Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 10

Day 10 of 100 days building a homestead. We are 10% in. We are mucking this pond. This is part of a 10-acre homestead build revamp. Getting, getting water established, taking advantage of what's already there. In this 100 days, finding a house site— what do you call that? Bonus feature? And we're getting access into Jonah, do you remember how to make the cuts? No. If I get everything in the timeline? Come on, I'll show you.

Okay.

Stairs! Our main editor Dan is on assignment this week. Making a movie with the Dohertys. And of course with them, you know what they do? They know how to live 90% of them off the land without import. The graders are back today. I have to edit. Surveyor's coming. We got so much to do. I could see the floor in here. You chickens are doing an amazing job and you're not pooping in here as much, even though Gideon didn't put this bar up. I don't think you're laying— I think you're laying right over here. Yep. Gideon, you didn't put the landing bar up. Okay, well, at least you forgot. I was hoping— I was thinking maybe it fell down. Well, that's good to know. You ready for the trip? You excited?

Yeah.

Get your stuff, don't lose it. I would put that in a bag somewhere. Guys, we gotta go. They'll be here at 9. The graders definitely gonna be needing this today.

Get them, Winnie!

That's right there. It sounds like sheep are right there.

Let's go, let's go!

Well, we almost did it. There's the truck.

Papa, well, if you let us each spend $100 on Amazon, we will build Glowy. Guess what we'll want for it, cuz I know what I want— rollerblades and toy animals.

Can't find my chip.

Flossy, you need a little more? You done milking?

Jeff Flossy didn't see All right, start putting this stuff away. I don't think there's that much left.

Good job, proud of you. I'll confess, this is a bit dramatic. I think we went from too flimsy to too sturdy. You shouldn't need— here, let's measure this. That's actually a 6 and a half. Foot beam. These are 2x6 braces, 2 in the middle, and then 2— there's a V and an X in the middle. 2x6s around the top. It's sturdy and it ain't going nowhere, but you shouldn't have to use a tractor. I mean, even though it's frosty, even though we're on 30-degree slope, I'm trying to make this design as accessible as possible. I think I could take the bracing we did and the metal roll bar concept to keep it from squeezing in and do 4x4s and 2x2, 2x4s, and that'd be sufficient. Tractors are great, and you're probably going to need one if you have a big homestead like I do in various ways, but probably going to need a milk sled before you're going to need a tractor. Henry, you want to go look at the tractors? Oh yeah, and we're grading again. How's the silt pond? It's not quite up there yet. One more foot. The name The name of the game right now is find the perfect house site. It already had these guys scheduled to do this for months because we wanted to tap an unused water feature on our farm. The kids love swimming in the summer. As we look for possible house sites though, could this be it? Could this be a spot right above the pond taking reflection? We probably want to go even lower. The sun, the southern sun that way, reflecting off the pond onto the house, giving us a solar gain. We're building a passive solar house. We're going to heat our house with the sun. The family and I are going to clear this. Here's the strategy here. We're clearing every grade 30% or less to maximize pasture. We have a lot of mountains here in western North Carolina, and we're thinking let's start clearing around potential house sites. Oh, here's beauty. Hey, hey, so what do you think about putting boulders above the pond for kids to boulder on? Or, or actually in the, in the pond a little bit, like that huge boulder? They could have a rock island.

Yes, that'd be great.

