Gonna Heat our New House (with wood)

I was to sleep early last night. Good. What'd you do? Jumped on the trampoline. Oh, just jumped on the trampoline late into the night. Yep. Sleepover beat you up last night. Yeah, I got sick. Oh no, you got sick? Oh no. It's working. We don't have HVAC down here, so we got a mini split and it's warm. It's warm down here. The cold weather has set in here in Western North Carolina. I think I could mark my calendars to it. After Thanksgiving, you know, it gets in the 20s at night, 40s in the day. That's cold enough to get our wood boiler going. Yes! Start heating the house with fuel from the farm. I was in no rush to get up this morning. One, it's 27 degrees. Two, It's hurting. The back is acting up again. Happens every, I don't know, 6 weeks, 8 weeks. It's the sciatic joint. I think it's from all the inflammation. Knees are creaky. It's like I felt good on that fast. I didn't eat for 5 days. The symptoms were less than they had been in a long time. There she is. Tally way over at the cabin. Hey. Had to kick the goose out of the community. I've never known a female goose to attack the chickens, but we've had 2 chickens die recently in there, and we just thought at first it was natural causes. And then we caught this goose attacking a chicken right there. Oh look, that goose! Hey, that goose has been getting somebody! But I didn't have a sharp knife on me, so I just put her outside the vent, and I reckon she's not bothering anything, and I reckon she's still guarding these chickens. See if that's a viable option. You know, I felt good when I didn't eat for 5 days. Jeez, I've got to eat. Look at this, the wood boiler. We're gonna get to go. I believe everything is set up and ready to go on that. We used to burn our house with that before a remodel. We've added some space, you know, and we have some you know, more space vertically. For that reason, we bought one that rated up to 4,400 square feet. Had a little bit of a late start this morning. I was in no hurry on account of my back and it being 27 degrees out. Oh, 27 degrees two nights in a row, only heated up to 39 yesterday. Her Everflow's flowing, not freezing. Hey, you coming with us? Yeah. You aren't sick, you're tired? No, I think I might be a little sick, but nothing. All right, we don't have an Everflow waterer over here yet. It would be kind of difficult moving that every day. Harriet and Minty are over there hay bombing. We don't move their paddock for a week or so. Just hay feeding hay in different spots. Come on, Vanilla. So here we have to think ahead. In the afternoon, when things are thawed out, we have to set up the next day's water. Are you in four-wheel drive? Wait, wait, you can't go here either. It's bad here too. Can you come right through here and we'll get you on the pathway? I'm so close. No, it's not, it's not safe. No, stop, stop. Is it not gonna to get crazy? Whoa. I don't like this. You don't like nothing. Y' all can't tell with this wide angle lens. But it's so steep right here. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. There's a log too. They're nice looking rocks. Just wait. You need to keep going at that angle. My daddy's heart's thumping. It's a dangerous thing, farming. Sometimes we gotta get the calf over to the mom. He got a little distracted with the hay. Let's get the sheep shaw coming at an angle and we'll be up here tomorrow. It's always thinking about the next day too. And then we go along this steepest slope parallel. We're not going uphill. Yeah, let's do that. Homesteading isn't a game for me. It isn't fun for me. I mean, there's fun moments, but I enjoy it. But it's not a game. I have to do this. I have to do this, hurt, on the Sabbath, on Sunday, on, um, Christmas, Thanksgiving too, whether I want to or not, because I have to. Because you cannot get grass-fed lamb Well, I mean, you could— a whole leg would be $125 and be from New Zealand, and it's probably still have vaccines and worms, dewormers. So 100% grass-fed lamb, no nonsense injections, A2A2 raw milk. They give us beef calves, no nonsense additives. Mineralized. It's not a game for me, it's a necessity. That's why I can't stop when the back's hurting. We've got a lot of milk buildup and we are out of butter, so let's do something about that. First, it might be enough. We're gonna look for— let's fill up a half a gallon for cream. A good cream line for winter. See that? I mean, when there's green grass, it might be a little more, but I ain't complaining. We're just gonna ladle the cream right off the top. All right, we got half a gallon of cream. I'm gonna let it warm up a little bit for churning it. What is going on? I got my feet Because it's fun. Okay, well, don't waste that tape. So I successfully skipped breakfast. I didn't even go up there for the temptation. That's the hardest thing about fasting, or, you know, dieting in any way, is the rest of the family eats more normally, and it's so freaking good and exciting. Zero wood here. On top of that, Jonah said the torch was down here. It's better to start the fire with the torch. I don't see it. We'll have to find that. I need to get a couple of bins of firewood over here. Mostly hardwoods right here. We'll just do the ones off the ground. The other ones we just need to pile up. I'm gonna saw. Josiah's gonna spot me with the Mini X. I was tempted to go get one of— rent one of those firewood processors, but I think there's something to be said about the sheer Using the tools you got. Okay, where has the time gone? It's like 15 to 11. I feel like we need to maybe start that thing at 11. It would honestly be better if we just get a few dedicated days and all the stuff's ready and just go at it. It won't take me too long to get way ahead of Jonah. You know, it's 27 degrees. That thing hadn't been started in months. Cranked right up first try. It's not solid yet. We fill that in like 10 minutes. So now Josiah's gonna feed Jonah and I'll help to stack this to get a little more in there. We're leaving Jonah to split some more. It's not going to take 3 men to start a wood boiler. We got one tote. We figure one tote pretty tightly Stacked is a third of a cord. We need 8 to 10 cords in a year. Come on, carry your golf club. That's the, uh, water. Oh yeah, Brock is telling me might want to start it with a little bit of charcoal, that initial fire. That's not a bad idea. We don't want it to go out. All right, truck only got me so far. Power on. Great. I think we wait till we turn on the pump until we get to like 145. 31, 29. That's good. Ashes are empty. Let's move these pallets out of the way. We need to come in with 1 or 2 stacks of pallets. Pallets of wood. I like this system, at least in concept so far. We're gonna have our wood in bins. We're gonna figure out a way to cover them out in the field. I think with the plastic that we took out, we'll cover them with. Uh, then we have this machine. Bring a couple up at a time and we don't have to use this whole thing as winter storage. Oh wow. What's happening? Hey, what's happening? We're just getting the initial fire going. Oh wow, you ready to get wood heat back in your house?

