Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 14

5:30. This first time doing the green egg, I really enjoyed that process. Super simple. It's a bit chilly in the house. The kids said they wanted me to get them up to do the chores early. It's party day, you still want to get up early? Yes. Ellie, you still want to get up early? You still want to get up early, darling? You still want to get up early? Ellie, come to your side. It's party day.

What?

It's party day, all your friends are coming.

Mm-hmm.

You still want to get up early and do the chores early? Why? I came out here earlier because it had gotten up to 400 degrees, so I shut off the air vent there and down there. It's going to be a matter of learning how to adjust that. I had that wide— too wide open. I'm going for like 250. It's down to 300 though, so it's cooling off pretty fast. You want to go with me to turn the eggs? Yeah, the egg baskets. Yeah. Okay, let's go. Flashlight. Come on, let's go see. The chickens have been roosted on top of their nesting boxes. I'm hoping we got that fixed yesterday. We put a panel over it on slant so they couldn't jump up there anymore. Hey, I think it worked! Like, dang, it worked! We spun the nest boxes around so they couldn't get in there. It totally worked, y'all! Now we have to open it up for the lambs. There you go, ladies. Wait a minute, did y'all milk? Yeah. Dang, your little animal chores too. Good job. All right, little— it's about 2:50. Let's let a little, little air in to maintain that temperature. We don't want to drop anymore. Open up the opening. Hey, and I've got some salmon. Maybe we heat it up for breakfast, a little smoke flavor on it. Get it done. Let's, uh, rest day. They get to watch a movie. Whoa, that screen egg is efficient! I just opened it a little bit and it's already 325. So I'm gonna crack it. I'm gonna get the hang of this. This is— I'm liking this though. This is fun. How much fuel has it burned? It's burned barely any fuel. That means I probably put too much fuel in it. Let's check ourselves. I'm hoping to get these guys to 160. Whoa, 180 already! And then I can cover them up for the rest of the cooking. I always wanted to do this. I couldn't quite get to this point with the other smoker. Parchment paper. Hey kids, that's not where the parchment paper goes anymore. They moved it.

And—

no, he'll swallow that gum. Rebecca, I'm already at 160, babe. Going. What you watching? Hey, oh yeah, you better get studied up because that's one job you can do if we get that excavator, huh? Can you, um, do your exercises? Okay, good. I am super happy with this thing. What I'm learning lately is that it's so important to have this smooth, enjoyable process, because I'm learning that's what it's all about. Because think about it, when we eat this pork, it's gonna take 10 minutes. And so this was all jerry-rigged and hard to do, it just wouldn't be fun. But this has actually been fun. I thought it was a heat mask, which I'm sure it is, that stone under there. But it's more for like baking pizza or, uh, bread in here, using it as an oven. Where are you going?

Riding my dirt bike.

Okay, nice. Have fun. We've got a ham, a butt, and we've got a belly. We had some ice left, huh? A lot. Really good. Good. Turn the ice maker off like 2 weeks ago. Guess it's been cold. What are you making, Dar? Um, this is hibiscus tea.

And coleslaw and baked beans are in the oven.

That's a, that's a lot of coleslaw. How many people you think are coming?

Oh, I don't know, I just make a bunch. We have leftovers.

Even though it's our rest day, the animals still gotta eat. Because I was gone, I didn't have time to set things up, like move the sheep. Try to avoid doing that on a rest day. So let me show you a trick. Hey, can you help me a second? Decide what to do with the poles. Been having our tent dry out since we camped out like 2 months ago. Yeah, it's time to get it up. How's that fridge doing? Where is Henry? All right, where's our good loppers? Sia, these are not our good loppers. Ah, our good loppers are there. There's a strange noise going on. Oh, you got your belt sander working? Yeah, I thought it was broke.

Um, the belt then.

But you fixed the belt?

It, it got over ripped off, so not straight again.

Josiah, we got 20 minutes. People will be here. Why do I give myself zero margin in my life? I see what y'all are doing with that hay, bedding down on it. You don't like dragging through the woods. Grandma's not here though, play here.

Henry, no, no, no, Grandma's not here.

Oh look, Grandma's not here. Look. Oh, but she's gone. All gone. Interesting. Hear that car? I'm way up with the sheep and I can hear a car down there. You guys want some bonus food? We're gonna cut these down anyway, might as well cut the top. You guys got some good— not big fans of the oak. They know, they know what they can eat and what they can't eat. Look at that mountain laurel they've left. This is an interesting one. They like it and its leaves are still green. Cutting briars, guys. They're clearing briars out of here. They haven't been working today. You're bleeding. All right, I got 8 minutes. Maybe I'll give myself some margin. Party's supposed to begin at noon. I might have a minute of margin, maybe not. You ready? Yep.

Gotta come get the baby.

Oh, I heard a horn. Somebody beat us to my own party. People are starting to roll in. Okay, Jason is here. We can start. What do you think about this green egg, Jason? I think that's awesome. You like it? It turned out really nice. Wow, wow. We're gonna see if it still has its pork flavor or smoke flavor, which looks like it does. Look at that. I think I can make a pork rind out of this. There you go. Look at how easy it peels too. Yep, that should be really good. Yeah, I've never seen the skin come out soft like this just because I put the tin on it. Have you ever heard of smoked pork rinds? No. Neither.

I fried some last night and they're like super puffy.

Now, that one, I'm asking her about chewy pork rinds. It looks like that one might be chewy.

Yeah, okay, so if one of them is chewy, then that could just be because it didn't hit the oil enough. Like, I've tried to figure out different reasons why, like maybe this is because it didn't—

This is one of my pork rind teachers.

Oh, I don't think I'm a pork rind teacher.

She has. I asked her, have you ever had a smoked—

and I have smoked—

she has. It's a thing.

