Elevated Weekend

Look at this rowdy bunch. Time to give back to the community. First, some live lambs to a local farm camp. 50/50 chance Lucky starts. The plan is let's lure them with the alfalfa and I'll catch one at a time. I'm gonna leave Lucky running because you never know, she might not start back up. I imagine for all these kids, they've never touched a farm animal, let alone a sheep. They'll come to this alfalfa I can grab one. Just put a little bit down, not all of it, okay? Oh God, you think the biggest one?

Oh my gosh, wow!

Here at the farm camp, I want you to see these guys. The teacher and the kids.

This— those worms, can I get in?

How weird are those eyes?

They built my OG Chick Shaw. It's going strong.

Looks like they have the Meat Shaw way over yonder too.

It's my original Meat Shaw.

Hi, Mr. Justin!

Hey!

Hi!

Is he the special guest? Has anybody seen a sheep?

No.

Yes.

Oh my goodness!

The good thing about sheep is they don't bite.

They're huge.

And they won't kill you if they accidentally run over you.

It's sort of like dog fur, but like more fluffy.

It's so fluffy!

We want Lauren to fall in love with sheep so she'll get some here.

They smell to me like they— like a dog.

Well, they're so pretty.

Right?

But I want to eat them.

Yeah, you getting hungry? But they're pretty. Well, you don't eat these. You eat their babies.

Oh, okay.

What'd you think?

That was neat.

You like that? Thank you. Sheep project over. Now our big project this weekend, gonna help the Holts. It's big. We got plenty to do. Full-on grading.

Volunteers coming at 9 in the morning.

We got to get some machines over there. One tonight, one tomorrow. Andrew, you reckon this F-250 will pull this?

Oh yeah.

And the tractor on it?

Yeah, shouldn't have a problem. And hook them right there and then just hook this to the chain. And then see how you've got your— like this way it'll tighten, and then you flip it and that loosens it.

On the way back to the holler house now to get the machines. I'm realizing it's 8 o'clock. It's an hour over there unloading, an hour back.

This could be a late night.

It's weighing that truck down. Wow, we got enough clearance right there. You hauled one of these before with an F-250? Yeah, sure have. Okay, you getting this down? All right, we ain't too low, are we, Andrew? We aren't too low with that trailer, are we? Nah, we'll be good.

9:30, we made it and we're not dragging out.

First time hauling a really heavy load. The truck did great.

Brianna is gonna— she's getting—

she just wants to show them something cool.

That's where it's at, puppies.

Are these, uh—

Hi, this is Zaya, Great Pyrenees. Yeah, look at how tiny they are. Isn't it cute?

Just 2 days old.

Yeah, it's 20 till 11 and, uh, we're back. We're safe.

Truck did good. How'd you hold up? Getting in here?

Come on, get on a piggyback. You gonna get up with me at 5 in the morning?

That'd be 6 hours.

Yeah, I don't think so. I'll let you sleep. I have to get up at 5.

We're gonna—

Flossie had her calf today, so we have a new calf in the morning, and that first milking can always be a little tricky. It's 5 AM.

I'm up dark and early to get these chores done in time to leave at 7.

Put a net around Flossie. We're up moving them today. It's a gigantic paddock. Look at the little calf. He keeps getting tangled in this. So this net has been handy for milking when other cows are in the paddock, like a little stall in the field. Decided to call this guy Monkey so that when we have guests and we eat him, we were like, hey, you guys want to eat some monkey? Well, it's going well. When they have a bull calf, you're supposed to milk them out halfway. The next day. I'm calling it. You're doing good because you're on a wild terrain and we came up here and you were nursing. We didn't have to stress out whether you were gonna nurse or not.

You're a good mama. It's been Iron Mountain to her all night, I'm sure.

It's already starting to get light outside.

It's 5:30 in the morning. Chores went incredible this morning, did they not?

They did.

Did they not? How often does that happen? Never. Film crew's here. Andrew's here. Andrew, did you get enough sleep last night? No, I got over here at 5 and— what?

Getting all the roof and stuff ready.

Oh my gosh, somebody's roofing there today.

Yeah, they're roofing the house today.

All right, what do you think, Andrew? It's a heavier load. It's heavier load. What is it, 1,000 more pounds?

About 2,500, 2,800 pounds more.

What?

So how much does all this weigh? Trailer, Mini X, about right at 15 probably.

And then all of us in the truck.

