In Case Switzerland Calls

6:30. Look, this is your last call. I'm not coming back in. Y'all need to be out there by 6:45. I'm getting the milk stuff ready. Hey, why aren't you going? I thought you'd be going. The idea is to be milking at first light. Happy 21 days of Grow 30, y'all! 3 weeks. I can tell you right now, this isn't just a 30-day experiment for us. This is very doable for us. We pulled the plug on the grocery store for this 30 days, and it got us in the groove. Big thing it did for me was to be— it's made me be way more diligent, efficient, prudent with the harvest that we already have. We're milking at first light. We're checking on our chickens, aren't we, kid? In, and we're cleaning out the nests by the box so we get nice clean eggs this afternoon. Made a deal with the boys. They worked yesterday. If you don't get up, you turn in your cell phone until you do. That's a day's loss of a cell phone. I really want them to milk today because I want to plant a fall garden. Honestly, I'm burnt out. It's August. I'm not sure I would have done that had we not been in these 30 days. There's just something motivational, accountability about it. You weren't camping in here all night, were you, hon? You're supposed to be guarding the farm. Oh my gosh, call the Inquirer! You like that phone, huh? You like that phone? Tell me if you see the wood cellar. You know, we really kind of should, shouldn't we? That's not as sexy as planting new seeds, is it? All right, it's just this. You got to constantly be on it for your future self. You got to constantly be planting, working for the future. Good job getting up. It's a little bit of grain. To absorb all the liquid in this food scraps. Was the root cellar flooded? A little bit. Only a little bit, huh? It withstood that storm. To fix that root cellar, yeah, we have to dig a hole and find the drain pipe, get it unclogged. Last night we had a big rain, had 1 inch, and water was gushing out of here, the gutter line. Is stopped somewhere in there. Oh boy. I did notice something though. Our corner edge to stop water from going down— that's the side of the root cellar— it was just overflowing. The downspout here was right here. Once we put it over there, we had less overflows, didn't we? Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't overflowing. So it makes me wonder if more was going that way and down that one, less in here, and then that wasn't overflowing. Maybe worth it to see. Otherwise we're digging this up, and there is a water line going to the septic from here, right here, and then there's the septic. Either find that spout and trace it, that line or replace it. See how bad the root cellar flooded. Okay, not too bad, not too bad. We do have a problem though. I don't feel like it's cool in here. I don't feel like it's earth cool. Come on, Gideon, let's go. Let's see what happens if we just keep the water diverted, if it works then. Time to get pig feed. Potatoes are getting buried. I guess they're ready. It's been so wet, I'm surprised we're getting a potato harvest. They like it somewhat dry. Okay, I guess we're ready to harvest these potatoes. Yeah, they've, they've, they've all died back. Let's grab some of these weeds and take them to the pigs this morning. We got this mean old weed we want to catch before it goes to seed. Has it gone to seed? I hope not, because then we'll have more. You can almost see a line here. This is new ground. We have a lot more of those kind of weeds. And this is the old garden. That's a testimony of us keeping up with the weeds in general, putting down new compost every year, and this being a brand new tilled garden this year. Don't forget, we doubled the size of our garden this year. Doubled. Somehow I'm still in the mood to— the, the thing I want to do today is to go and plant the fall crop. Sucker for punishment. That's what I wanted to do today, ask for more. No, that's actually going to be pretty easy if we plant cabbage. We're going to plant cabbage, beets, and lettuce, grow it till Thanksgiving, make sure it's covered during frosts, and then keep it covered all winter. We'll have a winter harvest garden. We won't have to deal with bugs, we won't have to deal with weeds, just harvest all winter long fresh from the ground. It's going to be— I love the winter harvest garden. No preservation required. Look who's joined me. I love that apron. All right, you found us some potatoes. Look at this, you got us some potatoes. Got my little helper today. Gideon's out though, he's feeling a little under the weather. Henry, we're gonna have to make up for it, okay? 30 degrees warmer than ambient temperature. It's still active. We got to get with it because that's going to be our compost for the garden, and we'll put some of that out to the pasture. Hopefully we can put a lot of it out to the pasture, but we need to get that finished. So that we can flip the, the, the crop gardens before winter. Wow, thank you for showing me that. I got more to do than I have time, so I gotta be really smart. Oh, Beauty mentioned you want to get these for your mama. She mentioned yesterday She'd like to see these old tomatoes get hot and put to the pigs. So that is priority numero uno. Vamonos, Enrique. You Enrique? When I hear Enrique growing up in the '90s, I think Enrique Iglesias. How's that song go? Something I will be your hero. Austin, feed me the line.