It's really good. Yeah.

Is it a thing?

I don't know if it's a thing. I just did it. I, I literally did, uh, skins, and then I put it in our smoker, and I was like, I want to smoke these, and then I want to fry them. And that's exactly what I did. So you could—

I mean, here's another one.

Yeah, you should totally save that skin. And so yeah, I think when they get chewy or they just kind of have more like a hard cracker texture, I think it has to has to do with, um, a couple of things.

Okay.

If it didn't— so you know how sometimes when you put it in the oil, like, if it's positioned a certain way, I feel like the contact is a little different and it's better.

All right.

But I think the thinner this is and the more it's able to, you know, like—

you think it's fat residue on there? That's—

I think it is fat residue.

So just making sure you get all the fat off.

Yeah, if you get all the fat off, I mean, like, really give it a scrape. So like these edges right there, yeah, scrape that more. Yeah, scrape it real good. And then, you know, put it in the dehydrator or your oven. I dehydrated my oven. What do you do, had it on your oven when in, um, I typically put them on a rack like a, yeah, um, just like a baking sheet. And then I will do 175 for like 12 hours.

So me doing 165 is not too intense heat?

Oh no, no. Low heat is great, but that's fine.

And you reuse your lard how many times?

I reuse my lard as many times as I can until I can't see through it anymore, or until it doesn't turn white.

Mine's, mine's too dirty.

Let me see. No, you can still reuse that. That's good. But if you ever want to clean your lard, you can.

How?

Um, you just do water and cornstarch. And it extracts all the stuff out of it and then you can then reuse it. I normally will fry potatoes or skins and that's about it. So I reuse my lard as much as I can. Because you know, why not? It's like, this is good stuff. But eventually when it's like, like orange, you need to, you know.

Yeah, see that? See that fatty edge, Jason? Yep, we're gonna master the pork rind, bro. Wow. Oh, that looks like a piece of leather. Wow, that's gonna be nice. Got those dehydrating 12 hours. I cut the edges off, scraped them squeaky clean, so we got a lot of experiments going on with those ones. All right, man, let's take this meat over. Rebecca's baked beans. Paige, have you seen your show yet?

No, we haven't.

Oh good, me either.

Oh, you haven't seen it?

Nope. I hope It's all right.

I saw a clip of it because he was like, I need to know what this food is. And I was like, okay, but that's it.

I haven't seen— oh, I'm sure Benjamin Roberts never lets us down. Look at this. Yeah, that's it. That's what everyone says, something, but I— it'd only be things that I had. Well, look at this, the Lost Boys. You wild boys with all your long hair. What do you think about this pond? Quite deep now. You guys ready to go swimming? Talking tractors and track loaders. I got a deal on it. Mike says he has a 50-year track loader. 50-year-old. But that's my manure spreader, by the way. That's it? Yeah, that's a bulldozer. Oh yeah, well, so it's— but it's got a loader bucket, so they call it a track loader. Yeah, but it's basically— they made this as a dozer or as a little mini. So, and then that's the manure spreader. Work done with that. Where'd you get that manure spreader? I'm in the market. I bought it at a place down in South Carolina that has used farm equipment. Can you send me that link? Yeah, that— does that manure spreader work fine? Yeah, it's about 60 years old. Wait, you're pulling it with your side-by-side? Hey, hold on a minute. Oh, because it has, uh, it runs off the wheels? Yes, it's ground-driven, not PTO-driven. So then we don't even need a tractor, right? We just started the show. Diverging Episode 4 with Grass Grazed. Here's the trailer for y'all.

I wanted Derek to choose me. I always wanted him to choose me. But every time a soldier goes overseas, every time he leaves for 3 months, 6 months, 10 months, he's different and you're different. So you have to rebuild every single time.

As my kids started to get older, it just became a very apparent that I was an absent father. I just needed the freedom to be able to make better choices.

We didn't really know what we were gonna do next. We just knew that we were gonna get out. So we raised these chickens, and then he starts doing numbers, and he's like, this could be a business, this could be a way out.

This is it, we're gonna do it, we need to start farming right now. The movie was great. Talking with Paige and Derek about possibly premiering that online, pre-premiere, maybe Thanksgiving weekend. I don't know what you guys think about that, but anyway, throw a big party, you have a good time, end up with a big mess. Man, this is a homesteader smoker. It's still going strong and steady like you all. This is the third smoker I've ever had. I wasn't happy with the either of the first two. This is amazing. And it's still going. It was steady. We still have fuel. Got to adjust it a little bit. It's quiet. The other ones made noise, had to be plugged in. This doesn't have to be plugged in. So I thought, let's make some burgers. He likes it. Maybe you just transplanted it. I'm telling you, Mom, you try it. I don't know if you're a fan of smoked burgers, but you might be after this. It's a different flavor. For somebody who eats burgers almost every day, that's a good thing. That's a wrap, folks. It's getting dark. Tomorrow, back on the farm hardcore. So farm work day for us tomorrow. Hopefully we're gonna get a lot done clearing. We're gonna run the chainsaws again tomorrow. Run chainsaw tomorrow, my man. Yeah, let's do it. 2 weeks into this thing, I feel like we got to pick up this pace if we're gonna prep 10 acres for a homestead in just— oh boy, 84 86 days. We got to put a hustle on. There's gonna be a lot of excitement down the road, a lot of excitement this week. Possible track loader tomorrow. Pay attention, we're launching fall registration for Abundance Plus. We're gonna have early bird special, plus we have limited spots of all the things we're gonna— we have workshop coming, things like that. Pay attention, I want you guys to get first dibs on that, so do pay attention. I'm excited for that one. We got Lots of good stuff in there. I can't wait for you to see all that's going on. You'll want to check that out November 1st, tomorrow.