Chickens Destroy My Garden Quick Fix

Young man is going away to a soccer tournament. How far is it? 3 hours. 3 hours. Welcome to our Rooted life. Today Jonah's missing, so I need to do the milking chores with Josiah. We'll see. How much milk do you normally get yourself? Uh, I get a cow in it just like it's 2 gallons. Okay, so 3 gallons. Okay, who do you milk? Milk honey. Vanilla gives twice as much as honey. Yeah, I don't know why. And she's smaller. She's the champ. Well, I'll see if I can get a gallon. Hopefully milking goes well and then we can finish the pro— the, the sidewalk project at the cabin. I don't know though, it's definitely an impossible goal for the amount of time we have because Brianna and kids are coming over this afternoon. You excited? This one's alarm went off at 6:15. And you went and trained. Man, I'm proud of you.

Yeah, I trained because when I cantered yesterday, my legs were hurting a lot.

Ah, and we'll end the day with family dinner. Mm-hmm. And then a movie. Zaxby's salad. Can we copycat that, but a healthy version? Ow. This is kind of fun. Are we candle people now? That's actually a real candle. Well, it's got to stay away from the paper towels. We want our— oh, there's a bunch of sheep out. I was gonna say, we're— our eyes are waking with the sun and the sheep are out, and we may not be milking. See, just in case the calves haven't gotten to them, maybe we can prevent something. What happened? Maybe one cow had got to them. It looked like it sort of just happened. So Cy's ahead of me on the dirt dirt bike. Couldn't find my sweater this morning. I guess we're getting cold exposure. They're nursing both of them. Ah, well, that's over. All right, let's go eat. Dang it, it's our daily bread, so to speak. Mm, we're not wasting any milk. So when we miss it— ah, and we're missing tomorrow too because— no, Austin's gone, but I think we're doing chores tomorrow. But maybe not. Austin, are you gone tomorrow? Okay, dang it, he takes over. See, that's gonna be 2 days of milk we're gone. You know what's interesting? I'm on stage 4 G.A.P. I can eat roasted meat, roasted vegetables. I basically eat what the family eats now, just the scrambled eggs. But I don't want to. I still want a soup. I'm having beef short— I'm having short ribs. All right, Henry, we're going.

I can't find my sweater.

It's right here. Here you go. Here's your sweater. Let's go. Before we do chores, I gotta show you something. If y'all have known Rebecca as long as I have, since basically we're 16 years old, that's a stretch, but she's been doing it. She's been training herself now 6 months, and that's just, that's just not in her nature, guys. If she can do it, anyone can do it. She's not naturally inclined to athletics or physical adventures like that, but she's committed to it for her health, and I'm proud of her and the progress she's made. She's doing really good. Josiah and I decided to divide and conquer since we're not military. We'll say— just declared healing, and then my SI joint acts up. Think, is it something I ate? Is it something I ate? Or— Is it because I'm more active now that I'm eating again? I was slower, just naturally slower, doing less when I was fasting and just didn't tweak my back during that time. So I'm going to keep on GAPS, assuming it wasn't a food, because we could suss peanut butter. I am going to limit it. I'm going to limit it to once a week on Friday night. Family, every, every week our family does a special meal on Friday. Like tonight we're doing Zaxby's fried chicken. I won't be able to do that, but I could have Gap's pancakes with peanut butter fluff on top of it and maybe some yogurt with cooked down persimmon, and I'm good. Let's see if this clears up. Bad news on these chickens. Let me show you. No big deal, digging up an empty bed. Kind of a big deal, making a dust bath in our lawn. Big deal, big deal. They're eating our lettuce, they're upturning it, and they found my cabbage. Okay, guess what? I've been putting this off too long. I give you guys the best life ever. And this is how you pay me? We just realized the cabin— we need those rocks here. We ordered them. Hopefully they'll come early this morning. It's hard to finish a sidewalk if you don't have the rocks. That garden project just became numero uno in priority. You got some Tiger Bond right here? You have some already cut. All right, this is our winter lettuce and cabbage supply. We had to buy that lettuce for tonight, and we've only got till Thanksgiving, about a month. I think this will get up. I'm not sure if the cabbage will. 10-foot, 1/2-inch electrical conduit. These are made for two 30-inch beds, uh, crop garden beds with a foot between. They work perfect for my do-it-yourself raised beds from homesteadbuilds.com, my book. They've eaten it, they've tore it up. This Agribond will not only protect it from the frost It'll prevent dogs from getting up in here and chickens, cats. Cats like to get up in here and poop. Before we put the COVID over there, there's something else I've been putting off. I want to try because it's been awful dry lately. Those things need to— they need to get growing faster. You've got to get them grown by Thanksgiving because nothing's growing after Thanksgiving. We don't have enough light. Something very special. I'm very excited to try it. This is from Garden right. We use their hoses all over the farm. They're lead-free. They have stainless steel tips at the end. Well, you know, we're the crazy stainless steel people. But this is no ordinary hose. This is going to be a long-lasting, easy-to-connect drip irrigation hose. No cheap plastic. I think it's gonna be perfect for the raised bed. Let's see. While we have this uncovered and accessible, I'm excited to try this. Some high-quality American-made stuff. I'm out of here. Kids screaming, just give him a Band-Aid. You don't ask politely for a Band-Aid, you're in an emergency. Thank you. She's helping you now. You forgive her?