Another potential site a little higher up. Down there, the people barn, the road. This would be clear, so we'd be able to see the pond where they're at. A little higher up you can see more of the pasture. I kind of like this spot. We're still convenient. We're probably parallel with the spring, which means it wouldn't need a lot of energy to get water from the spring. We're, we're a better distance from the public road. We got a time lapse on the guys down there. Let's, let's explore a little bit more. Let's see if this logging road goes parallel comes back out to our pasture because we would have a heck of an easy driveway if that was the case. Somebody said you guys ought to have a checklist for your house. Absolutely, we have a checklist for our house. Doesn't need to be on top of the mountain, needs to be 50 feet off the bottom, it needs to be south facing or off of south facing 20 degrees. So if you're looking for, uh, property Take that into consideration. I wouldn't get a property if it didn't have south-facing or southwest-facing slopes. Looks like the logging road fizzled out right here, and the difficulty is— the difficulty is to stay parallel right here. Oh wait, oh wait, maybe it turned down. Yeah, get turned down. That's not that steep. That's cool. You could have a little turn here in the driveway. You want to do the least amount of uphill as possible, going parallel as you can for the least amount of maintenance in the future. There's our silt pond. It's a little tricky because it's a bank all around, so you've got elevation considerations. You've got where the sun is. Now you want to look at access. Can you get into it? Like right here, I'm looking like it's going to be a little tricky to get a road in here. Like, there's— you couldn't go this way, it's too big of a valley there. You might could come up from the pond with some grading and come up like this. And it'd be pretty mellow. Those are things to think about. Surveyor's actually coming today, and I want to talk to him about can he locate roads for us, super chill roads. Is that a service he offers? I feel like roads you can make happen with a lot of grading, big machine like that, you can make happen. You cannot change the orientation of the mountain or the sun. So what we want to make sure is do we get our light from like— I think it's 10 to 2 or 10 to 3 in, in the various different possible house sites. That's probably what it's going to come down to, honestly. Good news, look at this clay. It's gonna be super easy to clear. There's not anything to underbrush, little trees spread out. It's already pretty clear in here. I mean, this is exciting, but it's also overwhelming. There's a lot of potential pasture here. It's just buried in rhododendron. Back where we started. Could we have a road right through here? We're gonna try a road the other way. Gnarly the way I just came. Could we come right through here, back up through here. See how gradual— see how gradual this decline— incline— see how gradual this incline is? Certainly if we had our house right here, it would be doable. It's a lower spot. The question is, could we cut up through there, or where's this logging road? There's a logging road here. Does it cut around? It doesn't. It dead ends right here. Could we continue on that grade through these woods up and around. Let's try it. Heck yeah, looky here, plenty of grade. Actually, I could cut on right there and go to even higher site. We continue on here, this is parallel. Here I am, here I am.

Ta-da!

Potential house site. That's cool. I found a road that connects us to that logging trail way up there on a much gradual slope, and cutting here and around, we can get back to that road around the pond. Super cool.

Yep.

Rebecca?

Yes?

Our potential house site? Uh-huh. One right by the pond, easy access. The one above the pond I found a nice windy road up to it. Super chill. Yeah, it's windy, super chill.

That's great. I don't mind wine.

So that site's looking better and better. Yeah, November 2nd is gonna mean everything when the passive solar guy comes.

Yeah, I'm excited about that.

Are you getting married to that site?

No.

Across the creek?

No.

Still open-minded?

Very open-minded. Okay, but because like if that is it, then we have a windy way to get to our pasture over there. Because that's gonna be pasture.

And there's another one that gets us up even further to an existing logging road. Okay, good. Oh my goodness, and there's more pasture. Yeah, if you keep going around the house and keep going, there's more.

Great.

Like overwhelming more.

Good, I like to be overwhelmed with that problem.

Okay, good.

Other problems, not so much.

Good. What's this?

They got chocolate on them. I need to wipe that off.

Pack in my bag.

Yeah, so I bought you water wipes to wipe things, your hands down, things that you might— just think, what would Rebecca— would— if Rebecca's sitting in this chair, let's wipe it down on the airplane.

All right, hands in. You're gonna limit my whole 2 days to this briefcase, right?

Well, and then you have a, a small suitcase and then your little cooler.

Okay.

Other than that, yes.

We are going to see the Dohertys tomorrow. We're filming a course for Abundance Plus University, but Also, to get some insight on this project, one of the classes we're doing with them is, well, one, how to find affordable land, and two, how to make ugly land work for you. And I'm dealing with some ugly situation. You know, the pasture I just found, it's steepish and has— it's a north-facing slope. So I can't think of anybody better than them to pick their brains about this. It's too big.

Hold on a second, I'm trying to—

do we have a smaller cooler? Because I don't need that much food. I'm sure they're gonna feed us. We decided that one's too big. We got that one for backpacking into the woods, hauling in our meat. A smaller one at Target. I'm excited about visiting the Dohertys because they're the most resourceful people I know, and they're gonna have some huge insight. Why am I leaving the farm? For 2 days during the 100 days of building a homestead. Info is critical, especially at this point. Insight is critical. That's the stage we're in now in these 100 days. How steep of a pasture do they graze? I, I know for a fact it's over 30%. Do they recommend that? How did they clear woods? Because they are also some of the most frugal people I know. That makes for very creative people, so it's going to be good.

You want to know what next?

Uh, yeah, I mean, it's probably about all I can do with it. No, I feel like you did good. I'm happy with it. Yeah. What do you think about— there's some boulders over there. Okay. It was a real big one. We were thinking about putting it down there. You couldn't, but I don't know if you could— you bring it and put it right here, put it down and have a look at it. It would be kind of cool to have it in the middle right there, and it'd be like a rock island. Yeah, the kids could jump off of it. Yeah, and there's more boulders there. You know how it's going to fill this in with creek rock? Yeah, let's put some of our boulders in first and they can do some bouldering.

