Handicap Man Does the Impossible

This day last week, I took a tumble down these stairs, pulled up, put my arm back, and dislocated my shoulder. I'm never walking these stairs again without holding on to this rail. One thing that is surprising is when I was a professional mountain boarder, we had a lot of people at least a couple. There was one at least that would knock his— he would dislocate his shoulder and then just go bang it against the wall or something and put it back in and start writing again. Well, they told me at the hospital, generally first-time dislocations, you don't put it back in. They didn't tell me it would still hurt. Like, it hurts. Mom would have had to do that. You could have just come up against this wall. I don't know if she's strong enough. Just go on. I don't know if I'm tough enough. Bang! I don't know if that's how it works. We should put your hip back in ourselves. That's a little different. That went into the— that went really far out. Everything I want to do is painful. So we've got chores, the 8,000+ square foot garden project. Keep them. It's gonna take over. It doesn't care if I broke my arm. And we need to redeem Last week we never got our iced coffee. So if we get that done, it's iced coffee time. I got chores, projects. The third thing is I like to take care of the family, you know, pick up, tend to them, just help cook. There's this other thing. Last week Rebecca and I were gonna have an iced coffee. It never happened. Let's redeem it. Let's redeem it. Let's get it. These Look, I got a surprise weapon. Look at this. Abundance Plus Member Day. Hey, boy, am I glad to see y'all. It's like we know you already. Just in time, help me out with this bum shoulder. Okay, how many people does it take to milk a cow when you have a busted shoulder? Today it's gonna be a dozen, it looks like. You had a request to milk this cow. What's going— what's wrong with you?

I want a dairy cow.

What's going on?

But it's not the season of life right now with one on the way and two small kids.

Yeah, so you want to milk somebody else's cow on Sunday morning?

Yes.

We'll let you do it a few times. We can't let you do the whole milking because she'll run out of feed. You, you learn how to do it in about two sessions. The first time will take 45 minutes, and the second time 20 minutes. And the third time, and thereafter, 15 minutes, right, Jonah? Yeah, just about. Maybe 8 minutes. We're done with the cows. Now I can really use some hands here. The chickens are out of water. These people are jumping right in. These guys get with it. You've got how many milk goats?

10.

10. She milked them this morning at 3 in the morning.

3:30 in the morning. Yeah, yeah, that's some dedication.

Your name again? Tell everybody your name. Michelle. And Woods, tell me your story again real quick. California story.

I moved— I started farming during COVID times. Yeah, um, by watching your videos, they motivated me.

How did you find the videos in the first place? You know, we wanted to start farming.

Yeah, we wanted to start raising our own food. Yeah, and we're looking for homesteaders and we came across your videos.

What?

And then after that, uh, we started with a couple chickens, a pig, and a milking goat. And yeah, so we moved from California all the way here.

Did you bring your goat with you?

We brought our goat with us.

She's still with us.

Her name is Molly. Yeah, she's still though.

Okay, and you are originally from Mexico, correct? Yeah. So, so tell me, what is a good Mexican dish for goat meat?

Ah, you're doing the deep pit.

What is it called?

Goat in the deep pit. So make a hole, yeah, on the ground. Put the whole goat in there, leave it there like for like 10 hours. Okay, next day come back and you get a nice like stew. Oh yeah, delicious.

I'm gonna look that up. I'm gonna do it for lamb.

Yeah, yeah, she has also, uh, 14 sheep. 16.

Okay, well then what's a good lamb dish?

Mexican lamb dish? Yeah, yeah, it's same thing as— yeah, like barbacoa. Barbacoa. So similar, same process. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so same thing, you cook it on the pit and then the juice that comes from the meat, you also collect, and that's what you put on them.

This is making sense now. Yeah, because there's a restaurant called Barbacoa, something Barbacoa. Yeah, yeah, that's what it is then. It's a Mexican restaurant and they're probably cooking it like that.

Yeah, yeah, and it's really good.

Okay, okay, tender. All right, nice. What a blessing. Chores not as painful with 24 other arms. I think that's assuming there's 12 of them. Regroup with the family. Okay, what do we got? Billy's heated you up a quiche. What y'all's playing? Drywall. Drywall Sunday, huh? Did you guys get milk? Yeah. Okay, just don't want to lose out on my coffee. Dan, these are all weeds on the edge. Well done. And let's pile them up. We'll give the pigs a big old happy— a big old happy day. We're gonna take these broccoli. You kind of— you kind of want to get them loose or you're going to rip up this plastic as you pull through. But that came out pretty nice, right? And let's make a pile and we'll go about 20 feet. We'll feed that to the pigs. This— that's fun. That's one of the funnest things you can do. Nature's greatest miracle. Turning, uh, broccoli plants into pork. Bowen, yeah, what you growing? Oh, am I on the vlog? You're vlogging me?

