I Turned My Old Chickens into Schmaltz

We harvested our fat old lady hens, and today I'm turning them into smolts. Also in the vlog: first time cooking and eating Argentine pork and beans, building a fire pit at the guest cabin, mixing my own whole grain chicken feed, and trying venison. Jonah's first hunted deer, eating venison for the first time. Let's go! Well, our chicken survived. We heard a coyote last night. It looks like our sheep survived. So long as they stayed in the net, they're good. We didn't hear Winnie. Hopefully she was sneaking up on it. We have got an exciting lunch plan. We've got a Brazilian sweet potato black bean pork roast. Oh my gosh. Oh, there was a Brazilian that came through our line. I said, how do you cook pork? She said a lot of turmeric, but then I looked up a recipe. There's not any turmeric in it, but this looks good. We'll have to try a turmeric recipe later. Time out for that though. Breakfast, starting off with a little bit of over-easy eggs and then gap soup. Give me that gap soup all day, y'all. Put a little poultry fat in there, forgot about that, and some bone marrow. No, I think they look really nice on the grass growing around them. I think they'll be really beautiful. Smoked bacon, so I just put Redmond's smoked salt on it, so I'm gonna use the bacon grease for the next step. What do you got there? The backstrap of the deer. All right, our hunter providing for us. You guys go milk. I'm gonna finish this. It's 8 o'clock. It says it could take 3 to 4 hours. We want to eat at 12. It might be 1. It's okay to have a late lunch. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be the last big meal of the day. We have lots to do, no places to go. Lots to do. I can cook the chicken. We're gonna start cooking the fat old lady hens, babe. And we got lots to do on transforming our guest cabin. And of course we got the, the most important thing, right? The meals. Need to train Harriet. Need to mix chicken feed mix. Whoa, what was that? Well, it all hits at once. Can't cry over spilt milk, but can you cry over spilt cream? You can cry, you can cry over spilt cream, right? It's probably time to get that hand churner. Gideon set up our butter to churn. I had set it up all night. Culture. The rod is bent so it vibrates. Well, it vibrated off the counter. Not just off the counter, but into the pig's food, into the chicken's food. I feel like I need to get the soup going before I can't pick this up. Okay, I gotta get this roast going. I made a mistake. I cooked the— this is the real cooking show, y'all. Interrupted by spilt cream. Made a mistake, I put the onions in. I should have done the meat first. Let's get the onions out. Let's get these meats going. Those are sautéed. Now for the fun stuff. Try and drop the bay leaves in here while I'm thinking about it. 2 cups of chicken broth, 4 medium sweet potatoes, or in our case, 2 sweet potatoes, 6 garlic cloves. I could have sautéed that, forgot. Bell peppers, we have some frozen. Could use more, but that's what we have. Put the onions back in there. Looks like a lot, it's like 2 to 3 cups of broth. I've just done 2, so maybe we should do 1 more cup. And I don't want to mess with this, trying to find it. We've been freezing them by 2-cup increments, so we'll just use some water. And I forgot the black beans. That's 4 cups. 2 cups of black beans. Wow, this is a huge meal. You sure? That's a lot of black beans. Way too many. We did what it called for. We'll just adjust it next time. I could lose our scraps too, or I could go through it by hand. I don't want to lose another thing, so let's do that. Make sure we don't have any glass. Okay, those were saved. All the glass I pulled out of there. That would have been rough on the pig's gut. We're still picking this up. There's big glass in there. Let's get all the glass up and then we'll get all that liquid up that will not go to the animals. Feel pretty good though. The, the soup's boiling or simmering now. Have to mix our chicken feeds. Adam's probably over there at the cabin. We need to go check in on that, get projects going over there. I wanted to start these fat old lady hens too. I need to do that early because they need to cook 3 or 4 hours. Detour abated. Let's get get these chickens going because the stove can work while we're working, but we got to get it going. Hey, how'd the milking go? You guys are so quick. Did you guys train Harriet? Oh, all you gotta do to train Harriet is get some alfalfa, tie her up to the side-by-side, and act like you're milking her. Jonah's gonna smooth out the stairs and plant seed and hay there. You can plant seed and hay on the sidewalk. Don't get it up. Spread it out there over that compacted area, and then we can plant there. So grade it. Does that make sense? And then maybe need to scratch that area so we can plant seeds because it's compact, either with your machine or get the water drag this afternoon. Just get the waterer and water it, and it'll, it'll fluff up immediately. Water, get the little spare thing that we use in the garden and run that on it for a little bit. Sprinkle it? Yeah, the sprinkler. Okay, but can you get it ready to be planted first? But sure. You can't plant on compact soil. Yeah, you, you act like just watering it down is going to soften it up. A compact soil doesn't work that way. That water will just run off of it. It's so compact. Don't plant until I come see your grade job. Is that okay? Thank you. Come get me. Don't pull a Gideon and not come get me for the next step, that milk situation. He was trying, he was trying. I did have to send him away. Because I didn't want to lose my Christianity. I don't know if it was so much as losing that cream or the time or both. What can be your job? Smooth out the, the back with a rake on that. The what? Where is it? Well, that won't take you very long. It's over at Mr. Cheney's. Is it out? It's out, it's out at the— it's out at the root cellar. And then take a rake and do the backyard of the cabin and then take those pallets of rocks around there and make a big fire pit with it. 1, 2— how many do we have, guys? 3, 4, 5. Let's do overwhelming. Let's just see how that goes. We'll do another more tomorrow. What'd you say? What do you want me to do? Oh, I want you to I want you to rake out the compost in the back smooth, then build a fire pit from the leftover rocks that we had. I'm gonna get this fat off of here. We don't run a real fatty soup, but we do definitely want to save that. Should dry this poultry fat, just put it on that tray and we're gonna flash freeze them, and then we can put them in soups or render them later. We're in this mode, we have things set up. We did get 5 in here. What is half of 26? 13. Nice. And we have a mathematician here. Did Mom really say you could have this?