What do you think?

You can handle that one? Yeah, it must have been that— it must have been that one you couldn't have moved. It's still down there in the ditch, but you could scratch here Anywhere in here, actually, and you get some boulder, you get some bigger stones. Yeah, here's one, here's one. We're gonna go look at the beach now. This is south-facing right here. Yep. There is any way you can create a beach, real gradual slope. Now we don't want to get too much into this road, you know, maybe right here. A gradual slope. South-facing end of this pond, we're going to kind of create a little beach.

You can jump up no problem.

I know.

He ain't scared.

I know, I'm like scared. I'm terrified. The cows are just—

I think he's trying to get on his blade.

Yeah, look at that.

Oh my gosh. Look at this!

How is he not going to flip forward? What?

That's crazy! Well, Jacob, I'm late. Very late. So what can I do in 25 minutes? We're gonna see.

That's right, you're a barber's wife, huh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, we're gonna do it. This looks like we're gonna go faster. Jacob can't let go. Yep, yep, let's dive. You just gotta go faster.

So I was watching a lot of my videos.

Well, Jacob, we broke record. We got 5 more minutes, so if this is gonna be 10 get-ups in 5 minutes, you know, you actually use the wrong bell.

Well, I told you to use the 20, you used the heavier one.

Oh dang.

I watched you do it on the first one, I was like, it looks good, I'll just let you do it.

That's good. Yeah, it's great. I thought it felt heavy.

That was a big deal. You've never done anything close to that.

And I did it fast.

You're gonna be sore.

He's gonna have me do half get-ups with bigger weight.

Yeah, really a quarter get-up.

5 minutes.

That's funny.

The normal belt, halfway up. Yeah, the quarter.

Yeah, just roll it. Yeah, just roll the elbow. Just fast Faster? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's— you can go normal tempo here because it's just going to take less time anyway. That right there, and then back slow. Yeah, because that's the hardest part of the get up, so that's really the most important thing. Oh yeah, I mean, for you, you struggle with the stand up too a little bit, but not near as much as the roll. This keeps you strong. This is really the whole thing in my mind.

Good.

Keep the shoulder angle down a little bit. You're kind of getting a little high.

That's— you could tweak your trap a little bit. How you feeling?

You feel strong?

Yeah. Okay, cool.

Let's do this one.

12:16. Good job, Jacob. Yeah, you crushed it. We just did a 25-minute training. Normally, normally takes 45 minutes. Okay, that's good. I can get back out with the trucks. How's it going over here, buddy?

Good.

But I don't think I helped you very much.

What was the timeline? 120?

That's the TikToker, Instagram, and then that's the phone, and then this is all the drone, and then the rest.

Okay, well, you helped me. You helped me a good bit. You going back to another Lego? I see. We're gonna put Pebble Beach in right here and some river rocks. Rocks, stones up there. The noisy Brookley, peaceful branch— I think we're gonna wait on that because we want to see where the water line is, one, and we probably want to clear around so many leaves aren't going to be falling down into it. What do you think, my man? You ready to jump off that rock? Yeah, we should have a big party here at the end of the 100 days, even though it's going to be like January, end of January. Should have a big old polar lunch party, huh? Yeah, I think we should. I think we should do it. Rebecca, yes sir. Nice hodgepodge meal here. Great, good job. Stupidly copied the finished survey.

2877.

This has been crucial. Especially the boundary marking. The original— there's the original deed.

Very original for this main piece.

Wow, look, Grandpa's $500.

So by coming from this way, he basically pushed all his error over that way. All right, so that kind of covers covers the big piece.

Do you do road laying out roads in your surveying?

Yes, it depends on what the road that you want is. Let's back that up for a quick second. If you're like, we want to build up here and so we want the road to follow the contour, I can stake out a private road for you. If we're developing the road here that has to meet weight standards for trucks to delivery trucks driving over it.

And we want a private road.

You understand what I'm saying? That involves a civil engineer, not a guy saying, here's the center line to that road you guys think you want.

Uh, walking it today, I'm saying that we probably need to come in right here, come along here, uh, do a little zigzag there, and come in.

Great, great set of questions.

Um, can you find a better route?

I I think for your needs we can take state LiDAR that exists. Uh, it's from 2019, 2017, but it's not like you guys have changed a lot, and it's going to show you your contours.

Um, and then you map out a road according to the contour, right?

