Harvesting the Instant Chicken Garden (Just 7 weeks after Planting)

Hey, you know what today is? It's time to harvest your garden. All right, we'll come back for that. Hey Lily, did you do your chores?

Yeah.

Okay, can I milk now? Milk? I love it. You want to milk early today? We could try, maybe in an hour. We gotta come today, huge day. Gotta uncover our gardens. The earthworks is coming back. Mom's planting out her garden, transplanting out her garden. The cold weather is done, the frost is done.

Wow!

Oh my word, mega, mega impressed! We just planted— this is the instant chicken garden miracle right here, guys. Chickens help with this. Oh my word, had chickens here, moved them out, built the garden, transplanted We're going to be harvesting this today, and look how much is ready. We're going to be weeding a little bit today, but look at all the spinach. That's breakfast, guys. There's a little bit of lunch with this lettuce. There's a little bit of supper with the kale. Oh my word. Right next door, instant chicken garden miracle number 2. Gonna be planting some melons in there, trying out the, the wood chip concept versus the grass clipping concept. Just a few weeds coming up, nothing major. We haven't weeded since we planted. This is just crazy. That's an instant garden. Ridiculous. Yet one more big thing happening today. Oh, you guys ready to graduate? When they start jumping up on the ledge, they're ready to graduate. Huh, are you guys ready? Look, look how big they are! They've got their feathers. Look at that, they're only 3 weeks old, ready to go out to pasture. Oh, you need that out? Oh, thank you for doing this, Jonah. How's it been so far in the birdie overall? It's been good. All right, anybody died?

Nope.

Okay, it's a little tough to maintain it at the end because you gotta put bedding down every single day, but yeah, but you have to do that. You did a good job.

2 weeks before they do that.

Okay, like before 2 weeks before they graduate.

All right. And then how are your pulps doing? The little turkeys, active little guys. All these plants in the greenhouse have been in here a week too long because of the frost. I mean, it's not too long, it's like not damaging, but a week longer than we had hoped. Are hopefully gonna start being put out today. Well, that's one way to get the dew off. I think I stole Mama's water. Did that, did that mess you up? Knee running in the water?

It's a little low.

Um, crazy idea, do you want to plant the one big pumpkin? Yeah, in the middle of your—

in the Instant Garden. Yeah, that'd be fun. And you know, Gideon kind of feels like it's his, so he can maybe show it some love.

Yeah, he could feed it with milk.

Feed it milk.

Well, I don't know about every day.

I'd say that's good.

Go ahead.

Good job. Put it back where it is stored. That's right, that's right. You don't have to do it crazy tight. Good job. Oh, do you need help? Here, let me help you. That's a huge bag.

I kind of wish the man would have just let me buy what I wanted to.

Oh, he told you to get— what? All right, well, let's just, uh, the pushy salesman, huh, Beck?

Yes.

Okay, tell me when. And I'll just fill these all up. It won't take long. All right, you sure?

Yeah, because then I'm gonna— I'm gonna—

I'll—

I want to put the plant in there, and then, okay, we'll fill around the edges.

Oh, okay. All right, well, you're definitely gonna have enough. That's all you're filling it up with. I'll do it. You only have however many.

The ones that we're going to grow food in, I'm growing it in that.

I'm not growing it in this.

Okay, this is just because it's flowers, it doesn't matter.

Well then, yes, you could use that bucket. Okay, so what is your plan here, Beck? These pots are going in front of the each post. Nice.

Each post will have a plant planter in it, and 4 of them are vines, and then 4 of them are going to be low-growing stuff, and Flowers, food, flowers, and food.

Okay, you might have to plant this one a little farther away.

I'm not gonna plant that one. That one's not—

does that one go straight in the ground? This is gonna be an amazing vision, I'm sure. Do you guys got this?

Um, could you just fill each of those 4 pots right here?

These 4?

Okay, with like this?

Yeah, I'll do it.

All right, Mom, I got your pots. I think you're in good hands here with Josiah. Yeah, Gideon and I are gonna go harvest this instant chicken garden. Okay, I can't wait till you see it. It's actually incredible. Gideon went and got the—

I don't know where it is.

Gideon went and got the strainer, but where's the knife for— or the scissors?

Gideon, wait, are you looking for this?

No, but yes. Thank you. No, we're looking for the little, uh, snips. Let's walk the path you came out with that. Okay, this is the way you came.

Yeah.

Okay, it's probably falling out somewhere along the way. Hey Jonah, did you do something with those little scissors? Those little harvesting scissors? Snips? Yeah, I know, that's the problem. He said you had them. Are they in your pockets?

Nope.

Here they are. Now where we put the strainer? Okay, thank you. Hey, that looks very nice. There you go, you can carry the strainer. Hey, get in, I hear big trucks. Oh, the graders are back! It's an exciting day. This is our time, Gideon. Can you believe the produce? Guys, this was planted just 7 weeks ago. Just started 7 weeks ago.

And a dam.

