Enjoying It While it Lasts

Happy day. 3 signs of improvement over the night. One, I woke up naturally. Did you hear that? Naturally, like I used to, at about 5:45. I usually wake up between 5:45 and 6:15, no alarm. Homemade buttermilk. I've been sleeping in 'til about 7 because of this, my recovery process. That's homemade milk, buttermilk, y'all. Put a little yogurt in it, put it in the dehydrator overnight on 100, not to dehydrate it, but just to keep it at 100 degrees.

Would this be crazy?

Would this be nuts? I'm being quiet. Beautiful one's still asleep. Boy, she's a hero. Boy, she nursed me back to health. My God, I saw the love in that woman. She was basically full-time on me 5 days. Smoothed it up. Let's see if it stays smooth. See, maybe that's weight settling to the top. The second sign, this right here. Okay, when I— I forgot to fail— I failed to mention one of the things we did during my illness was visualize healing. It's supposed to help your brain-body connection. This, for most part, promote healing. I believe it. Body has the power to heal itself. We're just tapping into that. So some of my more sleepy moments, boring moments, dull moments, laying in the sun moments, I would meditate and envision. This is one of the things I envisioned. I would envision different things during the day. I don't really like doing dishes, but I was like, I'll be so happy to do dishes again if I could just grab this scrub brush, scrub pad, whatever the heck you call this, and do that. That's so trippy to relive that vision. One thing I envisioned, because it's hard to imagine doing that without pain when my arm was so hurting, so I would more envision excitingly tell Rebecca. We tended, at least I did, I would tend to live in fear. I would intend to like fear and I would be thinking about myself like worst case scenario.

Oh my God, in the hospital, gonna faint, sepsis.

What is that doing for the body? I tried to envision the opposite. Get me the medical kit. I like this tote I got for all the medical supplies now we have in the house. All right, come on. We envision the worst case scenario. Like in the hospital, fainting.

Oh my God, I'm having symptoms, you know?

Our brain is trained to look for the bad. Can you help me get that yogurt out? Put that envelope out of that first. What did you just do? I was hoping you were gonna tell me you were doing the turkeys. Okay, why would you leave your yogurt uneaten on the table? I just want to go.

Okay. Oh, hey, hey, Josiah! He's on it. He's keeping it moving. Both machines are going. Hey! Uh-oh. Are there 10? Are they big enough to ward off the hawk? 10, yes!

This one, she's relentless. Papa, we gotta make a video. We gotta make a video on horses, but specifically Blaze's daily routine.

Okay, normally it's a lot more louder than that. That's what I'm talking about right here. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Getting a pulse on the place. We're gonna run out of chicken feed before we can get more. That's got to be ordered ASAP. Maybe supplement with some pig feed for a little while, not much. Yeah, your water's gross. Couple of rogue chickens and a couple of feed pans left in the pen need to be pulled out. Things like this grit chickens are completely out of. Oh wow, orange tomatoes! Huge, huge tomatoes. I like that kind of pulse. I found something good as opposed to a problem. Corn looks fantastic. Sweet potatoes jamming. Cantaloupe jamming. And nobody soaked this. I doubt they would. The kids will do the chores. They're doing great. They're actually doing wonderful. Most of the time they do the cow chores completely by themselves. Uh, Uh-oh, where's the hose? They're gonna take forever killing this, hard as it is, dry as it's been. Let's wet it down. All right, Lily, you help me nicely, I'm gonna help you nicely.

All I have to do today is feed Blaze in the morning, and I'll bring him in during the afternoon, ride him, and then I'll feed him, and then I'll turn him out.

And that's all. And this is called summer routine.

Yeah, Summer gave me the tea.

What? I guess these aren't going out. Wow, just look at the paleness. This oak just gotten so big. Corn, we had more than we needed. Maybe we have an extra couple extra rows. Look at this, this needs to go before it starts turning. Butternut squashes. Okay, what's this?

Oh, there's some watermelons.

I got some watermelon making it out there. Yeah, the brassicas jamming. Gotta protect those in the fall planting, in the start, in the— you can lose those to your bugs before they even get started. Wow, honey's got a dookie. I'm gonna be driving by here later. What happened here? Build alfalfa, a gigantic cow squat. What do you think the school kids bus is gonna think of all this?

