In this informal vlog, Doug and his wife Elena walk viewers through their rented homestead where they raise chickens, grow vegetables, fruit trees, and a raspberry patch. They discuss the practical challenges of poultry rotation, irrigation, and limited space on a dry summer, and explain how they gradually secured their landlord’s permission to modify the property—limbing trees for light, adding perches, and installing garden structures. The video also showcases their 40‑foot school‑bus conversion, detailing the gutting process, insulation removal, roof sealing, rust repair, and the rebuilt International DT466 engine with Allison transmission. Doug frames the bus as a mobile “transition plan” to live cheaply while they save for land ownership. The segment ends with packing for a trip to Seattle, breakfast preparations, and a light‑hearted community interaction. Throughout, the tone is conversational and enthusiastic, highlighting a DIY, self‑sufficiency mindset.
Chapters
We got chickens up there, we got garden here. You're renting this too, aren't you?
Yeah.
Okay, there's no excuse. You just plant, right, Doug?
That's right.
We're gonna feed the chickens and give them some veggies.
I can? Yeah, there you go. I don't want. You want? Whoa, it's easiest if you grab the bottom right here and you just twist and turn like this and Pull?
Comes off really easy.
Yeah, all right, you got some?
My name is Doug, and my wife and I are trying to grow more of our own food. So even though we rent, we've decided that while we're here, we're gonna go ahead and put some work in and get some annual veggies going. We have also planted a couple of fruit trees and have a pretty good raspberry patch going. And even if we don't get a lot of the fruit from the trees, then somebody else will. All right, step through here, guys. Can you climb over that? Yeah. Okay. Or do you want some help?
Okay.
I chose chickens and vegetables because it's a good starting point. Wasn't a whole lot of money to get into them, uh, pretty easy to learn with. And if we make mistakes, you know, we can learn some. Good morning, girls. Sorry I slept in this morning.
Oh yeah. Whoa. Oh, didn't like that one.
Morning.
Oh yeah, you're molting, huh?
Put your leaves out wherever. Wow.
Some challenges here are the, the, especially this summer, it's been really dry, so So, you know, we've been trying to rotate them. We have our paddock set up with the stakes here, and so we try to move them. Probably too long— we wait about a week and a half, but they just destroy an area and they pick the things that they like. And so we probably need to irrigate to support this many birds without trashing everything, or we need a little more space or a little less birds.
Yeah, it's hard to always find that balance. You can be more closer to self-sufficiency from the land with less animals, but that's less food for you, so it kind of takes away that self-sufficiency point. So it's— I'm encouraged about how everybody tries to find their balance. More animals, but then importing more stuff. Less animals, less food grown from your own place. So it's hard.
Yeah, and we want to learn, we want to learn more so that we can get less off imported grain and— yeah, yeah, be a little more self-sufficient there.
Totally. You're transplanting? This is a rental. This is a rental. He's got his garden. He mentioned that his, uh, Eggmobile is mobile so that when he moves, he could take it with him. All mobile structures. The garden, the annual garden is just seasonal anyway. Okay, but look, what do we got going here, Doug? This, this is bringing— this is bringing back memories. Quick, give us a tour.
Yep, this is our 40-foot school bus. Um, actually, after we saw you guys get a bus—
do you see it? Y'all jump up and down! Y'all jump up and down and wave! How do you know? Oh, they honked!
Scary. You ready? I can't believe we bought a bus.
We thought, oh no, that's crazy. This is our 40-foot school bus we've had since May now. We're on the— we finished the gutting stage, so we've got all the old insulation out and the panels off. We had some leaks, so we had to pull everything out, seal up the roof. We've had some rust to deal with. Wow.
We're—
we've got the flooring all out. Insulation on the walls was wet, so we had to get rid of that. And now I'm wire brushing the floor and moving forward so we can paint that. I've got sealant on all the seams on the roof, so we're ready ready to paint the roof. And then we covered up all of these—
wow—
holes here. Good.
You're doing all this work yourself, just taking your time?
Just taking our time and going at it as we have time and money.
Josiah, does this bring back memories?
Yeah.
Does this look like Maple about— gosh, going on a year ago? Does this look like Maple almost a year ago?
The first time.
You want to go, Mr. Brown?
