Driving 12 Hours to pick up the Pretty Coop

On our way to Columbia, Kentucky. I don't even know where we're going. Yeah, to see my co-author and his new wife. We are picking up the new pretty shop.

Yeah, I'm excited about it.

Yeah, Chris has done a really good job at perfecting my homestead builds. He's a carpenter, an engineer, perfectionist— everything I'm not. I'm just the visionary and the slap-togetherer. He's made these things easy to build, streamlined, and better than I could have imagined.

He's really done a really good job.

We had to build this one in order to do the plans. We realized Tennessee is an hour behind us.

Well, no, where we're going is not Central.

Yeah, so we're getting there at like 10 AM. Eastern. We're supposed to be there around lunchtime. So, just so happens that our spiritual daddy is right here, so we're just gonna take a pit stop.

We just called him. We said, are you home? He said yeah, and we said, can we come by you, see you in about 15 minutes?

Yeah. And he said okay, so we're on our way. I know him as a praying man, and so, and also all his 5 children turned out great. So we asked him to be the, them to be the godparents, so I figured— We should probably shoot it again. He'll pray hard for our survival.

We should probably shoot him a text every time we go somewhere.

Hey, by the way, by the way, we're traveling by ourselves.

We're traveling alone without the kids. We've been camping with them. You went camping with them just in April. Yeah, we'll all go as a family in August.

Sure beats the Shell station. Hey, that is done. My thing, you would be wearing that, wouldn't you? You wear that every day. Every day. I gave it to you. Hey, you guys, come on. Hey, you might be a homesteader if you have plants growing right inside beside your stairs. You got to have food. You give me a book?

This is for you and your boy. This is for you to take your boys on there.

And this is by you? Passage?

Yes.

So you enjoy those.

Good stuff.

They'll be good if you use them. Good job. Congratulations on the book. Farm tour. Is your ram over here separated? He's separated.

I actually had 4 rams and 3 of them have gone to the coyotes. Oh, and he was the worst, the skinniest, the least, and he's the only survivor.

Well, that is saying something.

Nice guy, but party guy. He— but the other ones didn't.

He's a survivor, dude. I don't know how we're going to get our blueberries to go this good back.

I don't know. What did you do?

He looked like he did nothing.

Raw sawdust.

He did nothing.

I haven't done it in a few years. I did. I put raw sawdust on top of them.

They're like acid. You haven't even pruned these?

Look at nothing.

I don't—

Oh, but some of these—

oh, there's one. Look how many blueberries you're gonna have.

Amazing.

Why did you plant so many blueberry plants? I don't know.

Well, Hannah— I wanted Hannah to have an income for the summer so she could pay for college. I thought she'll pick blueberries and she'll sell blueberries and make some money. Well, she could do that, but she didn't do that. It takes time.

I didn't want to do it either. All right.

I love these cattle, man.

I do. Hey, you've got some registered South Poles.

Yeah, and a little heifer calf. Come on, Mom.

And why do you like this breed?

All those reasons that Greg Judy says. Okay, you know, it's all that stuff.

Here she comes. She thinks I have a snack. You have an affection for these this color.

It looks like it.

Everything I have here is red, isn't it? Yeah. Thanks for the visit. Yeah, thanks for the potty break.

I know, I was like, we were coming too close.

Hour and a half.

Looking forward to our double date.

It's a cool little downtown.

Neat little town.

This building just splits it. Like, how do you— you can't even park at the building. You have to cross the street to get to it.

I know, this is a neat little old town. I bet this was a happening place.

We are there. Rebecca drove the whole way. I got a lot of work done, a lot of quiet office hours that I don't quite get at home.

See you, man.

Yes, you too. You too. Good trip. Yes, sir. Well, you might be a homesteader if you have a poultry pen in your front yard. Is this where all the work happened, Chris? Where the magic happened. Standing up? Pretty— what percentage of the time were you standing? On the stool. Sometimes on the stool. If this sells well, sometimes standing. Well, let's get you an upgrade. This is your rendition of the back cover, huh? I like how you've put exactly how it looks inside the book right here. People are going to know exactly what they're getting, getting. Look on that back cover. We just had lunch. Ladies are cleaning up. We're gonna check out his cows real quick while we wait on the ladies. I think the first South Poles we've seen today. Look at that cow went after this dog. She put that cow dog back in the truck. Look at the shade mobile. I like it. It is so hot. How many times you move them?

I've been doing twice a day. This field used to be all broomsage, broomsage, ironweed, orchard grass, and clover.

There's even timothy coming up, some ragweed, not much, not much.

It's exciting to see the improvement.

Heck yeah. Well, Chris, they're ready to move. Is it time?

Could be.

All right, you want to? Let's do it. Is that your call your dad taught you? Joel, did you make it up? Oh, Joe, I thought there was something magic to it. No, I think it's usually just inherited. Cuckoo!

Croaked a little bit.

Ours is— she gassed! She gassed! She gassed! All right, we're doing this. That Joe bottle waterer is better than those ones that sit on top because they can't bother it.

Can't bother. And this is high flow. I mean, you'll watch how quickly it fills up.

Wow, it fills up fast.

You need that when you have so many cows. Oh look, they know exactly what to do, don't they?

They're ready.

Now how's that off? Was that— you connected it here? I missed that. So yeah, this is a hotline.

This is hot.

How did you—

okay, it's Kiwi reel from Kenko.

It's a Kiwi reel?

Yeah, out of New Zealand.

Oh wow. Um, it just wraps around it like that?

Wraps right around. They sell the fancy bobbins and stuff, but I find Stick this in, and your other end is not connected to the fence, correct?