That's it.

I can be your hero, baby.

Hopefully I remember I gotta pull that line on the beautiful one.

I can be your hero, baby. All right, come on in, Rick K. Let's be heroes. We're gonna be her hero right now, baby. We're gonna pick up these old tomato plants. Always working smarter. Why start loading it down here and be heavy at the end, and then you got to come back? Let's start down here and be heavy at the end where we're going. All right, this is fun. You get to pick up tomatoes, you don't have to be careful with them. I can be your hero, baby. I got my basket full of tomatoes. The boys though have brought the milk around a ton because we put the calves up yesterday at 3 PM. We've got 1, 2 gallons plus that. We might be over 4 gallons today. I love your writing on there. You want to do that one? I love it. How many we get? 1, 2, 3, 4 very strong gallons. I'm happy. What are we going to do with the milk today? We're going to make cream— or not, not cream, we're going to make butter. How much cream we have? We want to at least get at least this full. It's half a gallon, it's no problem. We may even have more. Yesterday's milk, we'll get the cream off of it. Next up, we got to go get our passport.

Mom's a little stressed. Watch this.

Hey. Yes? I can be your hero, baby. Thanks.

I can be your hero, baby. Everybody needs heights. Heights, all right. Henry, let's start with Henry.

Where's Henry? Henry, come here.

I don't know what color his eyes Or does he have blue eyes?

I don't think they're blue. 40 inches is 3 foot 4. Wow, big 3 foot 4. We slammed some breakfast. Now we've got to go get our passports because got to keep those up to date. You never know, Switzerland may call and say, hey, I want you to come have a speaking engagement over here in this amazing, beautiful country, and we'd be like, okay, we got our passports, let's go. Hopefully we get our documentary, the real Pizca, of our bike ride into the Banff Film Festival, and then we'd be going to Banff, Canada. How long will this passport be good for him? 10 years? 5.

Everybody but Jonah. Jonah will get a 10-year and Josiah will have a 5-year.

You got Henry's hat? Yeah. You look so nice. You look so nice. Look! We got everybody in the car.

And we're on time.

It's been a minute since we've had everybody.

Yeah, we don't go places like this. This is nice.

And we're back. Let's share the passport. Port photos, shall we? Henry, you did so good! Now you're not allowed to smile, so that's why they look like a bunch of grumps. Lily, Jonah, Gideon, and Josiah. Handsome bunch of kids. Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, our film will make it into the Banff Film Festival and we be going to Canada. Right now? Nope, November. We're We're gonna find a way. We're back, but I got an acupuncture appointment for my shoulder, which I'm happy about because I got beat up in PT yesterday. Boom, bro. Lily, I cut up your meat. The beef tenderloin is 135, the pork is 145. Okay, just cook them as steaks. That's the quickest way. Next up, supper. We gotta think about supper. We found some roast, so we're gonna have eaten all our beef roasts, our steaks. We only have a little bit of ground beef left, just in time for Tuesday when we process He-Man. And I may have found the bull. I may have found a bull in Abundance Plus. One of the community members just posted he's got an American Milking Devon bull. And I just got the evening eggs. It's a full basketful, more than enough for a day. I think we're out of this egg basket to egg basket life. All right, we have an abundance today. Happy day. See y'all next week.