Okay.

You guys see that? Which is not let them leave. Mom says, where are they going? Where are they going? He's got to get his chipper off. She's panicked. Look, okay, they need clipped wings, dude. You got to clip their wings.

Okay, let's do it tomorrow. No, tomorrow's Sabbath.

Whenever we— when we kill them, because we're gonna lock them up tomorrow. Yeah, we gotta check everybody's wings. Chip drop? Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. We might have a couple more loads today. Okay. What are you doing in the area? You're gonna be in the area for a while? We're here on a weekend. He's probably got 2 more loads today, and they're on 7 projects. We're taking it while we can. Bring it on. Let's restore the hurricane pasture. More deep bedding. Just bring it on. All the carbon, all the carbon. That's just 1 of 7 projects in the area, and there's not always projects in the area, so we gotta take it when we can. Thanks, Chip Drop. This is from chipdrop.com. It's actually working. Josiah got us an end cap. End, okay. It should be good. Hey, get in! I need you, bud. Oh wow, stand back. Interesting, it's more of a spray than a drip. What's good about that is we can keep that under there, cover it, and then just turn it on from the outside. This is Agribon. This is frost protection. I mean, the chickens could technically cut through it, but they just won't. This will help keep these things warm, protected from the chickens, from the dogs. Now we don't have to get— you know, we won't have to come back in here until harvest. Now let me see one of those. We got these old fence posts. I think it's gonna be perfect. Look at that, are you kidding? It fits right there perfect. Maybe not the prettiest weights, but not too bad. Ta-da! Most underrated garden there is. Let's put the Agribond over this too. I don't think they'll make it. Big enough in time, but I bet if we keep them covered in the spring, we'll have early cabbages. You think there's another one that's already cut? This stuff does tarry. We plan on just getting new, new ones every season. Now this won't keep heavy snow off, so if it's going to call for snow, we're going to need to put 10-foot-wide greenhouse plastic on it. No problem. I like it, honey. I'm getting her new energy. I'm thinking I gotta plan this better. I gotta protect this better next year. The next year I gotta make sure I get winter squashes and onions enough. Eat 2 onions a day. 1, 2 onions a day. Just me. Get it. Put that in the garden stall, nowhere else. Frugal hack for you: when your boot gets a hole in it, just get some more. Use those when it's wet in the morning. And then your holy boot, just use in the afternoon when it's not wet anymore. I know we want to be up the cabin laying rocks, right? Punching gravel. But first, we better pick up our tent from Homesteaders of America because this tent was expensive. I'm not buying another one, so let's take good care of it. That feels right. That's unlike me. I usually wait weeks, but I did it within a week. Every day in every way we're getting better. There's where we all want to be in the garden of peace. Mom's anxious about this. We don't want this landscaping to hold us up from— our first guests are coming November 7th. We got a lot to do with this landscaping. We got a lot to do with cleaning up. All right, let's get on it, boy. Tamp it, and then we're gonna mix these old rocks, new rocks, hopefully should be coming any minute. So we're gonna cover the whole area with these rocks. There's not enough, but they're going to be spread out with the new rocks, so you won't notice if they're different that much. Okay. All right, you're going to start tamping. It only tamps so well, and that's fine, but you gotta cover— no, no, you gotta cover every area. I either don't understand or doesn't think this is a good idea, but It doesn't matter because that's what, uh, the beautiful one wants. So we have these old ones from the leftovers from our house. He said she doesn't know what she wants, but what she wants is for her to be my number one. Whether she's right or not, it doesn't matter. If y'all don't have nothing to do, you can picking up this trash too. Josiah insisted, so I'm gonna listen to him. He just wants those lined up there, and we're gonna put