Building Back Our Raised Beds After the Hurricane

Today we're taking back our front yard homestead. In Hurricane Helene's wake, devastation and destruction stretching as far as the eye can see. We were not prepared for this. Raised beds, kitchen garden, so important. The gardens closest to the house. Before it's time to plant these, which is coming up fast. Good morning, you gonna go work with Josiah? You gonna go work with Josiah? Where's your shoes, little boy? Use your shoes for the boy. Happy day. In this video, we're building back what old age and Hurricane Helene has tore down. Well, and we tore down, uh, you know, the rubble that was left. We did a little disassembly yesterday. Only got about 2 and a half hours to a very special lunch. We're gonna make a quiche from the lamb, from the chicken. I'm looking forward to it. First step, measurements. 8 feet exactly. We're gonna reuse as much as we can. As my late father would say, use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. We got 2 of those, we just need 1. We're gonna need 4x4, let's say 20 inches. Oh my gosh, what's happened in here? Okay, well, here's our stuff I pulled out yesterday. I cannot believe this. I just realized I cut my 4x4 to the 2x4 length. 4x4 is supposed to stick up like that, and I only had this 4x4. The leftovers are too short. All right, don't dwell on it too long. Cedar 2x4s are hard to come by and expensive. Here's a poor boy cedar 4x4. Although we're probably gonna need these 2x4s. Should we double check this? This one should be shorter. It is. Let's go. Breakfast break. Look at Lily, what she made y'all. A little bit of tea, a little bit of tea. I resisted. You did not resist. And y'all saved the best for last. Let's go back at it. Oh, gross. Really, Royal? We got until 11 till we make this quiche extraordinaire. It'd help if I got some boots on. It would be really rewarding and fulfilling if I could get these two beds done by then. Battery must be dead. I thought it was the new battery though. Let's make a 4x4. Now this has to be the top. 2x4 sits here, uh, 1x6s sit behind this. Okay, I need to make another shorter one, one for the other side of it too. Step 2, rebuild. All right, I'm gonna try one of these O boards on the bottom. Yeah, quick timeout. John's here to work today. We're gonna have him spread hay over bare ground from where we graded from the hurricane along the creek. John, we're gonna get that covered. Did you know Mother Nature is modest? I'm not. Yeah, she likes to be covered. If we don't cover her, she'll cover herself crazy. Boys are cleaning up the woodlot. Look at that. Can you go get John a couple of hay bales, 2 or 3 hay bales in that area? Don't get the nice hay. Do you know the difference between the nice and junk hay? Yeah. All right, thanks. They've organized the totes, they've stacked good wood. We got we can use for firewood, and they started a burn pile with the rotten wood. Put the fourth one on. I just realized I have a discrepancy. I'm down here, it's supposed to be the same level. That needs to be moved down. We're sitting flush up here. We not only need to move this over, we have to move these down. Hopefully— that's a mess— if I can go down some. John, you remember helping us build these? I do, yes. So what are we gonna do first, Mr. Road? We are going to make width of the bed. We're gonna make the wall first. Okay, we've got all these in a day. Yeah, it feels like maybe a couple days. Okay, I just put dirt under this instead of lowering the 1x6s. I just raised the corner, which is probably how it was. Okay, we're getting somewhere. We just got to put the wall up and we're gonna have to add the supports to the wall and the lip. And don't forget, we still got the other one. But John needs to get started on these seeds. I already got one unrolled. You already— can you get the other one unrolled too? Sure, let's make it a lot easier. We get our seeds from a company called Nature's Seed. The cool thing about them, you can select according to your region and what you're growing. In this case, milkhouse. Um, Start where the double thread would be on your right, so that'd be over on this side. Start from that side, not this side, Victor's side. Start throwing seeds, and then you just kind of walk slow. Hard to believe, nearly 6 months since Hurricane Helene. We're getting this done. This was an unbeatable mess, and here we are. Seating. And we're back. See if our board fits. I mean, it's perfect down here, and that's exactly how it's supposed to go in the plans. Now we're a little too high. Should I fix it or let it go? Well, I better fix it, or if it's— or it's going to set off all our posts that we set in the middle. Second time undoing this. Haha, we've done one side. Hey! What? It's not really fair, y'all in here playing b-ball and the boys are out working. Hey, come with me or tell me a project you guys want to do. Whoever gets to 5 first. It's project time, it's project time. No, give me some 2x4s out of there, Lily. Go meet us up there, up there at the raised beds. Let's screw these in so that we don't— it doesn't push wallet out, you know. Those help keep the— I'll hold it, you screw The board's in. Down hard and fast. All right, Gideon, we got this side braced. We can start digging out the other side. It's really past quitting time for lunch, but thankfully, uh, Lily is going in there and working on that. Mom's gonna help her in a bit. We gotta get at least this, this one done. It's probably that much wider than it should be. It's gotten pushed out without this dirt here. Or without this wall, there's nothing to hold it back. The dirt's been pushing it away. Maybe almost a half. It's hard, and you're gonna have to go across all the way. I'll take over shoveling. No, you start at that end then. Can we scoot this over? Hold on, hold on. Hold on. There, it worked. It worked, Gideon. Good job. Are these too long? These are probably too long now. Come on. Yeah, push. The rotten ones will work. Gideon's idea worked, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I know. And that's correct. Just like 4 seconds. We are gonna have to go measure and recut some things, but We got a little bit of a lip. There's really no point, but oh man, the amount of effort it would take to fix that, it's not worth it. And beautiful one's right, it's going to be bushy and it's— we're not even going to notice. Now fill it in and we'll present it to your mother. We're ready to present