Everybody Must Be Moved

Oh no, you're gonna break that. Who opened this for him? You got the other umbrella? That's how I'm resolving this. I'm like, hey, you gotta help me take it to the car because he loves to work. You love little jobs? Here, put it right here, Henry.

All right, good boy.

We're gonna hurry and do chores this morning. We've got a lot to do. Oh my word, this doesn't look nearly as bad from the cabin. But once you get down here— oh, I didn't realize buttercup or whatever this is has taken over the potatoes. I thought we were gonna just be cleaning up the garden. We might be saving the garden. Here's some potatoes still thriving. This part of the garden is done and we've got to save it. You want to grab that pumpkin? The Pasture Posse is overdue for a move, and while we're moving, why not put them on a spent garden bed that needs some desperate Tillage. Come on, grab the pumpkin, let's go! Oh, is it? You guys can have that for breakfast.

And there's a whole bunch of white pumpkins, like a patch of them.

Okay, sign of what's to come. Mucho pumpkins in here. This garden bed needs to be flipped. This corn, if there's anything left, needs to be harvested and dealt with. Oh, all right, another one. All right, we gotta go get him before our brothers catch us.

There's one more. Okay, we can eat all of them.

We could get them later. Boys are gonna kill me if they catch me. I'm not supposed to be filming an intro now. I'm supposed to be getting chores done. We're not supposed to be— that went on the list. We're not supposed to be water harvesting watermelon yet. I bet they'll forgive us for that though when you pop that out at breakfast. You want to? What? Okay, you—

then after breakfast we'll go and get them.

See what I told you? She's catching on to us. Okay, we'll get moving. I don't know that they're gonna have any corn left on this. You'll get some soon. We're gonna go do chores real quick. I'm gonna get in trouble with the boys because their new airsoft video that they filmed— we filmed— has been edited and they want to see it really bad. Hang on to that, all right?

Today is the last day I'll ever be alone in my whole life.

Baby!

Accidentally sat on the eggs. I'm hurrying because I want to watch the airsoft match too, but I also need to move the sheep and the pigs. Add that to the urgency of needing to move the chickens. We've got a lot to do.

Everybody hurry, everybody hurry!

Because if we don't move animals, it degrades the land and could cause health issues for them. How'd you do? She got real close. She exposed these logs. Thank you, honey. You're not gonna get in there. Hey, maybe we'll use the sheep to get in there. They come in here next. We're hoping they're gonna clear this out, all this bramble, and then we can actually get at that wood. You guys ready to be milked? You gotta get the non-milkers over first. Of course these cows give us milk, but they also help us regenerate the land. This is new pasture. We just burned and smoothed out a burn pile. Come on, together. Down here, down here. They've deposited their holy cow squat love. Oh, don't catch that. Oh shoot, Lily, Lily. Okay, look at how well they've mowed. We're moving them on now so that can rest and we get them off of their own manure and therefore parasite pressure. The great permaculture relationship: the land feeds the cows and the cows feed the land with their manure and disturbance and mowing and urine. Back to the hustle. The kids want to watch this show. Done milking. Two things standing in our way of watching their show. I saw a locust tree come up on its own and we do not have a tree in that paddock. Guys, we're foresting our pastures. So Josiah is going to process the milk and wrap that tree. Guys, I don't know, it rained a big swell last night. This is fresh ground. Do you think we can go through it, Lily, without getting stuck? Yeah, it's all that's standing us between there and lots of excitement. Sled hit the bottom of the valley here. And got hung up. And of course Sally can't pull it in this wet— it's mud. It's mud. I wish we were moving this yesterday. It would have been as hard as concrete. Josiah had the idea to bring in Salma. Salma will pull Sally. Sally will pull the milk sled, and we'll hope that will do it. I give this a 30% chance to work. We didn't budget. Can you go get the track loader?

Try winching yourself forward.

I hope you're right. I'm gonna try winching it. I know what'll get this out without question, 100%. The track loader. If I could just lift up this corner that's stuck. No, no, I'm not gonna lift that. That's not happening. Okay, just go get the track loader, bro. Here comes the track loader. Look at this pioneer tree, these locusts, the first to come up to establish a pasture. I mean, look at that. But cows love it, especially— and especially sheep. I think we've got a quick and easy way to wrap this, but first We've got to get the milk sled out. 95% chance this pulls it out from this mud position. 100% chance that doesn't work. Parking it on the grass, just running our chain to it. Should I get that log out of the way? No necesito. I should have bet 110% on that thing. No problem. Apparently Mom had Jonah make breakfast. I think there's gonna be a revolt. I think I'm gonna have to take a risk. That, uh, locust— I'm just gonna have to hope the cows don't get at it until after breakfast. Breakfast is gonna get cold and the kids are gonna lose spirit. They're already clearing around your wood, Jonah. Hope to add that to the list. We are getting behind. We really need to harvest some firewood. We have some totes. We think it's a good idea. Sheep, you got to clear this out for us. This is our first experiment. Harvest and stack here on totes, and it's ready. We can even store out here. You excited for that? You just hold it up with the machine, I cut it, and we throw it in the tote. Hey, smells good in here. Rebecca?