All right, let's go on a drive.
Cranking it up.
I know it feels like you got a long way to go.
It does.
Well, you do, but yeah, you've seen Maple.
Yeah, I have. You, uh, in the videos. Yeah.
So you'll have to see it live and see where you're gonna be with this thing.
And here's the engine.
Oh yeah, you can see the engine right here. Yeah, of course.
You always want to see the engine.
This is one of the reasons we got this is because although the bus has 227,000 on it, the engine and transmission were rebuilt 10,000 ago.
Oh wow, that's nothing.
So it's pretty fresh. Wow. It's the International DT466 and then it has the Allison transmission with the lockup. That's a big engine, Mr. Brown. Woo!
Woo!
My wife Elena and I, we got the bus so that it's kind of our transition plan to be able to move from here. We're on this property we're renting. We're doing the best we can as far as growing our own food. We'd love to own our own piece of land someday, and you know, in our area, land's fairly expensive. And so this— we started our transition plan, so we're building out our bus and getting a place set up that we can live in before we get land. And then when this is all ready, we'll be able to live in this, live cheaply, save some money, and then drive this away, hopefully onto the land that we get. So yeah, so when we moved in, we were not getting enough light for the garden, so we had to open things up a little bit. We got the owner's permission since we're renting. And we limbed up the cedar over here, and then the spruce, we actually cut it and turned it— instead of removing the whole tree, we left part for a wildlife snag, and we left perches on there. We cut the top so it looks like it broke naturally, and just as it starts to decay, bugs will move in, birds will come, woodpeckers will come. So we left that, and we get more light for the garden.
How did you convince your landlord to let you do this?
Well, we did it incrementally. We asked, hey, can we do this? And then they were they were okay with that. And then after that, we'd wait a little bit and then ask, hey, can we do this? And then they'd come over and they'd go, wow, it's actually really beautiful. Yeah. So yeah, it was easy.
So you're like, hey, can I put a few pots out on the porch? And then before you know it, you're bringing in the family cow.
Yeah, a few bison. Yeah, that's next. This, like, this is more like mycelium than it is wood chips almost.
Wow.
Just the fungus spread through here and Chunks. Chuck, here's more.
You got a lot of life in here, buddy. Yeah, I've never seen somebody so excited about their wood chips.
This is great. They're moldy wood chips. This is great.
Yeah. Good morning, sweetheart.
Good morning, buddy. Oh, you want to play b-ball? Let's play some b-ball. Oh, come on, come on.
Jonah! Jonah!
Jonah!
Oh, he fouled! Foul!
Foul!
There you go, Mr. Brown, you got it! Pass it, pass it! Oh, good pass, good pass! All right, here's what we got, guys. It's not as bad as it seems. Clothes to be packed in a backpack, snacks to be packed. Thank you very much, we've got these at the meetup. Dried tomatoes. Computer stuff, business stuff. We got to remember how we set up Adobe Premiere, which is how we edit, because we're putting it on the laptop because we're gonna— we can't take the iMac with us, honey. We're gonna have to take our laptop. And can we take that key— can we take the keyboard and the mouse? Oh, that's good, that's good. Looking fresh this morning.
Oh, thanks.
Well, we got the rest of this evening. We're gonna go into town, Seattle, stay in a hotel so we can be right by the airport. Because we got to be at the airport at 8 o'clock. I mean, it's not terrible early. But it's pretty early.
8:30, so we have to leave the hotel at 8.
Okay.
But that's better than being here.
Yeah.
And having to leave at like 7:30.
Okay.
So.
All right.
Well, breakfast is up in a few minutes. Awesome. That's it. I, uh, we just had a great breakfast. Totally forgot to film it. We were gonna have that, that was gonna be the climax. That's what it's all about. We ended up together at the breakfast table. Totally forgot.
Sorry guys.
But it was wonderful. Here's what we had. We had Bulletproof Coffee, eggs, strawberries, and paleo banana pancakes. Pumpkin pancakes. Oh sorry, pumpkin too. It's that time of year, isn't it? Pumpkin pancakes. Oh look, some of you wondering about our basil while we're gone? It's in good hands. It's got a lot of friends. There she is. You gonna take good care of her? Okay, good.
