I Think I've Got an Idea

I fixed the screen door and the beautiful one couldn't be more happy. Who knew a 45-year-old woman would get so excited about a screen door? Happy May and welcome to another day in the life growing what we eat and eating what we grow. I just got really lucky. Most of the chicks were in and I'm gonna move, move them. How are you this morning? You looking for your geese, buddies? Nope, you gotta bond with the chickens. Start goose training. These are our replacement chicks for egg layers. Gotta get the stragglers over. Bring food, bring water, bring shelter. These are the things they're attracted to. Thanks for the help. You bringing two men over? This is a bit of a a nursery for these guys until they can get older and fend off the aerial predators. Chicken tractor is perfect because it's an overhead shelter all the time. We are letting them out in the run because there's so many of them. There's now like 42, man. He hasn't failed us yet, but we've only used him for one year, but he was 100% fail-proof. I did a video last week on how I thought the chicken tractor— the chicken tractor is actually the ultimate chicken coop. It's definitely not what you would imagine would be. It's not some fancy— it's actually the complete opposite of fancy. Simple, practical, get-it-done kind of chicken coop. Got them here in the front yard so we can keep them close, watching them. This is our health program. When people say, what's wrong with my chickens? I say, you didn't get replacements yet. Just keep yourself in flow. FiberTuff posts on the corner, little gardening stakes on the bottom. The bottom string is an electric light. So you won't ground it out. Throw that in the cow manure. Cows were in here before the chicks. Chick— chickens don't like tall grass, so we use the cows, the mulch. Cool morning. That was refreshing. I feel good. That looks great. This is going to explode with fertility. One major thing on my heart this morning, and that's to continue protecting these fruit trees from the steers. What we did the other day, it didn't work. We got problems. We got problems. If I weren't used to problems, because there's always problems on the homestead, I'd be losing sleep over this. And if I didn't have such a diverse homestead— we got so much else going on. All right, you load that. We gotta get him breakfast, he's got a lesson, and then we'll go out there. A little update on our challenge to quit the grocery store: we haven't yet. We're still working towards it every single day. There's just so much going on with the the grease fire that was in the cabin, the remodel that we're, you know, kind of hopefully on the tail end of that. It's a tiny kitchen for 7 people. Got Gideon on his lesson. Henry, you want to go with— show you guys in a second how our steers are even getting into our— what we reinforced. This is an idea. The cattle panels are taller, they're firmer. See how firm that is? My, my concern here is when they get— when it gets this old, what's going to stop them from just eating this? Well, if they only eat what they can reach, it's not going to hurt it that much. Yeah, I mean, you're right, you're right. They're not going to eat this, but they will eat this. They will eat this when they come through. Yeah, but what happens when that's all there is and it's only this tall? Come here, I'll have another idea. This tree protection, the old wood broke. So it's telling me we'd most likely need to replace all of them for every tree. This one held up nicely, but like I said, there was nothing there. What's going to stop them from eating the top of the tree? Nothing. This held up, but they ate the top of the tree. Of course. Is that okay? Maybe it's okay. This held up, but they ate the top of the tree. What's interesting is this new tree we planted this year didn't get protection, so the boys put a net around it and it worked. Although it'd be a pain to put a net, net around them every time. When you're out of here though, you could get in here and mulch, you could get in here and mow around it. It sure— it would look a lot better. I think just size for cattle panels, because you do it once and you're done. Cattle panels are taller. Cool thing about cattle panels is you could open it up and get in there. They haven't eaten that locust yet, huh? But what's to stop them from just eating the top out. See, this is just beautiful, but what's going to stop them from just— nothing. Nothing's going to stop them from doing that. This is not fun, this is not cool, but this is, this is farming. This is life. This is what it is, having problems and get coming up with the solutions and just