Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 90

Mr. Brad, you with me? Come on, will you carry that please? Good choices, buddy. What happened here? There, we can use this cart, might as well. Can you guys know where the, uh, alpha alpha I think it's back at the pole barn.

What's back at the pole barn?

We gotta show me sheep out. Hey, Birdell, Birdell, will you show Ashley Hope? Let's get some alfalfa and let her feed her from her hand. Everyone, you need to meet the person behind the camera. We got Austin, Never End LLC. He's our backup editor when Dan needs a break or on the weekends, and our YouTube Shorts editor. Why are you camera, man? You're so shy. You just saw his wife Ashley. They're visiting just to get perspective on the farm. I had never even met you. You've edited, uh, for over a month now, 2 months. Yeah, I didn't even know what you looked like. I knew what you looked like though. Handsome young guy. Did I bring you a lid for that over here? Oh, I did. Here it is. Okay boys, let's do this. Hey, did somebody load the wood boiler this morning?

Checked it, it's having to be reloaded for a minute.

Hey, did you get to pet this, Ashley?

Not yet.

Grab a handful of that alfalfa and she'll eat right out of your hand.

Well, not if you had that bucket, honey.

She goes the path of least resistance. She's like water. Yeah. Lily, it would be good if you got Henry.

I have to feed the calf.

Lily will come up. Uh, Jonah, can you feed the calf?

No, I want to No, she could take care of the cats now. Nobody has to watch Henry. I'll do it.

Go ahead, and Lily's on her way.

I'll go watch Henry.

No way, but thank you.

That's a disaster waiting to happen.

What is?

You ain't going to watch Henry?

Come on, let's go. Then I want to get everything set up before we bring them back in, okay? All right, will you hold this up? We're missing a pan. Oh, there's a pan. Will you guys set pan?

Actually, we should put some hay in here for Flossy when she's up.

Let's get that, uh, sheep manure out of there too. It's a good way to get them to eat it all though, huh? Want to raise it up in there? No, we better not cuz because of this, this board. Not until we fix this board. Are you gonna retie that? We've brought the pans in.

We need to hire this.

We should, uh, put the wood chips down.

Okay, the reason this fan ruffet is knocking it down is because it has to reach down so far. It's not fixed for long.

All right, let's put the wood chips down. Yeah, Ashley's just jumping right in. Smell it here, Ashley. You smell anything?

Carbonation.

So you don't have to do too deep of a— no, you don't want to do too deep, really, or else it won't break it down. You want, you want it to be a little slimy, otherwise your ratio won't be right. You'll have too much carbon and it won't, it won't compost. Just a sprinkler, maybe a wheelbarrow though. There we go. There better not be any smell because that's our bedroom up there. Hey. Yeah, that's what I was afraid of.

What's your favorite chore to do?

Chores are these things that we do every day. I like the actual process of milking. Usually we're milking in a different spot out in the field, you know, so I get a different view of the farm. Sometimes if it's particularly stressful, or frustrating. That's a Serenity Now spot. And when that used to be only me and I had to milk 2 cows, it was a productivity time. I would listen to podcasts. I used to do live shows doing that, like Periscopes, or I would do audiobooks. I listened to Zig Ziglar's Developing Qualities of Success. That's a 6-hour book. I've listened to that 16 times.

Wow.

Hey, I need some eggs. Yeah, where is he? Jonah, you know where Gideon is? Oh boy, there went the roller skates. They take advantage of that because notice he's been gone. I haven't even noticed. I've been engulfed in the project. Is he in here?

No.

There he is. Can you go get Mom some eggs?

Sure.

He wasn't with me and he knows what's involved. Hey, after the eggs, come be with me. Okay. All right, y'all ready? Breakfast is going to be ready at 8:30. Johnny, you want to keep the sheep at bay? The friends coming. Uh, stay close to me, Ashley. Okay, here you go, here you go, Floss.

Hey, hey, hey, boy, how did you get in the barn?

Come on, they're very peaceful. I'll let you milk. All right, we got some warm soap water in that Yeti there. They get restless and they run out of hot water. That'd be like you guys getting a quarter cup of coffee. You'd go a little ill, wouldn't you? Oh snap, do you guys do coffee? We did not provide that, did we? I'll make you some when we go up then. I don't know if I ever realized y'all drink coffee. Yeah, I don't drink coffee. You don't? No. Oh, we don't make us any.

We actually bought some at the store. Through last night.

We have coffee here to make. We'll grind it for you from frozen, grind it fresh.