You just been like, "What is that?" Oh, she said you could.

She said you couldn't.

I'm just gonna save it. I bought myself a little bit.

Here, since we're already in the motion. Don't drink a lot. These are for Mom tonight, okay? There you go. This is the remaining ones. My future self will thank me. My today self, my this afternoon self might curse me, but future self will be happy. Look at this. This is that poultry fat. Turning it into smokes. Yum. Fat for my soups. We got 3. This one's already simmering. These need to come to a boil, then we'll simmer. We're gonna make a meat stock, cook that until fall off the bone, and then I think we're gonna vacuum seal it by the— how much chicken we eat at once, guys? 5 pounds? 5 pounds. 10:45. I haven't even done the chickens. Things have got ahead of me. Come on, Josiah, go look at it right now. I'm gonna go look at their job. I'm getting so much pushback from my boys. All comes down at once. The truck's here. Yeah, I'm in a tricky spot with my Boys being 15 and 17, this ain't their dream. They're part of the family because while they're under my roof, it's their— they're under my dream, aren't they? And, uh, but they're getting older now. They're becoming more friend-peerish. It's not discipline at this point, it's just ouch, you know? You don't want to make them do anything. It's where you want them to do it out of their heart and, uh Just not sure their heart's there. I need to check their job at the cat— I, I couldn't just leave and check their job. That's what they want because chickens haven't eaten. Uh, I couldn't just leave the, the chicken without getting it started. This is a hard phase, transitioning from boys to men. I just don't want you to think I have all the answers, all right? I don't want you to think we're without our problems, okay? That's not fair to you guys if you think it's all peaches and cream over here. It's not for you, you know. Can you, I guess, arrange that? But maybe scoot the empty one back. I did too much this morning, cooking and starting the chicken, and I need to train some of the bigger kids on this. And that's it too. Get in. Just can't do it. We got some things we'll work on with that, but for some reason— step 1, feed. Step 2, put hay in the box, clean it out. Step 3, check the water. Check 4, secure the gates. Just doesn't— just doesn't want it. Before we go to the cabin, let's— hey, did you get it going, Josiah? Okay, we gotta get these chickens moved back. All right, the annual clean out. You do not have to clean out these chickshaws very much. We have a 1-inch wire mesh.

Why are there rocks?

And most time falls through. I don't know. All right, can I go check on— get Adam started?

Sure. Yeah.

And Lily, we're gonna shoot for a 1 o'clock lunch. So we'll go for another hour before we have to make the rest of it. I get thrown off because I start today happy and excited to be doing this, and then when others aren't, it just clashes the mood, and I forget every day like a goldfish. How many scoops did you give him? I gave him like not even a scoop. Okay, tell him I'll give you 5 scoops. Put a little bit more in and you're done. The cat ate it. It's over. Whoa, now the cat's eating our boughten honey and premium yogurt. Jonah, where are you at? Jonah, they're not done. They want checked. They're not done. All this area, please seed it and hay it. This is looking fantastic. Wow, good job. Okay, you gotta seed and hay it. You seeded this. You could see the sidewalk too, Jonah. Yeah, the sidewalk. I was thinking about it. It really doesn't need hay just because I think so water's gonna be on it. If it rains, it's gonna wash all this dirt away, so just please put some hay on it. I'm glad you feel like you can share that, and I hear you, but the soil will wash away and the seeds will dry up, especially in this dry— After this, can you water it down, sprinkle it down? There should be a hose over here. This looks so good, Randolph. Gideon, did you get your mom help? Did you wash your hands before touching that apple? Yeah. You done spread out the hay. We're not supposed to. Yeah, it said— I said we were going to put down the fire pit. You want to go get the machine and we'll put that closer and put the rock pit on? Yeah. Well, Papa, look how thick this piece is gonna be. Yeah, if you want it to be like, what, 3 feet on the inside. Isn't there a metal hammer around here somewhere if you want to break them? I don't think you need to break something like this. Yeah, but this is our one. Watch. Is it working with your Thor hammer?