girding up your loins and doing it. So we're going to reroute this fence. We've got one apple tree up there that we— tree we need to protect. In this paddock. We're going to string trim a new— we're going to redo this line to encompass— no, maybe I don't want to do that because I want to— I want them to graze all they can get. I want them to graze this. Oh, that's what we'll do. We'll pick this fence up, we'll just go around that, and then we'll go find a 25-footer or something. One idea— hey, when a tree's on edge like this Okay, we'll lose this much. We'll go around it with the net. Now when we come over here and we want to protect that beautiful tree, peach tree, we are going to have to take a net and come out around it and then back. We'll string trim for that too while we're here. Try to take some off the boys' plate, you know. They're upset at me. They don't want to do this. They don't want to go through this effort, but I'm like when you come out here with your sweetheart and she's so excited, she's like, oh, you have peach trees, you have apple trees, and you sit under the shade and the cows have just gone through and it's so pleasant and the grass is short and it's a hot day and you take a break under that peach tree, taste some of that fruit, and then give each other a smooch. Yeah, then you're gonna get it. I mean, I get chills thinking about it. The wood I'm getting is the wood that's in the Shed, correct? Yes, the nice furniture wood that is in the log cabin shed. The guys ran out of trim on our house. We ran out of poplar trim, so we're gonna— we have some maple from the land as well, so we're resorting to that. Okay, kind of hoping these nets work because just looks better. You could add mulch. You can see it's hard adding mulch in there. It's hard weeding them. It's hard to get to them. Hope this works. String drum on both sides. I think it looks good. I just realized something. Tomorrow it's going to be a problem because this would be open, so we really need to do this. Yeah, all right. Yeah, that's nice. I like it. Before we go ripping out fences— boy, this would be a lot cheaper too, wouldn't it? Wouldn't have to do any of that. I wouldn't have to buy T-posts, wouldn't have to buy woven wire, wouldn't have to buy posts. We had those, we didn't have to buy them, but we had to make them. Let's find a short 25-footers to make this small gap here. Well, I don't know if it's a 50— I kept saying 25-footer, they don't make a 25-footer. 50-foot versus 100. I don't know if it's a 50-footer. I guess it's probably 100, but I got a fence wrapped around it. I think I have an idea in here based off of this idea. So we'll just run the fence system out and back and then just keep going around. We're gonna have to try that this afternoon. I'm feeling like I'm gonna take more responsibility out here The kids are good, you know, down in the easier areas, but it's still kind of rugged up here and not quite set up. Uh, will that do it? We need to get this over or the cows will knock this off, destroying our auto shut-off. We got a load of trim ready to go to them. It's been a crazy morning. Brisket, I'm so excited for this beautiful one. Seasoned this overnight, marinated it. We've been letting it come to room temperature. I'm gonna put it in the Staub. Uh, where's the lid for this thing? 225. Low and slow with an old bull. We're counting on about 7 hours here. Don't got time to smoke, don't got time to tend it. That's the easiest way to do it right there. A roast, although it takes 7 hours, is like a farmer's fast food. Just put it in, go to work, come in for dinner. Timeout! Mic went out. I had no clue. I wish it panicked, but here we are. I'm going to give you a narration. We have the footage. We decided that afternoon to bury our 1,000-gallon propane tank. If I remember right, it's been a week ago. About a week ago. It went relatively smooth. We got it in there. I was proud of Jonah. He dug that hole and pretty much got it even. The problem was he dug a little further than I had said. He never heard me say anything beyond that, and we hit a water line. It would be that case. Turn the water off. We went to Lowe's, came back, it was the wrong part. Annie went to Lowe's for the second time. We started to cover up the tank, fixed it, turned the water on, and it leaked. So you can't just unglue things. It's back to Lowe's for a third trip. This time I get primer for the glue. And then come back, and this time I read the instructions and decide to wait 2 hours before putting high pressure on it. So that means a 10:30 evening check. 10:30 that evening, I turned it on, checked it. Boom! I'm a plumber now.