Everything I Wanted to Do Didn’t Happen

Happy day! Welcome to another day in the life of The Rooted Life. Did Mom's plants make it? Some of them did. You missed one day when it's 90 degrees outside and you're in trouble. You watered them good yesterday, they're still wet. So many things to do, so little time. I want to move the ice machine to get ready for butchering. The folks need to hook it back up. Over at the butchering shed. I'd really like to scythe the brush— brushes behind the cows. Jonah needs to go hang drywall at the cabin. That means I need to help Josiah move fences. Can you go do the chickens? That would really help. Go do the chickens, please. Hey, we're gonna get Luna successfully in today for your training.

Yep, we're real confident about it.

You gotta take her horse to her trainer today. The cows are in the most difficult, furthest away spot, way yonder. You can't even see them. Tomorrow they're coming right here, the easiest spot because of its proximity. And look at this, we're hitting it just about right. Yeah, look, about 20% of it has gone to seed. That's textbook, y'all. That's textbook when to come back. Oh my gosh, they're gonna die and go to heaven. Look at all this clover. I didn't plant any of it, it's just rotational grazing over time. It's a locust tree we're gonna protect. This is gonna be a silvopasture. I'll have shade.

Good morning. It has been a morning. I've been up for like 2 hours and it's just been difficult. Henry got poked in the foot on this deck. Like, he was on the railing, like on the lower railing obviously, walking, like walking along it, and his foot got— it looked like it had just gotten a poke from a piece of wood. That happened to me the other day, so I was like, oh, you know, that's all it is. Anyways, um, this morning it just didn't look great, so we needed to go in and get the splinter out. But you know, that can be very traumatic. So Henry is now settled and I can get to working. Unfortunately, the sun has now come out, which is not great, but I want to get those flowers in the ground, so I'm going to work on that. I think I'm going to plant in here first. Since this is more like— people walk past this more than walk past over there. So I'd like to fill this with flowers. So I just need to weed it, and then once I weed it, then I can get my stuff in here. So let's start there, start doing that.

Mom needs some compost right over there. You're gonna see this permaculture front yard in action, live action. She's weeded that And she's feeding the chickens with it, and we're about to feed it with the chickens. It's so complimentary. Watch this. That's all there is to it. A deep-bedded wood-chipped run. We're kind of going to go to the lower end, get the wood chips off the top. All right, now we got the top layer off. Gideon's already gotten ahead of me a little bit. Shovel the compost in here. We got a wheelbarrow load, bro. We just leave that, the chickens will put it back. They'll just scratch. There'll be new microbial life open for them now. It's gonna be all you can eat buffet in here. The ice man's coming as soon as 4 days. We're butchering in 6. I'm thinking the ice machine could go right there. How do we move this old four-wheeler?

It has a flat tire.

All right, can you get it to neutral? If you can get to neutral and we can get it around here, we can pull it over to the back shed. Yeah, that's good.

Look at the flat tire.

Keep it coming, it don't matter. Thankful for this big shed.

Sauna mode just activated. It is getting hot in here. I actually almost wore my bathing suit underneath my outfit. But I have to work out today. I was supposed to work out yesterday, but the whole tooth thing. All right, let's do this. Let's get everybody out. Some of these really came back. I'm very happy about that. Okay, now I'm just looking for my—

there it is—

my spade shovel. I already got my first sunflower in. I'm gonna do sunflowers all along this wall, um, and these taller ones and then more sunflowers and zinnias and dahlias in here.

So.

Very excited. I'm gonna put you guys on a time-lapse for that. So I've got them planted and then I'm gonna come over here. I planted some sunflowers over here, but some of them got destroyed. I don't know how. So see, here's the stock, it's still there. I'm gonna weed these and I'm gonna put in this one smaller sunflower that I have. And then, um, I have some more calendula in the greenhouse, so I will go ahead and get that in here as well. And then I think I have enough of all the other stuff to plant it in the garden. Hey buddy, you want some? Here you go. Oh yeah, you like that. That's nice and tender. I have other stuff. I have other stuff for you, bud. Look, you want this? Yeah, get it. Put the little sunflower in. And then I have more calendula that I'll put in here. I just want to go inside and cool down, but I got more plants, I got more space, so I need to get on it. So this is what we're doing.

Thyme and rosemary from the garden. Tallow melted. We're gonna sear it both sides with our rosemary. Thyme. Beautiful. Pepper, salt, rosemary, thyme.

I'm in the shade, which is good. I think I did get bit up though. I think I got some ants in my pants. Lily is currently getting me some wood chips. She came out to help. We're gonna put that over there and then we're gonna call it a day.

