In this vlog‑style YouTube episode, the family’s patriarch (Speaker A) opens with a news‑style observation that grocery store shelves are empty, not because of a food shortage but due to pandemic‑induced supply‑chain disruptions, stockpiling, and reduced restaurant demand. He then pivots to the family’s “Plan A” for food independence, walking viewers through a day of homestead operations. The segment covers: Livestock management – breeding and caring for a small flock of sheep, using mineral supplements, rotating grazing, and planning for a future grass‑fed lamb harvest. Alternative meat sourcing – ordering specialty, grass‑fed products (bison, elk, organ meats) from Wellness Meats and bulk‑order co‑ops like Azure Standard, emphasizing local farmer sourcing and door‑to‑door delivery to avoid trips to town. Year‑round gardening – planting cold‑hardy crops, transplanting seedlings, using twine grids and bug‑netting, and troubleshooting soil nutrient depletion. Food preservation – blanching, freezing, and vacuum‑sealing beans, tomatoes, and other produce with a FoodSaver/Excalibur vacuum sealer; bulk storage of rice, butter, cheese, and other pantry staples in food‑grade buckets. Family dynamics and education – the children (Gideon, Josiah) help with tasks, ask questions, and learn about animal care, gardening, and cooking, providing a relatable, instructional tone. Cooking demonstration – preparing a breakfast of eggs, sausage, lamb steak, biscuits, and a large batch of tomato sauce, followed by a quick lesson on blanching green beans and cooling them in ice water. Throughout, the narrator intersperses humor, personal anecdotes, and practical tips, positioning self‑reliance as both a response to pandemic shortages and a lifestyle choice. The video ends with a reminder to check the description for links to the co‑ops and equipment mentioned. The overall message is that by integrating livestock, diversified sourcing, intensive gardening, and systematic preservation, a household can dramatically reduce dependence on conventional grocery stores, even during supply‑chain crises.
Chapters
Grocery store shoppers are being met with empty store shelves, not because there is a shortage of food, but because the nation's food supply chain is struggling to cope with either stockpiling by consumers or a slump in demand from restaurants and illness among workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That was a piece of an article from MarketWatch. Hang on, I'm getting— I'll grab the— let me grab this.
Papa, does it smell like the beach?
Yeah, it does. That's kind of a warm breeze, isn't it? That came up in a feed, or I saw a YouTube title. I don't know, I don't know what it was, but it caught my attention. Ah, back's feeling much better, by the way.
Yeah, we make something to shoot them.
Oh, look. I mean, besides shortages, Rebecca and I do not like to go into town, and going to town is more annoying now than ever, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you can pour here. Here, do right in here. What's in here? There you go. I know, but you can do both. Fill them both up.
No, you can have this.
So the sheep, as, as epic meat eaters, these sheep are critical to our meat program. Unfortunately, we don't have any meat from them yet. We've got to breed them in October. They have babies in the spring. Oh, she got it all up on her head when she got in there, didn't she? And then we harvest them. Not this fall, next fall. I like this problem. I like sheep that are so gentle we have to kind of shoo them out of the way to get in here. Yeah, kind of takes two with these calm sheep. Look at them pigging out.
They're pigging out with it.
I think you should fill that up because they eat so much of it. Okay, so these minerals help keep the sheep overall healthy, keep them from fending off any parasites. We have them in this sacrifice pasture.
Why am I taking off so much hair of them?
Which means I want to be extra diligent about this because we need our grass to grow up. We're We were grazing too fast.
I wonder if they're like salt.
We need our grass to get a little more ahead of us, so we put them in the area that needs nutrients, needs the extra nutrients. But the parasite pressure is going to be more. They love it. Look how much they eat. So obviously this is our— my family's Plan A for providing our own food, not having to depend on the grocery store. Um, in a minute or later. Hopefully we're gonna have time before milking.
What do I have on me?