I'm vlogging, man.

I'm vlogging you.

There we go.

What's your channel?

Thunderstick Homestead.

Thunderstick Homestead. You don't think— you don't steal Thunderstick's lunch money?

No.

What's your stick?

So my stick is really simple: teaching people with disabilities that they too can live a semi-self-sustainable lifestyle.

Nice.

Whether they want gardens or chickens. I don't know about the larger animals, but we can all do chickens and rabbits and—

Yeah.

A garden.

Yeah. What is your disability?

So I have what they call congenital myopathy.

Mm-hmm.

Basically, that means all of my muscles are weak.

Oh.

And since our bodies Everything's a muscle, therefore I'm in a wheelchair because my legs don't support my body, etc.

But you are able to steal 10 chickens and tend a garden?

Yeah, with a proper system like Justin Rhodes, it's real easy to do. Not a lot of work involved.

And a couple of good parents too, huh?

And a couple of good parents and a couple of good uncles to build a chicken pen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm always impressed by what you do. I've seen your channel.

Well, we appreciate it.

I see you in the member area and I appreciate what you're doing.

Well, we appreciate the inspiration and we appreciate you teaching us how to do things.

Yes. You drink raw milk?

I do.

So what was it like drinking your first raw milk? Were you scared?

I was, and then we— the— a lady walked in to pick up her milk.

Yeah.

And she was a nurse, and I was like, should I like wean my kids into it? And she goes, no, just drink it.

And I was like, okay, just act like this is normal. Yeah. And you drank it?

Yeah.

What'd you think?

I like it better.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anytime that I have like store-bought milk, it just— it's not good.

Yeah, because let's see the back of your shirt. Because this store-bought milk is for weenies. Yep, pasteurization.

Yeah, we had a friend over for our birthday party and she tried our raw milk and she, she was like, you don't really taste the difference. But I, I did.

You ever get any crap for that shirt?

No.

Okay. Is Johnny's the only one that makes the stirrup? No, Johnny's doesn't even make it, I don't think. This is, uh, they sell it Okay, their name's on it, but it's actually— it's Glacier. Glacier. Okay, I love this. You like it?

I'm gonna try it.

So do you want me to show you how to do it, or you know how? I watched you already. Okay, there's this guy on YouTube. There's a guy on YouTube, I learned a lot from him. It was great. Lily, you see this? This is a blessing. Yeah, that's work for me. Yeah, and you and your mom and dad, y'all are keepers. You want to move in over to the guest house, right? Stop working.

Yes, that's correct.

My mom, every morning she—

yeah, morning with, uh, with some matcha, green tea. Put some matcha and green tea and milk. That's why she's at her energy in the mornings.

Oh, she drinks matcha? Matcha, which is a mushroom, right?

The matcha green tea, the powder. Yeah, she puts it, the royal one.

Okay, we did this. Yeah.

Jeez.

Thank you.

That's got briars on it. We don't have those down in our area.

No, no, we have the pretty weeds.

That's a nasty weed.

Now, you're Bowen's mom. You must be proud.

I am proud of him.

That man, you have no idea. That man gets with it.

When he was in hospital, I, uh, I took his cards to the hospital. Yeah, because I wanted everybody to know what they were working with. 'Cause you know, you look at him and you don't think he's got a life. You know, you don't. So I took him, you know, and I said, I'd like for you to, you know, see what you're working to get me back, get him back to.

Yeah. He's not as— I know. Now. He has more life than a lot of people I know.

He does. And he's got a lot of, he's got a want to.

Yeah. Where does he get that want to? That's what we gotta know.

Mama.

Oh, well, where did you get it? You know what?

You gotta— somebody's got to teach you that you can go have whatever you want.

Okay.

And all you got to do is work for it. It ain't no big deal. All you got to do is work for it. You know, I heard you say something about you got to be just filming, and that's the way I feel about work. Just do it.

Well, that's what Bowen said about— he says you're out there doing, you might as well film it. Yeah, that's what he said.

So yeah, and you know, watching people like you Uh, that make it part of your life.

Yeah.

Not that it's a chore.

Yeah.

Uh, and the enjoyment in it, uh, shows him that, yeah, it's work, but you can enjoy this.

Yeah. If you want to. If you want to. Yeah.

It's what you make it.

So, and it's fun when we're all out here together.

And yeah, because I really expected a little group, like, yeah, normally it is.

What's a good Mexican potato dish?

Oh yeah, there's also some little tortitas. It's like potato, like mashed potato with cheese. You mix it in and you put inside a tortilla.

Like, oh, a mashed potato.

