How Gardening Pays me $100 for 10 Minutes of Work

All day Ryder Ryder, all day long.

Hey, you guys gonna go do chores? Uh-huh. Or play Legos?

I'd like to play Legos. Me too.

What would you guys do if you didn't have to go do chores right now?

Huh, that's a good question.

Every day it's a lot of the same. Where's the knife? I'm always slamming something. I just had it. I was just cutting. Just grab this one. Crazy how I'll lose something so quick. Come on, boys, I got a question for you.

What?

Is it worth it to do what? To get out there and get the milk in and eggs in and vegetables in. You were starting to shake your head no.

Yeah, come on.

Yeah, is it worth it?

Yeah, go get my snack and bring it.

All right, well, tell me first, is it worth it? Look at me.

Yes.

Is it?

Yes.

Fresh apples and cheese in the morning. Come out at your leisure. Yeah, it's worth it. Mom's visiting Gideon a little bit. See if you can get him up and at 'em, Mom. Hey, Teddy. I will try.

He's like, just help him, just help him.

Are you sure you want him up there? He's gonna go crazy. I'm gonna try to prevent it.

Teddy, you got it. Come here.

Watch it. Come here.

I don't know, I think maybe so.

Look at those eggs.

Geese egg, chicken eggs. More eggs.

I got one of those geese.

Yeah, one of those is your lady. I give him an apple slice. That, that gets him excited. He has a thing for apple slices. Oh, you're actually eating it?

Yeah, he does.

He eats it? Yeah, I thought he just played with it.

You like apples?

Do dogs like apples?

I guess so. Is that your fun?

Look, he wants another one. Teddy! Hey, hey, hey! Doing a little video for you guys this weekend. I guess it kind of answers this question in a monetary way. Is it worth it? Like, how much eggs can you get if you spend $1,000 on getting chickens? I don't want to wear those shoes. I want to work in shoes. How much garden veggies could you spend if you got my raised beds? The short answer is mucho, mucho. Just from one raised bed, it's like $350 a year worth of produce. And that's if you just did one planting. You could do two. So lettuce, we bought a seed pack for $3, probably had 100 or more seeds in it. There's one, there's actually, there's more than one in each of these blocks. Say we get 1 per block. There's 4 blocks. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 9 times 4 is what? 18, 36. You buy a head of lettuce at Whole Foods for $3. So 36 times 3, is that over— that's over $100. There's $100 of lettuce there. That one tray took maybe Less than 5 minutes transplanting it, weeding it, watering it all together. By the end, per plant, I don't know, not many more minutes because you can, you can do, you can maintain it all at once. 10 minutes of effort into this, maybe. I'll get paid $100 for 10 minutes of work any day. Hey, do you remember to soak last night? Oh, okay, right after you feed, bring it back and we'll soak it. Oh, looky here, Jonah, you ready for this? We're gonna try this and see if it's easier.

Yeah, I want to move the cows. I want to move them today while you're milking.

Oh, you're gonna move the cows and the sheep? And the sheep? You're gonna set it?

I'm gonna use that on the sheep.

Yeah, you're gonna try that for one of the sides.

Guess what? For the sheep, I can do that thing, go for 2 nets.

Yeah, it should be 3. It's 300 feet, be 3 nets. How many walls are you going to build with that? Okay, that's fine. I was thinking maybe 1, but go ahead, do 2. See, you wouldn't even have to do that right there if you soaked your feet. You'd save time.

Yeah, I would. I think I'm just— I want to take this out over there and show you.

We've put a lot of work into this asparagus and strawberries bed. Uh, you know, had the chickens on here prepping the garden. We put down the— the— we planted, we put down— it took a half a day to plant. We put down the weed barrier, and now we're putting down the mulch. Every day I'm watering it from our wastewater. You king of the mountain?

Yeah. Uh, haha, what?

What's happening?

She busted the fence, so Stud roughened it through.

Hey, let's get Stud back in there.

Where are you going?

Hey, we gotta have to put this lane up. He's not going back. He's gonna go too far. I was thinking you would let him in all the way in down there. We got mulch for the cow bedding. Buenos días, luchador. Hey, Nacho, you're getting— you're losing your coat. You're looking nice. Look, a lot of it's right here. Okay, problem is we've got some divots and we got a completely fat flat tire, not pumpable. I have to get a new tube. But anyway, we haven't done that yet, so the middle I think is dragging. So guys, there are times, probably at least once a month, I'll say to Rebecca, is it worth it? Like, I'm getting up every day milking these cows, moving the animals. We're doing the same things every day, and it's hard work. It's really hard. And you gotta just wonder sometimes, is it worth it? Good morning, Lily. You need a little help with something? Our greens from our raspberry weeding. All right, Mom's got us on a job here. Look at the raspberries, how much we've cleared already. We're gonna clear raspberries, have mulch dropped right here, and then mulch them. We got greens for the chickens. It's all looking good. It's amazing what we can knock out together in 10 minutes. Wow, it's spring, things are happening fast. A lot is going on, trying to keep you guys updated. Okay, yeah, I put that water in there. I put that water in there because we harvested this compost yesterday. You got a piggy? There we go. Got that.

What about penguin?

Penguin will come out in a minute. That's our weeds from yesterday. Over time on this deep bedding chicken system, we got wood chips in there But over time, they scratch it so much it breaks down and you get compost. You move the top layer to the side and you harvest compost. Look at this. Look at these raspberries that were here, really. And our persimmon trees. Arun's garden jamming. How are these guys doing? One more day in here, fellas, ladies, and we'll move you out. Tomorrow. We got some compost here from the chicken garden. We'll move these guys out. You'll see, you'll see tomorrow. We're gonna prep that bed tomorrow.

