Gardening with Sheep

You want to go with? He wants to go with, but he wants to put both arms out front. Let's go! Makes it kind of hard to carry you this way. The joint's way down there. If we were to open this to open them into that, I'm afraid they would just run into the road and off. They're really jonesing to get out of there. So what are we gonna do?

You're gonna stand right there and make sure they don't get out.

Gideon, leave your Jeep there. We'll leave Willie there. And then if we stand right here, you just might have a chance. Yeah, there you go. Do it fast. There you go. That's good, Jonah. You moved it fast. It's not too tempting to go here. It's just a tiny short grass or road or luscious ice cream grass. Uh-oh, Phyllis ain't supposed to go. It's a beautiful sight. We're about to use the likeness of those— the sheep. We're going to use sheep to fix our garden problem. First, we're going to milk. It's only Jonah. I guess this is the true test of my reactive arthritis, isn't it? Well, I can't squat. Wow, I can't do that. I can't, I can't, I can't do my knees that tight. Afraid to put them down in there. I think there's like manure in this, and I just changed these pants, and I like pants to go for weeks. Here's this dirty towel. I'm on my knees. This is the one. Yep. Oh wow, it hurts, but it's doable. That was my right hand too, which is my weaker one, so let's try the left one. Yeah, probably good for it. Here we go again. It's the start of a new week, start of a new life for many, many people. Definitely a new perspective. What's the matter, Henry?

He was fine.

Oh, he wants me. Lily, what's your job?

Baggy.

Nice. You got a good stack here, Mom? How many orders you got?

Um, it was more than we had labels for. The labels are coming today. Yeah, I had 200 labels. It was more than that.

We've sold nearly 2,000 of these things yet. This is why I say people's lives are about to change dramatically, even mine. I've learned so much from this. We got chapters on pitfalls Why animals? Converting woods to pasture. Developing pastures. Fertility. Laying hens. Broilers, which is meat chickens. Pigs. Sickness. Sorting and herding. Oh my gosh, 26 chapters. You want a sample of those chapters? I'm giving them away at Polyface Micro. That's also where you can get your own copy. All right, I signed a bunch of those, a bunch of random ones, and they're gonna finish up. I've got some work to do. On supper. Do hang in there because we hopefully gonna do some really interesting stuff with the sheep and the garden. It's going to be an interesting combo. One thing I didn't do with this turkey is soak it in salt. I didn't do a brine. I didn't soak it all night in salt. I should clarify, not salt, brine, which is like a salt water. First, we're gonna— we— I've had the turkeys, the turkey, and well, we're gonna put it on a stainless steel grate and keep it up in the air. Since I didn't brine, I did the next best thing, which salt— put salt on it, rub it down with salt, left in the fridge for a couple of hours. We're gonna try a number of experiments. One is bacon on top. What we're gonna do is one with cheesecloth and one without. I think the bacon might serve as the cheesecloth and it won't be necessary, but we'll see. One reason I'm hesitant to do the cheesecloth is because it sticks a little bit, and I'm afraid it's just going to pull that bacon off. The reason we have them in these pans is this is going to leak juice, especially from the bacon, some fat, and we'll be able to baste it. And that grease is not getting down in our grill. It's time to work on our project. It's Sunday seed day. The problem is we haven't really done— look at this, look at this. I'm walking on this bank. Look at that. The problem is we haven't really been doing Sunday seed days because of my reactive arthritis. But I'm getting there. Look at this, guys. Let me show you the problem. This is supposed to be a garden. There's not supposed to be weeds in there. We've got grass and it's coming to seed. Don't get stressed out about it, there's nothing you can do. Lamb's quarter gone to seed, that means there'll be more seed here for the next 7 years. I like to not try not to think about that, but we have pumpkins buried, we have sprinklers buried, we have sweet potatoes buried. And then we have that bank that just couldn't get mowed. Let's check this before we go. Okay, we've got a little bit of oil developing. It's drying up before it accumulates. Ah, give it more time.

Why don't we just put them under the tree so they can get under there?

Yeah, I'm thinking we could get the pig shaw for them, but then just— I had this idea to put them under the tree, include the tree. This is not bad, which he's talking about this walnut tree. I didn't want to encompass that compost. Are they going to step on that tarp? They might not. And if you bring— oh, if you bring the fence out here and it'll be a bigger fence, we won't have to mess with— mess with shade. It'll encourage them to be over here. Heck, you really wouldn't even have to do water technically.

They could drink out of that, but I don't think we should.

We'll just use that as a backup. We will get them some water and then just bring the fence down here and over, include the bank. Then we don't even have to string trim, Josiah, except maybe down the bank over there in one little spot.

I think you could drive the mower down that.