Yes, tell me.

Watermelon from the land.

Oh, it's so ripe.

I picked it.

It cracked the whole way down.

Is this the one out of the creek?

No, no, no, the other one's still in the creek.

You think it's a good one?

Oh, it's not good.

No. Just killed some breakfast. Hey, the moment you guys been waiting for, the premiere of your airsoft battle. Oh, slick intro.

You hit me.

Oh wow, you hit me. Oh, hit me again. Oh, that's good. What do you think? It's good. Was that not the coolest thing?

No, it is.

Lily said— wait a minute, you liked it too? Yeah. All right, you want to play next time?

I don't really like playing it because it hurts, but it's fun to watch.

That was fun to watch. They're gonna want us to go. What do you want, a cheese? This one you want? It's the last one. You want cold stale bread?

We just finished breakfast and now I'm gonna go move the chickens. I'm going to pick this net up and put it right over here. Now I'm gonna herd the chickens over here.

All right, babe, we're going out to the farm. What you working on?

I am trying to replace our immersion blender. We had a nice immersion blender that had a long to go in a half-gallon jar.

Yeah.

They don't sell that one anymore.

Because the one we do have, when you go to stir in the yogurt to get all the way to the bottom, this body has to go down in there and it pushes the yogurt out. So you can't fill this up completely.

And the next one—

for making yogurt—

the one that they sell is very expensive. So I'm like, do I want to shell out the money? Yeah, this one's half the price.

Half the price of what?

Of the Bamix.

Which is the one we had. Is that too expensive?

The Mamix is the one that's $300.

Oh, good lord.

I don't really want to spend $300 on an immersion blender.

For them to just break it again. Yeah.

So somebody put the immersion blender in the sink and then somebody did dishes on it, which is why it got broken. And the one that we had wasn't $300. So now I'm just trying to find one that's reasonably priced.

Jonah, did you mow before it? Yeah. Are you taping it with the camera? Videotaping? He didn't grow up in the '90s. Remember videotaping? You coming, Henry? You can bring your tractor. Come on. I think I've got a quick solution for covering this tree. Cattle panel. Ta-da! Don't leave, bro. Come on. I'm having a little déjà vu here. You know what's really cool? Those boys stepping up and doing the chickens, the sheep, and the by themselves. They don't want to go into that tall garden, huh? Shoot, they ran out. Gideon, come help them. We didn't think to put the chickens up last night. He set up another fence and now he's trying to herd the chickens. If you've tried to herd chickens, it's like herding cats, especially if you want them to go from short grass to tall grass. Oh yeah, I was thinking we'd pull that tarp out already. You're gonna pull it out after you put them in there? You don't think they'll tear up the tarp? Oh, wait, wait, wait, they're all going for it.

Oh.

All right, now we'll herd those two back in. Did you plan that, or did that just get extremely lucky?

Extremely lucky.

Day one getting chickens into this garden. Let's assess. We've got weeds on average 2 feet tall, probably some outliers 3 feet tall, some really nasty stuff. Chickens are a little shy at first. They don't really like tall grass. They're kind of hanging out at the coop.

Sheep.

Catch a sheep while you're out there and put a couple of sheep in here, except they'll eat the chicken's grain.

They can't, it's under that.

They'll get that. Sheep would really excel this fast. We could put that in a cattle panel. We'll just put it in the chicken coop. They'll get in there. It's not hard, bro. We'll put a, um, a cattle panel around it and the chickens can get in to get to the feed and the, the sheep can't. No, it's beautiful. The sheep will speed this up by weeks. We've got Jonah squared away. Let's go get this locust tree protected. Henry, you're pooping. Yes. You think we can cover this real quick and then change him? Yeah. What do you mean, you go change him? No, no, because you might not be done. You want to go get changed? These little ones, what's the deal? They especially like it. We may have came just in time. Hey, you stop that! Lily, can you go spot that tree? Gideon, you go spot the tree, please. Hey, let's cross our fingers this works as good and as quick as I think it will. To guard our tree, in the past we've been using 4 T-posts and then, uh, woven wire.