So why do you have it if you don't like it?

Just because all you addicts— they say it's the number one drug in the world, right? Coffee, the most legal drug in the world, isn't it? Here you go, my man. All right, come here, Ashley. Okay, kind of pinching it off the top and then squeezing. Okay, you're not pulling.

You do one at a time, whatever you want to do. You speed up.

Well, I think I've been doing this 12 years.

Oh, okay.

Every day. Uh-oh, she bumped into that a little bit. Okay, hold on, let's get her some more. Pop off your glass of coffee here, honey. You'll notice they'll be much more calm and mellow by the time this is run out. They'll slow down. Right now they're peeing. They're going to get their fix. We're going to get y'all's fix here in half an hour. When you get bored of milking, We're gonna have you take some alfalfa to Vanilla and pet her while she eats. She has not had a calf yet. She's a heifer. We need her to be comfortable with us enough to grab around her and squeeze. Now, what's the biggest cost in raising a cow? Well, the land. The cost of land. People don't factor that in, but you're gonna need 5 acres to fully sustain one cow, and that's in a cold temperate climate. You could do 2 acres per cow if you're willing to bring in hay in the winter, and that's what we're doing. In the winter, so figure 4 or 5 months on hay, they eat a square hay bale a day. So a square hay bale can run anywhere between $5 and $15 a bale. But what, what people often forget is a cow will give you 1, 3, 4 gallons a day, 100% grass-fed, and a calf every year, plus 500 pounds of manure. So all these cows here, we're producing 250 pounds of manure, which is going to mean 300, at least 250 300-ish pounds of compost a day. So what's that worth? A lot of times people think about costs and they forgot to think about production, right? Right. That's the scarcity versus abundance. We got to always make sure— sure, it costs us, but then what if we actually— we could save money? And then actually, then what if then we could earn money? Maybe you don't eat the beef, maybe you sell the beef, maybe you sell compost. If it's costing you, how can you actually Turn that problem of cost into a solution. Oh yeah, my friends treat me. Did I get— no, Jonah's squirting me with the teeth. Did he get you? He purposely—

yeah, he got me.

You wanted to drink straight from the cow. Now you're friends with a lot of the homestead YouTube community, right? Oh, for sure.

Tell them about how you met that guy that he knows, that Nick knows.

Honey Tree Farm. Honey Tree Farm. Yes, he was on a podcast of a client of mine. Oh, fun. And we went to his farm to shoot some stuff. Oh cool, he's legit. Yeah, garden farmer. You ever think you would be a YouTuber?

That doesn't surprise me.

I've been filming, documenting my whole life. Funny, I hiked the Grand Canyon in 1997, but it was basically me vlogging and told the whole story of us traveling out to Colorado— or no, Arizona. I had a tripod, I set it up on it, and that was before vlogging was the thing. Yeah. Now we started our YouTube because we were becoming content creators. We were writing blogs. That was our whole thing. It was always a business We were taking what we had learned over homesteading for 10 years and wanting to share it with others by creating content around that, free content, and then launching products. And we did that with blogging, but then we discovered vlogging. We just tried it and it really resonated with people and it really took off fast. At that time, nobody in homesteading was vlogging. There was homestead videos, instructionals, but nobody was vlogging. We did never imagine that we would be at a million million subscribers, right? We thought, wouldn't that be something if we got to 10,000? But you don't need a million subscribers to make a living, uh, from content creation. It's an extra blessing that we're impacting so many lives, and an extra, extra blessing career-wise too.

Do you make money off of ads if they skip— if people skip them?

No, you don't make any money.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, my bad.

My bad? That's all you have to say? What about I'm sorry? Ever hear of those words before? You have to watch 30 seconds of the ad. All right, from now on I probably have 2 minutes.

I'll be making you at at least 30 cents each video. Oh, thanks.

No, no, no, you stay here. No, you're, you're tricking me. No, my man, help Ashley pet the cow. Come on.

I want to.

Oh, it's your choice, buddy. Your choice. Gideon, come in here and help us get this stuff out, please. What's going on?

I'm just throwing down the hay that we could feed. Okay, let's actually really fill it up. Have you ever tried sheep milk?

Yeah, you can do sheep milk. I have not had it, but I heard it's good. Let's let her lay out. Honey, go first.

Try doing that. I'll get his top bit off. Oh, too late, the gate's closed. Funny.

All right, everybody grab something. Those are dirty.

You want to wash them?

