Day 1 of 10 Living Off the Land

My dad grew up in this little house with his 4 brothers and sisters in the '30s and '40s. They sustenance homesteaded on this very property that we're on. Dad would often say if they didn't grow it, they didn't eat it. Oh boy, the feed's getting wet. They didn't have a lot of money. Uh, my granny can remember the first car coming down the road. They walked a lot of places they went, so I don't think they did the grocery store a whole lot. Over the next 10 days, I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna see if this is still possible in 2024 to eat the overwhelming majority of my diet from the farm. If I didn't grow it, I don't eat it. We've had our first real significant rain since Hurricane Helene. What? Like nothing compared to that, right? We just got a flash flood warning on our phone. Happy day and welcome to day 1, eating what we grow and growing what we eat. Nope. But look, he has the option of being a fella. No, I know, but he, he— trust me, he doesn't want to be alone.

But he's not alone.

He doesn't want to be alone. Blaze was shivering up in the 2 acres with the sheep. Did you know that shivering is how they stay warm? No, besides, they said that he was all their muscles. It's not, it's not necessarily good that he'd be shivering all the time. Try put him in no cows. And we'll see if he doesn't pick on them. Let's try it right now while we can be out here monitoring. Are we? I thought we were gonna put a net up. Huh? Put on their milk up here, be way easier. Then we have to lead them up here. I guess let them make decisions on things that don't really matter. I would rather milk down here in the pole barn where they are. But what if they pee and poop, Jonah? If they're in the pole barn, it'll be right where we need it. Let's see if Blaze doesn't pick on them. Did he stay with them last winter? It's a hair You need about a 1 poop to 25 wood chips per volume. So size— hey, we'll get you out of the rain and put you in this pole barn as long as you don't bite people, okay? By people I mean the cows. Billy, you might be the first person I know of to deep bed a horse. His poops go into the wood chips, sanitary in there. And then eventually turns into compost. He's actually building soil for himself right now. Hey, what did you think about my— the idea that if they poop or pee, it's going to be in the deep bedding? But I get what you're saying too, though, because it's kind of gross in the deep bedding. We need to add some chips. We'll do your idea. Grab— maybe we should grab hay from the outside where rain's going to get to it. We've been getting hay from the edge, so when it rains doesn't hit this. This hay here would have been pretty wet. Grab these.

No.

Yes. No, it's so easy. Look, I'm getting overruled again. He assures me it won't rot unless it gets soaked. So it is easier to get it from the inside right into the hay racks. We'll get this hay right here, guys, for the hay bale at the 2 acres. Okay. Yeah, I had to climb up all over this to get it up there. Yeah, I just went worth Let's feed this stuff that's getting wet. Let's feed it to the youth group out in the— across the creek. Did you get the milking stuff ready?

I got the milk supply.

What about the reservoir? Yep, it's all over there. The cloth. Happy day, and welcome to day 1 of We Didn't Grow It, We Didn't Eat. Day 1 of 10. Can we do this for 10 days?

It's winter.

Yeah, not even any berries. I believe we have enough abundance that I can do it. We've been living a pretty abundant lifestyle. I don't think you can just, you know, up and do that, but we've been growing our own food and eating it for a long time. I'm just going to push it to the next level. So in a little bit, today actually happens to be a grocery store day. We're gonna go see what we've been supplementing and show you all the things I cannot eat. That ought to be fun. Normally I would think nothing of this rain, but it's, it's a little unnerving after what happened at Hurricane Helene. This— the chickens. Okay, that's why I was adamant about getting them up. Good news is we've gotten them all up and they're staying up. We recently moved them. They were getting out of where they were, and we put them in the high tunnel, and I fortified it enough. I don't think anybody's getting out, but This is why Wendy protects them, but then she doesn't stop them from pooping on our clean cow cloths. Do you think it's that one rogue chicken? There it is! Let's catch it right now while we see it. Wait, wow! Come on, come on, we got it here. Trying to go wide there. Catch that chicken no matter what. Here. Oh gosh, there's a reason this chicken is the last one out. Here we go. There you go. Good job. You got things to do? What? You gotta feed the pig. Now we can see our water vulnerabilities in the high tunnel. There's a wall here, so it needs to be graded so this water can escape. Nobody else is out, that's good news. Okay, the one place we have a little flood is where their feeder is. This might be the superior door. Yeah, just, uh, you know, more separated, cleaner area. You gotta let the bedding get a little sloppy. All the sheep just got out. Oh.

Oh.

