First things First

It's a good problem to have. We've been running out of half-gallon jars. We have so much milk. I think we'll have enough for butter today. Are you going or am I going? All right, let's go. We gotta get up. Come on, pressure's on that fence. Did you get egg baskets?

What?

You didn't collect eggs yesterday. The chickens and their eggs, the second most important thing on the farm. You know what the first is?

Cow.

The milk. Look, first thing in the morning, come out here, get eggs since you didn't get eggs yesterday. Here, here, take this. I don't mind to get him to be consistent on this. How are we gonna do to get you to be consistent doing chicken chores?

I'll break.

No, you get a break every Sabbath. You don't really get a break on the homestead. I mean, we're lucky right now. Austin, our editor, is living on farm right over there in the old house, and he wants farm experience, so he does chores on Saturday. So we do get a break. So can you look forward to that? You get a break when it's done too. Full of boots. What is this? Kitchen knife laying right there on the sawhorse. Let's put it back. So how many eggs did we get? 4 this morning. But what about yesterday? You didn't get the eggs. I don't know. Problem is we're living egg basket to egg basket. You know how some people live paycheck to paycheck? Well, homesteaders sometimes find themselves living egg baskets. Egg baskets. We're using them all just as fast as we get them, and there's not much room for error, meaning we don't have much of abundance right now. This is a mess because of the, uh, all the rain we're getting. Do you think that material may be done? You hear the cows moving? Come on, boys, they're getting pressure. These boys aren't down here. This was not the plan. The boys said they wanted to do the cow, but I'm not up there on time, and I hear them bellowing, and now I don't. There's a lot of pressure at dawn. It's been like 45 minutes. Good, they're still apart. There's a fence right there. Get in, go turn— put it apart. I'll be honest, I want to mix it up for you guys too so it's not the same thing every day, but this is what's most important. This has to get done. We're in the Grow 30. We're in August. So, and this is the reality of homesteading. You got to prioritize the priorities. And part of it too, the project today is to continue to flip that garden. Just open this gate and here they come. Who's the new leader of the youngins? I think it's Harriet, huh? The non-milkers. I think that steer would be the new leader, but I don't guess he is. You and I are gonna start getting up since you need help on the chickens. We're gonna do the milk chores first, then the chicken party number 1 and 2. We are looking to save money anywhere we can. It's the little things that add up. That's what I'm gonna try to do in this with all this green grass out here and, and clover. They don't need 5 pounds of alfalfa. Let's give them just enough to get them their RC Gold and their apple cider vinegar. And once they start getting restless, we'll just tie their head up a little closer. Now here come the boys. I thought for sure that— well, maybe that might even be Lily. That might not even be them. Gideon, boys, she doesn't like this change. You guys are gonna milk or you aren't? You got to make up that decision. What kind of milk? A reservoir. These boys have a tuck. One reason why I'd want them to milk. That's what I got, which— that fool is only 2.5 gallons, I think. See, be mindful, she's pretty restless. Look at this guy. 3. 6, 9, 12, 13. That's what I'm talking about. We kind of need even more than that just for breakfast. Oh, did you have some here? Did you have some here?

Yeah, well, one was around here.

Okay, good. Hopefully caught it. Start doing eggs one at a time in a bowl. We'll probably need something eggs for something during the day. 4 probably won't cut it. We'll be going out there again to the chickens. Those chickens have got to keep going. Oh, the, the new layer chicken— the young layer chickens are going to start laying any day, so that will help.

When I die, I'll come down.

Okay. Henry's calling me out. More baking. What did you bake today?

I made this for you.

What did you make? Crumble?

It won't let me use it.

Okay. Okay, what is this? What is this you made for me?

I'm supposed to make this for dinner.

All right. What is it?

I'm making potatos.

What is it?

Making potatos.

