I Got Ahead of Myself

Last minute lamb thawing plus some ground pork. We're gonna, we're gonna try a breakfast sausage recipe. That's a little hack. Usually when you take your pigs to the butcher, they want to know how much Italian sausage you want and how many breakfast— how much breakfast sausage you want. And there's two problems with that. Wait, I don't think you should do that to the, to the, to the blanket. Okay, the first problem is the spices are probably not going to be to your standard. The spices for us, we would want organic spices. Also, it may not be the recipe you like. That's chili. It's probably 20-something, but that wouldn't stop you northerners. You'd probably be like, that's a warm work day. The second thing, uh, problem with getting your ground pork like that is, well, you don't know how much Italian sausage you're gonna want. And how much breakfast sausage we want. You're on time. Trying to set breakfast to be 8:30. Chores that need to be done by 8:30, and then we can go into project. Boys, let's go! Johnna, now! Come on, breakfast is at 8:30. Let's stick to it. So what we do with our ground pork is just get it in ground pork and make our own sauces. We got spices, we got Italian spices nailed down. Breakfast sausage, we got some work to do. Oh, it's icy. Why is that not working? Oh, I suspect somebody unplugged it to run the diesel. Exactly what happened. All right guys, you can't do this when it's going to be 10°. Idiot. Now we're playing catch-up. All right, it's working. Oh shoot. Sorry, dude. Happy day, top of the vlog to you. It's our last call for New Year's registration, Abundance Plus. I should feed you first and then your piglets. Oh shoot. Hey, hey, hey, come here. I should feed mom first and then they wouldn't go steal Beefcake's food. They got all they can eat over here. Come on, there you go. Look how big they're getting. You're getting big. And we have a problem here too. I don't see a light on that. I don't know if it's that Power strip or not, it's been working. One thing we are going to do is I ordered one of these. So much more simple, I feel like less could go wrong. That was strip to off, a little more streamlined. You can homestead, I can help you. Inspirational community know-how. $30 towards a Joel Salatin book if you order by Friday sundown, which is about 6:20 PM Eastern.

Hey Austin, milk's on the other side.

Yeah, you're supposed to milk on the left side of the cow. That's why we're confused.

I have always milked on this side.

Yeah, you're supposed to milk on it. Well, are you left-handed? That's why. No, you milk on this side always.

Hop on that side, she'll kick you so fast.

Oh really?

Yes, do it.

Oh wait, maybe.

All right, face this way.

Face this way. You're right, that wasn't the other way. You're right, it's this side. Yeah, yeah, you milk on her right side if you're right-handed. It's amazing, I've done that for over a decade every single day and Had to think about that for a second. You didn't milk the mastitis one though, that's what counts, right? Or whatever that is. I don't know if it's mastitis or not, but it's gooped up. Now look, you milk the right quarter out into the ground. Oh, this one's shot too. No, it's working. No. Okay, the light's on here. Theirs is unfrozen. Why is the—

there's a hole, there's an old— there's a hole unfrozen right above it.

Wow, it's just that cold. Yeah. And it's plugged in. Last vlog of the week, so this is last call for New Year's registration. You want to get in there Friday. I would love to see you guys there, welcome you to the family, get access to me. Let's hang. All right, let's now figure out if the pigs' water is working because— make sure it's plugged in. Has it blown the breaker? Has it? Nope. All right, we're good. Should be working now. Hey boys, get in! Henry, let's go! There was talk last night of totally deleting everything out here— raised beds, chicken run— and focusing it all together out in the crop garden, which is not a bad idea for efficiency. But then the beautiful— and we kind of were running with that, and that was kind of axing my chicken coop idea. And if we deleted all that That was kind of some of the input from the boys, but Mom was like, well, I need some, uh, later on I need some raised beds. Okay, 4. Well, there's like 6 out there, so we might as well just keep all 6. You know, it's maintenance, it's a whole other thing, it's a whole other system going on up here. But 6 is not much harder than 4. And so if you're gonna have that many, you might as well have the chickens, because what are you going to do with all the weeds, the extra produce? You gotta feed the chickens. And then all that— those gardens need compost, so you might as well have the chickens there right next to it. Making the compost. I say that to say I might have to break it to these boys, but I think I have an idea. Mom wants kitchen gardens. That's— you go out there, you grab squash, you grab a lettuce, grab an onion or a tomato, and it's right outside the door. That's where you put a kitchen garden. Yeah, her minimum is 4.

