I Quit

Time I work. It's 10 till 8 Sunday. Yesterday we were finishing chores around this time. Today we're just beginning. You see that? I accidentally overcooked my yogurt yesterday. I was trying to make yogurt, supposed to get it up to 105. Totally forgot about it. Yeah, and we got it up to like 100. 40, 50. The Burn It Up Cooking Show on this yogurt. I'm gonna have to leave that for the boys. I'm doing the bare minimum before getting up to the cows, set their nets up, and feed them.

I mean, not feed them, I meant to say to milk them.

Crud, I left one of our pails in our tumbler. Gotta wash that real quick, guys. Please get going.

Drinking water, kids.

Uh, they enjoy sleeping in, but they do not understand the rush we have to get in because we've slept in. Thanks for getting ready. Where's your boots?

I don't know.

Can you be a real big boy and find your own shoes? Uh, I really can't stop. If we hadn't milked early yesterday, I wouldn't be sweating it so much. That's putting too much of a gap in the 24-hour milking routine.

There you go.

Well, we just got one cow today, so 3 quarts. Yeah, get in. Here's your shoes. Let's get the battery-powered one. You can string trim this yard today. Josiah, will you water mom's plants? We can get her pepper plants going. Kind of been dreading this because I've never done this before, but maybe we can trellis our tomatoes. Oh, Rebecca's got some. Oh, I think she wants to do that. I've never done it before. We'll see. Is that Tom? Line that I think will be the trick. Of course, I've never used these. We had a good bit of rain. You can see in the cart there, probably, I don't know, looks like half an inch, an inch. Happy Sunday seed day, y'all. Normally our day for work. I've injured my heel somehow. Maybe it's plantar fasciitis. So I feel like maybe I need to take it a little easy. We'll see. They've got the string trimmer in here for me. Let's go. Did you water the plants, bro?

Okay, let's go get this fence up.

What is going on? There's like 4 chickens out plus a goose. It's like out, out, another chicken, 5. The next box has fallen down. I need to do a mesh there or something like that.

I know what you need.

Oh, 1-inch mesh so that—

I know what you need to do.

What? Mount these to here.

There's nobody in this, so we need this net though. I can't move. Just so y'all know, I can't move the chickens to their next spot because they won't get it. If they're out, they will not get it. They'll come back to here. Chickens aren't that smart. They will not— maybe one or two, but most of them will not find their coop even if it's, even if it's just on the other side of that net. I'm thinking let's pick up the net and they'll free-range today and we'll let them come back in here tonight and then we'll move them tonight. We have to get this net up so they will not have a protection of the net today, but I think one day will be all right. I'm feeling a lot of stress to milk these cows. I don't like to stress the animals and it will do that if you vary the times too much. We do have a couple of nets here. Let's put Stud Muffin and, uh, Hamburger in a corner. Okay, and then after we milk, we'll come back and we can casually— it's a cool morning, we can casually set up the net. I don't know if this is on. I don't know if it's connected. The fence we turned off.

I got you a present. Smell it.

It is? Yeah.

Papa, smell it.

Test with grass and get a little closer and start feeling it. Maybe. Yeah, I'm not feeling nothing.

What?

Oh, thank you, buddy. Thank you for the dandelion. How about this? This.

It smells horrible.

How about that? See how Stud's ready? Okay, normally we— normally we go ahead and set up the next paddock and Stud and Hamburger can get in it and not bother us while we're milking. But we can just corner him off right here, Josiah. Okay, is it on? I'm so afraid it hurts so bad.

Oh, there's a honey suckle.

Okay, how do you know? Oh, you unhooked it. Oh, it was— it was hooked up there. Okay, let's, uh, get them in here. See, they're so trained. Let's, uh, put up a corner here. The boys are actually down in the corner, so that's perfect. What are you guys doing?

Papa, what's that big snake?

The water line does look like a big snake, doesn't it? Yeah, I got the bromance. In the corner. I'm feeling better now. We're milking our normal time. Uh, this one, she's not getting milk today. We should have herded her in with the boys. I'll use y'all's legs as a staff. We're gonna have to herd her down, Lily, and get her in the bromance somehow. Come on. She ain't gonna want to go. This is not her routine. We're breaking the routine, but we're, we're drying her off. She's gonna have a baby in a couple of months. Come on. I pulled Flossie's food away. So Flossie doesn't eat it all, because you don't want Flossie to get done with her snack and we're not done milking. Okay, now she's getting the idea. Yeah, the bromance is now on to us. So, okay, let's see if we can't— can you pick up that net right there and we'll push her through there? Although we haven't set the nets up over there, I don't think she'll go too far. I know she won't go like too far far, you know what I'm saying? She might even stay in the paddock. See, she's, she's not like gonna over overall leave the herd. We'll be able to find her. We might have to herd her a little bit. A special time with Lily. I reminded the kids we only had one cow to milk this morning. She said, can I do it with you? So here we are. Milk chores was a lot easier. I mean, twice as easy, but we don't get as much milk. Maybe a gallon and a half.