In the corner right here, put some grain right there, and then penguin will crawl out.

Ah, you got penguin to come out. There he goes.

And then I covered back up.

Okay.

Ready to run for your life?

Yep.

Uh-oh, uh-oh, we didn't open that door all the way. Yeah, you got the pig board for me?

No.

Where is it?

I don't know. Jonah had it last.

Oh well, I think since I caught him, he's had more respect. There we go. Penguin don't care, she's already— so before now— oh yeah, right here, you can help me deal with that. So before now, we've been emphasizing growing food for health, doing something together as a family that's positive, getting outside, getting some exercise, saving some money. But there's this new— here, I think it's ready. It might be ready. There's this— yeah, it's warm. There's this new sense of urgency to get some stability. It's also this— people are being more careful with their money in the past. So is it worth it from a monetary perspective? Like If you spend $1,000 on it, do you get more than you would if you spent $1,000 at the grocery store?

Did you already unclean the Jeep?

I did not clean them. Remember, we had to go up for the thing. Josiah, will you grab that camera? You're gonna show them you clean it. All right, she's cleaned up and ready to go, Josiah. Thank you guys for milking her. I'll be right there in the greenhouse doing this bonus video for you guys. Is the actual effort of gardening worth it? And what if you had $1,000 to put into gardening? How much would you get back? Let's erase this. That's a lot of food right there. Whole Foods, that's like at $3 a $32. I should be writing this down. Lettuce. Tomatoes.

Woo!

Broccoli. Let's say $19. Cabbage. Dollars.

Woo!

How many cucumbers we plant? $390 worth of produce.

Ha!

$1.50 equals nearly $4. You think you're done?

Look in the bucket.

What?

What?

You two little milkers! I'm gonna call you Almanzo, I'm gonna call you Laura.

What if they get married?

Oh yeah, that's true.

They're not brothers.

That'd be weird. Okay, you'll have to be, uh, Royal.

Okay.

And you're Laura from the Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wow, you milked the Froschies worth! Good job, guys!

Me and Josiah are going to show you how this quick fence works. That's what it looks like. It runs off 4 strands. It's really neat. It's like, it's 300 feet long, which you have to space the poles like 20 feet apart. It's really neat. How's it going, sheep and cowsies? So here's this speed fence. It's got these things, so when you bump into a corner, all you do is take it off and pull it, and it'll tighten your corner for you. Pull it, stick it in the ground. It's really loose. Between the two corners. So the corners go like this, you want it going like this. If this is like a lot loose, you just— sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Looks like one of them's about to test it.

All right, Josiah, what do you think? We're coming out, check it out. Was it easier to put up?

Yeah.

Okay, so it's easier to put up. We'll see if it's easier to take down. We'll see if it keeps them in. Moose too.

Justin.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't do that too much.

Don't let them know.

Don't let them know we got a breach in the fence. The clearing crew's here. Deer. There's the pigs. Here's our shot. So I also got them kelp. Some folks in our member area have been getting, uh, lice— is it lice?— on their pigs. And we did some research and figured out— I don't have any lice on these guys yet, I don't think— kelp. Kelp is a preventative of that. We did that that last year with our pig pork pigs and didn't get any lice. Okay, no tango mites.

Yeah, that's skim milk.

So we have our source fence coming way down here. We needed to get it out of the way of the crew today, so we're gonna lap it up there. It's not— it's medicine. It's not— certainly not skimming grain, but if they're like our pigs last year, they're going to need that kelp for the minerals. One more set of animals, the little pigs. This is what, day 3? We want them to be trained to a bucket. Look, we want them to come to me when I come. We want to be busting this door down. They're getting closer every day, right guys? You look hungry. I want you to be hungry. Come on, skittish little guys. Come here, because We don't want to put them out in the field yet till they come to a bucket. Leave the bucket there associated with it. It looks like this big one isn't jittery at all. Look, they all seen green grass too. They eat every bit of that before this afternoon we try it again.

Paprika radiation treatment. Nope, another one tomorrow at 3:45.

Good.

Then I'll have another one Friday.

Rebecca was looking for some B-roll for the video we're coming up, just some shots of the raised bed, and it's nice we come across some video of my late dad.

I probably gave Justin an appropriate nickname, Talking Man.

Talking Man. Another Talking Man back.

He would say we'd be out somewhere and I'd say, where do you want to go?

He'd say, my house!

Bye-bye, Ginger. Take care. We appreciate you. That's nice to get to see him once in a while again, right? Yeah, it is. It's nice. We are in the minority, so maybe we are crazy. Just working on the edit a little bit. You got to see Mom's seed plant. So Rebecca, we're talking about the crazy chicken lady in yesterday's video. So does this make you the crazy seed lady?

No, I've seen much crazier seed ladies. This makes me the unorganized, not organized seed lady, but who had no idea how much she actually had when she repurchased more seeds.

And it's a 5-inch Binder. Yeah, you can't shut it. I know.

I think I'm gonna have to get another binder for the flowers or something.

And then are you gonna stick that in the freezer?

Yeah, that's my plan. But see, look, now it doesn't need it.

All right, come on guys, let's go check their, uh, job today. Where was I standing this morning? I can't even tell. It's so, it's so different right here, I think. Yeah. Look at this, look at that pasture. There's the pigs. Here's our shot. What do you think, guys? You got a view. Holy smokes, this is beautiful. Don't judge the stumps. These are poplar. These will coppice now. These have deep roots. They're going to bring up minerals, and the cows and the sheep will eat that, and it'll help mineralize them. So we have the poplars to graze. We're gonna have green grass now that the canopy's open.