Yeah. All right, a little bit of grass coming through right there, but no big deal. It's easy to weed in the mulch garden. Oh, it must have come through in between where the cracks are in the, the, um, weed paper. Okay, all right, let's get the spinach, my man, first. Here are the snippers. Get them, get the outer leaves, okay? Because more will come in the middle.

All right, like this one.

Yep. All right, there's breakfast, Gideon. And then let's get us some container for the lettuce. And the kale.

You would have one of these sweet as food, and I would have the other one for flowers.

Yeah.

And then I would give you one.

That's cool.

I like these pots for food.

Do you realize how much could be growing? Like, these could be mounted on your raised beds, for one. Oh yeah, on the edge. They could be all along this.

Oh, I know. If that's all you had, like, if you didn't have much, you could really grow up. We could have food growing all along.

Yes. Containers along here or in a bed.

Yeah, the reason we chose pots is so that we could move them if we need to get a wheelbarrow in here and stuff like that. So that's why we did that. Yeah, so you do what works best for your situation. I just want to make that clear that this is— it's all just individual. Like, I'm thinking about hanging stuff on that too.

One year we grew a pallet demo garden there, a vertical garden.

Yeah, I mean, we could grow pallets all along here.

You could have hanging, hanging plants. I know. Stuff in. There's just like, you could grow 50% more of your food in containers.

You don't have to have in-ground.

What's going on? Oh, Jonah doing a little bit of editing for us today. Are you coming back out? What are you doing?

Washing.

Oh, all right. You sure?

Yeah.

Come on, maybe we could wash. Maybe you could wash while I milk. No, no. All right. Grab your stool then. I hope this is not a hurricane mess when I get back. Okay, but thank you, thank you dearly. Thank you, buddy, for your zeal.

We'll have to go over it, of course, but it's good that he wants to do something.

This is looking so good, by the way.

Thanks.

Good job. The beautiful thing about greens like this is, sure, they're small right now, but you harvest from the outside, more will come. You can harvest for even a month or two from some of this stuff. That's a bowl of goodness right there. Hey, you're back! Just in time. Let's get the kale together. You want to? How'd the washing go?

Good.

Okay, good. Let's do the kale. Oh my word, guys, take my word for it, this is so supple and tender and perfect. Like, you can't even find that at the grocery store. It's gonna be absolutely delicious. Now the true test this. I'm excited. Can we get the beautiful one excited? Hey, reaction time.

Wow, this is so pretty.

That's just the hair of it. Feel how tender it is.

It's beautiful.

Doesn't it make you just want to bite it raw?

Well, I don't really like kale raw, but yes, if I did, I would want to bite it.

Lift it up and look at the lettuce.

Wow, this is amazing.

I don't really like raw kale either, but This is just looking so good. You like it? Here you go, morning snack, bro. Super flavorful. I don't know if it's my flavor raw, but we'll cook that and have it for, uh, supper. Oh look, she got her flowers up. That's nice. Yeah. Gma's cooking us supper tonight, so let's take it up to her. Keep going.

Grandma might find that and feed it to us.

Who is it? Grandpa says the boogeyman. Who is here? The boogeyman. Hey, we got you supper. Okay, kale. All right. Hey, that's looking really good, Grandma, your raised bed and your chickens.

Yeah, we're gonna have the English peas, and, and I've been, uh, we've been eating the lettuce for about a week. It's great. And even the, even the Swiss chard is really looking good.

It looks good. Oh boy, looks like they're working on the swale next. Well, I don't guess— I guess it's a swale, but it's not on contour. It's actually to move water away, not capture it. So this will be nice. So water will come in here now and go through here. They're going to dig a culvert underneath our road there to get it out of here, the water. Oh my. They're tearing up our front yard right where he is. It's a terrible wet spot. There's really no way to drain it because of our garden over there and everything. So just getting off the sod and we're putting in gravel because we like to back up and unload things right there on our dock. It's really handy and makes things more convenient sometimes. How's it going out here, Rebecca?

Good, it's going good.

You got a little helper, I see.

I do.

Is everything all right, boys?

Yeah.

Okay, you got the line, the pipe in. And it's going to drain down into our little creek. That's what it looks like up here. Yeah, that'll do it, Rebecca. This is coming along very nice. Her cucumber trellis, brilliant. She's gonna drive cucumbers up the stake. They like to climb. And lettuce down in between. So when it gets hot— it's not hot yet. But that's— by the time the cucumbers get taller and it's hot, that's shading out that lettuce. Shade doesn't like really hot weather, so that's good. Oh, he's putting it back. That's good because we got to get our cows back out. And just like that, we've got to go over through the road. It's crazy. These things are so fast. Rebecca, this looks so good down here. There's so much water on the road. Look how it dug out. We're gonna get water off the road. A lot of water coming down through here, so we're gonna get it back over again into our ditch, the culvert. I put the cows in, uh, the Luchador pasture just temporarily. We can't get through. Do you see who's operating that? Did you see who's running it? Jonah's in there. That's looking good. The culvert under there is gonna help a lot. The gravel's here and he's putting it down on our— I guess, is it a driveway? Park? Parking? Dock access?