Oh, okay. We have a loss this morning. And this is what I'm talking about, and this is part of the drain of homesteading, is you've got to always be thinking ahead. We did not set out sausage last night. You gotta always be thinking ahead. Do we have enough spices if we did set out our sausage? Then we have all this cream. I just put a quart away. Gotta stay on top of it, stay on top of it. And at the meal, we need to think about the next meal. We need to have a farm meeting. I feel like Getting organized is going to be the key to this 30 days and our longevity of cutting our reliance on bought-in food, grocery store. You kids, we can end up dictating to you what happened from the meeting, or you can come to the meeting and maybe have input. Which one? All right, we'll come sit at the table. I'm gonna steal some ideas from permaculture. I'm gonna do zones But I'm going to do zones based on priority, not on placement. The priorities— Zone 0 is the house. What are the things in the house? Pick up, organize, clean. You guys know the difference between those 3? Definitely cooking and preservation. That's house. That's at the top of our priorities. So when we're wondering, oh, what do we do? Do we flip the garden or do we process this cabbage into sauerkraut. What would make sense to make use of what we've already harvested than to go ahead and prep another garden, wouldn't it? Does that make sense? I'm open to it not. You guys understand the difference between picking up the house, organizing the house, cleaning the house? Do you guys understand the differences?

No, I don't.

You don't?

4 seconds.

I think I'm basing it off of what I've learned from you. And I'm putting animals at the next party over the garden. Don't kill me, Mom. That's because they're alive living beings.

Yeah, and they—

and there are protein and fat in there. So then the animals is harvest. That's milk, meat, and eggs. Management: fencing, water, and minerals. And then improve— improving. So after we've done harvest and management, then we start improving. Improving is extra water lines, uh, burning the brush piles. The project today, that means we have to look at the animals first, and we've already harvested, blah blah blah. They need their minerals, so we got to get the mineral sled to them because they don't have the milk sled. They don't need it, they have trees. So to get them the minerals, make sure the minerals are full, and then we go into expansion, which is burn the brush piles. And so that won't take everybody because it just takes Jonah with the track loader and the grapples just to pile up the piles. So that means before any of that though, we're picking up the house. I mean, organizing is maybe something we do a little bit here and there, and we do before the cleaning. So that means I'm wanting to flip this garden really bad. I can let y'all go do the the cow project, and I'm wanting to flip this garden, but I need to make sure that we process the sauerkraut that we have. This helps me— a priority chart. Rebecca, on the very first priority, it has to be planning. We are not natural planners, we are not naturally organized, but you've got to be to be successful. One idea Rebecca had during that— we've been having this glass board over here forever. And haven't used it yet. I have a project idea. It's my job to figure out what the priorities are. Mineral sled. They know what that means to the cows. Burn piles was the expansion of the cows because there's so many of us. Somebody can be working on mineral sled, which is going to be Jonah, and the burn piles, Josiah. I had to write up here where these belong. What? Sauerkraut. Don't laugh at how it smells. Sauerkraut. What else, Lily, is so important? You want me to put up here picking up in the kitchen?

No, that's not important.

That's the core, baby. That's the core.

Well, we're going—

I guess it's just automatic.

What we're going to cook for all the meals.

Okay, so it's going to be tomato burgers. I'll have to cook those. You could grate the mozzarella unless you already grated the mozzarella, babe.

I haven't grated it, it's just in there. Grate the mozzarella. Don't grate it all because I would like to leave some of it in my salad.

Half? Half maybe? You could cut up squash for us. Ooh, make a tomato salad. Is tomato salad too much to go with tomato burgers? All right. Never too many tomatoes for the beautiful one. I get done with the butter, the sauerkraut, I have flipped the garden. We're afraid that some of our chicken, when we've been thawing it out, some of it's starting to think bad, and we may have to grow a whole nother batch of sea monsters. I don't think it got frozen fast enough, so we're gonna put on here test the chicken. So that's, that's priority number one. Let's go get 4 random samples of chicken out. Bags at different places in the freezer and test them and see what our rotten ratio is. We only have maybe a week, 10 more days to order Cornish Cross before it's— we're gonna be growing in them into November. We don't want to do that. We had Jonah move the minerals. Messiah was gonna go move the— start piling up brush piles. We still have brush piles in our field. It's embarrassing. Probably 3 years ago from clearing, we still have yet to burn them. They're just kind of— they're far out, hard to reach. But that's primo pasture. Primo is a strong word, but we'll be primo one day if we don't have brush piles there and we can run the animals on it. Problem is they're saying there's a hole in this hydraulic line. They need these grapples to consolidate the brush piles. We have a bunch of little brush piles. Let's prioritize this because it keeps things moving. First instinct was to call Mark. Great guy, great mechanic. We're trying to save money, learn to fix things ourselves. So pick up a couple of cables, right? I think he said he could patch it, or he just replaced it in 10 minutes, he said. Let's see, tight is that way. Well, sometimes they're opposite. Yeah, they are. Getting you full, those towels. House is priority number one. Wait, where'd you put the cream that was out, Lily? I was setting it out to temp. I'm thinking because we parted these birds and they sit in these flat packages and then we put them in this huge chest freezer, they didn't get frozen fast enough. Or when we were out there that day, it was hot and we cooled them off in the tank but then didn't cool them off fast enough after parting. Green. I didn't see anything else that was green. We can lay out that much. We don't need that much right now, but I've been meaning to try and make the beautiful one a chicken breakfast sausage. Well, us for that matter, we could eat less pork.