Josiah, you're making this job too easy for us, man. What about content? Just kidding. It has been mowed, hadn't it? Yeah. All right, so yeah, and then, then we don't even have to mow. My goodness. All right, well then let's go get our fence and a bucket for their water. That's, that's seriously it. And just— I had the idea to bring them over here in their cage, which we can do now that we don't have perimeter fences. We can bring them all the way here. Where are we gonna put the cage?

Way down there.

Yeah, we could take it to the end and put it in that pasture until it's time to get them back in. The question is, when we're done, do you think we can herd them back up that hill and into the cage without alfalfa? Okay, they love alfalfa.

All right, they're coming soon.

It's Sunday, 12 o'clock. Start up. Is this what y'all been doing? Oh my word, well, they can get to work when they want to. All day long you do that?

Kind of.

Is that one of our little ones? Make sure you got our little ones or short ones.

I think so. That's a little one.

Yeah, probably wouldn't need more than 3. Everybody's got one. Vitamin D time, shirtless farmer. Let's check the turkey real quick and then we'll put electricity on that. If I take that temperature, it could be up to temp. Want to get it 160, then covering it with tin foil.

Hey, still got a long way to go.

Well, we might be lucky if we get to 160 by supper time. 4 hours, we should get there. Was at 120. You ready? She's got her alfalfa for the luchadors. I hooked up to the grid energizer. Boy, you guys, you guys put up a lot of stakes. I think you put one like every 8 feet. Mom's joining us. Putting the pumpkin in the pigs. Oh wait, not right there, Becky. That's their poop corner down there at the other end.

I just hope I make it in there.

Well, it works better with a camera either way. Right there is good. Yay! Uh, we should have got it to the Pound Cake. She's more energetic. All was not lost in our sacrifice garden either. Yeah, you might as well get it. I mean, that vine is dead. It's not growing anymore. Whoa, 3 watermelons over here!

I know, and this is still alive.

There's some poop right there.

I bet this grew here because this is probably actually soil.

Yeah, yeah, it's probably not topsoil. I put some on you. I put manure here too.

White pumpkin, more white pumpkin, butternut over there. We've got 3 butternuts.

All right, just one meal. Jonah's been watching the baby and cleaning the garage. Well, he was cleaning the garage first and then he took over the baby. What kind of end do you for cleaning the garage?

Hey cutie, I want to be able to park both side-by-sides in there.

Ah, okay. So he's about to go to sleep, so Mom, unfortunately now you can't go with us.

I know, it's all right.

Maybe you can watch from the swing.

I will. I'll sit on the porch.

This is the most exciting part, but you don't care. You don't care, do you?

He needs to take a nap because the webinar—

he looks very tired. Yes. We better move it because it looks like it's gonna rain. How are our wheels on this thing? All right, get our cable please. This is how we want it to be. The door is right there. Let me pan with you guys real slow. So with the door right there, we pull right up and then we switch sides with Willie and we pull it from this side, and then our door will be along the fence and we'll be able to just open and right up. This idea to move them in the fence didn't even cross my mind because I'm still in perimeter fence mode. But guys, we got rid of our perimeter fences. We can take this thing up there and drive it on the road. We don't have to— I was thinking, oh well, we can't drive it through there because it's too narrow. Now that we're up here, we're going to connect to that side, and Jonah will pull it from this side. Okay. There you go. There you go. Freedom. Look, he's already eating the briars. He's stout. All right guys, go to work on the garden. They're gonna eat the weeds, they're gonna reveal our pumpkins, they're gonna reveal our sweet potatoes, and they'll drop some fertilization on it too. It's nearly time, and the luchadors I see didn't really go into the garden yet, but they like to bank right now. I'm going to show you guys something though. This side without the cheesecloth accumulated a lot more oil. This is basically none. Oh, there's some there. It's clear. So, but there's more over here, so I don't know if the cheesecloth absorbs some or what. But that's one interesting factor. I got to 160 about an hour ago, and that just wasn't enough time to try wrapping it in tin foil. I think that probably would have softened the skin anyway, and we want a nice crispy skin. Do we have a crispy skin? Yeah, the bacon fat helped to do that, I'm sure. The question is, can we get this cheesecloth out without pulling the bacon off? Maybe. Aha, look at this! This was under the cheesecloth. I think the bacon's gonna be more salvageable. This is kind of hard. Depends on how you like the bacon.

I want the leg.

The skin is not as crisp.

I want the leg, Papa.

It just might be on what you depend or what you prefer.

I tried bacon.

This is going to be more tender. Let's go for like the driest part. Let's test the— test the breast.

I'm putting this bacon.

All right, now cheesecloth. It's good, of course. It's juicy, the bacon's soft, the skin is nice.

These sides are cold.

This was no cheese puff. There was a little more chew in the skin.

Can I try this?

But it's crispier.

I'm gonna try that.

It's a wash.