Hurricane Prep (2 Days Until Hurricane Helene)

I got a regular vlog for you guys today, but a quick update about the hurricane. I mean, we had no idea what was coming. You can see the pole barn behind me. Water just— we just had our— we're okay, our house is okay. The lower farm is not. There's probably $100,000 worth of damage. We don't have power. We do have generator. Nobody in this area has power, even all the way to the airport. You can see water just rushed in here. Took out the soil underneath the pole barn, and concrete has utterly collapsed. The only thing holding up this corner, I believe, is the stack of hay. So we're gonna have to shore this up. We've got a lot of, uh, just rebuilding after this. Uh, we, we did some prep for this, but there was nothing we really could have done to prepare for this. This is the 5— this is basically the 500-year flood. I do want you to enjoy the vlog knowing we're okay. And we're gonna, um, the hurricane hits us on Friday, so that, that vlog will come out on Friday. Do stay tuned. We appreciate your attention during this time, your attention, your time, your energy, your, your prayers, your well wishes. Thank you.

We're about to have 15 inches of rain.

Are you serious?

From the hurricane. We need to get ready with figuring out where the water flows, just doing some basic maintenance. Yeah, pond, creek, the, the thing right here, maybe making our rain doing our— the water diversion. We're in that dark red.

Josiah? Josiah? Yeah? I'm divided here because we just learned it's going to rain 10 to 15 inches. I'll work on this a little bit more, then I'll come down. Okay, this is throwing me off cuz I wanted to Lily. She's gone crazy about hobby horses. There's an event for this stuff. So it's throwing me off because the plan was I was going to do some office work now and then do the cabin, but now we have this winter storm prep we need to do. Now we've turned into a horse arena. We still have stuff in our guest house, the cabin. I've been dreading this job. I've been dreading vlogging this job. It's not fun, but I guess it's the reality of our lives. And I think that's what many of you like about this show.

Aren't we gonna get ready for the rain?

Yeah, but we're gonna have to get the machine off the mountain, and he needs to do what he can before he brings the machine off the mountain. It'll be a minute before he can go back up. I think that's the wise thing to do. And we need to box all this up and get it over here before it rains anyway. He's a lot cheaper to feed too. Where Josiah is here. Sounds like it's somewhere right in there. I like for Josiah to work on that too because I'm super excited about getting the trail up to our water tank. Hey, this is one thing we're gonna have to do. This floats up during a rain event. It doesn't drain good. Right here. Problem number 1 fixed. Make this meaningful and exciting for myself and for you guys. We got to have goals. We can't just go through all this. We've got to do this before the rain comes. This will be a great project if we can get everything over before it starts raining. This will be a great rainy day. I'm gonna make the kid boys do their room. There's not too much in here. Oh my gosh, I don't know. I'm afraid to look in here. Okay, okay. Alright. Maybe not too bad. We are not the example of how to move, are we? Yeah, okay. Yep. And we won't know what to do with that. We'll just box it up. I think we got a plan. We got 1 hour until you're going to start making lunch. This is my help.

I saw a short on YouTube of this lady with a hobby horse jumping that high.

What?

She was like right at my height.

And 20 minutes later. Not bad. 1 room. This one will take even less. The restoration company ripped out the cabinets unbeknownst to us and the insurance company. It's causing a delay in our funds to get this thing back to where it was. I'd say less than 15 minutes we cleaned out the kitchen. Yeah, good job, Bird. You're so pleasant to work with. If you ever wonder why I call her Birdell, Big Bird, Little Bird, and I'm the only one that does it, it's because I've nicknamed her that after my late grandmother. Rest in peace. I remember her, she would always say, "Do I have anything you want?" And that woman would literally take the pants off of her legs if you needed some pants. She died a poor woman monetarily, but a rich woman in love.

So I'm gonna be rich in both things.

I like it, and I believe it. I believe it. You're our little entrepreneur. Hey, what shall we tackle next? Your room or Mom's? Should we dare?

Our room because there's less stuff.