them in as we go with the new ones. I mean, does it matter? Still getting Beauty what she wants, mixing these in with the new ones. But now I'm getting the kid what he wants, so you feel like he's taking more responsibility. Our guests pull up and they see this. All right, we got some work to do. We got some toilets need to go to the trash. We got some mattresses that were in our container washed away by the hurricane. We got the container tied up. Maybe we'll save it. We're really kind of still picking up after the heart. We're just getting to dealing with it, you know. We gotta sort through all this wood, figure out what's good, what's salvageable, and then organize it nicely. This gigantic window will be nice for something. I'm looking at these windows. Do we make a sunroom for the chickens. I think we're just gonna put them in the high tunnel. Beauty's wanting to build another greenhouse up in the front yard. Do you think we could just build it based on the windows we have? Hey, first hint, get in. Let's get— let's get wood scraps and throw them out here into a pile. Hurtful loss right there. Those are organic twin mattresses. We're eating. I freed up a lot of space though. Hey, look at there, with time to spare. Whoa, tippy tippy, tippy tippy. Gonna try to get that. He's so smart, he knew you need to get closer to it. It's lifting up the track loader. Wow, once you lower it down, you won't It won't— you won't tip. If you do tip, he's good. He's got common sense. You want to put it about halfway up because then we're hauling downhill, which is better. What do we do without these machines? Yeehaw! Nice and wide too. You guys want to know what we're at? $300 for this gravel, $600 for the rock, $50 for the tamper, but we get to keep that. $1,150 just in time for all these rocks. We'll skip the gym today and lift some rocks. We have 30 minutes at the, at the most before we need to go start making lunch. We're just heating up pizza. Mom's bringing y'all pizza. She took Big Daddy out for lunch. Ain't that sweet? Oh, so sweet. It's a year anniversary of Grandma's death. You guys know that? Hurricane, Grandma's death, Mr. Meeks dying, my dad died in the fall, the, the teen girl tragically killed in a head-on collision. It's heavy. It's a heavy time right now. It's heavy. I don't know what it is about the fall for us. Give ourselves grace. Let's, let's take it easy. Let's, uh, let's get the work done. Well, a lot of these are like loose. That's okay. Well, let's, let's, let's, um, I saw you doing some gravel under it. We can do some more gravel under it. We can put some dirt under it. This gravel helps. That's why we did the gravel. Somehow it helps it from sinking. What? This is how they do it. This is how all the professionals do it. I'm not making it up. How is it? Now I need you to park it. I gotta make lunch. So I have to park the excavator. Oh, you want to just leave them here? Yes, because we're going to need them on if we're going to finish this on Sunday. I was hoping to kill the fat hens on Sunday. Mark had to get a piece for our skull there, so if that doesn't happen, we're definitely not doing it. We might divide and conquer. We'll see. Look, Sabbath is coming. Let's gear down. Let's get ready. Let's get ready for a rest. You're gonna leave these here? Sure. All right, we can leave our tools here. Is that bad prudence? Is that bad prudence or not? Do you put away your tools when you believe this is the very next project you're going to do? Because it's an effort to put them away and then bring them back out. So you organize, folks. What is the best practice? Because I realize we might not end up doing this. We might end up— you know, you never know what's going to happen. You might end up butchering chickens on, uh, Sunday. We added a wraparound deck while we're at it. Hey guys, if you'd be interested in being our neighbor for a night or two and would like a guest house farm experience here at the holler, I got a survey for you down in the description. We're thinking about possibly doing that. Look at this pie!

Can I make one pie tomorrow and one pie— and because I made the crust for the other pie, can I like make the filling tomorrow for the other pie?

Why are we making two pies? Well, why not?

Well, one for tomorrow.