I don't know.

They won't know what happened here. We just finished feeding Blaze. I'm learning more and more every day from Lily about Blaze and his interactions with the animals. She did?

Yeah, it's all over this one. No.

Oh, another one.

Look at it.

Is that what you do, honey, to cool off? Then you stink. Nobody wants to pet you. Oh look, she's got it all over her neck. What are you, camera shy?

Oh man, Henry is still sleeping.

Really? Yeah, it's like 8:30. Good for them. Now Mama's crashing. Where are y'all going, Jonah?

Me and Jessica are gonna go get the shed.

Okay, over here. All right, get in. Let's go to your lesson. Okay, I feel like I've put a pulse on the entire farm now.

That feels really good after having been away, to just kind of catch myself up to what's really going on.

Randolph, is here. That means we'll probably have a mantle by end of day.

Remind me, we'll go see it.

Hold something in each hand, picking up junk. I feel like I'm back. Hey, come here. You got me through, baby.

You got me through.

You worked full time basically. I know, helping me. You got good rest today. I did.

You got to sleep. I slept totally.

Hi. Scrubbed dishes with my right hand, just like I visualized. This is what I imagined coming and telling you, being excited. This is good. I would tell you when I picked up a bucket with my right hand.

That's funny.

Holy moly, gallon and a half of milk, another gallon and a half of milk, 3 gallons of milk. Cut to length. Almost. All right, by the end of the day, that's going to be up. Yeah. All right, no doubt about this. Yes, sir. Oh my Oh my word, please be on. I put all that— I put that whole steer in here, never came and checked it.

It's a hair saw. Light shield.

Light shield's in the house. Okay, this is not good. I'm glad I'm checking this. Oh my gosh, I'm glad I'm checking this. There's no light to this. Did you boys just unplug me? This Or did this come unplugged? This is our freezer. All right, I should probably get it as cold as it'll go. That was a close one. It hadn't been unplugged, we'd be losing 300 pounds of meat. $10 a pound, $3,000 worth of meat right there. Project for today, and I love it, the boys are already on it. The cows need their cow— their, their milk sled. That board was broken, and hey, this one was broken. You've already fix this one. Man, you guys are on it. Proud of you. I totally envisioned me doing that in constant denial because they came to me and said, what's the project? And I said, it's fixing the milk sled and getting out to the cows. It's gonna be hot today, they're in the open. He just jumped on it. Hey, figured it'd be more Jerry. Looks like this leg needs to be put up. If he secures this right there as it is, it's going to be permanently like this. So one of these legs needs to come out. I just measured it. Okay, you guys got this? Boys on their way on the project. I saved us $3,000 worth of meat. Let's see what Rebecca's up to. Oh, Beauty! Rebecca! Rebecca, she's not in here, I don't think. There you are! Where you been? I couldn't go looking for you at the house without gaining too. Whoops. How do you like those orange tomatoes in there?

They're so close.

Rebecca and I have got to figure out a plan for these plants in the greenhouse. We want to lose as little of plants as possible. We're not doing winter harvest garden in the crop garden, so we can use all those beds that we have. That's going to be enough for this corn.

These are the Big Macs, pumpkins.

Oh, all this is pumpkins?

Pumpkins.

We gotta get on this.

This Connecticut field. Well, I was kind of waiting for my arch to be put up.

All right, we're gonna have to get them into the ground, and then we're gonna have to hustle and get your arch put up. Yeah, yeah, that's your little pumpkin dream row, right?

That's also our winter squash.

Are you gonna do anything with these tomatoes?

Probably not.

Okay, these lettuces?

I think we just need to start over.

These tomatoes?

I need to reassess this.

And then all the rest of these are just flowers, right? So yeah, win them or lose them, we're okay.

Yeehaw!

See you, babe. Bye. Another sign I'm better— I'm going on an errand. It's a little red, it's a little swollen.

The swelling is down so much.