Why, their gate. Must have been. Okay, okay, we'll grab that alfalfa right there. Why the sheep get Maybe falling off when they went to get the cows out. Hey, we should probably secure this until we bring them back. Jonah there? Yeah. Jonah is the fourth generation to hand milk on this farm. Grandpa Henry, Grandma Burdell, first generation. Grandpa Henry bought the land. My dad, second generation. Me, third generation. And Jonah, fourth generation. Slow cow, giving a gallon and a half of milk. See, that's what I'm talking about. And she pooped on your bench, your little grandpa's stool. Vanilla, you're a keeper. She's the best of the two cows. Smaller, doesn't eat as much, gives more milk. Is Minty the calf I like so much? Her shape? Vanilla's— we gotta hurry up and get her tested for 8282. Vanilla hasn't gotten mastitis yet either, unlike Honey. So hardy, small, gives a lot of milk, was slower to get pregnant this time, but both of them were, and it could have been He-Man's salt. When the old-timers said we didn't grow it, they didn't eat it, they had salt, they had coffee, they had sugar. I'm not going to do sugar, health reasons. So they did have supplements to their food Not like we do today though. So I will allow some supplemental foods like salt, spices. Jonah was saying maybe we should have some fried chicken. I know they had some fried chicken, so they must have bought flour. Grandpa worked at a dairy, so what they didn't get in their own milk, I'm sure you could get from the dairy. So we're gonna be having our own milk, having our own cream, butter. We're gonna do that now. We'll supplement with a little bit of cheese since Grandpa would have had that. Filtering the raw milk of any grass or debris. Do wonder how my family would have filtered. Unfortunately, there's a knowledge gap because my dad forsook it. He went into the business world when he grew up. He did keep some beef cows. I've had beef cows all my life, but it was more of a hobby, tax cut little bit of supplemental income. A lot of the knowledge was lost, and I've had to relearn basically almost everything. Some basic handling skills. Fresh milk going into the fridge to cool. The, the old folks would have had what you call a spring house. They would have spring water arranged to go into a little shack through a trough that they set things like milk in to keep it cool because the spring water was theoretically cooler, like 55, 60 degrees. We're gonna cream separate. If I'm gonna do this, I must have my butter. As far as the way we cream separate, get that cream off the top, I'm pretty sure the method I'm about to use is exactly what Granny would've used. Some things stay the same, like how they got the cream off. Just ladled the cream off the top. You see how it's naturally homogenized? It's raw milk, it's not homogenized. Just another thing they would've done. They would've took the sieve Skin. Yeah, that's pig food. Wait till you see this. Boom, man! What Granny would have done for that. Look at that. Hey, beautiful one, here's your cream. Let's look at what I might be able to eat 10 days. Come with me, let's take an assessment together. Okay, root cellar. Let's take inventory of what I got, baby. Apples. Am I allowed apples since they were local?

Yeah.

I think Boots probably would have had some apples in the fall and the winter. Would they have had honey? Well, they would have had sugar. I'm not gonna do sugar, so I'll allow a little bit of honey. Tomato sauce. Oh, I was hoping we'd have these. Oh, Becky, yeah, our preserved blueberries. You know, I'm so excited. Yeah, cannot eat chocolate. I know they didn't have chocolate, but maybe once a year at Christmas. Yeah, that I can put in some cream.

Yep.

Or some yogurt.

Yep.

And that's my dessert. Yeah, salsa. Maybe I could have that on some We're gonna get creative. You wanna do this with me?

Yeah, we're gonna do applesauce this month.

You want to do the 10-day dare with me? What would you have a hard time giving up? Corn chips?

I don't know. I, I'm just trying to figure it out.

They probably had tea. Sweet potatoes. Onions. That's good. I love onions. Oh, more onions. Why do those have stickers on them? Because I had some of them are boughten.

I had to buy them.

Okay, homegrown garlic. We still have some potatoes, Dar. Oh yeah, who knew?

That's great.

The folks would have had a root cellar. It was over there underneath the old house. I bet it would look a lot like that. What do you think? Yep. You know what we're missing is canned goods. We do freezing instead. This is where another modernity gives us an advantage. This is lamb and beef. Peaches, those were local. Green beans, I don't want to eat those. Corn, I don't want to eat that. I will try to incorporate the zucchini. Hey, wait, weren't there some— there's got to be some acorn squash out there and butternut squash.

There was butternut. I don't think we have any acorn, but there was butternut underneath.

All right, beets are fine. Broccoli, there's some broccoli. That's the pork department. It actually might be a pretty good time to do this, huh? Yeah, there's no cat. We have not bones for making broth. Would you make me some beef broth? I think I'm out. Yeah, plenty of chicken broth. Peppers, and I think we have some stuffed peppers somewhere.

We do in the other one.

Oh, I want some, I want some. All right, ready? That might be lamb, which is fine with me.

Dad doesn't want a bone.

You like to do a mix of bones. Well, if we're not going to use those bones, let's put them out. You're going to do a mix of lamb and beef?

No, we're going to do one beef, one lamb.