You guys won't eat a whole pie tonight. Yeah, so should I— so definitely, definitely wait if you don't mind doing that on the Sabbath. The ice cream turned out since we saved it so long Get in, you better get on it. Your friends are here. He's excited, he's hopping to it, doing Jonah's job since he's not here. I got some butter culturing— culturing, what would you call that? How do you— what's the verb for that? My soup mix of chicken bits and beef bits. I just got to kill two birds with one stone. Business calls. Should I tell you? Should I say this? Let's go out here. Should I tell you? It's not really business, but it does involve you guys. I was thinking, every year me and the boys do a Mighty Man Camp. We talk about what it means to be a man. And ever since I lost my spiritual daddy Steve Meeks, I feel like I need to carry on his baton of what he was doing in manhood. And so I thought— so I got on the phone with his sons and I put it out in the email. Would you guys like to have— do a Mighty Man Camp with us? It would be intentional. Have outdoor adventures with our sons in the woods. We got a group camp. We can line it up in Pisgah and we'll invite them for the spiritual element. It'll have a Christian worldview. And they will challenge me, they will challenge y'all, and we'll have fun together in the woods. I threw a fleece, so to speak. Y'all, you just look that up if you don't know what I mean by that. I threw a fleece. Gideon threw a fleece in the Bible to wonder if he was to do something or not. This— this one, I guess I'm explaining it to you. If the— if the fleece stays dry and it dews on everything else, you want me to do this. And then that wasn't enough, and then so he said, okay, if the fleece is wet and everything else is dry, you want me to do this? Anyway, I threw one of those last night. I don't know if I believe in them or not, but, um, I said I need 2 people to sign up by Monday. I sent a casual email on my 5 Bullet Friday this morning, and right before I got on the phone with them, there was 3 men signed up. Because I'm doubtful, you know, right? I'm a— right now I've been a homestead brand. I haven't been— I'm thrilled. I want to— I want to expand more into marriage and family. And, uh, I'm just being real with y'all right now. I'm not cutting this every 10 seconds, and we're not putting music on this. So thank you for bearing with me if you're still here. If you're still here, you really want to be here and you really care. So thank you. Thank you. So, um, I talked with them and they're on board. And so Mr. Meeks lives on in my life through them, and I'm thankful for that. And I'm not ready to lead it spiritually, so I'm going to have them do that element of it. And, um, It won't be, it won't be overbearing, so, and it won't be the whole time. It'll be mostly outdoor adventures and fun with our father, you know, fathers and sons, and some more deeper facilitated conversations about what it means to be a real man. That's a long way of saying, if you want us to join us, we are going to cap this at 10. We want it to be a small number that will be 2 brothers, and the ones that have sons, and then I think they bring up to 2 others too. So there'll be 4 leaders in that way. And then with my family, I already got 3 signed up.

Are you already on another phone call? No, Justin's here.

Okay, I'll tell him, tell him I'll be there in just one second. So I probably need to cap that at 10. We can have no more than 60 there. 60 people. Yeah, that should be okay. That's a big group, isn't it? No, we shouldn't. Okay, 10. 10 of you. And already 3 of you have signed up. That's it. Okay. That's going to be November, I think, 19th through 21st. The dates will be down in the description. I'm supposed to be doing this. 2 signed up. I think I can get 10. Don't have to have 10. Chores. Yeah, Mama Pig, 6 pounds. I thought her feed was getting soaked though. Um, you tell me what to do, son. You're far— you were running that one. You're riding it. You whipping out your famous coffee for your friend?

I am.

Are you spying on Jonah? Oh, he's at the tobacco shop. Uh-oh. Funny, we just know he's not at the tobacco shop. What y'all playing?

Police game.

Okay, police game. Are you guys the police or the robbers? Please. All right, you're the good guys. Oh, left. Gideon, is he— you sick? Did you get dizzy on the swing?

What?

You get dizzy on the swing?

Yeah.

How'd it turn out, Beck?

I think it turned out good.

Brandon, how'd it turn out? Best coffee I ever had. So relaxing, isn't it? Something special about her coffee in the afternoon.

Yeah, let's go sit on the porch.

