How I Got The Milk Sled Off of a Tree!

Happy day everyone! Rush day!

But when?

I mean, when is it? Looky here, boom! Haha, outsmarted Winnie! Took it yesterday afternoon before she could run off with it. One less thing to find. Speaking of find, Mr. Brown, where are your shoes? Uh, they're outside. Okay, let's go, go get them on. We're rushing because there's a lot to do. Uh, we are getting ready for Homesteaders of America. We leave tomorrow. And we've got a very exciting guest for the podcast today. We just threw it all in there together, didn't we? This is exciting because it's different. This is going to be a business-oriented podcast. Well, you met the guy yesterday, so— or not yesterday, day before, so 2 videos ago. He and his lovely wife homesteading in Idaho but running a big business. CEO and founder ConvertKit helps people like me, uh, collect email addresses, organize them, have them in database, message them, all that good stuff. Some leftover beef from the beef broth craving. Given our hectic, crazy morning, how about this? Let's try something. I won't— I'll resist putting you guys on these legs. Unless I'm doing an action that I think is really going to be— has potential for excitement. Does slow us down a little bit, but it's important to bring you guys along in a dynamic and interesting way. So what I think I'll do— hey, how about this? How about the GoPro? We'll get more POV shots and handheld shots. Can you guys let me know, did it work? Was it entertaining? Did you still learn something? That's the goal of the show.

How so?

I was mowing and then the blades just like—

they don't—

you were mowing this morning?

Sure.

Let's check this mower. Sit in the cold seat.

Okay, it doesn't—

it's not revving high enough. What does that mean? I don't feel like it's revving as high as it should be. You see anything blocking the blades?

Blades are clear.

I'm having to carry water through the barn all the way across because we're digging out our root cellar and the hydrant is not working right now on this side. That's cool. Look at the fog and the light coming in. Let's go see what's wrong with this mower. I'm gonna turn on the blades and see what happens. Hopefully it just needed a good warm-up. Yeah, nothing's happening.

Oh, that's what's happening. The belts are off.

Okay, we got a belt off. Yep, look at that. Okay, is it broke? We could put it around that one. This one probably goes on top. Okay, this belt's off. I don't know, it's beyond me, I think. And I gotta get going.

You ready?

Yeah, let me get the other ones. Okay, thank you. Thanks, appreciate it.

Thank you.

Mark just texted me back. He's the greatest mechanic ever. He can come do it probably today, knowing him, probably within an hour or two, knowing him. We need it because we got to set up nets for our farm sitter. We could do a string trimmer, but it'd be a lot easier with the mower. Hey, how'd you guys fare in your new paddock? Of course you did well. Little babies back there doing great. Paddock was probably a hair big. I have a lot left over here, guys. Looks like you made the next one even bigger. Honey, you go that way. Stud, you go that way. You guys know the drill. Joey, Follow Stud. Oh, Stud's gonna—

I guarantee he's gonna go out the ash.

There was a gap here. Really, really, really? There's nothing over here. You had two choices. Hey, let's go. You had lush grass or pigtailed woods. There you go. Come on, come on. Look at that, from honey. Come on. Drive it through here. Let's get it way up on top of this mountain, and then Luke won't have a hard time at all while we're gone because he'll actually be pulling the mineral shed downhill. We are going uphill, so we're going to be on time if this goes smooth.

It's going smooth. We're sliding a little bit.

Whoa! I hit the tree big time. Shoot, I hit the tree. Oh, it got off the skid. Wow, the chain pulled that and the bolt— the— I'm sure that broke. That's what gave. What broke over here? Oh yeah, the, uh, carabiner. Well, I just complicated it myself today. New carabiners. We gotta pull that back. Uh, ah, did I spill the milk? No, I just bumped it. Okay, and now the sheep are over here.

Don't worry, I'll get them over.