You have a, uh, I don't know, you have some sort of— I don't know, what do you call this? This is some sort of bungee. Not only is it great to grow our own food, we have fun, uh, doing it, working on it together, don't we? Okay, what else do we need to get in? There should be a Z and an S. It's gonna be a long time till we have our own grass-fed lamb. I thought surely there's got to be a place. 100% grass-fed, 100% grass-finished, like no grain ever. Wellness— can you guys— is that— are you blurred out? Wellness Meats. I mean, when you see them offering things like tongue and testicles, they call them oysters, and, uh, kidneys and hearts, I'm like, yeah, this place is legit. Good job, Gideon. Did you find Z? We're having a hard time finding Z. Uh, maybe it's on the other side. No, there it is. Your hand's on it. All right, so what's cool about Wellness Me is a couple things. Well, one, they're sourcing from local farmers, and then they ship. They ship to our door. We don't have to go nowhere. That's good for a farming homesteader. And then let's see how it's like No. Oh, that's cool. Another cool thing is they had like bison and elk, some exotic meat.
Papa, that's cool. Put on the lid.
I don't know if I've ever had elk. Have you had elk?
We've had moose.
We haven't had bear yet.
Yeah, I think we had bear.
Have we? Oh yeah, I know what you're saying. Bear the steer. You're funny. You're funny. You're funny. While we're in this sacrifice pasture, we're at least going to move their sheep shaw every day.
All right, goodbye.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
Rebecca, AKA the beautiful one, is on her way to another alternative. Azure Standard. It's like a bulk food co-op delivery thing. Once a month she goes and picks it up in Asheville.
She's gonna go to get this sporting goods and get us fishing poles.
I already ordered you fishing poles on Amazon.
Amazon.
Amazon. Another way to avoid town. The fishing poles will be here today or tomorrow. Now we're gonna need to back away when we pour this. You don't want to breathe this stuff in.
In.
It's not that it's toxic, it's just— okay, stand over there so you don't breathe it in.
Okay, I won't breathe it in.
Ready?
I'm going to hold my breath. Back up over there, further away. Keep going all the way to the corner. Ready?
Okay, let it clear.
Gideon, you got to get up front, okay? Let's go check the luchadors. Okay, now we're missing 2 sets of minerals. We really need to frame this out. Okay, yeah, they are out of BBC. Oh my gosh. Good morning, fellas. You ready to go? You ready to go with the ladies? 2 months. 2 months they'll be with the ladies. They've been with us now almost a year.
And then they're gonna marry.
Yeah, well They're gonna be friends with benefits. All right, we're done with the luchadors. Let's go garden. Having a garden all year round also goes a long way to keeping us out of that store. We've got all these cold hardy crops going in for fall and winter harvest. Some of these are more than due to go out. You can see they're starting to yellow. They're not as green You know, the lettuces seem to be doing fine. The Swiss chard— it's the brassicas. I think they're running out of nutrients in their blocks and need to, need to be transferred. It's time, uh, so they can have more room for their roots. Yeah, this is moist. So that— see that, all their roots coming out? Yeah, they're just looking for more, looking for more dirt. Hey, shut that off, man! Not good. 5-year-old walking around with an open hose. Come on, shut it off please. Leave it off and let's go. All right, it looks like we're missing— hey, we're missing a cross pole, guys, and a, and a stick. The kids get— have gotten a hold of it, it looks like. Can you find it please? It's a metal bar and a staff. No?
I don't see it there.
I'm pretty sure that handle already has the metal bar on it. Wherever that handle went. Oh wait.
Oh!
Oh! Oh!
There it is.
Oh! What's this?
Well, it's got instructions. Hold on, hold on. I think I got this grader set up.
What does that do, they say? It marks the stripes.
Straight line so you can plant the plants perfectly straight. Makes it easier when you go to hoe them later. My goal is one row. Let's do it. It's good to have goals, guys. One row of cabbages. And you can't just do half a row of cabbages, you gotta do a whole row because it's— and you got to get it covered with bug netting. What am I in here for? Don't you hate that? Oh, the twine.
I'll admit—
oh, I was gonna admit I'm unorganized, but I'm actually organized. It's actually in the garden stall where it's supposed to be. Hey, somebody bring this.
Okay, I'll bring it.
Okay, put that down. Just, uh, Gideon, please. Oh my word, what has gotten into him? He's running all over our tarps. Please stop. We need our— here, we need our cables. I don't know how many of these. Can you carry that?
Yeah.
Okay, I'm gonna go get the measuring tape and then we'll be getting ready to get the plants. 15 minutes. It's great to give yourself goals, a time limit. Aim for the impossible.
Nice. This will do.
No, it won't. Shoot, that's jacked up. Why do we even— ah, really? Okay, you guys caught me. My good tape measure is not in there. I'm unorganized every day in every way. I'm getting better. Something I'm working on. So for now, I'm just going to use this jacked up tape measure. Hey Josiah, will you come help please?
