How My Children Deal with My Chronic Illness

What are you saying?

Oh yeah?

Are you telling us about it?

Lily's calling me. She wants me to see something. Oh my word.

Look, these are weird bugs. Look, you poke them like this.

It's a slug.

They're really weird.

Look, look, like this.

Look at that slug on the roof. Plus mom's spoons.

And my bib.

One. 2, plus a bin. Another day of filming for Rooted, our TV show, episode 9. This one's about when one main person goes down and the family steps up. What do you need to do, Benjamin?

We're getting out of the leaf stores right now.

Okay, you want us to wait on Lily's chores, or should she start?

Let's wait on— I'll get one more shot of that, and then I want to get Lily's chores.

Okay.

I'm a month ago, I got my radex.

Is that right? If yesterday's vlog was about Rebecca, the heroist that she is with this illness, which by the way, I'm having a good day today. I can judge it by my mood in the morning going to bath. Do I want to turn on the heat? Like the air heat? Or not? Or do I want to turn on two heats? Like it's a bad day if I want to turn on two heats. I didn't want to turn on no heats. I've always wanted to drink my tea while driving my kids to school. There you go. This is it.

When I was— when I could—

It's a dream come true.

So we used to carpool and my friend's mom used to drink coffee while she drove us to school.

Yeah.

All right, well, here we go.

This is the closest thing I'll ever get.

Sally rides.

Picking you up.

Sally has a bit more room for everybody. We're gonna need to haul everybody around today. We're about to showcase Lily doing her chores. What are your chores every day, Lily?

Lucha doors, chickens and rabbits, and milking.

Look at her nest right there, Becky. Yeah, that's new. We thought she was in labor last night because she was breathing, she was breathing real hard. We put the cattle panel down so they can't get out. She was laying against this and Rebecca was thinking she's gonna have her baby. By the way, it wasn't aimed over that, it was aimed underneath it.

My fear was that I looked out the window and she's laying like right here with her butt like right there, and I'm like, she's gonna give birth and it's just gonna roll down and we're not gonna know.

There's a little bit of a gap right there, so Jonah's gonna take today a shovel and lower that down. Right here too. Lily's taking time to pet everybody. We got her breeders just so she could kind of have a pet rabbit because we would definitely harvest the babies.

Harvest some of the babies.

Yeah, are you okay with that?

Yeah.

Now she's gonna get them some grass. Grandma's back. Hey, what you got for us? I got a box full, but they're down there. Oh, okay. Are they ducks? They're ducklings. Yeah, they're not as chirpy, but they're still very active. Yeah. Are you going with Ducks. Yeah, okay, make sure Jonah put the heat on. Jonah, did you set up the brooder?

Set the heat up?

What about water and feed?

No, but I didn't know what you wanted me to do there.

Okay, I turned on the heater in the car so they'd be warm. So feel the box. Yeah, that's what they like. That's their number one concern. There we go. We're gonna try out this— let's make sure when we put that bedding back, we put it back A little wet, so we might put new shavings down. Yeah, let's bury that upside down as a water plate. Billy, will you go get the feed tray, one of the little feed trays, and start washing it out?

Sticks.

Oh, in the cup. Oh wow, has that been like that this whole time?

Probably.

There's a duckling stuck in the cup. Is it dead?

Yeah.

Okay, just bury that a little bit better. A little bit deeper, and then don't put any shavings on it. We're trying to keep it clean. He's putting it around the edge just so they can easily get on it. Move the heat over where Gideon's sitting, and then let's let it warm up a little bit before we bring them in. We got the water in. We open up the— there's a duck in a cup, Rebecca. Oh, don't be alarmed if it's dead. Oh, it's alive!

Here, dip it.

Good, made it. Dip their beak. Hold on, Gideon. Dip their beak and put it underneath the heat.

That one that was in the cup is— its legs a little bit wonky.

This is the test. This is gonna be our test of our bulletproof brooder.

I really hope it works.

I dare the rat to even try. These guys seem very vibrant and active.

I think they're eating it.

We got them some grit, hoverer, feeder, water. Happy birds. It's lighter in here too. I don't even think we have the light on in here, do we? So much from the sunroof. We installed a sunroof. Did I tell you guys that? So much better in here. Get in, go turn on the light. We'll see if it makes a difference. And then there was light. Yeah, it made no difference, I don't think.

So sad looking.

Is that the one that was in the cup?

That was the one that was in the cup.

He might make it. Maybe his foot's asleep. His name's Cuppy.

Puppy, he keeps getting flipped on his back.

Yeah, poor thing.

Oh my goodness, he's ducky. He would, he would get that thing and put it in his mouth.

That would be an amazing toy.

All right, rats, a daria, triple dog daria. That's what Rhett did. We figured out who wrote this past the inspection. I'm pretty sure it's Randall.

Chickens, yeah, you want to get this one shot of y'all driving this thing?

Okay.

Down to the chickens, we're gonna get it with a Mobi from up here.

All right, good.

But you kind of have to drive a little bit slower than you would.

That'd be cool. They've got shots of Lily, they got shots of Jonah. I want to make sure they get shots of the third hero here, Hosea. What are your jobs in the morning?

Pigs.

That's it? Yeah. All right.

Well, I used to do the brooder.