I got the Roast ready to roast. Y'all did the— y'all put grass clippings around the flowers and you wood chip this. It's been so hot lately, we haven't had to sauna. Sauna every day just to detox, sweat, but we haven't needed to. Welcome to the Earth's gym sauna session. Oh, if we finish this, we could go, uh, Maybe get the ice machine over. What time do you have to leave for your lesson, Lily? 10:50. Which, by the way, can't take Luna. They're doing tree service work over there from the hurricane. Oh, go give that to her. See if— see if that— that'll earn you some points, Gideon.

I made you lemonade, Mama. Oh, you did? Oh, you did?

Oh, look, it's a little better. You want me to go put more honey in it?

I accidentally—

I'm not taking a sip. You want me to go incorporate it, babe?

I see his heart.

I think the honey got incorporated. I might just go add more for you, huh?

I saw it.

I saw his heart.

I saw his heart. His heart was to be very gentlemanly. I've been washing off the sidewalk and, uh, the stairs and this concrete. One thing I remember as a child, my mom did this. And I don't know, but I've really been missing Mom. But I've just been thinking, as I, as I do this, the pleasure she got from this activity, because I'm finding great pleasure in it. It's been, what, 9 months since she's been gone? It just feels so strange. So Yeah, every time I hose off a sidewalk, I think of her. I hosed off that sidewalk, um, yesterday or the day before and had a good cry. So, okay, I've got it done. It looks so good. I, I want to get a pot. I've had a pot there in the past and grow some grow like a fern. Don't want to fall. I want to grow fern because it's protected, it doesn't get a lot of sun.

I'm hearing bellowing, so if you ever hear cows bellowing, there's something wrong. Yeah, that's not good. Something's wrong. So this is how far we are. We are up here. These cows are in the furthest possible paddock away. They're out, they're up in the woods. Harriet got left behind, she's bellowing. All right, let me show you guys something. I was telling Rebecca I wanted to set the ice machine, dig blueberry holes, and scythe today, and somehow I didn't do any of it. I think this happened too long ago. Still got good water pressure, that means we still are draining the tank. Let's get a little further away from the fence. A member texted me With a solution to this. Thank you, Jeremy. Guy sold my— one of our heifers too. We've got a solution for this tipping of the trough. We just need a moment to implement it. It's gonna have to be soon though. This is getting very annoying. It flips it. That's one thing, right? They lose their water. But if he's flipping it and getting out, that's another thing. And they're about to come down the mountain tomorrow. Come on. Come on. Hey, you guys, top with your own water, dork. All right, I got the water a little further away. Hopefully that'll hold us till tomorrow. We're gonna have to make time to make these special contraptions to hold that trough down. Just counted a tattletale, then bellowing. They're telling on each other. We nipped it in the bud.

Okay, so I did— I went up with Justin to check on the cows. So lovely. It actually felt cooler up there, up on the mountain. Um, and I'm going to check my freeze dryer. Yesterday got away from me and I totally forgot. Um, so I'm going to check these. I actually woke up at like 2 o'clock in the morning. I got woken up, I did not wake up. Um, and I'm gonna warm the trays. Um, I was like, the freeze dryer! So I literally came down here at 2 AM and put it on more dry time because I didn't want to deal with it at 2 AM. So learn from Carolyn Thomas, you can't over-freeze dry. So that's good to know. I am going to let those trays warm. I don't know how fast that will happen, and then and then I will come and check. I bet this is done. I'm gonna set my timer for 10 minutes and then come back and check.

Maybe things will look up today if this— oh my gosh, the dolly! It's there! Call the Inquirer. All right, unfortunately this thing is probably heavy up top. We can get this out to the basement. We can pull it off. Gonna be so hard. I hope I don't drop this thing. All right, this is dusty. We're in need of this ice maker for our chicken butchering coming up. After you put your chickens, you've got to cool them down right away. And you need a lot of ice. And we really only trust our ice. It's from our water. Boughten ice can have, uh, would have fluoride in it. Chlorine. Would it have chlorine? Mom says blow this off outside. Yes, she's right, even though it's going to be more of a pain to get the compressor out there. So we have some problems. Major problem, we have a PVC that has broken and that's going to be very hard to get to. Thinking about how to fix that. I mean, we could take this off. This is a solid top here, so even if we take that off, there's not going to be any room above it. I'm trying to think. Probably the best thing to do, get a PVC that could go in that. Come here, boys. Maybe you have some idea. That's a drain line. All right, where's our— here. So we have this for our supply line. We just have to get a new end to be able to connect it. We have to get this. Oh wait, did this screw in? It does. Can we cut this off and put a smaller one in there? No. An adapter? A PVC inside of a PVC? We might have enough material here to latch something on if we take this off. Is it just better just to go buy some ice at like Whole Foods? Because we only need this twice a year. It might be cheaper just to buy ice. Even if we fix this, we still have to pay the guy to come out and clean it and officially hook it up. Or would we? I don't know. Well, we don't even know for sure it would work. We will only use that ice maker twice a year now.