this to Mom. Hold on, don't get her yet, get the blower. We're gonna present this Let's blow it off, look, make it look nice. Blow off the beds first. Start high, always. You have 2 minutes. Oh, here she comes. It looks great. It's back to what it's supposed to be. Looks good, huh? Feels good to fix something. One more to go. Oh yeah, that one's easy though. Yeah, I gotta do the end one. Hopefully it'll be easier because it's only one end. I think it will be. You never know. And we don't have to fix it. You never know. This was quite more, more than I thought. Well, just wait till we do the rock ones. That one's gonna be crazy. See what's going on with lunch, do lunch, and finish that. Oh my! What are you packing? And what do we have here? We have mega quiche. You just call it a mega quiche? Yeah. Okay, when you get like 3 dozen eggs a day, you put eggs on the menu. Hash browns on the bottom? Hash browns throughout. Ooh, now you're adding sausage. Yep. I see cheese in my future. What are we having for dinner? Meat and cheese. Meat and cheese. Just fried some Brussels sprouts. Vinaigrette with some maple syrup in it. All right, turn that off. 5 till 3 this afternoon. I'm back at it. I'm hoping theoretically— I don't care if it lines up with these last ones, we're just getting by. Let's cut the, the rotten ends off, cut it down a couple of inches, and this raised bed will just be a little shorter than the others. These raised beds are specifically designed so the chicken tractor could sit perfectly on them. The chicken tractor will just overhang a little bit on this one if we use it to— if we use it, uh, the to have the chickens work in our garden. Let's go ahead and install this, and then we're gonna install it and then cut beside it. How about that? Something shorter. I have 2x6s. I have some old 2x6s used for braces I could cut down. We don't need those braces anymore. It'll be this thing's third life. Part of a chicken retaining wall inside of the greenhouse that got washed away. These were forms to build these— this pole barn back up, and now they're gonna be in a raised bed. Let's rip it to 3.5, which is a 2x4, right? They're not really 4x— 2x4s. Yeah, 3 and a half. You just making a round pen? Yeah, poor thing. Blaze is— what do you call it? Barn soft. Yeah, it's getting there. Okay, I couldn't just let her struggle with those herself. By the way, watch. Look, these are the salvageable ones after the hurricane. That one's pretty bad, but we're making it work. We're making it work. We'll forever remember Hurricane Helene, right? Making do. Okay, what we're hoping is we can cut right along that 2x4 without any dramatics. Well, I already see one drama right there. Let's get that screw out of the way. It worked! Look who's out wielding the shovel. That's right. You admiring that soil the chickens built? It's beautiful soil. I have to add a couple more wheelbarrow loads. We do every year, and I'd like to do that before the chickens come back in. It's just a little easier to manage. You can do it while they're in there, but deep bedding, wood chips on top. We'll move those to the side, and we'll have this Soil that chickens have made. Isn't that crazy? Chickens, rain, and sunshine and water make this. I'm gonna teach you guys how to do that. I'm gonna teach you how to make deep bedding compost next to your garden. Chickens on compost, chickens creating the garden— that's all in our Kickstarter right now. I'm launching my next book, kickstarting my next book, The Chicken Tenders Playbook: To Raising Your Chickens Naturally from Hatching to the Plate. You ever think this is where we'd be 10 years from When we launched that first Kickstarter, Permaculture Chickens, back 10 years ago this month, Rebecca. We've been chicken tending for 20 years now. Yeah, it's been a long time. All right, you think we can move it over now? We gotta go make, uh, 4x4s. One end was all this. It's the best. Y'all working beside me on your own interests? Okay, we're getting better at that. I made sure the— the— well, actually, that's a 2x6. I kind of wish we made this thing 2x6 instead of 1x6s. Would have held up longer. And I wish I would have found some liner to put on the inside too. It would last another 6 years. Now we shouldn't have that problem. They're shiny clean. The board's being higher. Oh, we're almost done. Oh man, we're baking out here. Okay, it's getting towards the end of the day. I'm tired. That one doesn't have a bottom piece. Everybody had a bottom piece. We can do it. We measured it. Let's go do it real quick. We'll be happy we did. I'm gonna build this. If we put the bottom piece on, we can put the middle brace, we can level it out, and we can feel good about being done. What's going on? Are you serious? I can make it work. You ordered the wrong pan? No, they gave me the wrong pan. Are you sure? Oh, you got those hooks? Heck yeah, that worked! Did you get those today? You want to go with me? I'm being paid to watch him. What do you want to— where am I going? I'm just going to the raised beds. These boys are fixing their own mini axes. This stuff's fun. Dig into the machine. So that's the pin they gave you? Yeah, it's like a tractor pin. And that's not the right pin? It might work. It's not long enough. That's the— the old pin came through here. Okay. And you hooked it in like that. All right, this pin comes through the other way. Cool. Do you have a pin to hold that in there? Heck yes! That's a Carter pin, you know, if you bend it open. Huge Carter pin. Yeah, how do you want to cut that in half? I forgot to film my cutting. What? I'm getting tired at the end of the day. I normally don't vlog afternoon for a reason. How far do I cut it? Show you. Let's go, Henry! Yeah, plug that in without getting shocked. Uh, proud of those guys. He We went online with Mom, ordered that part, went and picked it up today. Just him going and getting that and doing that work himself probably saved us $150. Me fixing these instead of just rebuilding these, buying us another year, maybe two, save us $700 or more each raised bed. This is it, this is it! Hey, looky here, guys! Looky there! How's it look? That feels so good. We worked, we didn't stop till it was done. Took twice as long as we thought it would, but that feels good right there, buddy. What do you need, buddy? Could you help me? Okay. All right, join us tomorrow, see if we can get the chicken run done. We really need to if we're gonna put the chickens Happy day.