No, let's eat. Tighten that up so she can't get out.

Is it on?

Here, it's off. Oh, you want it on now? We got to make some coffee. They're addicts. Okay. Whoa, not that heavy. No, no, no, we need to go. We need to relocate. Rebecca, did you eat?

Yes. Thanks.

Pretty quickly it's gonna overflow. You know how to heat this up, don't you? All right, let's get lids on it. Hey, can you start taking this label off? Hey Josiah, you guys start hauling. Josiah, show them the cart. Let's start hauling this over. Maybe do 2 service trays ready for rendering today. What do you think?

Shuffle your cards. Okay, you're gonna be right in the middle. That's convenient. So I would I'll put my one out. Okay, we're gonna be out of here.

That's the cool thing about the vlog versus the production film. A vlog, the kids are gonna be all around and interrupt, and it's okay. Everybody out of the house. Becca's got to do an instructional for a bunch of us on health, food, and water today. We're gonna get out of her way. Grab those pans. Carry those pans by hand. This thing is heavy. Big mess coming, coming our way. Look at this bag of fat. So get in. You could do this job if you get you a stool. Get in. Whatever you do, don't squeeze your hand through here and down, okay? Okay, you ready? You guys want to try this? We don't want to do that. There would go our organic pork. Okay, so drop it in like that. Oh wait, why is there styrofoam still in there? How did that happen? That's going to take forever. That's going to take forever cuz he found a pile of it, of this worn out styrofoam. Hope that will do it. Styrofoam wore out while it was in storage. Ants took up residence in here.

If we take these screws—

when you get those screws out of the way, just start vacuuming what you can.

Oh, look at Cory. Look what you done did. I think it goes right here. What are you trying to get?

Do you know what that is? No, I think it's a radio.

Come over, I got some stuff.

They're glued. This can't be happening.

Wow.

All right, look at that. That would have taken all day. The ants just made a nest or something.

Never in my storage bringing this out in the outdoors as fast as I can. These ones go right here. These are the two that go right here. Oh gosh. Yeah, look, it'll be okay.

No, it won't. Screw it in.

Where is this?

Probably right here. Right here. Where'd he go?

Oh, there it is. Okay, these two go right there.

Yeah. And right here. Oh shoot, that gets your finger.

Yes! That's rather Jerry. Go, go, go, I see it blow. Okay, I'll try a little bit at first. Yeah, can I do one? You can do this. I don't know somewhere that you can fit down in there.

Okay. Now we're going to fill this tray up with this fat, this tray up with that fat.

Just blacken. Oh, we got fat up there.

These are still frozen. Hopefully it'll— we can manage.

Does this go down? No, let's put that in here. Could you get us a hammer?

Finish what you can there and we'll let it thaw out some more.

What's the leaf lard?

Yeah, that's all leaf lard. Well, there's one bag right there on the brown counter that's just lamb. This is all leaf lard. Look, all this. Start on all this. Leaf lard is more neutral in flavor, and this lard is going to have more of a porky flavor. So you would fry things in this and you would bake with leaf lard. Don't want your cake tasting like pork, right? Leave flour, let's go.

Pop up, don't let it go to— Then we're going to need to give that pump a break, right?

Let it pull out more.

Aren't we done after this?

We would be.

I'm going to cut that up though. You know what, we're cutting up right now. You want this? What do you like about this job? I don't know. It's just getting stuck. Wash the baby's hands. Kitchen soap might work better. It says cuts grease right on the label. How is it going?

It's going insane. There was all the little fine particles of styrofoam in it. Oh, bummer. This is not thawed out all the way. I didn't even cut it. We're gonna head over to start cooking it. How'd it go for you?

It was good. We're done.

Josiah, come on, grab the lamb lard. You know, look who helped. Back, back away. All right, well, what's that? Where'd you get that CD? Shoot, which one's the leaf lard? Uh, this was sitting right here. Leaf lard was taller.

Then that's the leaf lard.

I think I have the leaf lard. That's how much water, half an inch. We're gonna put a little bit of water in it so we don't— fat doesn't get burned on the bottom. Idea here is to cook it on slow until you have no more evaporation and you've rendered out all the moisture, goes away, the meat begins to cook, and the fat becomes liquid. How full do you think I can fill this 5-gallon thing back? It's only been 30-ish minutes, and look, I'm so tickled by this. We only put a quarter inch of water, and look how much moisture is in there. I was worried that this lard was going to get burnt. It's not gonna. This is totally working out great. Grinding it has caused it to really be able to liquefy. Is the best. You back at training?

