Is this the Dream or Nightmare

This was a mistake. My shoes are gonna be 18 degrees. It's 18 degrees this morning. Happy day! Welcome to another day in the life of the homestead dream. Or is it the nightmare? It's 18 degrees outside. Good morning, you're here early on this cold day.

Yeah, I had to get here before the sun come up so this laser would show up.

Okay, did you level it?

I got some marks on them posts. Okay, I gotta get some more dirt. Hook this laser. Okay, shoots level. Yeah, but where I wound up was that was right on the ground.

Okay, all right, and then this one needs to go to that mark. Okay, Rebecca this morning trying to find motivation.

We're in our dream realized.

You know, it was once our dream to have 2 family milk cows. So Rebecca, that she said to me, you know, I liked your reel you did on that. I don't homestead for kicks and giggles. This isn't fun to me this morning. And she said, I think you ought to talk about something else. I'm like, oh, this is going to be good. She usually has pretty profound ideas in those moments. She said, is it the dream dream. Sometimes when you realize the dream though, you realize it's not a dream, it's a nightmare. Living the nightmare. That's a lot of truth to that. Is it the dream or nightmare, Jonah? Wait, you're gonna need more than a sweatshirt.

I'm going right back inside.

My phone said 18 degrees, your mama said 16, Randolph just told me his truck said 17. We'll go with that. It's 17 degrees.

That's okay, won't be cold for that long.

I'm going back. A little cold exposure, good for you. We have skim milk next to the farm sink.

Okay.

And as soon as you feed this, go take it right back upstairs. Okay.

I mean, that's where I'm headed.

Is the homestead a dream or a nightmare? I don't know.

Right now it's not so great. In the summertime it's really nice.

All right, it's frozen to the concrete. Wow, there you go. The homestead, a dream or a nightmare? I don't know, it's kind of cold right now. Jonah's saying his idea worked. Anything to make water chores easier in the winter. Holy smokes, the chicken's waterer is filled up. It's not frozen. Turn off water heater. That water is not flowing yet.

It works.

We could do an Everflow water over here though.

It's not broke, don't fix it.

And then we wouldn't ever have to fill this back up though. So you have to count on the hose to fill this up right now. I thought the nipples might still be frozen, but they're not. 17 degrees, they ain't frozen.

I'm so happy I don't have to do that anymore. I've been suffering for 8 days.

Well, you're going in. Yeah, definitely. Wait, what? What? I don't get a break.

They switch Cow chores.

Electrician coming tomorrow to set up our thermostat so we can get that wood boiler going. We burn, burn, and split. A more efficient burn. I'm thinking about not splitting. It would take us a day of chainsawing and working it up versus probably 7 or 8 days. I feel lazy though. I feel like, am I just taking a shortcut and being lazy? And the beautiful one said, well, there's something to be said about working smart and not hard. So let's try it. If it'll burn these logs and keep it up to heat. Looks like the Everflow waterer on the cows has met its match. 17 degrees. I think it'll thaw out. We'll definitely thaw out this afternoon. It's going to be 50 degrees. Must be some sort of somewhat stagnant water. Nature keeps going though. Stream remains unfrozen. One great thing we have going for us, we don't, we don't milk in the barn. We milk on pasture and we move them every day, so every day it's a different milking spot. We got a big across-the-farm move today. We're gonna let He-Man out. Hopefully they don't wander too far. So far they're going in the right direction. We gotta go down, down the road, way up to the end of our pasture. Those cows have taken a wrong direction. Not that way, guys. This, this way. Billy, what made you come out here to help us? It's like 18 degrees by now, huh? Well, I don't know. All right, in the frost. You know what's interesting? You're sitting here milking And when you're getting that milking— I mean, the milking part of the chore is fun. I mean, it's this stuff. I mean, setting up the net, getting all the stuff ready, tearing it all down when you're done, moving the nets. The milking part's fun. I'm sitting there milking and I'm looking out over a hurricane and I'm thinking about what people have told us, and you can open— we have to build a retaining wall out from the pole barn so that the material we stack back in there will stay, because all we have is sort of rocky material. Yet the flood washed— I mean, there's where the creek was. It washed all this out. We have a ton of material downstream that we've been piling up, needs to come up.