Is that what it's called?

The reason for that is it's cheaper on the surface, but is it cheaper? Because I think for the cattle panel, we're only gonna need 3 T-posts as opposed to 2. Or 4. Oh no, no, don't you guys fall. Okay, bring me the metal wire in the back of Sally. Oh, it's in the back seat. Is there a chance I didn't put it in the back of Sally? There it is, right here. Stay here, I'm gonna need you. Another thing, if the cattle panels— well, they're gonna save us a lot of time because we don't have to drive in 4 posts, we don't have to put up the wood protectors. The wood fencing. It's also what I'm doing with this. My idea is have this metal wire, super cheap. We'll shut it and we'll be able to easily open it to string trim inside of it. And then there's no screws going to come out of the wood and maybe kill our cows when they accidentally eat it.

I kind of put it—

I put it too— I didn't put it far enough over. Once I push that in, putting it the sheep can just reach right through and grab the locusts. So this needs to go way over, probably like right there. If we don't get this tree covered, these little steers are going to kill it. Got it. I think overall it's going to be sturdier, at least just that sturdy, and easy— just as easy to put up. We might do— need to do a fourth T-post though. Yeah, it gets pretty flimsy over here. How's Henry doing? He ready for a change? I'd love to check on the boys' progress, but we've got to get him changed. Here comes one of them. I wonder if he got done. Their goal was to be done for lunch. Pigs moved? Yeah, my man! They even got over and you got the old net up. Heck yeah! And we'll go check it out later. Right now we got to change Henry's diaper, eat lunch. Rebecca flagged me down real quick. Hey, he's got a load and he's had one, so we're gonna have to hurry.

There's a pig truck.

It's cute, it's cute. Okay, kill it. She wants me to kill it. I'm just gonna put it outside.

You have it in your hand. Yeah.

Oh no, I don't.

Don't have it in your hand and you thought you did.

Okay, no more cave cricket.

Are you sure? I don't believe you.

You want to go change Henry?

Yeah.

And start heating up the lunch, and I'll do that for you real quick, and then you can take over. So you just want it out and vacuumed? This is nice.

Yeah, so then I can put all my forks forks here and all the spoons here. And then when I'm— we're gonna have a party in a week or so, I'm gonna come out here and be like, oh, we need forks, oh, we need spoons. Like, I'm putting together an order right now of stuff I know we need already.

A little bit of a detour. Let's clean this out, Josie. Vacuum it all off and get it ready for Mom to organize. I did it! I think beautiful one will be having a blank canvas. This is all cleaned up. She can work her magic. There's my hand. One of them anyway. I think Mom and I have struck up a deal. She's gonna make homemade donuts and I'm gonna go weed her garden.

Do we have lard up here?

Ding, ding, ding, ding! Victor lard. You wanna go play in the corn? Hey, I'm gonna let y'all go play since you worked so hard this morning. That's what you wanted, isn't it?

Yeah, let's go catch some crawdads.

You gotta put on these. These are for farm. No, those are for town. That's nice of you. Cucumber sandwich. Whoa, the two things! One, that beautiful white pumpkin.

Is a pumpkin supposed to be this big? A white pumpkin?

Yeah, that's a good decorative pumpkin. Weeds as tall as Henry.

You can barely get through it.

First, before we get a hoe in here, we probably need to locate these guys. I think I'm just going to take these potatoes and lay them straight in here, and then I can go weed. I've never seen potatoes grow so limp. I got the potatoes found and I pinned them up into one area in their row. And now I'm trying to figure out, is it easier— you get a lot of weed when you just get this one root— or do I go through with a hoe? The weeds will have to wait. We've been summoned to fresh donuts.

You want another donut?

Here, you can have this one.

A little chewy.

That's the nature of the dough.

That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the nature of gluten-free.

Grain-free.

Grain-free. Pretty good for grain-free. Look folks, she's powered by donuts. Hey, and I think it's like cooled off 10 degrees since we took a break.

I was sitting out here, I was like, it's not that hot.

I thought I was gonna die, it felt so hot. Now it's got a breeze, it's cool. She'll never believe me. All right, pull by hand. Or use a hoe. I don't like hoeing. Look how clean that does it. Go get a rake and rake up these weeds, please, Gideon.

Okay, Papa.

Little combo, how about that? Look at that bean score. Nice. Ta-da! Saved the potatoes. Fall potatoes, bonus for us. What do you say we join the boys swimming? Yes, cool off on this hot day after a hard day's work. A little bit of cool off before dinner.

You want to do it?

No. Gideon's all the way up to the top.