Yeah, she makes him a potato like a mash with cheese and then some egg, so then you scramble it.

Okay, I'm gonna do it. You'll see it on the vlog. Oh yeah, she teach you how to cook?

I do most of the smoking, the meats.

Are you all still living together?

Yeah.

Okay, so you get to eat all this? Oh yeah, I get—

but then she gets— so they get to eat also the, the, the smoked ribs and all that. Yeah, yeah, I like to smoke meat. Oh yeah, I, I actually do a lot of the whole hogs. Yeah, we raise our pigs too and we do a whole hog. That's what I learned here, the whole hog. Okay, North Carolina style.

Oh yeah, yeah, you did the North Carolina barbecue?

Yes. I will tell you, I was not impressed with the sauce over here.

The sauce?

Yeah, you know, no, I like it more sticky barbecue sauce.

Yeah, yeah.

When I came here, noticed it was too watery.

Okay. Yeah, so you're thickening it up?

Yeah.

Okay. Okay, recruit some help real quick moving these turkeys. The further and further away it gets from the house, the less likely Gideon's gonna do his chore. So the odds go down. A man who knows the psychology. I just had to come up here and get Gideon down. I don't think he's even done his chores. This is me taking care of the family here. What are you doing?

Trowel.

Okay, you guys have to do a dump run on Monday and, and then probably reload it and do it again. It's gonna have to get picked up. We're gonna keep working in the garden. It's amazing how quick things can get away from you. Look at this weed already. Okay, and we just didn't weed last week. You skip one week and you get a jungle in North Carolina. Okay, I am able to get this work done. Bowen inspires me. He's full-on in a wheelchair vlogging homesteading. If you can do it, I can do it with a broken arm. You know, I can't bend over because the the shoulder right there. I can crouch down. I can't hold a hoe. I can walk on my knees. I can— I've got one hand squatting. Oh shoot, squatting down. I probably should have squatted a little better there. Eating by hand, getting close to the plants, because if you don't, these go to seed. They're not going to take over the potatoes by this point. The potatoes are fine, but if these weeds go to seed, we're gonna have problems for 7 years. But this is what I've learned over the home— about homesteading over the years. It's not in the big hurrah get her done days. It's in doing a little bit every day. I mean, that's how we've stayed on top of this garden, to make sure we weed it once a week. And then when you get injured and you have to skip a week, it's not the end of the world, but we just keep going even if it's slower. Oh, and I was telling them, because, you know, I got this arm problem so I can't just bend over and just grab a weed. So I'm having to— I'm having to squat down. Yeah. And then I got only one arm, so I can't hoe, but I can grab the weed with one hand. I was telling them the secret to homesteading is just a little bit all the time.

Like you said, that 1% all the time.

Yeah.

And do what you can. Can't get everything done all in one day.

That's right. That's, I think, what's been our secret to success is just doing something every day. Yeah, I retired this year and said, now I go out in the garden for an hour in the morning.

Yeah, see what he needs done with the chickens.

A little every day, a little bit every day, when you want to or when you don't want to.

Weeds don't stop.

Yeah, they don't care. We should do an update on our little weeds suppression experiment. Remember, we covered one section in silage tarp. I have no doubt that they're 100% suppressed. We sowed this section in buckwheat. That's coming up wonderfully. I really like this result. We could come through here. Look at the— look at the life it's attracting. There's sweat bees, there's butterflies. These are gonna— it's gonna call for the honeybees. Buckwheat adds to the soil. Austin, you'll have to look it up and just flash it on the screen what buckwheat will do to a garden. We do need to come in— actually, this is actually in the path. I don't remember if I sowed buckwheat here, so that doesn't really count. We could pull these weeds by hand. We're exploring our future. We don't want to be forever dependent on the plastic, and ultimately I think we're going to be cover crop people in the garden, but we've got to figure that out. That experiment helped, you know. Are we cover crop people or are we mulch people? We thickly mulched this. Oh look, some cover crop came up in the mulch. For the most part, it's pretty good. There's some we'd need to pull by hand. We, we use leaves, you know. We can get leaves every year from a landscaper friend until we can't, kind of thing, you know. Like right now, we're getting free leaves. But is that going to last forever? That's same thing with wood chips. You can't always get them. Cover crops, it's seed. Technically you could save seeds and it'd be sustainable. We could bring the lambs in, they wouldn't do too much damage to the beds, I don't think. They could eat that buckwheat. We side it down for the chickens, press it down, and just let it be a mulch. I like it. Don't be surprised if you see more cover crops in our garden over the next several years. Even a weed fabric— I mean, we wouldn't have had the success we've had this year in the garden without this weed fabric, given everything, all our circumstances. So we're thankful for it, you know, coming out of the hurricane, coming out of the loss of Rebecca's mom. But I think over time it's gonna fray. We have concerns for the plastic in the soil, but I think it's phenomenal, phenomenal boost for us. I don't think To be honest, I don't think I'm gonna get rid of the silage tarp anytime soon. Let's save these sweet potatoes. Even in it, you have these little round holes that you have to plant into for your plants. The weeds can take over them too. Look at this. Pigs have been in there a minute. They've stirred and tilled it well, our hurricane pasture. Let's keep them moving. It is best to move them in the morning before they eat. Before they're lounging and before it's hot. Good, they're following that water, so let's just bring— hey, good job, Dan! Way to look around and see what needs to be done. All right, so Dan, bring that a little further away from the fence so they don't push it on that fence. Yep, put the fence back, Andrew. I don't even have to tell Andrew what to do, he's done this before. Now look, they're walking around looking for the breach already, so we gotta get out and turn this fence on. The pigs, first thing they do is walk around looking for the hole in the fence. So we're quickly getting the fence back on. Everybody helped move. Now we're gonna go behind that. Well, the chickens will come in then, hopefully tomorrow. We'll remember. Pictures, pictures! It's the least we can do. You guys are the heroes today. Owen, you're an inspiration, bud.