All right, we'll start with the cleaning supplies over there and we'll end with this pile of junk. See how grungy it is over there? See how dark it is? We got some ideas when we remodel to make it a lot lighter over here. We're trucking along. Sent Lily to make lunch. Need to sit down for a second. We have a few surprises, like the cleaning closet. Don't want to sit down, but I should sit down. And you remember this: stay positive, work hard, and make it happen. That's what we're gonna do today. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be storm prepping this afternoon. Let's hit this surprise real quick, Gideon. 20 minutes till lunch. We got that surprise out of our way. While Gideon was working on that, I got that surprise out of the way over the toilet. Any more surprises? I didn't really account for this laundry room. That surprise is out of the way. I don't think there are many more surprises. I knew about this. I don't think it's as bad as it looks. We got a bunch of supplements in this. This is the last room. Yes! Can you promise me something though with all those boxes? No, she says. You gotta promise me something.

What?

Put all those boxes in the sunroom over there. Okay. And go through at least one a day. Yeah. You.

I can do that.

There is a horrible surprise. Oh no. The last surprise.

What?

Well, for me.

Oh.

I didn't account for this daggum closet. Guys, it's gonna be almost lunch. Why don't we load what we have and get it over there? You can't tell Mama to do do anything though. She's staying in there as if I didn't say anything. Annie to the rescue has started to load up stuff. Let's load what's on the porch, take it over to the sunroom, and then have lunch. Kind of doing your own thing, huh? She's getting in the zone over there. Just walks right over here, starts eating. You're in your own world. Josiah! You made it all the way to the tank? No way! You made it all the way to the tank? Yeah. And did you do the loop back around? No. But you made it to the tank? Yeah. Oh my gosh. We're gonna have to go see this. I hate to tell you this, man. What? There's hurricane rains coming. 10 to 15 inches of rain. Yeah. Friday, so we need to prepare the farm. Now don't get so excited that you hurt yourself. All right, we got to beat this rain. Storms are brewing. We got our boxes inside. Let's check out our abilities up at the pond. You could go ahead and push that down and we'll start draining it. I got to find something to go from here to there. You can push Ooh, I'll touch it to that locust. He's on that. This is supposed to be the excess drain, not the main one. Clear it out. You keep doing that, I'm gonna go get something to push it down with. Okay, about to unload this feed and put it down in the feed area. All right, how'd that go? That went good. All right, where are we going now? Now I'm gonna go and grade the access road. Come on, get in. Let's get some supplies. Hold that tube down. We need a wood, not terribly big. Boy, there's a lot of water in there. I've got to climb out there on this thing. I'm not as confident and agile as Gideon, so I've emptied myself on my phone. This definitely works better with a camera. Wrong size drill bit. Josiah said, what are we doing here? Now I got an appropriate drill bit size. If he doesn't know, maybe y'all don't know. We're taking this board and we're gonna brace that pipe because it was just up in the air and not filling up, and we had our overflow being the main. I'd like both of these pipes going for this event. I'm going to attach this board to the locust to the pipe.

So we're just making the pond overall lower, so then with all this water that is coming, it'll be lower.

We'll be more prepared. I just finished up all these little berms. The reason they're there is so they slow the water down, because when water comes down, it wants to go downhill, so it starts going fast when it has a long downhill. But when you stop with these little bumps, it slows down and doesn't erode your roads as much. Gideon, go get the blue tub out. Okay, silt pond. Looks like we have an overflow right here, which is good. It's not going down our mountain. Let's go ahead and clean that pipe out. We don't want to dig it out too much right there because we don't want it to drain if it doesn't have to. Gideon commissioned to getting the blue tub out.

We just have a little bit more to do, and then we have the closet, which I don't want to get the closet— I'll get the closet with ice.

So, Jordan, you want to do the pretty place, or you want Josiah to? Mom, explain to Josiah what you're gonna do again.

Okay, so take the rocks off of the waterfall area so that it can just go down, and then put— and then that will also lower that water line, and then put those rocks on top of the dam area between the pasture and the creek to kind of reinforce that.