I'm gonna try.

Now we go about our life while the stove does the work. Well, what y'all doing with those aprons?

We're gonna forge with them.

Okay, who's watching Henry?

Uh, we have to—

while we train, we have to do it. Okay, do it after lunch. 2-ish hours later, the leaf lard had very little meat in it. That's what keeps it flavorless, and it's looking like oil. I'm not seeing any steam come off the— when I stir it. This is the regular lard. I don't think I'm seeing any of the skin come off of it either. What do you think, Beck? You think it's all right?

I think so. How long has it been going?

It's been going, I'd say, almost 2 hours, maybe 2 hours.

Now what is this foamy stuff?

Are we gonna ladle? I don't know, the cheesecloth will get it out of there. It's probably some gristle. That cheesecloth last this whole session?

Yeah.

Or you're gonna do another one? You can just wash that cheesecloth. Just reviewed some notes from The Fat Kitchen, good book. We want to render this until— we called it right on this one. See the little shards of meat? They're colored. So the more color they get, the more meat flavor you're going to have in your oil, and we don't want that in the, in the lard, in the leaf lard. This one, it's a little more— you can see it a little better. That's starting to color, but ever so slightly. We can probably go a hair more, but now that I'm looking at it, I might call it. We'll see what the beautiful one wants to do. Okay, I think I figured out a system. The cheesecloth is going too slow. Let's run it through just the silver filter first, and then we'll pour it out of here. One thing Fat Kitchen did say, you can't wash your cheesecloth. Cloths, not with all this oil on it. So they have to be washed outside separate, or you're gonna have to throw them away. Whoa, wow, wow, that's hot, that's hot! Look at this though, 2 strained bottles. I didn't realize this is going to be the bottleneck. This is going to be the bottleneck, straining. The grinding, once we got it going, was easy. Fulfilling. Just got so much done in so little time. The rendering was easy because you can just walk away. This is going to be the struggle. Okay, we just changed the game. Rebecca is filtering it now. It's going very fast. We just said, what are we hanging on to? A whole roll of cheesecloth is $10. Let's just cut it up, use more, maybe change it out every quarter, every half. It goes so much faster. Time is money, darling. Time is money. We gotta make the process fun. It's much more fun when it's flowing.

You've got to go over there and check the boys.

I know, I gotta check the boys. They're finishing up the—

they want to do something. Yes, they're trying to get past—

they're trying to get the freedom in the afternoon, which is great, and they're hustling, but sometimes they hustle too much, you know what I'm saying? We're having fish tonight, so they're wanting to do something creative with the lard. Probably gonna have fish and chips, so to speak. Fish and fries. I better check on the boys. Sounds like you're all having too much fun.

No, we're not having fun. Is it still frozen? Yes, I got cut too.

Oh goodness, have you already done this? Yes, and another one.

We're working on the other bag.

I'm gonna be overwhelmed with fat, I'm gonna tell you that. So much lard. Each service tray is ending up being 2.5 gallons of oil. It's gonna be 2 more service trays, so that's gonna be 5 gallons yet over there, and then there's another 5 gallons in here. We're in 10 gallons organic homegrown. That's goodness.

Gonna last us a while.

We're gonna have to order more jars, dar. I will.

Well, hopefully we can get them.

You guys see this pork start to solidify and get more white. It'll be pure white by tomorrow. Jammed it out with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 racks of pork skins. That would probably last me a month, maybe 6 weeks. Got about that much more, but then that's it. I'm gonna have to find a source of organic pork skins somewhere. Look up after your 3-hour nap. Rendering more fat. That's from the skin. Chips from fish and chips. Remind you of our trip to England. That's right, but it was not salmon, and I'm sure it was some sort of fried fish. So Rebecca, how is that? That you cooked that in their fresh lard?

That's so good.

Good. It's worth it. Yeah, we have lard for like 6 months or more.

Well, we have in the cold room, we have a whole nother 5 gallons of it.

Oh, that's right. Frozen stuff that you guys worked up.

Oh, in bags.

So you're gonna have another—

Oh wait, no, we have cold room. We have 2 service trays of cold room.

Yeah.

Ground, and then we have 4 bags in the freezer.

Oh, that's right. I forgot about those bags. Oh my gosh. We're swimming in lard.

Lard in 1 teaspoon has second to cod liver oil. It's like 500 IUs or something.

Vitamin E or D? D. D, okay. Now we need that without the sun.