We negotiate.

Yeah, and by that time, all those beds need compost, and then you got to do something with all the weeds and the extra produce. So that's why then it makes sense to have chickens up there. What's your negotiation idea? 2. How about, how about my negotiation idea? You always—

this is the one thing I just try and teach your wife.

Hope you— hopefully you can learn from me on that one. Um, and you guys don't, don't want the maintenance of it, so I'll keep it string trim.

It's never weeded, ever.

It doesn't need to be weeded. It does. Okay, that's it.

Yeah, for a year we planned it. You gotta get really excited, you plan all the stuff, and then you come back in 2 months.

We did give it serious thought. I did. This hoop over this thing is kind of harder and more intense than I thought. It's not just slapping some rebar and some cattle panel over it. This year's recover for cover. It's not the time to do something new, is it? If our word for 2025 is recover, I need to check into that.

We also don't know if we're gonna keep it. Do you realize that also all the beds are falling apart?

This is probably not the year because this year is recover. Maybe 2026 is build. With the chicken coop out of the way, I can mark the perimeter of the property or I can go prune today. Which one should I do? Probably the perimeter. I don't want to see them. He just squinted his eyes. You disagree?

The perimeter is going to be a nightmare.

It is going to be a nightmare because of the trees that are down.

You can't just walk.

And it's winter. You want to do it? You guys want to go with me? That'd be fun.

Maybe do it by ourselves, we go a lot faster.

I kind of want to see what our— I don't think I've even been to the perimeter way up there. I mean, it's so steep and it's just top of the mountain.

We walked the whole thing, it's crazy.

