IT'S OVER | How Chickens Help Us Put Our Garden to Rest

Excuse the noise from the laundry. Okay, we've got to go catch some chickens. We're gonna need them tomorrow.

Come closer.

We gotta be quiet because people are asleep. Oh man, wait. I'm moving y'all and talking to y'all at the same time. I'm about to do it again. I want to stop doing that. I want to lock on when I talk to you guys. Okay, that works. I want to get 1% better every day in my filmmaking, and watching the vlogs lately, I'm like, I'm walking and talking too much. So I want to lock on. Me and Ming. I'm not going to say anything while I move you. Me and Ming. I put you guys on this thing. And you're steady. I'm steady. Steady. So this is what I'm gonna do. Everybody meet Dan. Dan, show something of yourself. Dan's my editor. I'm gonna tell him anytime I'm talking alone and I'm not locked in, Dan— oh, look, I'm about to do it. I'm about to do it. I'm about to do it. I'm about to walk inside. I think that's gonna be okay. Sometimes, but I'm doing it too much. So instead, I might do something like this. This is kind of creepy at night. It's a long way down. Okay, I can however walk and talk this way because I'm a little more focused and steady on the shot. You guys see those rascals? Okay, 4 or 5.

Damn.

If you see me walking and talking, let it run for a little bit and then cut it. That will punish me. Oh, I just did it. I'm stopping. Don't cut it, don't cut it. If I go longer than— how about that? If I go longer than 3 seconds— I don't know if I can talk and catch these chickens at the same time, so maybe this is a better background. Let it go on for a little bit. After 3 seconds, cut it. I'm punished, they're punished. It's like in school. It's a discipline effect where everybody gets a result and it's high pressure on the offending person. It's just me, Winnie. Hey, Winnie, it's just me.

You're doing a good job though.

I'm also gonna need these guys. Did you notice that little thing running around during the time-lapse? I was wondering, is that a chicken? What was the chicken? Good morning! Good morning, little hen Marie. There it is. That's what it was. Little Sabina. Look, kitty!

Is Seth coming back?

He didn't act like he was coming back today, nor the waterproofers. I about did it there. I about started walking talking. Let's start— let's do this instead. The waterproofing job is probably gonna continue on another day, hopefully soon. Moley alfalfa? Are you sure? I think it'll be okay. I think it's just a little bit. I've always wrestled with making this a good show. I've been wrestling really a lot since January. What do I do? What do I do? What kind of shows do I make? I want to serve the audience in the best possible way. And then I look back to 2019 2019, 2020. And then I noticed something. You guys really like those videos. There were a lot of views, like over 100,000 views, 200,000, 300,000 views sometimes. I also noticed those were like 20 minutes long. So how about let's try it old school, long, and about more things, capturing more things. It's work, but I've never been afraid of a little hard work, and you guys are worth it. No wonder we have to sweep every day. Look at how much that is just one day.

You wanna know why they have more views?

Why's that?

Because everyone goes back and watch them.

I thought about that. They have been up longer, so these never go down. You go watch that, you go watch old ones. Yeah, for your motorcycle. Good morning, G-Dog.

Good morning.

Which one?

The dinosaur eggs.

Okay, all right. He's been wanting the toys, but it's been changing every 3 hours, so I said, you still want it tomorrow, this particular toy, then we'll think about it. You— hey, you got to go get your egg basket, bro. Hey. That's how you get stuff in life— work. I'm excited about this. We fixed the ramp pin yesterday. We can move it by hand. Oh wait, I should have went that way. Did you shut the door back up? Okay, I forgot to tell Lily not to let the chickens out. Sorry, forgot not to tell you. Hey, did you notice anything missing? Phyllis, our prized milk cow. We sold. Getting another one tomorrow. I think he notices his mom's gone. Calf's been behaving itself lately. It is in a corner, it's a little harder to come right through a corner to get to mom. The updated Chickshaw, the Chickshaw 3.0, has actually been doing really good. We are missing a leg here. That's because I made the leg too long and it doesn't lift up enough when we pull the side-by-side, and it got knocked off. One reason these plans have taken so long to get out— I'm gonna get these out to you guys for free. It's prototype-ish because this is a new addition, this extending arm. The other thing is we want to do it really right, like Polyface Designs. That book plans like that. Look at this fertilization bomb. All right, we're gonna borrow their fertilization power plus their chilling and put them on the garb.