Josiah undamming the pretty place. I'm securing our gutters. I'm doing hurricane preparedness right now. But you know, it's also season for winter preparedness. I gotta cut this line. It says cut this line, and I guess that secures over that. There's gonna be a lot of rain right here and could potentially wash out this area where Blaze comes through, and this at least gets it into this flat pipe and it's just a wider flow instead of such a central one. I'm being summoned. Gosh, look at all this water coming down from the pond.

It used to be deeper.

I don't know what He could dig it out. Yeah, he could probably— when he comes back, we'll have him dig it out at the— there to make sure the pipe's not getting filled up with sediment. All right, got the drill gun. Let's get another screw for another drain. Got some rocks that were right there to make it deeper, and I put them on the side so it wouldn't overflow. You're done? Is that it? Uh, No. Henry's new best friend is awake and ready to go. Very important to keep clear. This is the road to Grandma's house. She has medical personnel come here every day. I think we're actually pretty clear here. We've got to keep that bridge clear, and I think it will be fine. Sediment has built up where this, this exit build up the bank with some of the sediment. Good job getting him to talk there. I'm having Austin do Have them tell what they're doing, and then they do the action, and then sum it up. Just dig out in front of that pipe so water can come out faster, I guess. We're getting everybody out of their comfort zone. We've got a lot of water that comes down this road, comes down flowing through here, and we have a culvert to get it from right here to our exit. You got to clean out this ditch in front of this culvert a good bit, like up to here. Gotta be dug out in front of it. Oh, you got to be careful of this hose. Dug out this culvert so the water can drain. That needs to be strung up and screwed in. That was easy. You gotta be kidding me. Ah, there's no telling where that bit was. It was the last one we had. That was the bit for putting this on. We're gonna open this up. This is jank city. Screwing that screw into here. Got to. Wow, we got it buttoned up. It's not gonna fall. It helps if we put it in our drain. I kind of need to screw that in too, don't I? Go grab a special something something for that. I think the rains have started to come. Hopefully Rebecca isn't got her boxes out in the open. Where is this? Okay, let's get this. Let's grab this. All right, got the screw in, got this more secure. Hey, we'll see how it does. We need to go see if Mom needs some help in this sudden rain event. Hey, what'd we do? We did the gutters. It's 2, we've been working since 6. Normally I don't like to work this long, get the kids a free time in the afternoon, but hey, this storm disrupted all of our plans for today.

We're about to walk out.

Oh good, just in time.

Um, I put everything in boxes, but now it's raining.

Yeah. All right. Okay.

Did you fall?

I'm gonna get in the office. All right, office time, office hours. Okay, unless the mailman wants to jump to the front of our mailbox, I gotta get this out of the way. Randolph, what do you reckon? You think we're ready for this hurricane rain? I think we're about as ready as we're gonna get. All right, I'll take it. We got one more thing to do today. Josiah has dug Where'd you dig to? Whoa, the water tank! He has dug— whoa, wow, my gosh, where'd you get this lead foot from, your mother? Yeah, yeah, wow, I'm driving home. Wow, whoa, stay over. Whoa, really? Whoa, wow. All right, well, look, he's at the water trough. This is a historic moment right here. We drove up through there, look at that. Turn around and we are at our water collection system, our gravity-fed water. It's a game changer for us, Josiah, big time. We can come clean it out to troubleshoot. We don't have to hike up the mountain. Proud of Josiah for getting us to the tank. Proud of ourselves for prepping for this hurricane, although that wasn't the plan this morning. We really came through, got things ready. I think we're ready. Time will tell. You guys will have to Keep following and we'll keep you updated. Austin and I going to town on these edits. Enjoy. Happy day. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Stay with me. Hear that? That's our diesel Cummins generator. The electrician's here making sure it's hooking it up. He just did a power failure simulation. And Becky, we got power on that generator, huh? Those lights are on. That's a happy day. You get two happy days today. I texted him this morning, said, any way you can make sure that generator works before these rains come? Please, please, we need to get our gas tanks filled up. Austin and I are going to keep at it, but we're going to try to catch the electrician. What do you say, champ? The lights are on. Perfect, it's working. That is a real happy day. Generator is going just in time, and we're done with it. Don't fall there, buddy. La la la la la, let me be free.