Okay, we dropped it on that log and it didn't break.

Rebecca or Lily is not answering.

They're in the house chilling.

Are they okay?

Yeah.

What were they doing?

They were not doing anything dangerous. They were just in the back.

I'll finish putting that up.

Can you move that rock there?

Sure, Josiah, grab that end and put it on this so one end's on that and it'll break easier. If MrBeast came and offered me a million dollars, I could have one phone call, but they gotta answer. I would call the beautiful one. So I'm glad MrBeast isn't here offering me a million dollars for that because we would have just lost Jonah. We got to get this side too. Gotta check on my ladies and the poultry fat. They're both there. Hey, we missed out on another million dollars. MrBeast offered me a million dollars, but the person had to answer the phone.

Call me?

Yeah, twice. You okay?

Yeah, my phone must be on silent.

I had it in my gut I should check on you. Oh, I've never made schmaltz. What do you think? Yeah, you think we're there?

Maybe some of those pieces are still fat.

Got fat on them. There's a little bit of fat on them. Well, we can call it. It's not like— I mean, okay, let's call it because we don't know. Cheesecloth strainer, just filtered it. Cheesecloth over a mesh. I threw the cheesecloth away. This is exciting. I've never— we've been homesteading almost 20 years, I've never made smolt. I feed those chickens to the pigs. I know, but I ain't feeding that to the pigs. That's the best animal. Old animal is the best animal. We're starting late. 30-month-old steers. We like a grown lamb. We're gonna get to eat our ewes pretty soon. Need to replace those cows. So how exciting is that? And that'll take some pressure off the butter. When I want more fat in my soup, I just scoop out some of that poultry fat, right, Rebecca? I'm so excited.

It's so great.

It's a new me. I'm a new me. You are.

You have become a different person.

And that, that other chicken, we're gonna cut up that fat and put it into the sauce.

Oh yeah, I like it.

And that's gonna be some good chicken sauce. You're gonna want some old lady chicken sauce. You can't buy that. Hey, you ready for me to check on it? Done. Well, let's go see. I have to delegate. And Josiah, you need me to check the job, and Austin needs me to check the vlog. That's inviting. That's exactly what I envisioned. How's that? You guys would be interested in coming, having a fire pit here? We're thinking about opening this up for farm experiences. Fill out their survey down in the description. You think we ought to be the first to spend the night in it? Come over here and glam, redeem it from the time we had to live in here. It was all dark and dingy. I'm gonna knock this out before lunch, finish tidy this up, and we're good. We got a woodshed. Uh, what is that, countertop? Butcher block, 8-foot pieces, 4 5-foot pieces, 2x4s, 2x6s, plywood. We're actually— oh, here they are! Come on down. You're still going at it, huh?

That's another thing that needs to happen on Saturday night, dishwasher cleaning.

Okay. And sink cleaning. Jonah, how's your venison coming? It's coming along.

Smells delicious.

Could you help me get that out? Shred this pork. They start wrapping up lunch. Look, it's a homesteader's Christmas. Santa Claus just came. Premier One in the house. Look at this. Give us a tour of this Energizer.

Whoa, this is—

I think one that you can run on a house. Yeah, you can definitely plug that in. You plug it in through here, right there. Just run it out. Yeah, holds the little clips in there, which is pretty neat.

You're not dragging away.

Now what's this for? Is is this to charge our batteries? I think it's to run it off the grid. So if you just want to— if you're near a house, you just plug it in.

Okay.

And what else? 2 batteries. How many joules? It's 1 joule. That's going to come in handy when— now, as we want to put the sheep separate. Yeah, on the 2 acres. Okay, this is awesome. Thank you, Premier Wine. They got a whole other box of stuff, but wait to open that, guys. We'll make an unboxing video or something. I want a full review. Somebody bite this. Adam, how is it? It's amazing.

So rich.

It's good.

That's really good.

