I Had to Let Them Go

Is this like one of those pranks where the woman puts a bunch of empty Amazon boxes out? That's been a thing. She ran a big old order.

I had to buy some stuff for the baby's room.

What?

This looks like online shopping has gotten a little out of hand.

The electricians. Let's see what these are. One is empty. Made it to prank. These things are our— oh, a couple teas. I guess this is the day before Amazon. We had to go to the grocery store get our tea. Epsom salt for our Epsom salt bath. Need a cow bellowing? Goodness. Essentials. Popsicles. Here you go, get in. Go put your popsicles away. Is this unboxing fun? Let's pop the video. I think it's interesting. What is it? Oh yeah, air filters. Sorry, it's not a unicycle or something. Another exciting item. Diapers! Yay! This, I actually hope and pray this— it's a smaller version of this. What is this? Tell you in one second. We need it today. Dishwasher pans in case the dishwasher's leak. Let's hope these fit. The last ones didn't fit. It's a happy day. Welcome to another day in the life. Some purple cult— I can't understand your accent. Permaculture homesteaders growing what we eat and eating what we grow. Sunflowers are in. Hey, what's wrong with the cow? They've all busted out. Just leave us alone. Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm gonna have to go see what's going on with the cow real quick. Is he gonna want to take a take by the side? Then we'll go. You don't know. Just in time, they're coming today. Where does this one go? Is that this one? Go in here. Is everything under control? Yes. Okay, those work perfect. It was sent earlier. It doesn't fit here. And I don't see it. I don't see a replacement. Pants do the critical job of catching any moisture that might fall through— stay with me— and prevent, prevent mold. Appliances are coming today, so those trays really need to be in. I'm not sure it's gonna happen. Like, at least it's a nice, cool, brisk morning like I'm used to in western North Carolina. It's been hot lately. Okay, good news, bad news. Well, the good news is The dishwasher trays fit under there. The bad news is we still have that big refrigerator tray that doesn't fit. Whoa, we've got eggs! What I really want to be doing is covering our garden. We harvested yesterday.

Look at this potato.

Oh, that's a weird one, huh? Yeah. And y'all know the number one rule of Mother Nature is to cover itself. We've got to cover the garden. I would really like to be working in the cool today, but we gotta stage these electricians and the figure out this appliance thing. Thing is, this would fit. This would fit if it weren't for that trim. Does that mean the fridge isn't going to fit in there and they got their trim wrong? Or does that mean our pan's a little big? Mom thought Jonah could cut it with his— cut it? I'm pretty sure he told me he can't weld stainless steel. Like, he doesn't have the skill or the supplies. I could do that if I had to. It just won't be pretty. The idea is, can we notch? Can we notch out for this? I don't think anybody will ever see it. I need Randolph. The electricians are here bright and early. I'm pretty sure there needs to be power to the appliances. They're going to want to test it. I know they're going to want the water. We got that done yesterday. Y'all got it? Can you do a garden project after this?

A what?

A garden project. Maybe you want to do that in the hotter part of the day since it's a little easier than, uh, building garden beds. There he is, my wild man. What do I do? I feel like I need to be at the house. To be at the electrician's beck and call. And I was gonna say to get Randolph started. Is this Randolph? Is this already the appliances? Who is this?

Painters.

Painters?

They have a red car.

That's gonna throw us for a loop. More electricians, that's good. Yep, both of them electricians. All hands on deck this morning. Maybe we get lucky and we can actually make a phone call from out here. We can find out when Randolph's coming, and then I could tell these guys I'll be in the garden if you need me. Hello, this is Randy. I can't talk to you right now. He can't talk right now. Maybe he's on his way. Ah, it's a race against that ball of fire. I've got to put a Band-Aid on my stab wound. This is risky because Henry will probably see us. Can you make breakfast? Gideon's got a lesson at 9. We got out relatively unscathed. Sun is over the mountain now. Hey Gideon, did you do your turkeys? Yep. Okay, Jonah and Josiah, I need y'all to help me a little bit when you're done. Look. This is still in shade. Still haven't tilled that one area right there. Come on, guys. Maybe today will be a little cooler, guys, and you can be a little more active. Dump it in there so I don't have to get over the fence. There you go. Good. It's been so dry, I'm wetting it down to soften it up so they'll till it. Hey, we're still behind the mountain right there. Let's do some of this hard stuff right now. Let's get some of this excess weeds out of here. And I heard word from Randolph, he'll be here in 30 minutes at 9 o'clock. I'm not going to handle these more than I have to. I'm getting Josiah down here with the track loader. We'll put the weeds directly in the bucket. In the meantime, water in the greenhouse plants. Onions, broccoli, a bunch of fall plantings, some summer— a little bit of summer plantings left. Oh boy, corn, it's gotta get out. I gotta get out of here before I get overwhelmed. I just remembered something. When you are starting seeds for fall and winter and at the same time harvesting from spring and summer.

Chocolate chip muffins for the party, or, um, 3 types of cupcakes for the party.

Chocolate chip muffins, hmm, or chocolate cupcakes. Yeah, and you know you have a bunch of rotten bananas too. You can make banana bread. Oh, okay.

Oh, I could make different types of, um, muffins. I can make chocolate.

I like these kinds of choices.

I can make banana muffins and vanilla muffins.

