Gung-ho Tomatoes

Happy Casual Friday! These beans— oh my gosh, we thought the pumpkins were getting too big for their britches. These beans, they're starting to grow their beans. I don't know how long they're gonna keep green doing it like that. Our farm goal project for today: transplant those out. First, Gideon, let's go do your turkeys. Thank you for watering the plant.

When are you gonna go do Harriet?

After you do that water. So come on, meet me out there.

Gideon, let's go!

You do open it there, then you bring all your stuff in, then you shut it back and you pick up the rest of the fence. This is kind of his chore, so you tell me what to do, Gideon. Animals on new grass never gets old.

Did you miss me while I was gone? Yeah.

Did it make you nervous?

Not really.

No, that's good. Feeling anxious about moving back into the house? Yeah. Are you really? Yeah, what's so anxious about it?

It's gonna be bigger.

Oh, I think we're all going through a little something. Tensions are high. We're at the final stretch of living together in a 700 square foot house, you know, finding resources to finish our homestead house. You know, it's the finish line, like our event, our bike race. You're tired at the end. You're tiredest at the end. It makes sense. Let's move them this way, bud.

This way?

Right here. Are those horseflies mating? Fighting?

One's a bee and one's a horsefly.

Oh wow, they're fighting.

Is that bee killing that horsefly?

I saw how they do it. I saw a yellow jacket come and get a piece of meat, and it was too big for it to carry, so it chopped it.

Nice.

But that was all they would do. I got all my chores done.

All right, good for you, girl.

I put hay in the mangers.

All right, thank you. Give me and Gideon a ride. I need to get in there and get that pan without her bothering me. I got a trick. No, this isn't to herd her. Pigs don't herd.

Bothering me now.

Good job, boys. Did y'all put apple cider vinegar in it? I did. Jonah didn't. I did, Papa. Okay, RC Gold. Oh, where was it? Trying to pour that. That's so full. Now she kicks the bucket, I won't be so sad. Yeah, right. Little RC Gold, which is a robotic.

Evil eye. Like, watch this. Okay, let me look here.

You know what, Josiah, put a little alfalfa in both pans. We got a little trick for these sheep. And then a little more in that one. These sheep, we're about to put an Ike in there for breeding. In one week he goes in there. They say— I'm not teaching this, you're following me in an experiment— they Booze, give them some alfalfa before breeding time. I guess during breeding time because they won't all be ready to go. They go in heat, I think they cycle every 3 weeks. They say giving them apple cider vinegar helps bring down eggs, flush eggs. Let's take those 2 troughs to the sheep. They're about to love me. These are our ewes, hopefully to breed them here in about A week. That gives us January babies and a November harvest.

Jeeps! Wow, they just knocked it all over!

Crazy for it. You just want to catch one? I don't think he'll do it. Wait, how'd you catch that? I didn't think you'd do it. I forgot to film it. All right, let them come back. They're all getting away from the alfalfa. We have a steer pushing on the fence. We're gonna train this steer. Oh, why are we letting water run like this? I'm just seeing new problems as I go. Fix the water problem real quick. Okay, you ready? Okay, get— is he touching it? He's touching it. Yeah. Is he not getting shocked? I hear the fence clicking. Right here comes Josiah. Watch this. Watch this.

Yeah, no, I was kidding.

Why is that not shocking him? I don't know. All right, it's not hitting him because this ain't doing it.

Okay, hold on, let's try it now.

All right, shoo him off of it. Okay, it's hitting now. Barely, barely. Where's the guy? Where's the offender? Okay, it's not on this fence for some reason. It's not on this fence. We've got to get this fence hitting harder so we can train this guy, have a little training session. We're disconnecting yesterday's fence so today's fence will be a little more powerful. Found our problem, at least one of them major. This is connected to a grounding rod. Okay, turn it on. Let's see if it's working. I'm gonna get him on this. All right, all right, turn it on. Fix it, Poppy.

He's about to touch it.

Turn it back on quick, he's already pushing it. Quick, quick, boy, he knows. Look at this, train him real good, train him real good. This is good, this is gonna solve some of our Cow's escaping problem. Wild turkeys after our old feed spill. Spilled feed. Oh boy, come on, let's do this before it gets hot in that high tunnel. We got John. John, you sore? No. Then you haven't tried hard enough. John, are you feeling better? Yeah. All right, that's good. I better grab a tray of beans. Here you go, John. All you kids get a tray. Hey, let's hoe this real quick. It's not much, but let's hoe it. Do you even need a trowel?

Yes. How do you eat all these tomatoes?

Well, we preserve them in a sauce. I want to say maybe a little halfway done with all our tomatoes. This is the first year we've really just gung-ho got all our tomatoes. I'm not even sure if anything's falling on the ground.

Um, I think some are falling down.

Yeah, let's pick those up, feed them to Mom.

Look, there's also one here.

Let's get the ones off the ground before Mom sees them and her heart breaks and feed them to the pigs. Wow, you guys already got them laid out. You're gonna have too many. Yeah, I think they're not even 4 inches, Jonah. So this is like 6 inches. That's like 8 inches right there. So half the spacing. So if you have any extra, it'll be more like this. That is a lot closer than I thought. Yeah, we'll get the weeds up first so we don't have to hoe around them. That's 4 inches right there, bud. Use that as your measuring stick. Hey, hey, look who showed up! I'm here, the beautiful one. Don't look, we have casualties over here. Oh gosh, what is that? Some of your tomatoes have fallen on the ground. Don't cry over spilled tomatoes. Do you want me to go and, and pack those up because maybe you can't reach them? Yeah, look at this, babe. Wow, you want to go for it? Yeah. How many quarts are we at?

I feel like we might— oh, so we have some crushed.

Well, just estimate.

Uh, probably like 35, 40.

So a third of the way there. We need 100. We're thinking 2 jars a week for a year because you're gonna have chicken cacciatore.

I know, we might have chicken Sunday, right?

If Jonah— that's, that's a tomato. I've been pulling for, uh, stir-fry. But if you ask Jonah, we're having friends over, family friends over on Sunday. Always when you do that, you definitely want to include a lot of farm fresh food.

Pick all these up.

I was gonna say, we're gonna just put it in the wheelbarrow for the pigs. Nothing goes to waste on the permaculture farm. They won't eat this. This will probably be toxic to them, but they'll sift through it, eat what they can. What they don't eat ends up composting, right? Below them and they're deep bedding. Are you pruning a zucchini?

I am.

Can we check our zucchini so it doesn't look crazy?

We got a bigger—

that's the biggest one we've got, and then we've got a whole bunch of little ones. There's baby hornworms.

I think so.

It's starting to warm up in this hot tunnel. I got one more row to do. Two-thirds done. It's starting to get hot with that sun. All right, Leah's going away party. Leah's been helping us with Henry and the other kids. Lily, Leah, we'll miss you. I'm gonna miss you guys so much. What's next in the next chapter of your life?

Gosh, we'll see. Whatever God wants.

Yeah. College? College right now at Oak—

Or Robert's.

Ah, okay.

Yep.

All right.

Golden Eagles! Hopefully she'll be here next summer at some point to see us again, and we'll see her at Christmas. Yes, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. Oh, okay. This is her request. Steak potatoes. Steak and potatoes. Man, that's a farm girl. Happy day.