This was bolted on there. Every bolt got ripped off. Wow, we don't have to get them over. We do before the evening so we can separate the calves. It's just best though because you guys don't need to eat just this choice grass. This is for the cows. See, they're eating the weeds. Go eat the weeds in the old paddock. Come on. Because they do get some of this choice stuff, this ice cream grass. We're on track. Let's get on track with these guys and we're good. There we go. It was going so smooth this morning.

We're back.

What you been up to?

Packing and finding socks, which I found some.

Let's do this podcast. Good morning, Matt.

How you feeling?

Good. That's good to hear. Early this time, how about that? Yeah, Lombardi time. I usually like being over here. Am I right here then? I can put you there and then he's there. Yeah, and that worked good.

Yeah, totally. I think it was just the right closeness on the wide shot. Okay, it doesn't matter as much when you're in Okay, straight shot.

Yes.

All right, the wide, it looks pretty good.

And it wasn't weird that he's on one side of the couch and I'm on the other side of the other couch?

Okay, one thing I did do or noticed is, A, we're on a little bit of a tilt, so it keeps making me think that this is— the camera's tilted, but you're level.

Oh wow, everywhere. Okay, so yeah, this floor is no level anywhere.

Yeah, I totally get that. I think it's actually You know, something like that.

Yeah, what happens with a 100-year-old house, right? Look who's here, my man! How you doing?

Good, how are you?

Did you bring the kids?

Yes.

Oh sweet, they are. Okay, some of them are very excited. Okay, good. And Josiah did not want to get out of the car, so— Oh really? Okay, Hillary here too? Yeah. Okay, she can come in, go in. You want me to tell her? Yeah, yeah, they're— Oh, they, yeah, they came out. Okay, good. Yeah. Nathan, we had a good talk. I didn't want to stop. Yeah, we went for— we got to get— I know you got to get on with your vacation, and, uh, I got to get on with packing. Um, takeaway: give them that question that you posed in there. Uh, what would it look—

yeah, so the question I like to ask, especially when coming up against something hard, is just what would have to be true to make this happen? What would have to be true to be a full-time content creator? Would have to be true to have a business so I can afford my homestead and be with my family? You know, just sit with that question and come up with like 4, 5, 6 reasons, and some will be terrible. You know, you threw out like rob a bank.

Yeah, you could rob a bank and have this.

But yeah, like that will get you out of the thinking of like being stuck in a rut.

I like it. I like it. I think if they get one thing out of it, there you go. There's the money ticket. If you want to see the whole podcast, that will be up. On Abundance Plus, and we got a whole series of podcasts with all kinds of cool folks, so do check it out. Uh-oh, look at this. It's the only way to get him down, huh? Hello, how's everybody? We're good. Just did a quick training, weight training. Thanks, Jacob, for the training. If it weren't for you, we wouldn't do it. Yep, that's what you get paid to do— accountability and counting. When I heard that one of Nathan's other hobbies was soccer, I was like, hmm, we should play. It turns out he's playing with the kids, so I can't resist. Y'all ready for this? I'm undefeated on this farm. Okay, so it's us 3 versus you 3. That sounds good.

Okay.

Hey, if you're gonna play soccer with a baby in your hand, you should have a camera. It works better with a camera.

It does.

No, no, no, no. Uh-oh. Lunch.

We're gonna go make some salsa.

Nice, I like it. Oh, good block. We're in trouble. Not good game, everyone. We got up 2 points, you caught us. Yeah, and then beat us by 2 points. Good game. I've lost my winning streak. The winning streak— you held out to the end. He was taking it easy on us to the end.

Oh, so he's good.

I know. Yeah. How's the build, my man? Good.

Just a little too fast.

You've done that in a day? Less than a day? Less than 24 hours? Yeah, what are you gonna do after that's done?

Just this top part took me like 2 hours.

Yeah, it did. Look at that, look at that detail.

Uh-huh.

I know, it's like a book.

Serious.