Baby, am I ever!

Got it to 32. Josiah said, well, why are we doing this? I'm just saying it's fuel from the farm. It's probably more expensive than just running the propane and the electricity, maybe with the machines and whatnot, but I don't think so. And it's fuel from our farm. Yeah, we're going with it. And sometimes It's not about cheaper. Sometimes it's about being more independent, right? We got this. This is fuel from our farm. We grew the fuel. I think 185 is optimal, so we're gonna get it to— maybe when it's 145, we'll turn on the pump and then engage this. What I mean by engage this is turn on its thermostat upstairs to call on it. And turn off our main thermostat. Everybody's sitting at the counter. Look at that. We need one more bench, don't we, on the counter? And we all could fit. How many times have we eaten Thanksgiving? I opted for a lower inflammation lunch, steak and eggs. Feeling strong, although that's very tempting. I think I'll save my carbs for that pumpkin cheesecake we got brought up coming in. Actually It's cloudy right now, but why does that matter? We're going to do the monthly Abundance Plus webinar on preparedness for disaster. I got a lot of experience with that now, unfortunately. There, see the sun's coming in. Why is that so incredibly backlit? Now let's clean up. Although nobody will see this element, it'll just— It's— we'll feel better. All right, that's decent. Got a webcam. Moving on up. How's that? Boom, boom, check it out. Uh-oh, there's a, uh, there's a big sun streak on my face, but the camera looks good. How's that look? Looks good, right? Got a little light settings on this thing. Off, on. We've gone over water, food prep, livestock prep, first aid, tools and equipment needed, snow, power, vehicles, communications, shelter warmth, safety and security, sanitation, knowledge and planning, community. Maintenance. I'm excited. We're gonna help a lot of people. Before we start though, I think I have 15 minutes. Let's go check on the wood boiler. I do hope we're gonna get to eat today. Oh yeah, shoot, look at that, we're there. I'm gonna turn on the pump, which I gotta do— pump, plug it in. And now it's going to start moving this warm water through. I'm going to show you where it's going here in a second though. Let's just load it, make sure I don't need to load it during the webinar or anything. It's still pretty pool. I hear it going through. This is warm water now. You can hear it bubbling. Okay, let me show you the inside. Those red pipes come up, see them right there? They come out right here and then into our house and into the furnace room right into there. Goes into coils, and when it pushes air through, of course those coils are warm and hot. Turn on the boiler. That's exciting, right? Yeah, we turn the main one down so it doesn't kick in, and then this one, which is the wood boiler, and turn that to heat and turn it up to 72. Running the main system fan, this is controlling our temperature here. I guess— did it work? We'll see. 70 in here. So let's make sure that doesn't drop. Let's set this to 72. Okay, you making us some tea for the show? I am. You gonna join the show? I am.