We're gonna have to put dirt.

Yeah, we will. That's exciting, huh, Blaze?

Look, his head is not high.

Yeah, and we had a grader come out here and consult Uh, it's gonna be so expensive. I mean, we're gonna have to spend all that money on that bridge. I don't know if there's a way around it, but the retaining wall for a— yeah, I don't know if I want to buy big concrete blocks. I mean, that's the best thing to do. It is. We need things this size to line up along where the old creek is so it would help hold in this material. This washed down, and we have stuff this big, but I'm not sure our machines will move them. But guys, The hurricane relief is not in the budget. I mean, we just remodeled the house. That's in the budget. Get out of debt. I find myself coming back to this saying during this hurricane repair. There's something to be said about using what we have. Well, you know, I, I was even thinking that about the, uh, you know, the wood splitter, as opposed to like renting a nice fancy fast a firewood processor. Let's just— we have a wood splitter, we have a mini axe, we have a chainsaw. Let's make it happen. So I guess what we're gonna do— I mean, optimally you'd be big— you use big boulders as an alternative to concrete blocks. Machines won't carry that size of boulders. We're just gonna get rocks that our machines can handle and just do with what we have. So that was my thoughts while milking. Got a lot done while milking.

I think those kids They're getting that milk.

I was hoping to film that. I think they're getting the cows over there. That was the dream, have kids working on the farm with us, and now they're so capable. That's beyond our dreams. Now the nightmare is they, like us, don't always want to do this.

Look at this.

There you go, you found your paddock.

It's incredible that this grass is this long considering it's December, right?

This is a heck of a stockpiled field. We did a good job. This is our—

bad it doesn't extend all the way to the house.

This is our best pasture.

We don't need garden.

Now do you see where he's getting that soil? Yeah, yeah, I agree. Tell your mom that if it were up to me, we'd be eating milk and eggs and meat. If it were up to me, we would have 10 horses. That one's not supposed to be in there. He's not going to milk them, is he?

No, I don't think so.

He's flossy.

They do not like it when the herd gets separated. We normally keep the steers in a paddock behind them because we let the cows, our milk cows, have choice grass.

That was one desperate cow.

It was. He knew exactly where we were too, didn't we? Didn't it? I mean, we're way over there, guys. They were way over there. There's the yellow original farmhouse. They're about right there. We forgot to set up the cows' water. You have to do that in the afternoon at this time of year. This is what you have to deal with if you don't have an ever-flowing water or your water line broke. Yeah. Oh yeah, and we realized our water line to that whole field is gone. The hurricane took that. You're not lifting nothing. Get it from the bottom. All right, ready?

That's not bad.

That would feed them for a day, wouldn't it? Yeah, half a day.

You need a whole thing.

We have enough garden hoses that we can just snake it out here from the house. Okay, this ain't half bad. This was a cliff just beveling to the creek. It's not half bad. A lot of this is still soil. We're having to build up the bottom of our garden bed up because the garden is on a slight slope, but if we want level, we got to build up one side. See, it's starting to shape right there, right? It's a couple of feet up. We're having to build it up right here on this end. Look at this, guys! I don't know if you should eat that. Where is that from?

Did it ice? Frozen?

Oh, don't Don't fall in, it's icy. It's ice. Look at the ice, Papa. I got real thrown off when I took myself off this job, although we are gonna have to split stuff that big. We just probably won't have to split that or that. But I think I have a vision. I have a new vision. We're supposed to get the wood chipper. Okay, Reverend's Farm had said You know, so a lot of people have been asking about this because they said they were going to get a super chipper. That's been several weeks, months ago now. I don't think that's happened. I mean, I haven't called them. I mean, the lady that was here representing them is now gone. I just— I don't know what's going on. I'm not going to count on it. We've got to do with what we have. There's something to be said about that. Well, we don't have one, so we're gonna rent one, okay? And I think that's the one. I'm not going to change my mind on that. Wood chips are clutch for rebuilding the soil that Helene took away. What we're going to do is work up any trees that are down that we're going to wood chip so that we'll be ready. It's $400 a day, $1,200 for a week. So if we can get this done in less than 3 days, we'll save money. We've only got about 1 hour. That's something. I mean, that's a tank of fuel. The last thing we want is that wood chipper sitting around. We want to run it for 8 hours a day. Okay, that wasn't even much of a time lapse, was it? It was so fast. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8 trees just boosh.