Grandma got us some links to fix our problem, but looks like I might have ordered too big. 3/8, I don't know if that'll go through the chain like we were doing, but the chain might go through it. It's a family affair. Even Jonah's going with us. Yes, that's what we're living for. The mechanic came by this morning. I wasn't down here, Rebecca was. Sounds something like they have to go for a part. Yeah, that's not working. Wait, let's get the string trimmer. It's gonna be a lot, but what are you gonna do?

How do we get here?

Caught up the tree just fine. Good to know that that thing is pretty much— well, I was going to say indestructible, except it pulled this entire plate off. I don't see any remnants of bolts. Problem's going to be we pulled this plate off on this end. That end's fine. We pulled the plate up. We hit that tree. The structure held up well. The plate just totally ripped out. There were no bolts over there or anything. Uh, I guess we'd probably use carriage bolts, maybe just screws, and maybe that's why it broke. Probably needs to be heavier duty than screws. How can we lift it up to see what's under there, to see how he attached that?

I don't know.

This may be why I want to build our own house. Help the contractor because they don't know how to fix it.

Here's an idea.

Yeah, you hope I don't like it. Why is it in town?

Like to screw into here, right here, and then we could jack it up and then we could get under. Yeah, and then we could jack the whole thing up.

We could. I would be game for jacking it up. I feel like I could have a way to screw that plate in.

Oh, you don't— you don't have a way? Okay, how did Grandpa do it?

Well, if we could lift it up, we could see how he did it, but I don't know if I would have those kinds of bolts. We need to pull by this bar. This bar keeps it from squeezing in, so it's not like we can wrap a chain around each end and then pull without this bar. Now, we could hook a chain to this.

We could—

we could wrap a chain around this and then hook it here. That's probably our best bet. Then we'll be pulling on that bottom leg. That's gonna be the best, Josiah. We're gonna bypass the plate right here, wrap this chain around the leg. Really, that's all we need to do right there. Okay, now can this hook in.

Now what are we gonna do?

It's not gonna— it's not gonna go through, but we can loop it around.

Okay, it's gonna be tricky.

It's why I hit that tree. I didn't want to climb this hill. I didn't think Sally would do it. Ah, let's try it though. We're gonna have to hug this hill. I got pulling on something and I thought I was rubbing this tree. We came awful close. We need to get rid of one of these trees. This happens every time. It happens every time. I don't want to though. One of them's a walnut. Well, they're both walnuts. Look at this, bad to worse. A little tiny stump. Boy, that's strong. That shows you the strength. Can you lift up on that? All right, try it. Pull it.

Yeah, it's broken.

We did it. It's all literally downhill from here for our farm sitter, I think, until we get back. That's the way I like it. There they go. All right, look who's back, and with a bunch of feed. I don't think our feed's gonna arrive in time. It's not because we're leaving tomorrow. It's not coming today. Nope, I guess it's not. Uh, so I got enough to get the farm sitter through even if it doesn't arrive while we're gone.

Well, how would the farm sitter know it's here? I guess they unload it.

What? Oh yeah, they'll unload it. Okay, the driver would love to unload it. He's done it once. He offered. He's a cool driver. Thank you guys for joining us today. I don't think you want to miss it. Next video, next show, Homesteaders of America. 5,000 homesteaders getting together, having a good time.

Yeah, it's gonna be fun though.

Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Hey, can you say brother? Can you say bye-bye?

Say bye-bye.

Say bye-bye to the vloggers. Bye-bye, camera. Bye-bye.

You want to give him kisses? You want to go— you want to blow him kisses? You blow kisses sometimes. You want to blow kisses?

Oh, halfway there, halfway there.

Do it!

Come on, you're so cute when you do it. Blow them to Papa. Blow kisses to Papa. Or do you just want to give him a kiss?

There it is.

There we go. He does it! But not right now.

Oh well. All right, maybe tomorrow. See you guys then.

Bye-bye!