For the cream I'm going to make butter with, I'm going to set it out at room temperature. The warmer it is, the easier it is to make butter. We got chicken laid out for supper. More goods in the freezer. I'm going to show you what I'm going to miss terribly— peanut butter. See you later. Mommy, it's terrible. And chocolate. Oh, I should have ate that whole thing last night. Take a bite of the tree. The dry tree. It got so dry. Rebecca, we got into growing our food for the health reasons. Mm-hmm. What are the top 3?

For us, we can't buy a lot of the meat raised the way we want to and fed exactly as we want it to be fed.

So for example, organically feeding pigs. Yeah, or pork. It's hard to find organically fed pork.

Chicken. I mean, we could buy it at Whole Foods, but it's not local and it's not pasture-raised and blah blah blah. We know where it's, like, how it's been grown, like the vegetables. And we use animal manure compost on that.

How about we have all control over the chemicals? Yeah. That are inputted in them. In the garden and the farm. Yeah. And so how about—

even in organic, there's, you know, chemicals that are allowed, and we choose, you know, then we can choose. We can say like, oh, you know, we don't really want that chemical, we'd just rather let the bugs bother this plant. Or we're like, oh, you know what, we do— we, we are okay with this one.

How about no spray? Not even organic sprays. And then with the animals, we don't have to, uh, chemical deworm, vaccinate.

Well, and we do minerals, antibiotics for our animals, so then they're going to be more mineralized. So our chicken or beef is going to have a higher content of goodness, nutrient density, whatever.

That's the highlight of day 1, is that is one reason for growing your own food. It is our main reason, and that is health. Let's go see all the things I'm not going to be eating for 10 days. I bet if we had to walk here or do a horse and carriage here, we'd go here less. You're gonna pass this section up for me? Chocolate? Well, 1, 2, 3 boxes of things I'm not gonna eat. I think today is figuring out the rule. The folks had flour, so we're gonna allow that. I don't know if I need that. They probably had a bit of tea. They probably did coffee. Do you think— we gotta see if Cody will remember any of this. I'm not sure he will. They have dementia. Just trying to figure out the the rules here. Henry probably would have had cheese because he worked at a dairy.

You're gonna take a break for New Year's, yes or no?

I don't know. Let's talk about that right now. So we're gonna do steak and chicken. Steak and chicken. Couldn't I?

Well, but I'm gonna have sauces and stuff on it.

Yeah, I'm gonna allow sauces. Sauces and spices and salt.

Then we're gonna have fried rice. I like to see you resist fried rice.

What can I fry some potatoes. So maybe is that the one special holiday meal they would have? We're back. I'm being tortured putting away all this food. Who's gonna do it with me? No one. You want to eat off the land with me?

Not really.

Hey, looks good in here. We have got to figure something out for coats though. Tree is gone. We gotta put a hook. I like it because that would be kind of hidden. One hook high up and one hook low up. Maybe we should just relax and watch a movie on this Yeah, I don't know. Wet day, lesson got canceled real quick this afternoon. Look who's helping me. Well, this is for you guys because this is volume 2 homestead builds. We need to get—

we usually do BBC in these.

He's wanting to make 20.

He's wanting to accommodate buffer, GRP.

He's going to accommodate 20 of these. Is there going to be enough room? 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. Oh, that is 20. We can make it easy on you. We're even going to tell you where to put the minerals because you want to put the more popular ones out here. It's a little easier to access than underneath.

Let me write it down.

Salt and kelp.

I had salt and kelp already in there.

So the extra I thought was charcoal and vitamin C.

Charcoal's in here already.

How many minerals are in the ABC program, Advanced Biological Concept? I thought there was 16.

I think it's 15.

Oh, it might only be 15. This is the sheep shawl. This is also the meat shawl. This is the exact same build. We tested out the taller height for the, for the meat birds. It worked fantastic. They were still well protected from aerial predators. Um, the only difference, if you have Homestead Builds 1, build the meat shawl, put your animals under it. The only thing we're doing to turn this into a sheep shawl is we're adding this mineral rock. Just so you know, in case you want to do this now, two 2x4s. I screwed the mineral feeders you can get at Tractor Supply in there, and I did a little frame. We actually scratched the labels, but I'm recommending, if you can afford it, um, mailbox lettering. And then we do the Advanced Biological Concepts. We believe it's 15 minerals. We had thorvin kelp, we had SEA 90 salt, so C90 salt. When we're feeling saucy, we add charcoal and vitamin C.

Well, vitamin C, I only use that one when someone's sick. Yeah, I'll just pour it in there. So right now, like, these two are open. I put BVC in them because it's so popular, and then we don't have to do it so often.

That mat, I believe it's a quarter inch. We got it from American Mats. Let's see how our farm's holding up to this rain event. They said it would be worse after the hurricane event because so much is washed away, water runs off the mountain easier. This is like we own a river now.