Um, sure.
Come on, you'll have time later to draw. Hey, don't encourage him on the tarp. Let's peel it back one row. Peel it back like this. Look at that, ready to go. Nice, looking good. Next, let's draw our twine. Okay, we have to do one twine, make sure we get it straight. Where's my jacked up— hey, where's my, where's my jacked up tape measure? I already knew what I was talking about. All right. Hey, where'd you find that?
Down at where Sally parks.
Okay, thanks. We've got a twine up. You do have to do one twine. You do like this and you— your twine is your, is your guide. It's not the smoothest bed in the world, but we have our grid. So we're gonna plant one every— one over here and one over there. We've got our grid, no more line. Let's do it. Where's all the cabbage? Broccoli. Broccoli and cabbage look a lot alike. They act a lot alike too. All right, here it is. Okay guys, well everybody please grab a tray. Well, where's the spade shovel too? We've got our plants. Let's do this. This dog, he thinks it's a game we're trying to catch him, but he's running all up in the garden. Hey, $2 bills if somebody catches Teddy. We did it! 2 rows of cabbages, 10 inches apart each. Got the bug net down. They got room to breathe, but yes, they had outgrown their blocks. Mega putting the— put everything back. One of the problems with putting things back and having kids is they also figure out where it is, and they know where things are. They don't put things back like ever. Look who's back from Azure with our other errands.
Come here, come here.
Sit, sit. Oh my gosh, he's beside himself. Must be nice to be so loved, huh?
So loved. No, get out, get out.
All right, we've got the score, we've spread it on the table. Rebecca, why is there a standard though? We're growing all this food, what is this?
Well, this is all extra stuff. Yeah, like grapefruits.
Is that what this is? Great, I think they're grapefruits. We don't— this copious amounts of butter.
This is like my favorite cream cheese and it's literally just organic cultured whole milk, organic cream, and sea salt. And it's cream cheese and it is so good.
It demands respect.
It does. I got— so they, they're now carrying an A2A2 organic company, Alexander.
What?
It's grass-fed.
And that's yogurt.
This is the— so I tried their yogurt and their heavy whipping cream.
And the yogurt's just to start our yogurt, correct?
It's just to start it. Um, and this was— I, I wanted to try this because we only had one milk cow and milk, but now that we have two, we're gonna have plenty of cream. But I ordered this many weeks ago.
That's A2.
It is A2. Goodness, organic.
I mean, it is pasteurized, but it just means A2 means it's just easier to digest.
Yes. Um, I, I wanted to try this probiotic— uh, this probiotic— the sour cream and see what it tasted like because we can't get this brand locally. So I would buy that, um, from them. And then I don't know what I was thinking, I got some Crème Fraîche.
Um, is that cultured cream?
It's cultured cream, French-style cultured cream. And I guess I saw it, I got excited, and I ordered it. There you go. I don't remember what I was gonna do with this, but here you go, babe. This is my um, favorite butter from there. It's so good. It tastes good. It's nice and yellow, and it's, it's just good. So I, I forgot to buy this last, last month, so that's why I doubled up. So we'll never be without butter. This is the absolute best cheese in the entire world.
This is why we do not make cheese.
This, because you can buy this from— and it's actually truly raw. So they, um, if you look at some raw cheeses in the grocery store, if you turn it over, it'll say that it was flash pasteurized up to 152. They never— they don't take it up above 104.
It's organic, grass-fed.
It's organic, grass-fed. Or I don't know, is it organic? It's not, but it's soy-free. But they're— it's completely grass-fed.
Yeah.
I don't think the cows get grain. I don't know if they do, but it's just amazing. It's amazing, amazing. Cheese. Just one of my favorites.
Potatoes.
Potatoes, cuz we didn't grow enough. I got baking soda in bulk for cleaning.
Can't grow that.
Lentils for Indian Wednesday. Maple sugar. Very excited about my maple sugar. Because I am out of— almost out of the maple sugar that I bought from the family farm in New York that I bought it from. And so I'm very excited that this came in. I kept, I kept thinking I need to buy maple sugar, and then I was like, no, Rebecca, you ordered it from the shirt.
It's real quick, rapid fire.