It's kind of soupy, isn't it? There's too many black beans, isn't there? No, everybody likes the black beans. Everybody likes the black beans. There's not enough sweet potatoes then? No, there isn't enough sweet potatoes. Okay, so I'm gonna get a bit of a gap soup first. I probably don't need to fill up on that. I haven't had black beans yet on my intro refeeding, but let's try this. That, that poultry fat ought to still be— it ought to still be warm. I'm fine with this gap soup. Good, I put my heart into it.

Mama, I made like a lot.

Of course, I'm gonna take some of this pork. You just all put suits and ties on, some glasses. Uh, I put a little gap style. Sour cream, raw egg.

Let's taste this.

Oh my, oh my gosh, that's good! Yeah, it needed a little more sour— a little more sweet potato. The beans are good. There's not too many. We're gonna try it again. Just knocked out shot the first draft of the 30-plus day fasting documentary coming to YouTube soon. Never-before-seen footage that'll drop first on Abundance Plus ad-free and then on YouTube. Well, these fat old lady hens are tough. They're still so tough, and I don't want to deal with this this evening, so we're just going to cook it slow all night. We We were gonna make breakfast sausage tomorrow. And what about this rain? That's not in the forecast. No, it wasn't. Um, maybe we'll make— well, we'll be dealing with this meat tomorrow, and then the next day we'll make the breakfast sausage. Trying something a little different. I'm gonna try to do my evening chores now before supper so I can relax. A daily Sabbath, if you will. Building a daily rest. Feels like I've been going from pre-dawn till after dark, day after day, because the farm work will never end. We've got to make sure we just do the most important things. We would have had our teens with families meet up, y'all. We have 18 families signed up. Whitteens! Look at this. Jonah has cleaned this area up so nice on his own accord too. He's picked up the mulch pile. He's cleaned up out here. Get ready for this meetup. I'm excited for this meetup for our own family. I'm excited it may be for something we do in the future. If this goes well here, could we do this worldwide? We coordinate it, host it, find the host, connect everybody. I always said if somebody finds somebody because of something I've done network-wise and they get married, I will not— I will not only become— if you want me to become ordained and officiate, I'll film it and you'll get a wedding video. Henry will be the ring bearer. We'll come to you. That would be pretty special, right? Okay, now we have all this grain. Let's think about how to do this, Gideon. Instead of mixing it every day, my idea— this is, this is all the, the ratio of mix, okay? So this is the correct percentage of everything. It doesn't say, so it's the percentage of oats, the percentage of wheat, the percentage of peas, and If we mix it into that empty bag, it'll be— it'll already be mixed. We want to mix it daily. You don't want to put all the oats in and then all the wheat. You want to put a bag of oats and then a bag of wheat in the proportion— in their proportion. I don't know if this was worth it. We'll see. Well, maybe I figured it out this time. Won't be as hard next time. 12 wheats. 3— I'll save you the trouble. 3 times we're gonna do 1 pea, 1 barley, 4 wheats, 2 oats, and half a bag of alfalfa. Okay. Oh, I didn't realize we were on this pig feed. Oh my gosh, there's probably 200 pounds in there. Okay, that's a lot of work. Now this could store forever because it's whole grain and we can sprout it, so we'll see. It's 1,000 pounds. 10 pounds lasts 100 days, nearly 3 months. Probably be more like 2, 2 and a half. Maybe that's not so terrible. It's taking a good 30 minutes, maybe an hour before we're done. We should get some and soak it now because it's, it's whole grains. It'll soften it up even more. That can store for 3, 2, 3 months. Doesn't lose any nutrients because it's whole. We can sprout it and increase its feed value. Might be worth it. We'll see. Wow, I'm impressed you're even getting the bags in. Yeah, Jonah will be very happy. The last of commercial mix. We might be getting ahead of ourselves with eggs. Wow. Can you try it at least? Sure. Normally, uh, Intermittent fast, skip supper, but I'm gonna try some beer for him.

Oh wow, up here has been getting more eggs than down there.

Yeah, those are some old ladies, old-ish ladies. No, um, those just are new, new layers. A little light supper. Now I probably didn't have— what do you call this, the backstrap? I probably didn't have the backstrap, but I don't remember Venison being this good. I think we got the best piece.

Yeah, I have rice.

Jonah, they gave you the best piece.

I hate meat.

Yeah, sun is going down. Blue lights off of my computer. I got in a good journal, something I could share with Instagram too, on being aware, saving the moment. It's about me visiting the graveyard the other day. Just realizing I'm gonna be there, but I'm not there right now. So I'm thankful for that. We got the faux candles going. Henry's got his little lightsaber. It's amazing how quickly we have all adapted to this. Our body's going down with the sun.

Come on down.

It especially includes our eyes. Feels so natural and right. Early breakfast tomorrow because we got photographs. We've got early milking. I hope to see you guys there. Happy day.