Side.

There it is, it's done. Boy, it's starting to look really good out here. Wow, Rebecca, it's looking so good out there. So much better getting the tarps off, getting some plants. And you going to finish planting today?

I think so.

In your raised beds anyway.

Yeah, I'm gonna direct seed some stuff.

Look here. Hey, that's from the instant chicken garden miracle right there. The, uh, the, the spinach. Well, the eggs are too, really. Hey, look what you're eating there.

What?

It's spinach right here. You know where that's from?

Where?

You remember? Eat, eat some. Show us.

It's from this morning.

You are— your garden. We harvested it this morning. Show the folks how you eat it. Now, it's not your favorite, is it? But you'll do it. This early afternoon, I'm inside editing. Now we're running our gutter line instead of on our driveway, underneath to the creek. And Rebecca's gonna be continuing to plant the raised beds. I guess— I bet she'll get done today. How's it going out there, Beck?

Good.

It's going good in here. How's that salad? You know where it's from? Here, the Instant Chicken Garden. Yep, just like 6, 7 weeks ago. Yeah, you started that seed and little bits of bacon bits, a surprise.

Yes, delicious.

That's crazy, this is fresh food. I picked this this morning with Gideon. That's crazy.

He probably liked that, didn't he?

After noon shore time, we want to move our sheep, and then— you guys ready for this? And then put 100, 100 Cornish Cross meat chickens out to pasture. We've got this lined up, huge paddock. But we have slowed them down because it's not— it's not growing fast enough with the cold weather we've had. It's a little shorter than I would like it to be, to be honest with you. We're overgrazing this, but I am happy with how it's recovering and the pastures coming. So it's working, it's working. We're slowing down, pastures are recovering. I'm happy we had the warm weather. Now all we need is some rain. There you go. Being grazed so short, it's gonna have a little harder time recovering. We'll just keep moving them slow and eventually we're gonna get caught up and hit it just right. Cows are happy, the sheep are happy, the sea monsters, which I like to call the Cornish Cross, are about to be happy. Yeah, the tractor— do you think we need to move the tractor?

No, no.

Do you think we can walk it? You and Josiah on one end, me on the other?

Yeah.

Okay, it's hitting something. It's gonna be hard to balance.

I could be in charge of that right here.

Okay, come on, help Jonah carry. Oh snap!

Oh snap!

Hang on. All right, we can raise it down now.

All right, ready? Yay! There we go.

I just moved the lambs. Look, the luchadors! Look! They're going to town on that yellow dock. Cows would never touch that.

Yay!

All right, you guys ready to move these chicks? What's going on?

Look, chicks are hanging out in the king feeder. Oh my gosh, relaxing in their feed while eating it. That's not the king feeder, I forget the name of it, but, um, tray feeder, whatever.

Yeah, tray feeder. Okay, you guys load them up. Okay, good deal. All right guys, we got them out in the field. You're about to be some happy birds. Okay, let's get them out.

You guys want to spot me? Wow, here you guys can start getting them out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Free!

Come up towards the water, guys.

Get free!

Say free the birds!

Free the birds!

Why did I have to say it?

First time, and for the rest of your life. Yay! Hey, you know what we're missing? A guard goose.

Yeah, and I know where that exactly is.

Where?

Up there.

Yep, Grandma's going to let us borrow her guard goose.

Oh, look at that turd! So excited they're pooping!

Well, that's good because you know why? Because we put them on one of the worst parts of our pastures. These chickens will not only put meat in our freezer, but they're gonna make our pasture better for our cows, which means happy cows and more milk for Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes and all their chidlers. Happy chickens! Rosie, we appreciate your services, honey. Low predator pressure up here right next to Grandma's house, so she's letting us borrow Rosie during this time. How you gonna catch her, Grandma?

Oh, I'm gonna—

you got the food, she's running.

Come on, go chicken!

Go chicken!

Here, let's come over here. Let's see what we got here.

There we go.

That might do good.

Here we go.

That could work with it.

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Oh, she knows now.

Come here, come here.

There you go.

Oh, sweet thing.

She says, oh no, where are you going?

You want to come with us or you want to So just take her?

Oh, you can just take her. Okay, there we go. Yeah, she won't hurt you.

There we go. All right. Oh, here's your new home, Rosie. For a little bit anyway. Meet your new buddies. We just want to make sure she doesn't attack them. I don't think she will. She's going into their territory, not the other way around.

Look, she is very interested.

She's happy. Grandma told us, oh look, she would— she's a good egg layer. She's a good egg layer. We'll see if she's a good guard. So far she's being very not kind to them. Especially at this age. They're going to be subject to hawk, crow attack, and Rosie will definitely help with that. Now you've just adopted 100 chicks, Rosie. Where are you going? Got all the grass you could ever dream of eating. Get in. Last meal of the day. You know what that is?

What?

It's the kale.

Ow!

It's the kale from this morning. Mmm, that's good.