Well, then when we do turkeys and then cut our own beef and pork, at this point we're gonna have to use it.

Okay, why?

What do you want to do?

Well, I'm gonna put a lot of time and energy into fixing it, and then those people are going to charge us to get it going, and then it's it's going to run electricity, right? Is it better just to get back, go and buy bagged ice?

Well, it's also for harvest because that little one, it's— it doesn't— like, I could have been a lot more, um—

okay, but I'll take a picture of that and ask Dave or Grog. Yeah, if I can put a little piece of plumbing in it and it not leak, it's gonna be hard.

If you can— if you can fix it and we We don't get them to come, that's fine.

Oh, that's a challenge. I have a challenge. We fix things ourselves and be self-sustaining. Texting my plumber friend. He said he thought we could put a smaller pipe in there. Randolph did too, but it'd have to fit right. And look, there's a lip on it right there. That would have to fit just right to not leak. And maybe that's— maybe that's— maybe there is a PVC pipe that it'd be better. See if we can't take this off, access that. And do a proper fix. Really good if we could fix this. This is over my head, but it's not— they're— it's not like they're going to be like, oh yeah, see this every day, either, you know what I mean? Attached to this. This probably ain't gonna help us at all, this little thing. I mean, maybe I'll get lucky and can just bring this up a little looser right here. That is not budging. Oh yeah, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait a minute. I pulled this off, but we're still looking at— it's stuck in there. I think that's encapsulated, huh? I might have saw the line. I thought this would be a cooler box, but I think the drain line's accessible there. Oh boy. I can see the line. Okay. Yeah. But I'm not gonna be able to get at it. Even if I got access to it there, it's wedged in between this plastic stuff, so there's no getting around it. Maybe if I could pull it out. Can I break the glue? I'd just break it if I pulled it. I could try to get something that fits in there. If I can't do it, I could just let it drip here and create something to catch it. Something like this would even work.

The warming trays will be done in 2 minutes, and then, um, now I'm going to test them and see where we're at. So what I'm doing is feeling for any coldness. I mean, it's pretty— like, honestly, this was kind of a big experiment for me for the broccoli, you know. I didn't know— I just don't know, like, I don't know if I'm gonna like this or anything, you know what I mean? Like, I'm kind of thinking that I want to make like a stir-fry packet with like garlic and onions and ginger. And like basically what I'll do is, um, you know, like cook the meat and then we can just throw in the vegetables to reconstitute and cook. I don't know, we'll see. We'll see if it works, but that's kind of like my idea. Okay, I got that done and out of the way. The app is Ladder if you're interested. I'm gonna go shower. And get ready for tonight.

That turned out nice. Little overcooked for a London broil, but still pretty good. Most everybody in here likes it a little more, right? I think we're doing this. Can I do it? A plumbing run, fix our own things, including an ice machine. The homestead store. Find the elbows for that. Barbara, look, look! Oh yeah, get one that's not a screw-on. I know, I told you. Here we go, there we go. I was well over an hour in there and I'm still not sure if I got the right things. The, the compression fittings that are supposed to tighten up on that little white supply line, they don't seem be working. I've never done this before, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or I don't know what's wrong. It's kind of making me anxious till I can get home and try it. Um, I'll put some, uh, plumber's tape on it and get it really tight when it's attached to something. Maybe then it will, you know, bite it. It's supposed to bite it, but it's not. This piece, we found that right there. That fit on tight. Wow. I guess it goes in right there. That's— that may be what we need because none of the stuff I got worked. We figured it out. You just get it really stinking tight and then it holds, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then We attached our— we just— I pointed out we don't really need this white PVC line. We could just hook this directly. This doesn't even go down. Oh, it goes all the way down, so that might be more handy. And then we have the hose connector. We ought to try it, but we're out of time today. It's the next day. We have this thing in place. What we want to do is just make sure our water line works. It's going to be a miracle. I'm going to give you the ice machine dance if this does not leak. Go ahead, Josiah. Is it on? Yeah. Whoa, keep it on! Are you serious? No leaks. Actually, actually, there's a little bit of a leak right here, but I can probably just tighten that up. Come here and tighten this up, Jesse. This is not real that this is where our leak is in the garden hose line. Okay, take this. I cannot believe this. Zero leaks. I'm gonna have to do the, uh, ice machine dance. All right, well, all we got to do— we're gonna take the Sabbath tomorrow. Let's pick— let's clean this up on Sunday and, uh, try to turn it on then. I don't know though, I'm kind of curious to see if it— well, if it won't turn on, we won't be able to do anything about it, so So we've done all we can. We're gonna have to clean now. We're going to clean everything out, put in a new filter, clean this. That's it. Happy day.