That too was super fast.

It's going Really good. We're gonna cut this and then he can grab the tree and put it up here where we can get at it. I'm sorry if these time-lapses suck. They're so fast because that's not taking us that long, I believe. A track has come off the track loader. First time losing a track, uh, Randolph?

Yeah, I didn't know what that racket was, but something sure wasn't right.

Do you know how to loosen the tension, Josiah? Yeah, but that's a lot of work. These boys have done this before, Randolph.

I believe they have.

They got a trick. What's the plan, Josiah? Pull it back on. Pull it back on, he says. He did it! You guys are getting good at that. Proud of those boys. We're making a dent in this. 10 more boxes leaving, going to my assistants to be shipped out. I'm signing every one of these in this first shipment. This show comes out on Wednesday, I believe, December 11th. You've got until the 12th. You've got until tomorrow to get your order in. Get a signed book. You gotta order by the 12th to get this in time for Christmas. Get one of these before they're gone. They're gonna start going fast here as we come closer to Christmas. They're gonna get gone. Yeah, keep us busy and they're gonna be gone. You're only wanting one. Well, I want my garage back. Rebecca wants her garage back. We don't lack much. We're gonna be almost done with this pallet today, and then we only have one more pallet. How about this? Every once in a while I'll give a happy day, so you get the gold ticket, so to speak. Confirm with farmer friends. They're coming early Friday. It's gonna be cold, you know, it's dipping. It's gonna be the coldest morning yet. They said they'll just dress warmly this afternoon. Jonah was right, he said that thing needed to be full for it to last the day. They flipped it, they're probably thirsty. Let's get this water going. Let's see if there's not too much impossible damage. We gotta get the cows water. Obviously, it also affects their milk production. That would be inhumane. That's first priority. I need to put the calf up, build up milk for tomorrow. The boys are on errands. Okay, broken right here. Oh hey, doing a little better than I thought. It's here, only needs a hose clamp. There's my end. Pig port. We got a water hose for the pig port, so then from the pig port, the black line— not much. It's just stalled out all the way up against the house. It's dark, always still frosty over there. Maybe 15 feet. It's a ridiculous size torch. I couldn't find our normal size torch. I think it'll work. You gotta heat up the plastic in order to get the fitting on it. It worked. Before I can, or before I should hook up their water over there, I should make sure these sheep have some water for the night. Then I think I'm going to need that auto shutoff on the troughs. Here we go. I think that'll fill it. That's filling for the sheep tonight. Got everything. Jeez, wait. Okay, there's one more disconnect right here. Water's gonna come through. I'd say water's coming through. Back to the house. I was counting my— I was starting to count my chicks. Shoot, we're gonna run into supper time here. We got about 15 more minutes. I need to grill some pork chops. Can we do it? I don't think so. We're gonna try.

Fixed!

I'm pretty sure that's it. I'm pretty sure we're ready. Alrighty, they're thirsty. They're lining up. We gotta fill up tomorrow's trough too because it's gonna freeze tonight. Gotta fill it up in the afternoon and everything's thawed out. When that gets full, I'll transfer it over over. I'm 5 minutes overdue and that trough ain't filled up. We still got to set up a net for— put this little— where she at? That calf up. All right, let's get the net up. Ran out of battery out there, but I did get the calf separated, water ready, The cows are— cows are going to be in a good place. Pork chops are back on the menu. Yes, I love them.

Very nice.

We got our pork back. When she has pork chops, she's got to have this gravy. I gotta have apples and onions. Oh, we got collards from the farm too, babe. Mom makes gravy, she has to have rice. A little side note, we got the Great American Farm Tour tree that was in Maple. Supper was amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your time and energy watching these shows, your attention. We appreciate it very much. I wish you guys the happiest day.