So much. I'm not gonna leave you. I'm not gonna leave you. He wants to go so bad. He doesn't care who's going. During that thunderstorm the other day, Henry comes up to me and says, Papa, I want to watch something. I said, you can't watch anything, the power's out. And he goes, the power's out? Outside? And I said, yeah, the power left. He's outside. He said, "I want to go with him." We're going to town, get this truck registered. What are we doing for you?

Getting a nail gun.

A what?

A nail gun.

A nail gun? What are you gonna do with a nail gun?

I'm gonna finish building those shelves in the Bastion.

And we got to get some supplies for Mom's dream pumpkin arch. All right, Jonah, you keep the peace, okay? You guys gonna have to park here. You gotta be here for a second. Okay.

Gotta go to the tax office.

15 minutes later. All right, that was relatively painless.

How'd it go?

Home Depot.

Yeah, now what do you need a nail gun for?

To nail stuff together with. I'm building those, uh, cab— those, uh, shelves.

All right, you're a handy guy.

And anything you need done with a nail gun, you're welcome.

Henry, I'll let you get one tool, okay?

What tool?

One tool.

Oh, the little mower. Let's mow!

I guess he got me on that. He's gonna get the mower. That's his one tool. This is fun. I feel like our time together is waning a little bit, getting more and more divided as he gets older. I'm really enjoying this moment with Jonah and the other two. Jonah has given me a better perspective on these other two, knowing just how soon they are going to be growing up and buying their own nail guns. Is this the one?

Yeah, right there.

Okay, Jonah, how do you feel now?

Very excited to have a nail gun.

Yeah, what's the first thing you're gonna do with it?

I'm gonna try it out, try to nail some stuff together.

All right, don't get your finger in there, okay? Big Daddy— and we won't say Big Daddy has done— may or may not have done that to Grandma. Yeah. This afternoon, Jonah's continued work on his shelf. Except he's got a nail gun. You want to go see the nail gun in action? I like that this is what my boy buys with his hard-earned money. What is it you're cutting?

I have to cut a board, another board.

We need outlets out here, don't we?

Yeah. Do you want to try?

What do we got cooking, ladies?

We have hamburgers and french fries and buns.

French fries from the land.

I'm making the squash casserole.

I'm gonna make stud muffin burgers. I had the idea, let's get— we don't have any tomatoes, right? Like, we're having to buy so little now.

They might be— they're like from a really long time ago.

Rebecca, though, we don't really need to buy vegetables at the grocery store anymore. I know, we're just buying fruit.

Yeah, we're just buying fruit because we don't have enough.

And bacon. And hot dogs.

She's, uh, yeah, she's telling me. And cheese.

Of course cheese. Yeah, 95% or more of this meal is off the land, and that, that excites us because that's the most healthiest, nutrient-dense food we can get a hold of. Tomatoes aren't quite ready, but I think they're ready enough for one or two for slicing tomatoes for our burger. Oh boy, I got it! He got the tomato. He was supposed to get the onions, which she needed more badly. Now that's convenient, grocery store across the street. I mean, normally it's in our backyard. That's pretty red, Rebecca.

Yeah, it's nice.

Well, that red onion sets us on— oh yeah, like this morning.

Can you go get lettuce?

Yeah, Mom's hid the lettuce under this canopy so that doesn't get too hot in the sun. Grab Grab a few of those leaves.

Here you go.

It's all getting real. Let me show you. Look at these burgers. What kind of tomatoes is this? These are those heirlooms. These are the best for the burgers. Your squash casserole is back. Fries from the land. Nothing like junk food from the land. Fries fried in tallow.

Tallow?

Lard. Fact checker. That's an insane plate. And I can pig out because I'm not playing soccer later. I'm gonna take it easy, something I should have done a week ago. I should have took it easier the moment I cut this thing. I should have bandaged this twice a day. Yeah, Epsom soak in the morning and then the Epsom soak bath at night is what we do. I should have probably started saunaing. Hindsight 20/20. Delicious meal, and the kids just played soccer. How was it? Good. Rhodes family versus everybody else. Rhodes kicked butt. Good job. Yeah. I set out, but I, uh, full confidence I'll be on it next week. Happy day, y'all.