Not even a gallon.

Phyllis is quite the producer.

You can hear Jonah. He's about to mow the, the perimeter where this fence is going to go so the fence doesn't have to fight the grass. I'm going to go ahead and let these grow mats back in their old paddock, give more room. Then we'll need this fence. See, she's liking that. She's not going too far, crushing the clover. I was right, 1.5 gallons of milk. Josiah been burning it up cooking show this morning. You guys see the haze? Heating up a hot dog, high heat all the time. All right, so I'm gonna give this another batch. My last yogurt was sour. Meanwhile, Mr. Brown wanting to string trim. Jonah, can you try us a new battery in this thing? I think you have a lot of dead batteries though. Oh well, only one string's hanging out for one, so there's no juice in this. Oh, he took it away. We got Mr. Brown going. This electric string trimmer is perfect for him. Doing good, buddy. The chickens are back where they're supposed to be. This is their paddock. They're probably gonna roam more. They were way up— they were up by their coop where we fed them. Well, we got plenty of nets now. Phyllis continues to stay right where she's supposed to be. Hey, China, will you get our water going? I'll start on the fences. Better late than never. It is 11 o'clock. Yes! Best part of my day right here. Animals on new grass. Call them once. Go slow, Jenna. You got this. I'll walk beside you, guide you. We got this gap down here. It always makes me nervous, but we always get through it just fine. What happened? I doubt the chain busted. I bet the carabiner did. Yeah, these little carabiners. It was bending the other day. Goodness, I think that chain's too small, too short. Okay. Hit this rock. Yeah, that'll break a little chain. Wow. Yes.

Gird up my loins.

Ready? I sent Jonah well because of my foot. Trying to think. It's such a beautiful day. This is our one day we can dedicate all day to the farm. My foot's hurting. I feel tired. Should I rest? I'd kind of like to take advantage of this weather. It's free day. I would kind of like to heal too.

I'm gonna do it right here.

I feel like this is gonna be too big to get through this chain.

What do you think?

Oh, so close! And it made it just barely. Now that's the carabiner. All right, let me spot you a little bit better this time. Go real slow. I'll be in the back watching.

Okay, you're good, you're good.

Don't go fast. Just take it easy. Here's another possible hangup you can catch on this other side. Coast is clear. Go down to where it's flat. Despite the beautiful day I think we're opting to rest.

We're tired.

Our bodies say so. What do you think? Are you our moon and stars? Are you our moon and stars in this outfit? Well, he's watching you.

He's so cute.

Don't you feel that? That was such a nice day. Shouldn't I feel bad? No. It's like nice and cool, the sun's out. You shouldn't feel bad at all.

We need to rest. No, we should maybe go sit in the sun at some point.

Yeah, that'd be good. So we'll finish watching our show we've been on, which is The Challenger. The story of The Challenger. If you're my age or older, you will remember that. I think it's a horse.

His hair is like that long.

It's pretty long.

Rest and learn at the same time. Let's check my turkey.

Ah!

In this new gigantic— what do you call this, Rebecca? Um— I think I'm going to uncover it. Dutch oven. I've put bacon on there to keep it moist. We've got an hour and a half to supper. Oh boy, we're not doing good. We're at like 65. Let's raise the rack. Let's raise the temperature. 375. Hey, come on Gideon, put down the Nerf gun. Let's go. Yeah, I want you to go. Whoa, this is about empty. Henry, like that swing?

I think he does. He does like this swing.

There's something I can do with a bum foot. Mow. We gotta mow the higher banks where the cows just were. Big Daddy and Grandma are here though. Thought they were coming later. Grandma's got them some gifts when she was in Florida. Probably more clothes.

More the right kind of—

I like it, I like it though. You ready to get in? Let's do it. Actually cooked a hair too long. Turned out good. The bacon protected well. The skin still got crispy. Bacon's nice and crispy. Turkey stayed moist. We won. How is it, Mr. Brown?

Good.

How is it, Mom? Delicious. Juiciest turkey you've ever had? So juicy.