It's clear, it's more clear than it was earlier today, but it was really dirty today, and that's I think just because there's still so much dirt.

That is rapids. That is river rapids. I mean, I love having a creek on our property. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it does come with some, some major potential problems. The plan is there's wood chips, wood chips right here, and then hay bombing it. That's what I don't like to see. It's, it's flooded that whole area. It breached right there. Just need to build up the bank a little bit. So Rebecca, let's measure this. We'll wait right on there because I need this for other minerals. Oh yeah, yeah, because I want to put a mineral feeder in with the sheep. There's those mailbox letters I'm talking about. Yeah, they're expensive, but they last. This one could go in there. I'm gonna need some help pulling it. That's the small mineral sled. I wanted a small one to see if I couldn't make a mineral sled that you could move by hand. Why do you poop in your thing almost every day? Sheep haven't pooped in their thing yet. This Redmond salt on a rope, excellent, excellent source of salt for the animals. You guys about to have babies, you need your minerals. Well, it didn't take you long to figure out you could jump in the trough. And the medium-sized one. Hey, that's a welcome sight. I'll take it. Sunday seed day is tough because really the one day we can dedicate all day to the farm. It's good to have one day for, for everybody watching, everybody doing a homestead, one day. Or, you know, if you even work, working a 9 to 5, one day on the weekend, half a day on the weekend. It's better than nothing. 1 hour each day during the week. If you just did 1 half day on the weekend, 1 hour each day, that's 10 hours. Called the 10-hour homestead. You could raise meat chickens, layer chickens, and gardens. That's a lot. If you're feeling really saucy, you could probably do a couple head of meat cows or a handful of grass-fed sheep. What you got for us, babe? What are we gonna do with that sun shining right in our eyes?

It's a problem. So my plan is to have the desk that goes along here and we're here. And this is where the computer will go. You can look out the windows if you would like. And I also need to get shades. But have you ever tried to get all of this stuff done? It's difficult. I was looking at Roman shades. They need 2 inches and we have 2 inches here. But the problem is, is that there's like, what? What is this, a quarter of an inch?

Yeah.

So which one do I go by? I don't know. I need to call them.

Yeah, let's do supper! We want to cook these within an hour and a half. We're gonna cut these big boys in half. Meat pit is going. Chicken going. Plus, I'm basically a carnivore and I don't like to eat just chicken, so we're gonna eat some lamb chops. Is the fan sound unbearable? Because it's kind of needs to be on the Burn It Up Cooking Show. Homegrown lard. I found some beef broth. I think I've figured out the rules. All right, 10 days living off the land. 5 exceptions because my folks probably lived 90-95% off the land. I can have a bit of tea. They probably had dry goods like tea or coffee. A little bit of honey because I know they did sugar, but I'm not going to do sugar, I'll do honey. Spices and salt. A holiday meal. New Year's Eve is coming up. Sauces. Yeah, sauces, does that count? And spices and salt. Anyway, there we go. So tonight's supper, that means no peanut butter and chocolate after supper. We're gonna try yogurt cream and yogurt and blueberries versus cream and blueberries. Hang tight. Broth. Beef. I found some frozen beef broth. Oh gosh, I do hope we have I have some butter frozen. We'll make butter later. I haven't done that yet. I mean, we have some frozen butter. Oh, I'm so happy right now. Have you ever tried to eat a sweet potato without butter? How can I unfreeze this enough to put on sweet potatoes, Dar?

Just let it sit out for a minute. But I thought you were making butter down there. Could you make butter quick?

Nah, probably take 15 minutes. I am gonna miss a little avocado. Rebecca, how do you desalt broth? Yeah, I put too much salt in it. We're gonna try to break a piece off, melt it. Hey, it might work. Yeah, maybe a little more. And I am doing electrolytes and minerals, of course. Sweet potatoes, dark meat chicken, lamb chops. I should probably eat that fat too, huh? It'll help me not crave the chocolate so much later. It's evening, perfect time to cream separate, closer to room temperature. Should churn and break into butter pretty quickly. This is what it looks like when it breaks. The butter literally breaks apart from what you call the buttermilk. Football of butter freezing. These two are thawing out still because I would be hard-pressed to get all the, all the milk out of it. It's not gonna store at room temperature. Because it's not perfectly butter. There's still a little milk in it and cream, I reckon. Butter, which is just the fat, would sit on the shelf indefinitely. Milk inside of it is what would— what rots pretty quickly. I gotta have a little dessert. Where is it? Where is it? There it is. Let's try yogurt first. Taste of summer, how about that? What? I mean, it's not chocolate and peanut butter, but it's good. It's cold. It's different. Not meat. Um, and it's probably 10 times healthier for me. Have a day.