Two farm residents discuss protecting their fruit trees from steers using Premier One electric nets and additional fencing, which saved dozens of apple trees. One dealt with a stepped-on nail using Epsom soaks and acupuncture, bringing pain from 8 down to 2 or 3. They're also repairing a leaking water tank and working toward moving into their new house by September 11.
Happy day! It's after lunch. I just realized the mic was not on the entire morning, so— It started like this. Much like this. Yeah, it did actually. Yeah, yeah. Rebecca was here. And that's because you stepped on a nail yesterday while we were doing the tank. And how much pain were you in?
So much pain. It hurts so bad.
And how much pain were you in this morning?
A lot of pain. It hurt really bad all night. It bled a lot, so that's good.
But—
and I flushed it out. It was very painful this morning.
We talked in the morning about how you Epsom salt bath. I tried to tempt you, tempt you with some ibuprofen, but this worked. Even I will take ibuprofen in extreme pain.
Well, it— this works, so I didn't have to take it.
You woke up 2 or 3 times.
I was gonna take it if this didn't work.
You've been reading the Be Your Own Doctor. Did they say soak in Epsom salt? Is that your own trick?
No, I— that was my— that was a thought that I had, but then it confirmed it in that book.
The farm doesn't care. We still have to eat. Nope.
So the farm still—
chores still have to go on. We're in a battle against our steers for these fruit trees.
A battle.
They were getting to our trees, then our reinforcement didn't work, and now have decided to do a net. I think that net will work. It's harder to do for sure. Thankfully there's only one section of where we have a lot of fruit trees, say. You think the nets will work?
Because they worked before.
Yeah, that's right. And they didn't touch it, and it was so—
it was, it was pretty close to the fence too.
The advantage is going to be when we are out of there with the net, we can mow, we can mulch around those trees, it'll look much more beautiful. We just have to keep the fence on.
These stairs are going to go bye-bye eventually. And then there'll be a new group of them and they will throw us another loop. That's what happens on the farm.
Yeah, what we have on hand is, uh, Premier One nets. That's what we use. We didn't have to buy cattle panels or anything like that. We just have to put a little more time investment in it. Getting Mama out of here was very interesting, kind of like back our married days. I could I carried her around. Well, I got her in the truck. Lucky day, it's acupuncture day, huh?
I know. Oh, don't fall, Mama.
Jonah, did you go on errands during acupuncture? So then, Mom, you know, you went to acupuncture.
So I went to acupuncture.
Jonah, come here. And you went on driving errands? That's the first time you drove in a car by yourself. Where'd you go on errands?
Damn, I already got some more of it.
So you talked to real adults?
Yeah, who else would I talk to?
Fake adults. How happy does that make you feel on a scale of 1 to 10? Freedom scale? 8. 8? What would make you a 10?
If I could read the bikes from REI.
Oh, I would say drive into an airsoft battle. When are you doing that, this weekend? Yeah. Really? You ready for that? Hour and a half away. After the fences, I decided to landscape. This is beautiful. It's— we have this weather window. Yeah, we just buried that tank. The water holds. There's no more leaks. Okay, it got a little hot though, so I think I'm gonna finish landscaping in the morning.
I'm terrified they're gonna be like, you did this wrong, you have to redo it.
Yeah, the county is gonna make us pull up the tank. Why?
Who knows?
It's just how it goes sometimes. We shouldn't think like that.
I hope they don't.
We should think positive.
All the rules that were made known to me, that's the problem.
How much pain were you in this morning, scale of 1 to 10?
That's probably like a 8.
Okay, and tell me how much pain are you in right now?
Oh, like a 2 or 3. Okay, it's much less.
She did one on me.
Oh yeah, I mean, I was thankful. This is just my standing appointment, so it was nice that that happened last night, and I went straight in, crutched in. She was like, what happened to you?
All right, you back at it tomorrow?
Hey, on the farm. That would be wonderful if I could be, but I doubt it highly.
Look who's up and at 'em! You coming to see the house?
I had to get out of the house because I was bored.
So what's the word on the house?
By August 1st.
We've moved our date again. We was hoping July 4th. Can we get in here by September 11th, Lily's birthday?
We better be. Is that a safer bet?
Our goal was Thanksgiving. And then it was the New Year. And that was Gideon's— Henry's birthday, February. And it was your birthday, May 6th.
And then it was the country's birthday.
Yeah.
And then now it's, it's Lily's birthday. No, we might be close to it.
I know this, every day we're one day closer. Oh, my office doors! The inaugural close. Is that a fog on it or is that just a cover?
It's a cover. It's clear.
Nice. Yeah, let us put it off. We'll keep it protected. Yeah, we'll keep it protected for as long as we can. Good job. It's been several days. I've got good news. We've wrapped our trees. That tree is untouched. This tree is untouched. And this is all from things we had on the farm, no extra expenses. We did have to take the time to extend out with our electric nets, wrap around them. That apple tree is untouched. Dozens of trees that we've saved.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
