Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 69

Hey, it's actually only getting colder. Our idea was to sleep in, but it's actually getting colder all morning. It feels like negative 1 right now, it says, but it's actually what, 11?

7:14, I think.

I don't think it's ever been that cold here in my memory. We're in western North Carolina. At least since we've been having to go out in it. A homestead for 15 years. I feel like it hasn't been this cold since we Yeah, since like 1995, that crazy winter. Needless to say, we're not clearing today. Actually, I want to ask you Minnesota people, do you actually work on days like this, or do you just get chores done? Like, please tell me you don't go out there and chainsaw and clear and doot and just piddle.

No, they don't. There's no way.

Okay, I got 2 pairs of underpants on. I'm calling them underpants because they're like running pants. They're not long johns proper. Gideon, you can stay here, but you help with Henry. Hey, don't leave without me. I want us to work together. This is my content for today. There's not gonna be a whole lot of going on except for us surviving on chores this morning. All right, but come right back. Don't do anything with it. He's gonna go check out the pond. They're thinking it's gonna freeze over. It takes a minute for things like that to freeze over. Maybe by the end of this cold front. How long is this cold front gonna last? How long we got until it gets 40 again? It's gonna heat back up Monday. We're filming this on— what day is today? Friday. Oh, this airs on Christmas. Merry Christmas! Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Well, so 3 days. That's not too bad. Uh-oh, smoke from the boiler. We let it get down to 70 in here last night. I turned it up to 74 about 3 o'clock in the morning, and it's at 74. So I wonder if that means it's running low on wood.

Okay, so it's supposed to be very windy today. Yeah, and then tomorrow it warms up to 17, but there still is wind. And then Sunday, Christmas, it warms up to 24.

And look, look out there, Winnie. She doesn't care. She's walking around like it's normal. Maybe I will let the kids go at it with chores. That's gonna drive them nuts being with me and Filming does slow us down quite a bit. How's Henry's little cold? You want to milk Flossie? Sure. We're going to put her, Flossie, in the stanchion and then Honey over to the side. We'll milk at the same time. Okay, I gave the boys the GoPro. Let them divide and conquer. Lily said she'd film, so I'm going to give her the M50. Listen, you can do this with your gloves too. I set it up so that all you got to do is hit the shutter button and it starts recording. Here's the shutter button.

Okay, look, Henry destroyed it.

All right, it's time.

To go see what problems we've gotten ourselves into with all this cold weather.

It's really cold, so we're gonna bust the water on this house.

We'll have to give them some more too. Hey, hey, hey, hey!

Ha!

This was turned off. It's frozen.

Is it frozen? We can put that— what, that hose that got frozen inside the, uh, furnace room. I'm pretty sure if those submersible coils get exposed without being in the water I think they burn up. First, to see about— I should have gotten the water running yesterday. The pipes are subject to freezing over here. Warm inside, that's good. This water doesn't work, we're in big trouble.

Water works.

Just get it to drip and help keep the water lines from freezing. Okay, second on my list, that cow's water. So this was shut. Well, I guess I should have checked that. There's a chance there might not be any water in this. Go get some tools.

I think I can get it.

Did you just get it?

What?

How did you get it?

I just clamped it on and twisted.

Can you tell if this has got water in it? It might not. It has lots of water in it, doesn't it? Check the sink. That's working. Uh-oh. The quick connect's frozen. I have to hook up directly. Bad things do happen when it's cold. Gotta walk around with two wrenches when it's cold.

Okay.

Let's see if it comes out. Can you go see if it came out? Coming out. Okay, halfway down this hose we have a connection. The water would have collected all down in there. All right, solid ice. Okay, plan B. Let's roll these hoses up, put them inside. This will be thawed out by this afternoon. Get 2 buckets, put half the scraps in one and half in the other, okay? And then finish filling each of those buckets halfway up with grain.

Today I'm taking you on chicken chores. Now I'm going to take you on rabbit chores. I'm gonna go tell Papa that my rabbit hutch has frozen to the ground. My rabbit hut froze.

Your rabbit froze to the ground?

My rabbit shelf froze.

Oh, okay, but your rabbit's not dead, right? Lily, you're gonna need to get that water and get it thawed out.

No, I'm going to soak grain. Now I'm going to do pigs.

Rabbit okay?