You, you are inspirational, man.

Yep.

Let me see your sticker.

We'll plug his— we'll plug his, uh, YouTube. Thanks, Bowen, for coming. Everybody check out Thunderstruck Homestead. Thunderstick. What a great time. What What good people. What a blessing. I just feel overwhelmed with blessings right now. You know, Rebecca and I set out to make this channel 100% business. This, this is a, this is a business move for us. It was— I got Lyme disease, I was market farming, I had to slow down in the physical way. But how can we stay in the movement? Let's, long story short, create content. Build an audience, find a need in that audience, serve them more by selling something they need. But then something has surprised us and came out sideways on this. We actually extended our family. So for that, thank you. Thank you for watching. Thanks for everyone who come. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude for y'all watching through this, for the, for the kind comments, for the subscribing, for the Abundance Plus members. It's, it's why we can continue to do this and to be able to— then we didn't seek out to do this, but we ended up inspiring families. We wanted to teach, we wanted to teach this This was an immersion learning experience, our vlog, right? You're just gonna learn as you go and follow us. We had no idea it would be so inspirational. And we had no idea that showing our failures is what was gonna be the inspiration. So if that's all we got to do, that's saying a lot about you all. That you are forgiving and you're loving and you're open-minded and you're learning. And it gave— God knew we needed this. He knew we needed this extra in our life, that it needed to go beyond a business, and it has, and we appreciate that. We love inspiring the families, the fathers to step it up, the husband and wife to stick it out, the people to raise their children, have children, have lots of children, And just, it completes our joy to share this with you. We found something good and we share it with you. So thank you for tuning in on that. And thanks to all these people for coming through. And it means a lot now because like my shoulder's bound and I've helped these people in some way over the line and they just want to give back and they have. Because it was very helpful and encouraging today. So thank you. The beautiful one's doing the Abundance Plus webinar this month. Healthy home. I'm proud of her. I'm hurting like crazy. Is it supposed to still be hurting this bad a week out? And I feel like the brace made it worse. Like, it was feeling good this morning for about an hour. Oh, we're close to redemption here. Rebecca's made the coffee. We got an ice pack. You killed that webinar, apparently. And I killed the nap. I came in and you were passed out. I thought, surely he will be awake. This is way more than I bargained for. Oh yeah, I thought they were gonna pop you back in and it was gonna be over. We're gonna go to the chiropractor on Wednesday. Okay, they better not touch my heart. I think it'll help. As long as they don't touch my heart. I don't think she will.

She's very Respectful.

Don't take it for granted because this is all from the land. All of it. A Philly cheesesteak. That's all from the land. Save the salt. Even the dill in the cucumber salad. Dinner and a movie, watching the Trehans cross the country, 50 states in 50 days. This is about the only position sitting down, leaning back, or laying in the bed on my side. I think it's this weird cream up here that smells. Yeah, should I? Let me taste it. No, it's sour. Iced coffee incoming. This is a week in the making, this iced coffee. We were gonna have this last week. I milked the cow. I milked that calf at noon to get iced coffee, and then I fell down those stairs. Thank you so much.

This is a week late.

This is a long time coming. Talk about delayed gratification.

One week.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. After a long hard day working and napping, she wasn't gonna let me get away with that. What's wrong? You did work hard this morning. I worked hard on healing, not nap. You did, you did. Like this. She caught me, she caught me with my mouth open. You should have took a picture. Works better with the camera. Cheers, happy day.