Looky here. Hey, how come Adam gets my book before I do? I've not seen my book yet. That's great, just keep it. Hey, well, that just shows how much I love the customer. You get it before I've seen it. Let me see it. No, it looks fascinating. Have you looked through it yet? Well, just a bit. Are you going to become a chicken tender? You know, I don't know. I just need to see how you're— I need to learn how to do this. I'm a good friend, but now I'm curious. When a friend has a book, you buy it. You always buy it. You should always buy it. I think that's great advice. Look at this! You read that and don't want to become a chicken tender, then let's talk. All right, sounds good. Well, might be worth it. All right, Austin, you know the drill. Chicken tender, I think. ChickenTenderBook.com. You guys can get it before I get it. Zaxby's. Coffee cat. Here we come. Plus Gaps can't pancakes and peanut butter fluff for me. Hopefully. He picked all my persimmons. He's proud of it. Okay. I wanted to eat those when they ripened on the tree. They only come in once a year. Oh, thank you, buddy. Thank you, I appreciate it. Did you crack those or were those cracked on the tree? Well, I guess we'll be, uh, letting them ripen and then we'll freeze them. Zaxby's coming right up, y'all. Yep, I can start working on my dad's dinner. Here's the options. Squash pancakes with peanut butter fluff. Just a little bit of those, or a lot of those, or some yogurt with cooked persimmons. I can't have both. Do you know there's 30 carbs in a persimmon?

I didn't know.

And 11 in the yogurt. And then with the pancakes and the peanut butter fluff, I'm at like 60 carbs. I just can't do that. My blood sugar spikes. Blood sugar spikes. Are you sure? I think that might be what is my trigger, so I'm just trying to behave.

I'm just saying, because right now you're refeeding.

Oh, that's true.

I'm not saying that this would be your—

That's true. You know what I'm afraid of? What? I'm afraid I'll just get in the habit because I was in such a strong habit. Did you weigh yourself for 28 days? I want to go with that momentum, but I hear you. Maybe I should, but I'm afraid I'll get bloated.

And did you weigh yourself this morning?

No. Has Cassie yesterday? That's what they want to know. I was telling her, y'all, it was not—

it was not smelling good. It was terrible.

You know why I'm so outgoing with the camera? Because y'all don't never talk back. I don't ever, you know, have a wisecrack against me. Well, in the comments, yeah, but I can choose to read those or not. I can shut those off right now. Austen, don't put comments on this video. Sir, yes sir. I'm helping them cook. Should I go all out and have the pancakes and the fluff?

Just have the pancakes and the yogurt.

Maybe I won't have the fruit in my yogurt, but it's apple season and it's persimmon season.

What you should do is just cook them down, you know, and then just freeze that into jars. Then just take them out. You don't have to cook them all down all at once.

Oh, and then I would already have some ready.

Yes.

Oh, that's the homesteading way, isn't it?

It is.

Get all the work done now and the future stuff.

Would this be in one of those little jars? One of my little jars?

And if you want to do half portions because one whole is too much.

Okay, well, there's little jars, little jars. Okay, and then we could can them, and then you'll just have little cans. Or we could freeze them, either one.

Can we do that with apples too? Because I, I feel like I don't want to miss out on the season. I feel the stress of like, I want to eat them when it's fresh.

We could totally just, um, what we could do is do this with them, spiralize them, okay, and then chop them into smaller things, cook it down, and then just can it.

I can handle some delayed gratification. So just plain pancakes and a fruit compote. Room temp butter coming right up. Butter! We'll mix it with honey and peanut butter and vanilla. Butter, baby! To Destiny. He came over here and said, what can I do to help? He knows. Family dinner. It's kind of weird calling it that because we eat dinner every night. Family dinner is every night. I should call it Shabbat dinner, because technically you go into it at sundown. We're gonna let it do its thing. Set a timer for 10 minutes on the puff, and I think Friday I'm gonna keep peanut butter sacred. Friday special. This has got to be expressing his love for me. Better put the lid on. That puff is done. My goal is to be done by the time the family eats. It's the only thing about two different diets, it's hard to get it all ready at the same time. Halved the honey and that's still good. Oh, oh, oh, those look particularly greasy. Excited? I think the puff's gonna be enough. I don't need the yogurt and the fried apples too. It's just too much work. I'm gonna be happy with this. I'm gonna get some protein before it. That'll help with the spike, the blood sugar spike. Here we go. Oh, look at this, Becky. Oh yeah. What? That's like a dessert. What do you think? Looks like marshmallow sauce.

Whoa, looks delicious.

It's nice. Main course, little avocado. I'm gonna say I can't believe this is on a diet. I don't think normal people would get excited about this, but a health nut would.

It's a little fat.

Are you saying that's bad? I'm probably not getting enough fat, honestly. I need to figure out, I need to take chunks of that lard and put it in the soups.

Maybe.

Henry, there you go. But maybe eat your chicken first. Don't tell him I have the honey. He's on a sugar high. I have the honey and it's still great.

La la la, let me be free.