Exactly. You nervous? Is that all right?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

With my F-250 and my gooseneck, I pulled a skid steer and truck out.

Did you? But I did. We won't tell nobody.

It don't matter, I don't care.

They didn't catch me in the act. That's right. How many people can we put in the F-250?

A little sway in there.

What do you reckon caused that swaying?

It's probably just too well balanced on the trailer and there's not enough tongue weight on the truck. So when you come up, the tire probably come off the asphalt just a little bit and allowed it.

Okay, we got the machine moved up forward, put a little more weight on the tongue. You ever have that happen, Andrew?

A couple times.

We made it safe and sound.

Compost corner. You don't have to have a permanent fence and run, you can do a compost corner with a Premier Net. Another Chickshaw. Can you weigh it down? Look who it is! How's it going? Get him light up. Oh, you won, you won his heart. You see that face? He's gonna hang out with them real soon.

Good on a promise last night of the biscuits and gravy, so that's all set up for you.

A couple eggs.

Oh my, look, from those cows, sausage from the pigs, eggs from the chickens. Homestead breakfast.

Got home last night and I was like, I'm not gonna eat because if not, I'm gonna feel like crap in the morning. So I hadn't— I hadn't ate since like 11 o'clock that day. I was giving him a hard time. He's like, oh, you're fasting? I said, no, we're fastly going to get to McDonald's.

How was that California-made biscuits and gravy?

Is he fitting right in now?

He's fitting right in. He'd make a lot of women in Burnsville happy.

Already got the machines going, clearing a forest for pastures.

But we need to mark some tiny hardwood trees to save them for a silvopasture.

We've just domed it up to protect that little hickory. He's already grew his pastures 25% in like 30 minutes. How's that? So dense, it's hard for any hardwoods to come up in this. Oh, there it is, there it is! Think that'll get their attention? Rianne, how long would this take by hand?

Oh, really, really long. Oh my gosh.

Because Ben works, right?

Geez, that's wild.

But we saved you the good stuff. We saved you some little tiny hickories that were struggling because of all the poplars. Yeah, and we got a maple saved.

I didn't know where those were. Where's the hickories?

Well, there's one under that blue bucket down there, right next to the tractor. You want about 30% or 20-30% trees. Okay, you had about 90. This is your future house site. This is our future, probably towards the back. Okay, nice. Yeah, look how we've opened it up so much to the sun right there. Poplar, poplar, poplar, poplar, poplar, poplar everywhere. And that's what happens, it's so quick to grow it dominates. The more choice hardwoods struggle to get the appropriate light. Really rich soil under this forest. Hey, look who's here! You heard us up here? Yeah, look who's here! Lily, how was the ride?

Oh, you want to see the tractors?

Yeah, buddy. Hey, you got your legs on backwards. They've already weeded the potatoes, mulched them. Rebecca's here. Bobby's coming back for more. Sherry, good morning, y'all.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Harvesting potatoes for lunch.

Is that what he's doing? Is that the prize? What makes y'all give up your Friday and come out and weed somebody else's garden?

Community. We can learn and help all at the same time.

Yeah, so if we ever get blessed enough to get some property, yeah, we can pick up some of this information that—

that's right—

we found out with y'all and be able to use it for ourselves. She was telling us about how to use the goats and the pigs to clear out land.

Oh nice.

Yeah, and that's some stuff we'll definitely be able to use if we can and pass it along to—

there's more of the community, so the reach is—

there's nothing like hands-on experience.

Yeah, yeah, worth the 5 hours.

Yeah. How far did you drive, Graham?

Hour and 45, 81 miles.

And what makes you drive 81 miles to come weed somebody else's garden?

Um, you know, I like I like giving back to others and, uh, the camaraderie that comes out of this. I just bought 2 acres and need to build my own little homestead, so you get some experience somehow, and no better way than helping others.

Yeah, Ben, we making a movie today?

We are.

Is that what you do sometimes, set it up on time-lapse?

Oh, that's not me, that's theirs though.

Oh, who's that? The Blacks Homestead making a movie? Black Tropical Homestead.

Rebecca said Blacks Tropical Blacks.

Blacks— is Blacks your last name?

Yes.

Blacks Tropical Homestead.

Not because of the color of our skin.

We had to stress that when we first started.

It was like, why are you not Whites Tropical Homestead? Our neighbors are white.

We do get that comment sometimes, like, well, if I said Whites, and I'm like, well, if you are a White, if that's your last name, that's okay.