Or you guys, you know, these are— so like, we're, we're like, oh, we want to come off the road, we want to go around the barn, and then we don't want to mess with that creek, so we want to come back, whatever it is you're going to color on here, and we're good, you know. We're going to— we'd say, and here's where we're putting our house because it looks over the pond really nice, you know.

What, what can you do that I can't do to go out there and just mark it based on eyeballing it?

For you, nothing. You most certainly— you got a digger here, you know your property, you know how you want that road. It's a private road. You don't need to gain access permission from anybody.

That's where you could come staking it out. I wouldn't know how to stake it out. Well, you, you, what do you do? Just walk? That's right.

You bang a wood stake wherever you like and you put them close enough and your grader is going to pull 10 feet either side of each one of those and cut your road in.

Okay.

Right. So you don't need me for that at all.

I just need to keep as, as on contour as I can. Right. What's the steep—

right. Best, um, you should— you would Google that.

Okay, I—

there's— it's like a K value or something like that is what your site view coming up, uh, so there's certain— and you get snow here and ice, so you're only going to want your driveway—

keep it as mild as possible, right?

But you don't want to pay the grader to do 50 miles of road, you want them to get to your house in as little money as possible.

Yeah, yeah, there's a balance there. What is that? Help me.

It's like—

I'll show you.

That's how you pull logs. Oh, hook it up to the tractor bucket and use it kind of like—

why don't we use a knife?

Well, it kind of fell out.

Is that too easy?

It's kind of hard with a knife.

That's too easy. Some work done with that thing.

And then you put it on a log.

Nice. We wrapped up the metering with the surveyor, and when we learned— Becky, I think we learned mostly that I could just build my own road. Yeah, just have the confidence to go up the least amount of contour, put stakes right in the middle of where I want this road. And what did they do, 6 feet on either side? Yeah, 10's a little dramatic. 20-foot road is a little dramatic.

15 minutes and you haven't even touched it except for sitting on the couch. Ouch.

We also went over the survey. We got some really cool info, history on the land and how it all went down in the past, which land came from what, all this and that. So it was really neat. Survey, although expensive, totally worth it, especially the ribbons marking the property so we know what we have. Taco Tuesday in the house! I learned this in Cleveland, so Mama made made, uh, salsa and guacamole and their sour cream. I don't need no stinking chips. I'm gonna make pork rinds. Let's try it. You're gonna have your corn chips all day.

It works.

You want to eat?

You want pork rinds? Here, look, you want pork rinds?

There you southern boy, loves those pork rinds. Eat that pork rind.

Oh, you blowing on it?

His plate, their plate, baby's plate, her plate. Just wrapped up dinner. We didn't get to see them put these boulders in because we were meeting with the surveyor. But let's go check it out. Y'all saw the big rock go in, but look at this, we got some smaller boulders from the land. Kids can hop around and play on this. We're gonna fill this up. We have an even bigger boulder than that, and he came to me later and said, I think I can get it. So he's going to do it next time when he— when they come back to do these boulders. We just got to get the forest cleared up a bit around it a bit more and let this fill up so we can see where our water line is. Nope, taking forever. Maybe 4 inches or so, it'll be there. You know, you could swing off into that at some point. I know.

Papa, could you come tie a knot right here?

Nice. So I got an idea, Beck. Okay, look how the culvert comes out about, I don't know, 3 feet down, right? Well, why not? Let's raise it up and have it drop more and have it splash on rocks. Yeah, and let's make as much noise through here as we can.

I like it a lot.

But how long will it take until we get into the plane?

The plane ride will only be about an hour and a half or so.

Yeah, but how long?

There'll be 2 plane The first plane ride's only— you were only in the air like 20 minutes. To Pittsburgh, it's probably an hour and a half from Charlotte. We're going, we're going on a trip. It's your turn to go on a trip alone with Papa. We're going to see the Dohertys. It'll be— I think you want to join us for that because— I know you'll want to join us for that because there are some amazing homesteaders truly living off the land. We're filming there, putting in Abundance Plus, but for the YouTube content and day— it'll be day 11 and 12. We're gonna pick their brain and just look at the farm and observe and learn things from others on how we might continue to make full use of our land, what is possible. I know they're grazing really steep stuff. I know they're very frugal. Guys, you don't want to miss this. The next 2 days, for sure, join us. See you tomorrow. You guys hear that? Listen. Hear that brookling branch? That's what we're going for over there with our rocks, but we want to make that louder. Listen. Kind of hear the plane overhead right now, but that will help drown that out some.