Yeah, you can do that. You got to make sure we have enough supplies so Mama can order more if we don't have it, okay? The boys are mowing. He just went with the sheep today. I'm really conflicted. You know what, you know, they want to mow. I want them to take charge of the farm one day, start letting it happen right now. They know this is getting done, and I guess it is the most efficient thing to have everybody working on different jobs. 2 people on 1 job isn't twice as fast. You know what I'm saying? It's a phenomenon. It's faster, but it's not twice as fast. You lose incrementally every time you add somebody. 3 people isn't 3 times as fast because you kind of have to, you know, watch out for each other. Time for communicating. I don't know, it's just a phenomenon. It's a weird stage I'm in, and it's new to me. Even she wants to leave in 15 minutes to go start baking for the Fourth of July party. Gideon, Gideon! Oh, he's in his lesson. No, he'll be in his lesson.

Yep, he came.

Gideon! I've been a little absent there. You can see at the end of the time lapse. Uh, so Austin, cut to the iPhone footage for everyone. Handoff is here to save the day. He's always got some idea. It fits down in there, doesn't it? Wait, does it fit? Did you just make it fit? Yeah, you just shoved it. Yeah, you always got the ideas, don't you? All right, I guess I was timid and afraid to— that's working. Good job, bud. What happened? All right, did you get more fuel in it? Yeah, just giving it a second. Do you just went, started mowing even though I wanted y'all to help me? You just, you're just taking the farm from me, huh? Huh? Yeah, that's all right. It's just a hard transition. You guys are taking it over. You know what needs to be done now, and now you are making decisions on what's priority. So I'm just gonna do what I can out here in this garden, and then there's always tomorrow, right? Yeah, might get some help then. Yeah, no, tomorrow we're doing the other side. You know, you guys are gonna have it looking good. And there's 46 people coming on Thursday to this party. It'll be looking real nice for them. All right, we're back. We've almost got a load. I wanna, I wanna, I mean, that's pretty much a load, but let's max it out. I think we can get the rest of it, but I wanna show you something. Beautiful one's back. Hey, you're back at it, huh? Well, apparently they didn't send my outside light over there, so I need to go over there. That's your job, isn't it? Call an order. Yeah, we have this little patch of shade thanks to that big old oak tree right now. See it in the drone? Drone shot. All right, let's take advantage of this and let's get this as much done as we can. You can see we are out of the Shade now. This is why I love calling Western North Carolina home. We had a couple of weeks real hot and it's very reasonable out here. A little breeze. I did have this idea for these things. It's soccer night tonight. Look at these ugly— these ugly potatoes. Let's have a trophy, okay? The winning team gets one of these ugly potatoes. All I lack A little bit of bow raking, a little soft rake. What do you call this rake? I could just call it the soft rake. Harvest some carrots and find me the ugliest one you can find.

Okay.

Hey, I get your help after all, huh? Let's get these weeds and I can have you haul that— haul it off. I was all worried for nothing this morning. It's still cool as all get out. Well, cool as all get-out is strong, but comfortable. And look who I got. I got a big helper after all. And Gideon came after his lesson. Gideon, what kind of ugly carrots you got so far? Well, you got some pretty ones.

Wow, I think this one's uglier than this one.

Wow. All right, hold the ugliest ones to the side. We gotta have prizes for tonight's soccer game. Most blocked goals for the goalie. Whoever got the most goals during the shape in the beds. Don't you think we need to draw our lines? That looks okay. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Tell myself that. Oh, that one's real ugly.

It's big and then it goes small.

That one's super ugly. I don't even know this one yet. We have to give one to the loudest fan. Another empty time lapse there at the end. This time it was so frantic and so boring I didn't tape it. Sorry, plants. People are going to be here any minute. I was getting a little worried because it's like 11:15. I do want to finish grabbing the rest of this weeds. That's gonna be gold for the— we've already made it beyond though with Jonah coming and helping and shaping these beds. Doesn't it look good? We just finished and the appliances just showed up. Perfect. Get in, grab those carrots, they're in the sun, honey. They gotta go. They can't install though, and everything's done with the cabinetry. It's been quite the puzzle piece. At least our appliances are here. Nice guys. They have a service charge for coming out. They said they'll waive the second time. Nice guys. For lunch, we're thinking leftover Japanese. It was so good, right? We're gonna need to cook some more steaks, fry in some carrots fresh, fried fresh onions, put it on a leftover zucchini, harvested us a little cabbage. This morning. Gotta kiss the cabbage. You gonna kiss it? Oh, you're right.

That's grosser than kissing a horse.

The new lunch spot. How is it, man? Good. How is it, Josiah? Good, man. That's the way to do it. Been working in the office a bit. Look at this, we've got a semi-rough draft— no, second rough draft of Homestead Builds cover. It's looking good. I'm excited for that. You ready for some Soccer. Who's gonna win the trophy? You know what the trophy is? No, it's a surprise. Community soccer night with a very special trophy. Jonah's gone to get the trophy. We found this trophy this morning just for you guys. It's what we're all fighting for. Oh man, it's a potato. Look at that, the ugly potato trophy. Yeah. All right, okay, okay. You motivated now? We're at halftime, it's 2-1. My team's winning. Isn't that crazy? Wow, you never see those in the grocery store because they just would have thrown that one out. Hey Beck, we showed the trophy. Oh gosh, let's finish this game. 2-1. You're gonna play with the camera a little bit. Y'all want that trophy? He's gonna, he's gonna release now. Watch out for the cow squat behind you. Oh my, already these boys have played a lot of soccer. Nice. Oh, oh, Dad's schooling them today. Oh, oh, that was quick. All right, it's 2-2. Uh-oh, he wants that potato trophy. There you go, Jonah's taking it away. Oh. Good job, Jonah. Oh, we're 6-3, we're winning. I think they're holding back on us though. They get 4 points, they're gonna win. Just keep it away from them. No, no. That's it, Lily! MVP! You were the holder of the trophy. You're good. You're a good goalie. Happy day.