken. Your weep hole is running. It probably has something to do with us pulling that lever up and it's not all the way off. Okay, I'm gonna go find out what one of these look like so I can figure out where it needs to come undone. And we don't have running water, so I can't wash my hands. I need to talk to Mrs. Boob Tube or Mr. Google Pants. I think it's just a matter of screwing that hydrant on— off and putting the other one back on, which Grandma is getting. She's in town. Lily has come through and made everybody lunch. She's so nice. Look at this. Thank you.

Why do you want carrots, Mr. Henry?

He's not worried about it a bit.

Look at us, all organized.

We look like Professional big homesteaders. Now let's lift up that PVC and see if we can't stick this across and hold that PVC up out of our way. You could brace with that one down at the bottom and we, and we turn with the adjustable wrench. You got it on there?

I think so.

We're fixing to get real muddy. There it goes. There we go. Wow. Be sure to lift it up. We don't want to get any dirt in there. Okay, now you have to be very mindful. Yeah, we do, because if anything gets in there now, it's in our water supply. Hopefully it's working.

Okay, ready?

Yeah. Okay, throw it off to the side. Now, how to get that protectant filter off of there. Oh wait, it came right off. Yeah, that came off. These didn't. I think we need to put the gravel down around it on the bottom.

There's already gravel around it when you pulled it up.

So let's go get a couple bucks— I know, but let's just get a little bit more. Okay. And then we're gonna fill that with the gravel, and then you're gonna have to find some sort of lid for it. We pulled that off and then the whole lever had to come off. Unless we want to take the whole hydrant apart and risk screwing it up. Put it into that contraption. We're not gonna—

Oh wow, that's a hole saw with an apple in it.

Oh, why has it got an apple in it?

We were curious.

Did that just happen?

Yeah, we were curious why.

And now it's jammed.

Not necessarily. You just have to get—

That's how we learn, curiosity. Look at that.

There you go.

Oh yeah. You just hold it steady there. Guys, we're about to fix this on our own. I got a T-post driven all the way down in to support this so it doesn't wobble. Now let's put gravel in that hole. We should probably test it before we go burying it. Hold it down here and then, then do it. How's that feel, boy? We did it! Must be a full moon or no moon, whatever the rule goes. We didn't have enough dirt to put it back. We even had a pig board block it from going in the grass, but there was so much—

pick it up, I want to see what it looks like.

It's so muddy, I guess.

Off the grass. That's what it looked like earlier today.

Yeah, you really made it a mess. Can you not scoop some of that up?

There's not going to be enough.

There you go, you got some there.

Maybe, but like, Papa, what if I push the bank down?

Let me go get a rake because we got to smooth it up anyway. You guys can do your idea and get some soil out of those beds though. Nobody's using those garden beds. Yeah, rake your shovel. Well, it's kind of working. This is not a pleasant job. I've got mud caked on me. Our faithful Yoro. Got us up to 70 degrees. I don't know if it got above 30 today. Although we did not get to clear today, that was very stressful. What we did today was solve, well, a major-ish problem. And it's good to have that hydrant, water hydrant experience, because eventually we're going to put it on the entire farm. And anyway, the kids and I, and mom too, holding down the house, figured it out. And we figured it out together. So all in all, we would never ask for it, but it's a good feeling knowing we beat that together.