Well, you can do the brooder again now that we have ducklings. I'm staying out of frame because these are chores they're doing without me, really. Our, our new roles are they kind of come out and do small animal chores. I get a bath so I can function. Epsom salt bath, uh, loosens up my joints, gets me moving. And then I come out and go over it with them. Ben's starting to know exactly what they're going to do now. He knew he was about to move this. I didn't know that kind of stuff at first, but after 9 months of working together, he's got it down. Good job. Look how they just follow. You got them trained so nice, Jonah.

I know, I trained the animals for the movies. I'm the animal trainer.

Hey, what are, uh, what are, what, what's your job on the farm now that I'm injured.

A little bit of quality control and training the animals.

What's your list? Like, what's the list that you go through every morning?

I get up, I make sure Josiah gets up, eats a snack, gets some water. I make sure I do that too. And then he gets the pig bucket, and then I do the turkeys and the fat hens, and he does the big pigs and little pigs.

What happens if you guys don't get your snack in the morning? What if you forgot?

Angry.

Angry. He got angry pretty quick.

Grouchy. Joey's almost trained to going into the fence.

Okay, you mean in the afternoon, just go open it up and he comes?

That's what I did.

Or you got— he goes into the sheep?

Not yet.

That'll be super smooth.

It gets pretty—

I've seen you train them before and, uh, you'll get them. We got Josiah lugging the water, Jake chasing the chickens, and ending on Josiah. Nice. We got a rogue one. Oh, good job. Good catch, Josiah. He is still into it even though you're probably gonna just pass out.

Oh no, I'm gonna go into the house while you guys milk because he's, he's tired. He needs to go to sleep.

We're getting Cubby out. Cubby will be for the crew. Hey, before we go milking, you two, what What has changed now that I'm kind of limping around? How's life changed for you guys?

Everything!

Everything has changed. What?

Chores. Daytimes.

Tell us how chores have changed.

Well, they go a lot quicker.

They go a lot quicker that way?

Well, if you're not there it goes quicker, but if you're there when you're sick it goes really slow.

Yeah, I should make sure everybody knows It goes smoother because I come, because we do it right. We go over everything, not because I'm not helpful. How has things changed for you?

Nothing really.

Yeah. How have things changed for you, Arun, after that, without me? It goes so much smoother now, right? Yes, faster. I'm joking. We have to milk more. Yeah, because— oh yeah, it used to be that I would kind of help a kid with one cow and you would kind of help a kid with another cow. Yeah, and we used to milk at the same time, same time, faster. Now we're having to do one milk at one cow at a time. We are gonna walk to the shed right there. I've come up to extras. Joel Salatin taught us we want to treat our pastures like cornfields. This is our crop, grass. So we're not going to drive through it. We would have to drive through it if we were moving the shed, but this is actually a 2-day paddock because this is so steep and gnarly and so long this way. We have been doing 2-day paddocks. How much milk she got, guys? So far, I think mucho. It's already pretty good. We didn't milk her for 2 days because we're drying her off. It's the last day we're gonna milk her. Let's milk them all. And, uh, so she'll probably have quite a bit, but that'll give you some relief. What is this?

Look, Jonas. Onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and the dill that you dried.

Pretty much everything in that salad is from the farm. The ice is even from the farm. That's our well water ice for my ice maker. Hibiscus tea. We grew once. We did it 4 years ago.

I do want to grow it again.

It is on my to-do list.

Not this time. I am going to take my lunch supplements. I'm not going to take my pain medicine. I'm feeling some pain in my ankles, kind of like dull. Tops of my feet are a little bit better, uh, but let's see what it's really like. So Here's to hoping I'm really starting to feel better and it's not just pain medicine. We're in the afternoon checking on, uh, Cheesecake. She's, she's acting funny. She's due yesterday, could happen today. You know, she's walking around panting, grunting. Jonah has dug out her— wow, that's next level, bro. You did such a good job. It's too low. It won't be hard to lift it back up though. We just got some shots out in the field, kind of a reflection on episode 1 as we begin to wrap up this season. In 1 minute, we're gonna end this with a— we're gonna have a very happy ending. The kids doing very interesting exercises. Jacob, you're gonna mix it up today. No kettlebell training today.

No kettlebell training, kid training.

Rebecca and I cannot kettlebell train today given the show.

Yeah, backwards leopard crawling.

We're going to train kids. Yeah. What are they learning right now?

So this is a backwards leopard crawl, kind of.

Nice. Yeah.

So the ideal situation is you keep looking straight ahead the whole time. But I told them it's fine if their, their butt goes up in the air and all that.

It's all good. He's our simple and sinister kettlebell guy. But you're also a physical educator. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got my degree.

That's your degree. Okay.

This is, this is what I'm quote unquote trained to do.

Yep.

You can put your feet outside of the mat if you want. Keep your hands on the mat the whole time, okay? So for the rabbit crawl, I'm going to reach forward with my hands and then I'm going to jump my feet up.

Good job, everyone. I'm gonna go see if I can't steal the baby away from Mama, give her a break, give me some baby time. It's been 3 hours since I should have took my pain medicine. I feel like I'm doing good. I feel like I'm doing good. It's bearable. I can feel it, which is a good thing. I come to steal this baby from you. Okay, or at least sit right there and take your spot.

I'll let you.

You'll let me?

To get to sit with you?

You and me, buddy. Did you lose your bow? Hey, you want to get— you want to say goodbye to the vloggers? You talked to Gigi the other day. She loved it. Thankfully Gigi saw it. Little kiss from Mr. Henry. Hey, you want to give him a kiss? Sorry, he is really excited about the, uh, his book there. I think he missed the time of day. All right, maybe tomorrow.