Oh, we didn't go up to Grandpa's.

If it works, our homemade sauerkraut— I loved it. I'm skeptical. I really love Bubbies, but I love this better. It's crunchier. We've made a little sour even. Then Bubby's. It's so good. It's so good. 55. So dropped— raised 5 degrees in 30 minutes. She's doing the much-needed work of planning. She's doing the unsexy work of planning, and we'll not be filming today, most likely. Had to recruit the master here. That's 3 heads. So what did you do, 3 tablespoons?

I said 3 tablespoons.

So 1 tablespoon per head. And now that salt, do I mix it in and then smash it? I'll do it. Taking the cleaning of the machines in our own hands. Good job, Josiah. One machine down, two to go. Yeah, four lives up here too. You might as well do it. Oh, you do soap too? Yeah. Heck yeah! We got the sauerkraut covered, we got the timer on, we got the milk up to Temp, butter incoming. Bang! For lunch today, stud muffin, Mexican, lettuce, tomatoes, wrapping it up with popsicles. Jonah has his first soccer game today. See, Jonah, it's kind of confusing because they're both on a JV team together and that game was yesterday, and now varsity has a game and you're on it. Yeah, we're not always gonna—

invited JV to come and play today, maybe.

Oh, we can't go to every game. We'll go to the games that both of y'all can play in, except this one we're torn because it's his first game ever. Being homesteaders isn't conducive for just going down, huh? No, that's supper time, so y'all are going to need to eat an early supper.

It feels so overwhelming.

I know, this is not happening. Well, you just have to put together the dessert order and that's probably it.

Yeah, for today.

Been 2 hours on the, the, uh Sauerkraut. We're getting a good puddle of water. That's what we want. I got some liquid up here. Is that enough?

Do we have a cabbage leaf?

Should I put more? No, I forgot. I'll have to get another. It's gonna be too sour if we keep it going. Hey, look at this guy! I know, Puma!

I just saw this funny reel that Ashley shared. Okay, it was, uh, the Forrest Gump where every time I see my son and he's— or every time I see my teenager, I'm gonna do it just a second. And it's Forrest Gump where he's like on the boat and he's like, he like sees somebody on the thing and then he jumps off the boat.

This is stalled out enough that we could probably get a whiff. That's looking sus as crap. See how this is, uh, see how this is all pink? That looks good. Just does not look good. I think that one's all right. That looks fine. These are all good. You have the upper body strength?

Hear me? Yeah, I hope I did.

Why do you think 1 in 4 is bad? Do you think it froze bad, or do you think—

I think it—

we left it out too long?

I think that it was probably too much around it.

Okay, of warm chicken in the freezer. Mm-hmm.

And it just took so long to freeze into it.

So it was a freezer burn? It rotted.

Yes, I would say that.

Quick supper. Yes. Because we're going. We're those people now. We're soccer moms and dads.

We're not those people. We're just gonna go. It's their first game.

All right.

We're not.

I know. Well, we're gonna do the boys' job since they're gone. Just a glimpse of my future. The chores are going to revert back to me. Well, if that's the case, we are downsizing. Now this one doesn't know. Well, maybe it does. 3 days and it knows. Wow, I'm impressed. Wow.

Y'all ready to carry more chairs?

Hey, I like this hat. Where'd you get that hat, buddy? Hey, well, we got rained out. Thundered out. Thundered out. No, sit here for an hour.

No, no rain. No lightning.

What happened, bud? Oh, you come to help us with the chairs? Yeah. You win some, you lose some, and some are rained out. That was tonight. At least this didn't happen. Oh my gosh, isn't it terrible? That could have been y'all. Happy day.