It was More Than I Thought

A little over 2 hours this morning to get those pumpkins out of their britches before they outgrow them. How long do we have? I mean, they're still okay, not mostly yellow, they mostly look good. How long do I have? I don't know, but what I do know is they could have been planted days ago for optimal success. Let me be free. Gideon, you think you can do this? I go build these garden beds, yep, empty the dishwasher Load it. Yeah, my man. 2 hours is enough to do 150 feet of garden bed. I know it's going to be very close. First we got to get these turkeys. They looking good on feed. I'll give them a little bit more. For the first time ever, we had to get 2 batches of— it's our second batch of turkey because we had enough casualties in the first one. We weren't gonna have enough. These guys are looking good. We have one little hiccup. Actually, I couldn't sleep this morning because of it. And that's— the boys have the track loader out at a neighbor's job. They've got a grading job. Said, how am I going to get this compost out to the beds? And I said, you know what, I'll just lay here, I'll think about it, I'll figure out a way. I thought wheelbarrow, probably couldn't do it in that time crunch with the wheelbarrow. Then I remembered Dad's old tractor, Lucky, so named because we'll be lucky If he starts, it's a 50/50 chance. Lucky day! Jonah, Jonah, can you come help me? Somebody's got to spot the chickens, not let them out while we let this in to get the compost. Josiah, Josiah, can you come help me? If I could get both those boys to help me. I'm busy. Look who I got. What happened to your bike? He wheeled it and it went over backwards and he busted it off, so we just cut it. You dweebs. Yeah. All right, look who I got. We might get this done now, right? Where are we putting it? On the beds over there. So I'll spot you. If I'm not here to open this and watch them, these birds will get out. They don't have an internet, they're bored, they're ready to go and have a good time. Hey, come on, come on. Hey. Everybody move. It's a little different than that track loader. Listen, I'm thankful for this tractor, but listen, if I could only have one homestead machine, it wouldn't be a tractor. If I could only have one homestead machine, it would be a track loader, skid steer. Hey, all right, don't make it to where that it falls in it and then get some more. This is so hard, and then it gets top heavy when you have a load. We probably could have stood to turn this a little bit more. All right, there we go. Hey, it's so hard to push it. Go up with it so it'll fall down in the bucket. I tried, it looked— Whoa, don't do that! Maybe that's just all that happened. I just did it. I don't know if it holds as much as the track loader either. Main advantage of a tractor though is the PTO. It's the device on the back that could run haymaking equipment. Really, you couldn't run haymaking equipment with a track loader. No PTO. The other advantage of a tractor is the tires. They're not going to be as hard on the yard or pasture as the tracks. We need to do the other side of the bed. We've done this side. Okay, we have broadforked— well, we have two rows broadforked, half of those rows finished. We've got to finish bedding these two beds, plus we got one more whole row. Hey, wait, wait, you're gonna hit the corner! I can't have you do that. Hold on, back up. This thing is Horrible. It's terrible, isn't it? Hey, what you doing down there? I'm making the— I'm making the bed. All right, well, let's, let's empty this thing and make the bed here, one shovel load at a time. You want to go grab a shovel, Josiah? Look at these strapping young boys. Y'all are coming in clutch. I'm pretty sure we're going to be able to do this since y'all helped. How was I able to get you guys to help this morning? Oh, worked yourself out of a job, out of your own job. We've about closed this gap between these two areas. That bucket isn't as big as the track loader's. We weren't able to get it done with one load, so off to get another load. What's wrong? What happened? Okay, we're lucky, tractor started back. We don't like— I don't like to turn that tractor off. Josiah, you want to replace the damaged corn? No. With that before it gets too bad? Why not? It's all— all of it's damaged. No, it isn't. No, you still got good corn. You look— we lost some up in there. I think you spray weed first. Take it from the bucket to the— if you would bring the wheelbarrow and the big Henry cart, then we could do that. I