Hey, what's your duty?

Um, I'm just cleaning up this flower bed.

What makes you organize a team and drag your kids an hour away and weed somebody else's garden? You don't even have time to weed your garden.

I know, right? Um, I think it's just the, well, the helping spirit. And like, next year I'm like, let's not go speak anywhere and let's just do this in our community. Like, let's go help more people. Yeah, because it's like, I like going to events, but they're also very tiring. And this is like, it's kind of hands-on help. So I don't know, that was just the thought I had because I'm like, I'm coming home to my bed tonight.

Ah, that's what I'm— now we're getting to it. Rebecca fretting our trip next next week. Justine, what makes you want to weed somebody else's garden? Helping and blessing other homesteaders, uh, because you get blessed in return.

I mean, just the drive here was a blessing for me because it was beautiful. Let's go find out who this Mimi is. Who's Mimi?

Who's Mimi? Oh, that's my mom.

Where's she at?

She's in California still, but she'll be moving out.

That explains the weeds in the garden.

There you go. So Mimi's garden, because this was our first garden And then we had this kind of weird textured area, and I really like going with the hillside. And so I didn't want to put rows right there, and so I left it blank, and then I put the rows down at the other end. And then we didn't know what to do with that, so we thought we'd make it a flower garden for Mimi.

That's neat. It's Mimi. Now you know, now you can— if every garden patch had a name, you can reference it and be like, go to Mimi's garden and get me—

We've kind of named them. This is the kitchen garden.

Okay. Garden.

Okay, that down there is the lower garden.

Okay, do you need help at the lower garden?

That's pretty good right now.

Okay, good. You rescuing your chamomile right here?

Um, there's a little bit of chamomile right up in here. I'd like to try to save one or two plants, but you know, it'll, it'll totally reseed.

We save you one right here.

Pop them off and, um, dry those too for our tea.

She does it fresh, straight up. Henry, do you care about those puppies?

He did.

He pointed out to me and let them know—

let me know he's found some sunglasses that they were nursing.

Yeah, Mr. Brown's got one.

You're a good mom.

See if my trees withstood the trial. Open it up all the way to this opening. This is absolutely incredible how it changes the landscape. There's my tree marker.

Haha, it survived!

He's gonna clear half an acre by lunch. Oh, you guys want to go see the goats? You goaters, you want me to take you to see the goats? Goats is not on the machine, but he loves to do this. Did you've been saving those little ones on purpose? They just survived. You're supposed to say, yeah, I'm not good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey goats. Hey you devil eyes. How are you guys? All the goaters liking this? You got some fans. You got some fans. Breaking out the food truck for this food truck, dude. You're missing the market tomorrow for this.

That's okay, it's totally worth it.

Everybody that's getting hungry on the video and they want a piece of this, where do they find you?

Try me in Burnsville on Saturdays, Yancey County Farmers Market on Saturdays, and at a brewing— Homeplace Brewing on Monday.

Can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. It is probably 120 degrees in here.

It's nice and warm in here.

You ain't even sweating. Like, my face is getting burnt. I'm used to it. Uh, Taller Tater Tots, Taller Tots, grass-fed burgers from Hickory Nut Gap.

Yep, that's some of our pork for tomorrow.

Heck yeah, all night. Yep. Wow, Henry, you're a helper.

I'm there by myself.

Don't you get going down that hill. With all the work we got to do back at the house, why are you doing this? Um, he doesn't know.

I didn't really have a choice.

Sunday when we take off, we're gonna take you swimming, all right? What's Father's Day?

Yeah, Father's Day.

Oh yeah, what you got?

What you got me for Father's Day? Total utter obedience.

Oh my word, this one's yours.

Oh heck yes! We gotta go get some of that sauce. Look at this, Lily, what got into you? Even my fellow carnivore ate it.

Yeah, I'm still waiting on my piece actually.

Oh, you are?

Yeah, I haven't got one yet.

Oh, you haven't?

There you go. I don't know, a little sus right there. How were those burgers, guys?

They were fantastic.

Bobby, how many did you have? I had 2. That's it? Be mean, man, get 4. I think I ate 3. 3, man, you're a little bigger than me.

Just a little bit.

Rebecca, did you see this before?

Yeah, I saw it last time we were here.

Okay, well, this was Woods today. We're about to make the best out of this old barn Ben Holt bought this trash, meaning it came with the farm. There is probably 2 feet of trash in here. Rebecca's gonna get a reaction.