Okay, uh, the, the kids are really loving some french fries, so I thought I would invest in them. And save fingers from possible French fry cutter cutting off of mango. Dried mango. I usually like to buy it in the, the 5-pound— I think it's in the big bag. I don't know how many pounds it is. They have been without it.
They—
so many people are buying from Azure, they can't keep it in stock. So I got what I could, which was 3 very small bags.
So yeah, we're gonna have to really put in the food-grade buckets, ration it out.
So I got the food-grade buckets because I bought 25 pounds of rice I wanted— I was buying it like 5 pounds at a time and it just— we were going through it too fast. So I got me— I got— I decided to get 3 because I want to be able to store things in them. But first thing up is the rice.
Frozen strawberry— frozen—
frozen pineapple.
Pineapple.
I haven't been able to get it in, um, locally.
Nice for smoothies. All right, let's, let's load this up, guys. All right guys, let's, uh, let's store this. Let's get it all where it goes. This is their standard, guys. This is Nationwide Co-op organic natural stuff. Once a month pickups, probably in your area. Be worth checking out. I've got a link down in the description for this. I definitely check it out. This is amazing. This is stuff you can't even buy in the grocery store if you wanted to, like that cheese. Cannot get that cheese. Well, there's one more thing I want to accomplish today. That's all about avoiding the grocery store too. Let me show you right here. We cook down some tomato sauce. We just dice those, blend those, cook it down in a, in a stove. And one other thing, look at all those beans. Yeah, I'm gonna freeze those today. So preservation. But first we gotta cook breakfast. You guys are digging in. Eggs, green beans, cabbage, sausage, biscuits, a little bit of lamb steak over there. All right, there we go. All right, we're gonna— tomatoes. It's just— it's turned on the sauce. I should probably get a ladle. Um, just me, me and the kids. Mom, she's got to go out again. Yet another alternative, local farm to get some beef. We are out of beef. I think we'll have some beef— moose— very soon, but we got to call about that on Monday. Mucho frijoles, green beans. There they— frijoles verde. A lot of green beans. They're already washed. They're already— we've already picked the ends off on them. Well, some of them anyway. So we're ready to what you call blanch them. Got one pot, start getting it boiling for the blanching. You got us some ice? Thank you very much. I don't think this bowl is quite big enough. This will be immersed. All— it'll all spill up. We gotta put cold water in there to cool it off after the boiling. That's the pot we need, but she's soaking, uh, cashews. This I think will work, but I've got to wash it up. It's tomato sauce. We got our pile of ice. We've got our—
our—
it's almost boiling. Oh my gosh. What is the deal? It's boiling, I think.
Yes, it is.
Ah, so close. What do you think? Think it's boiling? Yeah, let's go. Let's call it 3 minutes.
I wonder, do we let it go for 3 minutes or what?
I think we do. We got a new one going in. This is— this is boil. We'll just let that cool for 3 minutes right before this goes off. We'll take this out and put it on the towel. Got a lot of beans drying by a fan. Rebecca's back. You got us some beef?
Hickory Nut Farm?
I don't know, it's been about an hour-ish. Had the fan on those beans. Rebecca got us some quart-sized bags, FoodSaver bags for our— what is this? An Excalibur?
So we have had FoodSavers in the past. FoodSaver is the brand. Oh, um, this is a vacuum sealer, but we've had FoodSaver vacuum sealers.
Yep.
And they just— they can only go so long before they overheat and they need all, all this attention.
This Excalibur go all day.
It goes— well, it'll go like 90-something times. Yeah, before it— this is the 15-inch. They also have other models. Um, you can get a 12, 15-inch. The 15-inch is currently sold out, so I mean, this is not an ad or sponsor or anything.
No.
So a little, uh, window where you can see. You just want to have that in there and then hit start.
It does it automatically for you. You know, this is a hard job anyway, might as well make it as easy as possible with good tools.
Yeah, well Like I was saying, so we used to vacuum seal our, um, our chickens. We used to not— because we used to raise heritage chickens and you couldn't, uh, shrink wrap them. They didn't, they didn't shrink.
And we've done beef, we've done a whole beef with this thing.
We did beef and a pork. We did pork with it too. All right, it works really well. I am very impressed. I just wanted something that didn't need a break after 10 minutes of work.
All right, good deal. All right, we're done. Look at this. And we had that much last week, we'll have that much next week.