Yes. There we go, I got my— some pig scraps and some skin milk in this bucket. I'm gonna take some grain and put it on this. Now I'm getting the grain and putting it in the bucket. Now I have my buckets of grain and I'm gonna put them in here. Now I got them both loaded and I'm heading over to the greenhouse to where the pigs are.

You got hooks? I hate to use your Lego room as a storage. This is the curse of the cold weather. You want to just get out and do the chores, but chores take that much longer. We're about to be watering these cows. Hey, is that iced up? Did our de-icer work? Well, this isn't even on. That's why it didn't work.

Breaker. Oh, oh, I bet it's the breaker that's connected to our room.

Shoot, neither one of these were working. Their light wasn't working in their room. Well, let's see if these are plugged in proper though. They're plugged in proper.

Why?

Why does this happen when it's 1 degrees out? It's probably the de-icers on one thing. There it is. Okay, let's see if it's working now. Interesting that their bedroom and the outlet outside is connected. Did you mean to let them out? Yeah, that's good. We need to get their water on the concrete. Look at this. Okay, it's working now. We're gonna count on these de-icers then to warm that up enough to where the nipple will work. Jonah, Yes. How is it going to be okay? What's your plan?

I think it'll defrost it pretty fast.

Oh, don't put that— don't put that out. That cannot be on and out of the water. All you, uh, northerners are like, welcome to my everyday. Well, you're free to move down here. This ain't normally like this. Look, it ran out the bottom of our wood chipper. This has got a crack in it, and I would like to fill this all the way up. Morning and afternoon. I should check the wood boiler real quick. I was hoping to get the water first. But that's something that looks like it might actually go through. Just make sure we have wood in here enough. Oh yeah, okay, we're good. We can deal with that later. I'm starting to get nauseous. Whoa, it's cold. Should be a lot more water than that. Putting hay down where we spilled that water. We have to put some hay right here too, guys, just because it's going to turn to ice and we don't want our animals slipping on it. Who's going to watch this so it doesn't overflow? You guys got this? I'm going to go load the boiler. So everybody knows it was 40 degrees yesterday and now it feels like 1 out here. Kind of wondering when the cameras are going to go kaput. Okay, maybe the doorknob went kaput. Had that gotten locked? Oh, why is your hands uncovered?

Because they're vicious.

Okay, what just happened?

I climbed through there.

You did? How'd you climb through there?

Guess go between.

Did you have to roll it up?

No, look, I'll show you.

Go from here.

Nice, I like it. Oh, oh, let's not jam it. Door is frozen shut. How's their water? Boy, a bunch of them still laying. The animals are going on like nothing's going on. We got to get eggs more frequently too, cuz they're going to freeze. Looks like some of them cracked. Wow! Tell me what you did with the pigs.

Pour the grain into the pans and put them in there, and then I took out yesterday's.

Okay, looks like Mama Pig is doing good. Piglets doing good. And Lily did a good job. They got plenty to eat. What about the breeder pig? Where's their scraps of food?

They already ate it.

Okay, are you kidding me? This is the heat, guys. None of our submersibles were plugged in. Can you crawl in there and see if the nipple waters work, please?

They're not even frozen.

Okay, then it might have happened this morning.

Dang, nipple waters are frozen because there's no heaters to the— out of the nipple waterers.

What are we gonna do?

Go get your torch.

The water on top is not frozen?

Nope.

Okay, don't do that. Your gloves are not waterproof. Well, my mama bought me waterproof gloves, so I think we need to regroup, take these eggs up, then come milk. Problems and problems, Mom. The nipple waters on the pigs are freezing. Oh dear. Even with the submersible. Is it gonna warm up at all today? Maybe that the sun is out at least.

Well, the sun comes out and it will heat the greenhouse.

Okay.

I think that'll be fine, but what about the piglets?

I don't know.

Okay, so it is really cold outside and Justin was like, you should go and see what it feels like. I was like, I don't really want to. He's like, you should definitely do it. The handle of the door is like frigid. Well, I'm like kind of standing close to the house, so I'm not getting the full effect. There is ice. Wow, this is really cold. I'm going back inside.

Your light's not working?

Yeah.

That means we've already blown the breaker again. No, but we need the breaker down. We need the outlet down there for the submersibles.

Oh!

