Dealing with (just) ONE Arm

Finished. This helps me get through, that's for sure. They can survive this, I can survive this. Let's say we had a good time last night. All right, got a cleanup project for you today, Jonah. These guys look good. Everybody's still alive from all the commotion right next door last night. Meg said there'd be extra eggs for us in the morning there. Scare the eggs out of them. Joel Salatin is coming next week, which means I'm going to give myself a little list of things I want to do before he gets here. I am a little limited. My wrist still hurts. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, excruciating pain. It's kind of now moved to my ankle. I'm kind of suspecting it's not just the Campylobacter but the Lyme disease. Because it is intense. Here we have— is this going to be choppable?

Yeah, that's choppable.

With like a manic landscaping— Jonah brought it up. What do you think, Jonah?

I need another—

you think you could mow and string trim things?

I sort of need another person because it's a lot.

I think you could do it. Maybe you can recruit Josiah. Our garden's jamming down here. Need a little bit of weeding, but it'll do. Last night I was able to get up about 2 in the morning and take a bath, and just kind of— the bath will make my wrist feel quite a bit better. And then I was able to go back to sleep again without any, like, ibuprofen. I'm trying not to take ibuprofen. Beans are jamming. They're now almost my height. Grab the cucumbers. Grab those too before they get bad. Mom will be thrilled. Yeah, look at this. Nice. These little boogers are not ladybugs but lookalikes. We're just gonna go in and squash them. That'll go a long way for pest management right here. Probably the most important thing I need to put on that list to get ready for Joel's visit, which by the way, he's going to be in our TV show Rooted, and we're doing a master class with him for Abundance Plus. He's bringing rabbits, like we bought breeder rabbits from him. Yes, you heard me right, we're getting rabbits. Well, Lily's getting rabbits, it's going to be her operation. That supply stuff is supposed to come this week. We need to put that together, that's gonna have to be priority number one, getting ready for Joel. These were yellow, probably from getting too hot, uh, too mature. Let's give them to the pigs. We got twice this much and good ones. We'll take up to Mom next. Normally I probably would have had these guys out by now on pasture, but I want to ask Joel, who I learned this deep bedding system from, hey, are they mixing it well? How can I get them to mix it better? Is my, is my compost mix good? So I sort of want to have things in place so he can critique it. I'm seeing Royal there, our cat. I thought he had a mouse. Which reminds me, has anybody checked our rat traps this morning? Somebody has?

Yeah.

Oh, we don't have nothing?

Nope.

All right, here's a nice little surprise for your mother. More cucumbers than y'all will eat. Oh, this is another thing I'd like to do. You think they're big enough for their turkey shawl yet? Maybe. It'd be good to have them in their turkey shawl by the time Joel gets here. He liked seeing that last year. You got to get your turkey feeder going. You gotta do his addition that he, he suggested, the little lip. Notice how on these feeders there's a lip at the top? That's because they, they crane it, I guess, and you'll have a lot more spillage than this. Well, this is overflowed, but with your wooden one you can put like a little slat across. There's one more thing if I really want to show off, is I'll get my overflow water going to the chickens. I think that'd be fun to demo. Obviously, first priority is get these cages ready for these rabbits. We need a place to receive them. And then probably do the turkeys last minute, let them get a little bit bigger. Good morning, Teddy. What'd you think of those cucumbers?

Nice.

What are you gonna do with all those? You pickling?

Probably give them to Grandma to pickle.

Ah, good morning. Are you a crab? Are you a crab this morning? Did you have a good time at the fireworks last night? Let's make sure we get this fence hot today. We're gonna be putting the cows over there. The sheep would go here, but I think we need to put all the mamas with the cows. All the mama sheep, and we need to wean them. I don't think you'll be able to see her from here, but Ryder isn't regaining her condition, so we're gonna just go ahead and wean the babies. I don't think we can just wean one mama because she'd be panicked away from the sheep. Yeah, so we need to put all the mamas with the cows. What we did with Joel last year was get a farm consultant, and that's what we're gonna do this year. I can tell you right now he's gonna say we're moving too fast, put them in a sacrifice paddock, let the, let the grass catch up a little bit more. It looks really good, but I can tell we need to slow down. So this is a pasture that could use some help, so we'll sacrifice it. We'll, we'll put up a big paddock, we'll feed hay in different spots to get nutrients in different places. You know, I say it could use some help, but look, it's pretty good when one of our best pastures is— it's at half clover, but it's these like in-betweens. This grass here that's not doing great. Sure, we got this great clover, but there's nothing really growing that great right there.

