City Girl Gives our Farm a Go

Hey guys, let's go! They're waiting on us. Come on. Okay, it's one of those days we can't seem to get out the door. Hey Gideon, I put in rubber boots before it rained this morning. Are those your boots?

Yeah, but I don't want to wear them.

Hey, well, he had fallen asleep nursing. I didn't think we were going to take him, but we got these new adorable boots for him. Daily persimmon checkup time. Very bright orange. Look for very bright orange. This tree didn't do that great. Oh, there's one! Who can reach that one? Not that one, Josiah. Well, maybe it is that one.

Can I eat this?

For sure, that's what it's there for, buddy. Okay, go enjoy your lesson. Oh, thank you. Yeah, here we got a special visitor this week, Holistic Hilda. She's going to be creating content surrounding our farm lifestyle. We're going to get on her podcast Nourishing Traditions podcast. I'm pretty excited about that. See, I missed one right there.

What do you do with them?

We peel them and then cut them up and eat them in chunks, just fresh. We just check this every day, and this is our lunchtime sweet treat. Yep, after-meal type thing.

Much better than—

had one?

Much better than Twinkies. Um, you know, I can't remember if I had one.

Oh, You all right? Yeah. Here's one, and I think we'll call it. No, you want to get them pretty orange. You want some help?

This is just harder than I thought, and we're just getting started.

We got Holistic Hilda and Roland Nolan.

Yes.

All right, what's your movie going to be about?

Well, this movie is going to be about the beautiful Rhodes family and all that we get to do with them.

Okay, I like it. Here's our breeder boar and our breeding sow. She's not grown up yet, so she's not ready. That's why we have them separated. I got it in. Nolan, is that a custom handle?

Uh, no, I didn't make it, but—

But you bought this.

Yeah, actually that's the main question I get on this handle is everyone's like, did you make it? It's like, no, it's actually—

What does it do?

Uh, it just makes it a little more stable for when I'm filming, and then I can quick release this off and I can just kind of go full handheld.

Nice. And what lens What filter do you have on there?

So it's an Earth 77mm variable ND filter.

It looks very dark. Yeah. What does it look like through the— looks totally normal.

Yeah, so it's so then I can adjust my exposure manually.

Yeah.

So I'm guessing yours is like auto ISO or something like that.

Oh yeah, for selfie.

Yeah, because you have to have that.

Yep.

And so that makes it so I can expose.

Nice. Properly. Cool. You gotta be a video bomb, don't you? I do. You can't just It's holistic Hilda or Happy Hilda. I heard. Yeah, Lily, you gonna do the rabbits with them? Yeah, it's a light layer on the manure. Hey, we'll give you the honor of getting the eggs.

Yay!

Let everyone turn the fence off real quick. Hilda, where are you from?

Um, well, I grew up in the DC area, um, but my mom's from Mexico My dad's from Cuba, so I have that Latin, Latin blood.

So what gets you up in the morning, Hilda?

The sun.

Okay, so the sun is about to come up over, and we learned in a podcast you were, you were hosting, you're supposed to see that morning sun.

Yeah, it's really critical for setting your circadian rhythm, for kind of making your hormones function the way they should. It helps you sleep more profoundly at night. It is good for your metabolism and It really gets you in tune with nature. I used to be a night owl, and then I started getting the sunrise, and after like a week or two, I never looked back. In other words, I never went back to my old habits, and now I get to bed, you know, a few hours after sunset, and I just feel so good. We were talking in the car about biological age versus chronological, and I feel so much younger than my chronological years. It's amazing.

Okay, so how old do you feel?

Oh, 35.

How old are you?

Do I have to say? Okay, no, the big reveal.

Let's go with feel. Okay, you feel 35. That's good. That's all that matters.

Yep, yep, it's amazing. I don't just feel that way, like I— yeah, I have the energy, I have the cognitive function, I have the strength. It's like amazing. And the sun has a lot to do with it, plus food and all the other good things too. But I love the sun.

So does it— Rebecca and I have been wondering technically we don't see the sunrise. It takes forever till it finally gets up over that mountain. Does that count?

It does count. I would still get out within, within 30 to 45 minutes of sunrise to get that benefit I was just talking about. But making eye contact with the sun is great too. But you're right, it doesn't come up till later here.

So are we experiencing sunrise right now then?

Yeah, we are.

Even though we can't see the sun?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. All right.

Even on rainy days, it's still there, by the way.

Okay, it still counts.

Yep, still counts. So it's even good to get outside even if it's raining and snowy, whatever the weather.

Absolutely. Okay, good to know. Lily, you're looking at her like she's kind of crazy. Is it kind of crazy?

Yeah. Wait, can I tell you about a funny thing we did this morning? I was like, look, Lily, you know, kind of warm up our lymphatic system, kind of get things moving this way. What do you think? She's like, no. She's like, I'm just gonna do my chores.

You're not quite ready for that yet. You're actually living it, girl.

You are.

That's right.

See the sunrise every morning. You go barefoot. We lost one. Gideon, I saw you make the right decision. See, this is a problem because they scoot this down the hill. Yeah, and it hits the electric fence and grounds it out or could knock it over. So you're gonna drag it up the hill over to that? Yeah, I would. Good. Oh.

I didn't know my own strength.

All right, helpful Hilda's taking it away. Good job.

Maybe I feel more 36, not 35.

Oh, she's gone up in age and go do the pig chores. It's the best way to keep pigs if you have the land. So put them in a sheep, uh, Premier One hog net, and they're easily trained to it. And we have the source fence. Lou's gonna go turn it on. And we've just built our fences out along this fence, and so we only need 3 nets total. Do you see how there's no grass in here?

Yeah.

Do you see any really grass that a cow— that you would imagine a cow would enjoy? No, no, there's nothing in here. But can you look down the line and see that line of green?

I do.

Do you see all that grass? Yeah, isn't that crazy? You can really see the difference right now.

And that's after the pigs have been there?

That's after the pigs. So the pigs had, had this— had been moved every week coming this way.

Because I was gonna say, you don't get the benefit of the compost when they're out here on the land, but you get other benefits.

Yeah, yeah, they're not making compost, but what they're doing is feeding our cows. So they've tilled. You see how they till? They till nicely. Yeah, and these old spots till really nicely. They do a really shallow till. Some pigs go really deep and really root it. And we move them before 12 days, which is when they would have the highest parasite pressure. So we move them before that and we make the paddock small enough that they can actually— they'll come here next and they'll till us up. And guess what? That's ready to be planted in seed. They tilled it up. So this is being converted from forest. This was forest. This was unusable pasture, like it was forest, like right over there. And so we've cleared it, left some trees for shade, and the pigs will go down through here and they'll perform a miracle. And the cat— the pigs feed the cows because now they grew that grass.

Wow, that's great.

But the cows feed the pigs Because the pigs get the skim milk. So this is one system. This is not pigs over there, cows over there, chickens over there. Is there