So it looked like that.

I mean, it looked like that back then.

This is all of Rhiannon and Ben's expensive junk that they bought.

I know, isn't it the most expensive junk ever? And there's what it looks like now.

But that's so much better.

Nice pool corner.

So we're coming back in August, so do 2 trash bags a week.

Oh, we'll see how far we can go.

Think you can do that?

I think so.

If you have like extra time or whatever, like, or get your— like, everyone, let's fill up a trash bag.

And also do one each.

Yeah.

And then—

or consequences.

Consequences.

You ever having girls getting in trouble? You got to go fishing.

Just line up your trash bags, and then when you need more— does that make sense?

Did you say when we have extra time?

Yeah, I know.

That's not happening.

You have a lot of extra time.

That's not happening.

Can you tell me the secret to that?

I don't have any secrets.

Are you growing up Holt?

What's that like?

Hmm?

What's it like growing up Holt?

With all them sisters.

Yeah, and she's one of how many girls?

One of 5 girls.

So you're master dad, girl dad.

Girl dad master.

Grandmaster girl dad.

Yes, that's it.

Let's hear your best dad joke. Now you're putting me on the spot. Don't steal mine. Now you're putting me on the spot. I'll say one if you say one. All right, you say one. Well, I say mucho to my Mexican friends. It means a lot to them. He stole that from a comedian.

Yeah, there's a—

totally stole it from Bad Jokes on Instagram.

There's dad jokes on Instagram.

I don't remember that one.

He does remember that one.

You don't got no dad jokes?

I don't have any dad jokes right now. I'm too— I'm in the zone. All right, I'll think of one for later.

All right, she's going to get you one.

I got to find one that's semi-appropriate. This morning I saw my neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious the poor woman thought the cat understood her. When I got home, I told my dog and we laughed a lot.

That's great.

It might be too good. You're the only one supposed to be laughing if it's a good bad joke. Ben's gonna show us how to make tomato trellises for $0.

$0?

Well, except screws. 2 cents in screws. House with living roof here. Those are in style nowadays. Too bad. They didn't mean to on that abandoned house. With your pig port, you just feed a little wood chips in there.

Yeah, just be a little—

yeah. Hey, this is a— hey, nobody's got any excuses. Oh, I don't go no— I don't got no money to build a pig port. How much this pig port cost you, Ben?

Again, only the roofing, that was it.

You had the—

you had the cattle panels, I had the cattle panels, you had the T-posts, and then a couple screws, and then I— the same thing we're doing with these tomato trellises. Yeah, I just got wood that I had up on the top.

Nobody has any excuses. Bobby, you want to shove us some wood chips? Graham, you got pigs? Graham, not yet. On your 2 acres, you ought to have pigs.

My wife said I can't get pigs yet.

Okay, you better not get pigs then.

Um, you better remodel the kitchen first.

You better do that. Get that kitchen done, my man. Kitchen's finished. She's put an ultimatum on there.

Doing the living room now.

And now that's a raw deal. Still no pigs. They don't like that like they like this yellow dot. Graham's still going. All right, we started the trellis job. He needs to collect some parts. We're calling it a day. It's literally about to pour. I think we can see the wall of rain. Everybody's planning on coming back tomorrow, so no need to push it today.

We need to go buy something.

What do you need to buy?

Well, I'm gonna get contractor bags, but I'm not gonna—

Oh yeah, that was a great idea. She had the idea of let's bag up their trash.

The dumpster walls are smaller than we anticipated, so yeah, we can't load as much.

Out of the day.

Jonah, hey, get us on there right this time, Andrew. Oh my gosh, I don't think we're gonna fishtail now. Now see him?

Now, now watch this.

Watch this. Yeah, he's moving the bucket. Oh my gosh, that's what I'm saying.

It's so tricky about loading one of those because it's so much weight.

What's that test? That's just how much weight's on the back of the truck. I think we're gonna need a better truck.

No, he has 750.

Hey, I'll take this one. Real big truck. I'll take this one. Dump truck. Look at him, already unhappy with his truck, and it's raining.

Good timing.

Back home. Huge move today. Can't go the trail, there's a ditch in the way. We're just gonna hopefully take them down and over through an open field, see how Salma does it. Hurting calf fell in the water line ditch, and, and Flossie has been extra protective. I don't want to get ran over.