Okay, are they taking off by me? Nope. Look, good sign when they start munching right as soon as they go over. How you gonna move this? You're looking at them girding up our loins. What happens when I'm not here?

My wife.

Oh really? Look, that's why he's got it on this slight slope, isn't it? An old hay wagon. Just retrofitted with 4x4 posts. Is that shade structure in Polyface Designs?

There's a better one in Polyface Designs.

Oh good, you're like a landscaper, you know, their lawn is unmowed. Yeah, or a construction guy's house is undone. I see this pretty shawl. Tell me what you improved.

It's lighter. I'd be curious, is it? Because this is 3/8 inch thick. Okay, instead of full 3/4 like you had.

Okay, nice.

And then we used PVC lattice trim for your board and batten instead of the full 3/4 inch.

Yeah.

And this is, uh, LP siding, SmartSiding.

Okay.

We use it on houses.

Do you approve?

I do approve. It looks great. It's got It's got a bit—

he's got a proper ventilation here. This is not Marathon, this is a different brand.

It's a different brand.

It looks beefy.

Out of Pennsylvania. They've got real sealed ball bearings on it.

Wow, what does that mean?

Um, it should hold up better.

See, this is why I involved you.

Wow, look at it.

And this again, all PVC, PVC, PVC. And this I've soaked this wood for days and weeks on end and it doesn't hardly swell. You got your latches. It's all extra, of course, but just tried to prettify it, you know?

Yeah.

And you prettified it by extending this— what do you call this in construction when the roof sticks out?

It's like a gable end and eave. Instead of— you had like your eyebrow coming out, uh-huh, and it just kind of looked a little heavy. Making this flush and bringing this out would add some dimension.

That's just a little touch for people watching that he has done. Is he's put the latch on the bottom, which gets it out of the way when you want to go open this. Now you can just lift this and you don't have to worry about it catching.

Oh, look at this!

And then here's another huge—

I wonder how you kept them out of the boxes. This is a huge improvement.

So we got the mesh on top, and then I added just 4 inches of mesh.

Wow, around this keep them out of the, uh, getting on top. They were, they were perching on top of the nest box because this was all open.

And this right here, this is insulation.

You gave them insulation? You're gonna give all the crazy chicken ladies a celebration night. They're gonna be very excited about that. If you have an insulated coop, you might be a crazy chicken lady.

No, that's insulation to keep heat out, right?

Not for cold.

It's— yeah. Because it's metal roofing.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, and then there's little locating pins. Oh, right here. That way your lid doesn't like slosh around, stays on.

There you go. He's thought of everything, folks. This is the hardest one, the most steps of them all, but everybody who's got an extra wife is happy to do it for them because nobody wants— nobody wants a basic wife. So Erin helped build this.

Let's just say this.

Okay, so you've fallen in love with the pretty shelf? Yeah. I painted mainly. We're about to have a grand reveal of this thing because if we didn't just go over it, right? Cue up the epic music, Austin. I'm ready. It's hot. Cut. Don't look. Okay, Austin, let's try this again. Cue up the epic music! First time outside! He's moving it easy.

Wow, yeah, that's so light.

250 pounds. Oh, that worked out fantastic.

I can send you with a touch-up paint.

Good job. We got some brooder covers for brooders. We decided to teach everyone how to do totes. Dude, they could even haul that outside, let the chicks outside for a little while if they wanted.

There's a million things on Pinterest, so people, yeah, chop them up and they work great, but then it's one purpose, single purpose.

And, and our— yeah, our idea is, oh yeah, you only have them in the brooder for 3 weeks, you have a tote the rest of the year. Absolutely.

Store all your brooders.

Or it could be storage for your brooder supplies. Look at that. Yeah, I'm glad we went with the tote idea. And what is custom of ours is we have a cover for it to keep out the predators. Super simple. Feeder water on top of that and helps keep the feeder water clean. We even have a big one for 100 chicks. That's a big water trough, but I totally see you guys using it the rest of the year on a hot day like today for a pool. If you're doing 200, 300, 400 more a year, yeah, build something permanent in your house. But you're running one batch, two batch of chickens, perfect. Permaculture teaches us multi-purpose everything.

Just want to thank all of our Kickstarter people and all of Justin's followers for believing in us this past year, supporting us in Kickstarter. It allowed me to take a huge risk, quit my job to go on this project. Yeah, get this out to you guys as quickly as possible and support our family at the same time. So again, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you all. We really hope these projects are beneficial and bless all of you in your homesteads. And again, thanks for supporting us.

Yes, a brand new family. Y'all are supporting. A lot of people gonna be raising their own homegrown chicken, HOA or not. Yep, because ain't nobody gonna complain. Yeah, exactly. Even the front yard. We are an hour down the road in which Henry has been talking to her for 45 minutes. He doesn't need to say a thing.

He doesn't really even want to say anything.

He just wants me to watch her. 3 hours left. We've gone 2 and a half. Readjust the straps 2 times. About to get on the interstate. I'm thinking We're gonna make it home in one haul. It's gonna be late. It's gonna be like 9:00, 9:30. I am wondering what people think this is going down the highway. If you see me, honk. Well, it was a fun run. Now we're in a 20-minute traffic delay. Home sweet home. Hour delayed because of the traffic. It's super late. We left at 6 this morning. It's 10 o'clock tonight. Wow, they've kept the house clean. Hey, we're back! Thanks for helping hold it together today. Looks good, buddy. Man on the homestead. If that pretty shawl looks like something you would like to have in your front yard, backyard homestead, it's coming. Homestead Builds is coming soon. Get on the waitlist. When you join the waitlist, we give you the free chicken tractor plans. homesteadbuilds.com. Happy day!