Glad to.

Good. You always have a good insight. Yesterday you were on me and you're like, you gotta get that wood burning. Well, yeah, yeah, it's the first cold day.

It was very cold yesterday.

So what does it mean to you now that it's on?

Oh, I love it. It's like the, the heating is much cozier.

Mm-hmm. Even if it's a wood boiler.

I've heard bad things about propane furnaces, but I did not experience those bad things.

Were we running off propane? Is that our backup furnace now? Yeah. Well, you gotta wait until it gets cold. Cold.

Yes, because we have done that before too.

You can't just turn the boiler off.

We'll do the boiler till like the end of February, depending on March. Yeah, depends on what March is.

So a good 3 months.

Then we'll turn the boiler off and just use the propane in March, April. But we've also had cold until May.

Yeah.

Where we've needed the boiler, so it just depends.

Think we're saving any money? Running the wood boiler? I think so. Even with running the chainsaw and splitter and the—

Yeah, because propane's expensive.

Been in the webinar. I wanted to get a shot.

We ended up having to leave our generator running. 24/7 so that we could run the dehumidifier in that area.

It's the Barn of the Cooking Show. We don't even got nothing going. The pans were drying a little strong, the alarms were going, the fan's going on high. You'll have to excuse me. Beauty's making us some salmon. That'll be a good nice break from all the turkey. Webinar went good. Join us at the next one. We're going to talk about keeping ourselves in ever-flowing eggs, or is it keeping us with milk on tap? One of those two. There's over the next 2 months. Anyway, you got to join Abundance Plus for that. Would love to have you. He's been dying to decorate this tree. Okay, let's do the lights. Yeah, you get that ready for me, hen. Okay, good. Oh, you like that? Yes, with kids it's fun. What? Oh, you do? Yeah, there's rules. I like this. Tell me the rules. I do understand the shoving it in though. Shove it in. Now I'm gonna have to get a ladder to get all the way up to the top. We're having a good problem with the wood boiler. It's working, it's blowing heat. The thermostat isn't telling it to chill. It's not cutting it off at 70. Oh, we're opening this window. It's like 74 in here now. Out of all the things to hurt my back today, climbing that ladder. Everything else was fine. How does it look? Put them on the same setting?

Something different.

Okay, okay, get in. Baby got something we were watching. I have to do a placemat on the bottom and one in the pot because I dropped this mixer once and it got a little crooked. Of course, it's off balance now, so it's a thing. That'll probably be done in less than 15 minutes. Butter's done. How about some buttermilk? A little bit left. I think it'll go to the pigs. Excuse the super orange lights. We need orange lights to not have, uh, blue light exposure at night. Want to wind down. Did butter just in time. Salmon could be even fattier for me. Get all the people's People who pull off the skin. I get the skin. Half the omega is in the skin. Salmon with a plop of butter on top. You got a gift from Granny. Will you eat? Take a break from that to eat? No. Case in point, you get busy, you're not hungry. No, you're not. No, you just gotta stay busy. That's the trick. It's 80 degrees in here. Yeah, I would say the thermostat is not hooked up and working. Hopefully the electrician's available tomorrow. We're going to be opening windows tonight to be able to sleep. Okay, well, we sure could use a light out here, couldn't we? Oh, it's cranking and it's burnt almost all the wood. That's because it's going full speed. It won't slow down. It means it's gonna burn all this wood because it's going full speed ahead. Bad news is the thermostat isn't working. The good news is— what's— I don't think it's hooked up yet. The good news is the wood boiler is working fantastically. Happy day.