We're not going to do the spray paint, put it up. We're going to do it when it's a little warmer, and it's going to be so warm next year— next week. These trees might start budding. We need to prune now. Okay, come on, come on, get in, Henry. I want to point out something. You know, the chicken hoop would be a great idea. It'd be fun. A lot of y'all are excited for it. I was excited for it, but then we remembered and got our focus back. If our word this year is recovery, everything we do should go through that filter. So instead of— is building a chicken hoop Is part of recovery— no, no, is building more and more garden beds, which we are doing, part of it? Perhaps, because we want to quit the grocery store. But so maybe instead of the chicken coop— well, I need to just make sure we maintain what we have. Repairing the raised bed over there, one of them was washed out from the storm. Hey Gideon, you can go get the big pruner and prune this. It's easy to go in and just get the Suckers. Take it out as low as you can. Okay, so it's good to have goals in, in, in one word if you can, and then just make sure you visit that and revisit that. Now put your feet on there and pedal. Good job, bud. We've got a couple of hours. And about 80 trees. Sounds like an impossible goal. Let's do it. That was easy. They're all that easy. We might actually get this done. Henry's causing problems. All right, it was getting cold, but we're just going to bundle him up. I know what we'll do. We'll put him on the Ergo. That'll be warmer. You have a whole whole bowl of chocolate chips. Here, let me, let me show you how much you can have. Okay, is everything else okay other than that? I'd rather take— Henry, do you want to have to go with me? Then you're gonna need to obey Lily. Okay, hopefully that solves the problem. I was way up on the mountain. Let's go again. It's just— no, no, because it's just easier to walk between the trees. I did think about it though, didn't I? I think the side-by-side will be okay though because he can drive it and he can go along spotting me. At least when we get to the end— well, no, we'll walk. He'll spot me. If I have to come back for Henry, we'll have the side-by-side. Back to pruning. We're getting the inside ones, we're getting any tangled ones, we're getting these— anything that's growing towards The inside. Wow, what happened here? This is hurricane damage. This is very appropriate for our goal to sure recover. We're thinking about taking our fences off. They don't really work. The sheep go right over them. Is this tree even alive? You scratch it and if it's green, it's still alive. Can you tell? Still alive. It's green, it's not brown under the bark. We might get rid of these fences. And then that way we can bring in and mulch them nice. We could prune them, shrink trim around them, and— but we, you know, we are gonna have to commit to netting them. My fear is we don't have a lot of deer pressure. We have very little deer pressure. I've seen more bears than deer, uh, but it would be the year that the deer come back, wouldn't it? But I guess the deer would just reach over the these fences too. See, on this one you can't even scratch the bark. Yeah, it's, it's so dead. Yeah, and it's brown underneath. That's how you can tell. I think I just did our biggest patch, probably 20-something trees. We only had one dead. That's a pretty good ratio. And I feel like this year might be our first year to get fruit off these trees. Feel like we planted them last— I think the winter before last. Here's one without a cage. Just finished the lower half, probably another 15 or so more trees that I just did. Gotta do the upper half. I think there's less than what we just did in total. It's windy and cold up here. That one doesn't even need it. Let's see if it's green. Oh, that may be why it doesn't need it. Okay, we found our second tree. Hear that wind? Austin, put some wind sound effect in there. That's it. We have hit a cold pocket in here. Oh my gosh, this is a microclimate big time. Ground's still frozen. Sun's just now starting to get to it. Probably will never get to it up there. We protected some naturally growing locust tree because they're great silvopasture trees. We don't grow an orchard, a cute little orchard. Our fruit trees instead are spread out in a savanna style. Everything revolves around the family cow around here, so these trees are going to serve as shade, rubs, fly traps because spiders live in them. We can't have branches Oh, hello! The boys bumped the back grill here. You can see it's unlevel. We can't pop the hatch. They've been hauling material. I think it's just warped. I think because they hit right here. I'm hoping it's just this. It's not about to pry, is it? No. Okay, if you look right in here, there's a bolt, and it looks like it's just sliding up on that bolt because this doesn't look dent, dented. Everything just looks shifted. So to get in there, you've got to get this off, and then you can get to it, I think. I just went and called our dealer just to— seems like they invited us to extend warranty, but it's not the case. I would have had to gotten a warranty within 30 days, and it wouldn't cover this. We do have admissions warranty. We do have undercarriage coverage. I don't— it wasn't accidental. We have insurance for that, but this won't be $2,500. No, I know y'all did accident, but they won't cover accident. All you got to do is loosen that up.

I've tried, it's so hard.

Look, so that's pro— that could be built in like that to do that.

Maybe. Probably just so they could take it out.

Yeah, you're right, that's more like it.

Probably so they can hook on.

Okay, so how do you take this off so you can get at it? We don't have a ratchet.

No, that is a massive— that's a specialty ratchet.

None of these are big enough. You sure? No way. Watch the 17. Biggest one we got. Yeah, you're not even close. Okay, all right, exciting, guys. We're gonna fix it. I'm so proud of you fixing this thing.

It broke when this happened. It broke when this happened.

Okay, we fixed that yesterday and I built a piece of metal to go on there.

I will fix that again. It's because this got jarred.

I, I could see that. I could see that. Did you order our 6 trees? I did.

I got 2 peaches. I got a white peach and a regular peach. And then I got, uh, yeah, 2 apples, a Granny Smith and Honeycrisp. And I got—

thank you—

a mulberry because we didn't have one. And then I got an Italian plum.

Thank you.

The Italian plum is like really great. Like, it's Italian.

I mean, but like, but like, was it hardy?

Yes, it is hardy. It's actually very hardy. And It's very hearty and it's good for like canning, baking, eating fresh. Like, it was very versatile.