You want to see something?

Maybe about 6 inches after— well, we've probably had— we've probably had a 50-day rest.

Yeah, you see that huge mound of grass?

All the manure came down from the sea monsters.

Yeah, see that huge waves of grass?

Oh, from the cows?

No, from the, um, sea monsters. They were up above that wave, big wave of grass.

Yeah, the sea monsters went right through there, and that's going to be better. But yeah, it's catching there in that kind of swell there. So one thing that makes me nervous about a sacrifice paddock is the parasite pressure. It's one reason we keep moving. But sheep eat cow parasites and it dies, and vice versa. So it'd be kind of neat to have them here together. So we'll put cows there today, sheep will all go in here, and then tomorrow we'll wean. What do you think? Not gonna milk her under the shed today, gonna milk her from that side because they've muddied it up quite a bit. Are you happy this morning, Flossie? Rebecca, for this rabbit hutch— well, we can't do anything until it gets here, hopefully this week. Um, but I'm wondering if you'd be okay.

Well, I'll go out there with you and help with the—

given I don't have my right hand, that Randolph could maybe help me. So it's going to be all hands on deck once that rabbit supply stuff comes. So it's probably— if we're gonna get anything else done, now are the days. Well, I'm gonna prioritize that yard. Looky here, get in. There's your little shovel, grab that. And look, what are we doing? This is a perfect mattock for me. This is a one-handed mattock. Let's get the hard rake. Okay, you're gonna carry it? Oh, that'd be awesome. I found it helps when you're sick like this or injured like this, to still have goals, although they might not be as ambitious as they were. Like, does Joel care if our front yard is nicely sown with grass? Actually, no. But it's good to have some sort of date, goal.

You can't do the mattock, you're crippled.

You can hold the shovel.

Oh, I should steal a line from you, Rebecca. Watch me. Is it the big mattock that I would have used? Watch out, Teddy. Teddy, watch out. No, but it's working. My left hand's gonna get real strong. Not bad. We've got it leveled almost to the end. We're gonna take a water break, finish strong. Get in, let's get these rocks up. And put them in the crevices of those big rocks.

Rebecca, you should check my ring and see how awful I smell. Thanks.

Do I even want to know? What is it?

Pretty bad.

How many hours?

Your deep sleep is increasing, which is good because you weren't.

So what's the overall verdict?

Um, you got 5 hours and 17 minutes of sleep last night, and you were awake pretty a lot in the middle of the night.

What's the overall sleep score?

Um, 66.

Oh, normally I am in like Sleep score of high 80s, low 90s.

Well, yesterday it said you got a sleep of 91.

What? The night before?

Nice. Yeah, last night was bad. I'm writing with my left hand. Good thing I only do 6 critical tasks. Write my goal on the top of this notebook. The 6 most critical things, and that's my to-do list. Don't mind my left-hand writing. Take care of members, vlog, set up the free trial for Abundance Plus, self-care. Just think through everything else and think about what's possible, and we'll add it to the list. Just set out this week's meat. That's hamburger. Yum. That's ribeye from him. This is escalito, leg of lamb. Looking excited about that. It's cool. This is all our own meat except for the ground lamb. We're finishing some that we have. Heading down to the creek for, uh, the training. Nowadays it's Mom's training, isn't it? I just took a monster, monster nap. Hopefully that'll help since I only slept 5 hours last night. How you feeling? Terrible. How's that for an answer?

Actually, it looks like I think your fingers are less swollen.

Yeah, my hand is crazy swollen right now. The wrist, it's gone from the wrist to the hand. Your forearm looks better.

Now it's like in his last 2 knuckles.

Crazy.

Boy, so I'm like, maybe this is like moving through, it's just gonna like move out.

Yeah, you got a cheerleader, Mom.

He just wants my attention. What?

What?

Relax, hike, and then stand. Hike, stand, catch, and then back down. There you go. What?

I didn't breathe at all.

Good job. It's okay.

I just held my breath.

That was—