I bet both outdoor plugs, which— 2 submersibles over here, 2 submersibles over there, 4 submersibles on one unit or whatever. It's too much. This is outlet in the middle of our house. Let's hope it's on a different circuit. It is on a different circuit. Wow, I was thinking this vlog was going to be more boring. Never mind, we've got lots to do, lots of problems to solve. And even if we get the submersible problem fixed, we haven't got the nipple part fixed. Okay, it's lit up, that's good. Okay, that's me taking two submersibles off that circuit. One's out in the high tunnel, could still be on it, but we'll hope that's not too much. We'll know. We'll leave the boys' lights on. Does that light get turned off? I don't feel like that tripped. See if your light is on. Is it not working?

Nope.

Guys, I'm gonna have to figure out this electricity. Cow's got to get milked, so can you guys start milking the cows? It's gonna be two different— this is gonna be Honey's first time. Such an electric smoking, and I don't know. I bet you I know the problem. We have splitters. We have proper splitters. Come on, we'll unplug this even though it's off. Guarantee you this is all connected into one thing. Look at that. See the ice developing around the nipple? Yeah, that submersible is not going to help us there. It probably doesn't like this thin drop cord. That is not lit up. Maybe the light on it is busted. Yeah, the light on it there was busted. That outlet is still working. We might be able to grab this drop cord. Grab this here. And we have this one. We're gonna use bigger cords here. It used to be a straight one. Does that not work? This one's looking a little janky. It's missing the negative. Oh, drop cords. We were going through that little orange one definitely when I was on the Great American Farm Tour. Unplug the splitter for a second and I'll Go flip the switch. We'll see if it'll turn on. There you go. That felt it. That felt good. We put the water on the south side for the sun. The sun's hitting that water over there. Pigs don't seem too stressed out about it. They're laying down. You've plugged it in? How do you know it's working? By the light, right? Connection right here. It's not lit up. I don't think so. Oh, that'll work. Do you know how to check a breaker? Yeah, well then let's check the breaker. One problem at a time. Don't, don't be flipping switches.

I'm not touching.

Let's try this outlet. This outlet works. I was thinking we'll pull this. Oh yeah, see if it'll go all the way to the wall, this one. Okay, that made it to the wall. Now we have that thick one. Just how you're going to take that heat gun to the piglets. Now you think— okay, run that to the end and see if that's enough. I feel like we have some more bigger cords somewhere. Made it to right there. We were right there. Jonah found the big one, remember? Yeah, we ran it here to Anna White Greenhouse. Keep going, I'm giving you slack. All right, go ahead. I don't know why that outlet out there is not working. Lit up. Wow, it's already super warm in here. Super warm, that might be strong. Let's see if it works.

Won't let me pull the trigger.

Saw got frozen. Okay, I'm kind of thinking we can bypass That orange cord worked, but how long is it gonna work? We were able to replace that cord with just tightening that one up because it's a little janky cord. Hey, how'd that work? Did it break open their nipple?

Yeah.

Cool. Can you do it on the feeder pigs now?

Is there, um, stuff out— is there a lot of electricity out there?

Yep. Gideon's chicks and mama hen Probably getting abandoned in the brooder, so we're gonna put them in the high tunnel. They have their feathers, so I'm thinking they, they'll be able to escape the pigs. Hey, is your gun working? It's quick too, isn't it? Now it's working. Now we need to get Flossie out. Keep her in there. Can you milk honey now, Lily?

I could, but I don't really they want to.

Okay, trying to think, am I to the spot to go? Hey, did that stay? Where's the submersible?

We never put one in.

Oh, we only have 4? Yeah, we don't have 4 submersibles. Yeah, uh, well, what should we do though? Should we get her in our new habit? I kind of like that water there though, because it's in the sun, can get thawed out. You don't have much milk in here. Oh my gosh, that was the worst! Morning ever.

Terrible.

It should have been. Do you realize our fail safes, none of them work? Our two preventatives did not work. The hose, which drained— my fault, I did not turn it off at the end, water did not get out. The submersibles, we had that electrical problem. But even if we didn't have the electrical problem, then it didn't keep the nipple waters from freezing. Next up, gingerbread house. It's gotten colder out there. What do you like about a gingerbread Gingerbread house, Josiah.

I don't know, it's fun.

Is this your glue?

How do you do it? Kids, let me see the directions.

You put it like this.

Oh my.

Well, there it goes.

That was our beautiful talent.

Are you eating the gingerbread too?

She said we could try it.

All right, enjoy.

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Get Mr. Brown, tell him Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.