Hey, we're fixing stuff, and one really cool thing about it is we're getting tools. I think they just sell the biggest— well, you should measure. You should go measure. You just think they sell the socket that goes on the half-inch drive? Because we have a half-inch driver. Yeah, maybe that'd be the cheaper way. The dry brining was so good on those steaks. I'm gonna try it with ribs. Is that a thing? I feel now though I probably should have had more. This is not gonna be enough food. What do you think? And I'm doing it with Redmond smoked salt to get that smoked flavor. I think I have to go get more ribs. I don't think what we had set up is enough. We basically doubled it. It's just a little bit of— you know, there's not a lot of meat on this lamb rack. Mom and I are gonna start eating more paleo. Got a cheat meal coming up though with Him and basically we're gonna eat less carbs. Fortunately, a paleo, which is like heavy fruit, uh, or heavy meat, vegetables, and fruit, is what you can generally get off the land. Your birthday's coming up Sunday. Sunday. Did the socks and underwear come for it? Oh, we're looking— we, we're waiting on a big box of socks and underwear. Okay, you can jump off. Oh my gosh, you are getting big now! And Mom and I just realized last night. It kind of just sneaks up on you. He's sleeping through the night all night. You sleeping through the night now? And you're jumping and you're potty trained and you're our lion. Pork and beans. Pork and beans.

Oh, you're making sweet tea for myself?

Wait, what, what, what tea did you use for that? A tea bag?

Uh, the tea bags.

Just one? Just one?

Yeah.

Okay, half a cup. Eating up leftovers. Come eat, come eat, niños. Planting that garden, babe.

No, you know, I was just in there for like 30 minutes with Henry.

Oh, that's it?

Okay, because Jonah chased him off of the game.

Okay, the boys have given us an ultimatum. We gotta plan those raised beds.

They didn't—

they forgot that we moved. We, we weren't even living here. We had a garden over here. We weren't even here. That wasn't even our front yard. That was across the street, and then we moved in here.

Things going on that were very stressful.

And I think it's a testimony to our garden because it really didn't need weeding. It thrived. We got what we wanted out of it and it was done. We threw it to the chickens.

We did harvest out of there and preserve some of that food, and then we also ate on it.

Get in fact check.

We made tomatillo out of Yes, we made, we made green salsa.

That's a recipe for like, put this in, what you call it, tomatillo. Tomatillo, that's it. We used to say tomatillo. We got tomatillos and we got cose verde. No, the greenhouse salsa verde.

I'm gonna do an inspection every week.

There we go, my southern accent on Spanish. Casa Verde. No, uh, Salsa Verde. We made Salsa Verde. Okay, Henry, you're doing so good folding those. Each and every one, you're getting even better. Let's get this going. We're gonna put some lamb seasoning on it, pre-mixed, we've already made. I should probably put a little olive oil seasoning in here. I'm gonna put these on top of, uh, racks to keep them up elevated. Chicken broth in the bottom of this, that'll help keep it moist. The drying racks in here. Our canned chicken broth's working out great. Said to cover with tin, but can't I just do that so as to not waste some tin? I think I'll do that. You can do that for 2 and a half hours on 300. Come in about 4:30, broil them, and then we'll uncover them, broil them, and let them sit for 10 minutes. Squash from the land. Acorn squash, remember, face down, a little bit of water in the pan. Here are the boys, they got back. I wonder if they got the parts needed to fix the machine. Since we're planning, we fixed the machine.

We already fixed it.

What, did it work?

Yeah, we just have to, um, I just have to fix the tip of that.

Hey, were you able to put put the panel, the side panels back on and everything?

Yes.

Now come show me.

Now the bottom up, it did get bent, so we were conceited about something.

Okay, well, I have to go show him. Poller, yeah, can you guys pause it for a second? This is it. Oh, all you had to buy was this? Well, that's great. Look, Jonah. Wow. Yeah, you can see it where you banged it up here now that you put the side back in. So are you all banged up? It is now.

It's uneven because this has been—

are you sure?

Yes, look, you can tell.

Okay, but is your latch gonna shut?

Yes, everything will shut.

Okay, you just have to fix that now. Heck yeah, we fix things, bud. Acorn squash came out great. Lamb came out amazing. You only get this once. This is all of our lamb ribs. Very good. Now it's not— it's not fall-off-the-ribs. I could have maybe cooked it longer. What is it about ribs?