It's a new day, and one of my goals for the Holts today is let's string trim, let's brush saw, let's leave it looking really good.

Day 2, even the cameraman's working. How do you think the This film's going so far, Austin. Oh, it's going good. We got a lot of— we got a good story, good, good help here. Yeah, and like, what's more inspirational than walking into a trash pile and by the end of the day that's gonna be gone by the end of the show? And we cleaned this out yesterday and already they're utilizing it. I mean, it looked like this, it looked like that, and now they've cleaned it up. We've cleaned it out and they've put—

they've used it as a storage. This is inspiring. This is the kind of people you want to help.

Jerry's back.

Bobby's back.

We are back. You want some more torture? Oh yeah. Justine's come back for more. And we got a newbie, Brianna.

This was a tobacco barn. You can tell by the way that they have it, all these beams.

Okay, all right.

And you can see all the tobacco sticks over there.

Okay.

You can see the tobacco leaves there. So what happened was, I'm guessing, is that granddaddy stopped growing tobacco, kids inherited it, they just started throwing crap in here. Yeah, then they freaked out, they sold the place and said you gotta clean it out yourself, no discount.

That's what happened. Encouraging how you already used the space.

Yeah, I, I felt a little nervous to start putting things in there because I didn't want to mess it up. But, uh, but, uh, it's really awesome to have space for that. All the garden stuff is like organized now. Yeah, now we just got to work on my other personal organization.

Yeah, we've cleared all the way to the corner, all the way in the back, a lot in that corner. This is all keeping, this is all good stuff. 45 minutes till lunch. We got some folks losing steam. People must be getting hungry. Getting hungry, Bobby?

I could definitely eat.

We got 45 minutes. That'll work. Get it done in 45 minutes.

We could try.

I've been working on this overgrowth here around this watery area. It all looks like that. You think I'm nook and cranny farming? Ben has the nook and cranny farm. So this could be a little bit of a pasture if we can't finagle Andrew or the boys to clear this brush for him. You like the sunglasses? Pieces I found in the trash. Andrew, man, like true Andrew fashion, gets into more nooks. He was just gonna grade the road and now he's messing with me. That's a bummer. Yellow jacket's nested there. I got got. I don't think we're gonna be able to get any further on that project. Look at this feast. Homegrown sausage. Here's the homegrown pulled pork. You hungry, my man?

Yeah, I'm hungry.

Okay, have you— have you eaten in a while? Yesterday had been 24 hours.

Exactly.

So we're good.

Okay, so it's been a push if I've ever seen one. I can't believe how much we're getting done today.

I know, right?

Yeah, this is like above and beyond.

It's a brand new homestead.

It's a brand new— I mean, we could sell it now.

All right, that's a better use of that dumpster. There's some trash bags. I bet we took 4 truckloads of trash. 9 minutes, you got it. This is the pile of keep.

Look at this, this is amazing.

Oh my gosh, completely brand new. Did you imagine that, Ben?

No, I thought I was happy with this corner.

I know.

Yeah, I was happy with just that corner.

I did not imagine it either.

It's amazing.

I don't know what just happened, but we did it. I don't know how we did it. Garden space, tool space, and then it's gonna be a regular Hauler Depot.

Yep, I think so. All right, if we can shore this thing up, maybe it could be something cooler someday.

Yeah, party barn. Party barn.

Okay, you guys want to see this?

Why do I do this?

These people that we've been helping this summer— this is 3 of 4— are all my friends. I want you guys to look at this as I talk. To have friends, you got to be a friend. So I'm trying to be a friend.

You guys probably can't take me serious with these glasses on. I can't leave.

Well, this is my job creating content for YouTube, but also for our streaming platform member area, Abundance Plus. And this is inspirational stuff. These people are just like you guys, limited time, money, energy, but they're getting it done. They work to make a living, and so they're very busy, and it's inspiring stories. And we're turning these into episodes.

We're calling this show Elevated.

Because these people have elevated themselves out of the social norm, and we've taken a couple of days to help them be elevated. And we want you to be elevated, and you will be.

When you watch these shows, you'll be so inspired, and you'll learn many things.

Look for that this fall on Abundance Plus.

Nice ride. Oh, we got to get you those chickens. You coming by this afternoon, evening? There's no try when they do or do not.

To try as hard as your glasses are.

You're jealous.

Oh yeah, yeah, just jealous.

Exactly.

You'd look cool with these glasses in that Jeep.

Oh yeah.