have it. What's your idea? We can dump them in. You can line all 3 of them up and pour it out. That's the only way I'd want to handle something twice. I have a pet peeve for handling something twice. Jonah has this idea: line up the wheelbarrow and our 2 little Henry carts, dump it in it. That, that's too far over. All right, we got these over here and then we're like, this is not a good idea. It's, it's hard to get the material out of the— you have to shovel it out of the— you dump it. Yeah, but it's hard. It's hard to dump it on these rows. So let's just do what we know. Two beds complete-ish, maybe a hair more. We've started on the other one. We're not looking good. We're not looking good. This project is taking more than I suspect, which happens sometimes. Most the time I'm underestimating. I think we got 35 minutes. Let's do this. Let's just do this. Let's broadfork. Mom's gonna plant these rows, so that's something. Josiah, I'll broadfork and you start hauling wood or, or soil. Load number 3, 15 minutes to go. Hey, hey, you're hitting the corner! Not enough time, but we'll get something. Got almost a half a bed. Beauty did get 2 beds planted. It was a valiant effort. Sometimes you accomplish your goals and sometimes you don't. We only got half a row left though, and we'll be done this afternoon. Been getting some work done. Jonah just called me, he needs me to check his site on a construction— or a first— his first grading job. I wanted to show you guys this. Hang tight, we're gonna go look at that. That's gonna be exciting. Brooder plans. Sorry, this is— is this lit up good? That's okay. Brooder plans. Sorry, it's not in color. My printer does not print in color. This is the plan for the brooder covers for troughs or totes, depending on if you want to have 20, you know, raise less than 25 chickens or up to 100. We're going to recommend the troughs and then the covers and the lights and everything you need to get started with brooding. I'm bringing this up, it's Christmas in July, day 3 of our Homestead Builds print launch. So we've got to go to print. We need to know how many people want this book. We've got our Kickstarter count. Y'all are good. Uh, we need— which, should I wear boots or shoes? We got bonuses if you order this week. This will not be available again until we go to print in December. If you want to— until we have the print edition. If you want to ensure you get a print copy You gotta order it now because we're gonna print based on demand. We've got bonuses if you order by Friday, 8:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. July, it's— you know, a lot of you are putting away your spring garden, your summer garden. It's maybe starting to slow down a little bit. It's, it's, it's, it's a great time to build. It's a great time to build, and it's never too late to get going with chickens. It's never too late to create a chicken coop, upgrade your chicken coop. Pretty Shawl there. Raised beds. We have plans for all this. The raised beds, the compost corner. You could build this permanent chicken run. The, the Pretty Shawl. Just in this front yard, there's 3 of my 12 designs. Of course, we got the Chick Shawl, produce drying rack, all those cool things. All right, Mom's visiting Grandma. Catch that sale right now. We're offering some things we're not going to offer again. Homesteadbuilds.com. Want a sampler? We We give you a chapter for free. We give you the chicken tractor design totally for free. Sign up for that at homesteadbuilds.com, y'all. Josiah, I think they're— well, it's well time for a move. What do you think? They have mowed it down. Cooking some steers. My bad. One, I totally blanked on filming that job that Jonah's doing. Jonah's doing a great job out there, so proud of him. Every day is a celebration on the homestead when you're having steak or homegrown chicken or Boston butt. Every day feels like a celebration. Steaks turned out nice. How's the steak, Dar? You're a steak girl. Delicious. You're a steak and potatoes person. I am. Look, we got our Broccoli that we preserved, zucchini, onion. You already ate the zucchini and onion. You got the steer from the land. It's all from the land and it's quite the variety. Bang! We won, man, we won. Look at that tomato. I know, I just picked it. Is it supposed to be orange? Yes, I thought it was a yellow tomato, but obviously it's not yellow. Get it over with. You just slice the tomato and just eat it straight up. Every day is a celebration on the homestead, isn't it? The meal, happy day.