Free the birds!

Billy, don't go to the— no, don't go to the dirt. Get in, get off the dirt. Why? Because it's hard to keep the house clean when you're walking in and out a filthy mess. Yes, Papa! That is a garden bed we need to rest. The chickens will fertilize it and get all the weeds tilled in, taken care of. We're gonna get our chickens some more chickens, some help, but I just saw that Mark came here for our mower. We're just ground out right here. Yeah, I'll show you what happened. See that metal plate? That must have rubbed on it. Yeah, this right there, it's missing a— it's a rod that comes up to here and has another one to keep it off of. You think we ruined the battery? I'm hoping that's what— since it's melted right there. Yeah, more than likely that's what's wrong with the battery. Hopefully I'm gonna start it and see if we can't get a— it'll It'll start if you jump start it.

Yeah, I can get a—

can we get a battery? And a battery. Get you fixed up. We got to get going. We got to get the All right, Dan's almost caught me there walking. We got to get going, we got to get chicks over, and I'm afraid the calf is going to get to the cow, and that's our only milk today. Lily, come help me catch these birds. Look like you only let big birds out, that's good. Some of them are little. Is that one Kai? Yeah, all right. We do have one mascot, Kai.

We're catching Kai.

Allow them one mascot. Well guys, why don't you make all the breeders mascots? Because we're not gonna slaughter them. Well, eventually. Eventually we do. We'll never slaughter Kai. We'll let her die in an old age. I don't know if that's good or bad. It's probably a disservice to the poor bird. Lily, can you spot me?

Guys, I could use some help.

You got new ping pong balls?

Teddy put two dents in them already.

Yeah, what are you gonna do about that?

I don't know.

Teddy, no. It's not hard to destroy them. I know. Well, they weren't expensive, so that's good. Colorful ping pong balls, where'd you get that idea?

The internet. I'm trying to come up with activities.

He likes it. He was pitching a fit and we showed him those balls. He was like, oh, he's fine. Oh good. All right, we gotta go. We gotta get these— I'm afraid that calf's gonna get the milk. Whoops.

Do you really think—

Get in!

Come spot the calves! Despite our best efforts, the calf did get to her. We just waited too long. Yeah, she's got no milk in there. So, boy, it doesn't take them long to nurse it out. We got a teaspoon of milk today. You excited about this cow coming tomorrow? Yeah, I'm excited. We're gonna have to train another cow to our system though. Oh no, look, 2 chickens coming back up. 3. This is where they were. How do they know that? Because that garden is like behind the house. And there's a fourth coming. This cow is coming with a calf. I don't know if he— he's probably not gonna milk her. She's got to leave super early, uh, so maybe she needs milk when she gets here, or maybe because she's got the calf on her it'll be okay. Don't know if we'll just put her out in the field with these guys. We're just gonna kind of see her temperament and stuff. We might have to kind of put her in the stall downstairs, train her at our stanchion.

It's coming tomorrow. She's coming tomorrow.

She's coming tomorrow, tomorrow morning. What are we gonna do about these chickens though? I don't think they'll go back. Now I'm trying to decide what's more important— rigging up a pig panel catchment for this calf tonight or doing something about these chickens. We have those cages right there. Let's catch some birds. Oh, you caught one! Good job! Almost. There you go. You're pretty good at that. Hurry, quick, quick, quick!

I had my hands on it.

There you go. Oh wow. Oh nice. Our axle's coming out. That's a common problem on my Shaws. We're, we're fixing that. I was saying earlier about the plans for the Chickshaw. I have like 25 plans, and I think the best place for them all eventually is in a book. I guess you guys wedged into there didn't work out that great. So, but we've gotta— we're gonna figure stuff out like that. We're gonna work out all the kinks. I bet that's where they got out, crawled right under. Pin it down. Now to the source of our fence, see if it's that. So what we're gonna do here is take off this and put it on that, and that's telling us what it's coming out.

9.9, 9.8.

It could be this line too. That line, yeah, we're losing some stuff. Look at that. I don't know how great that is. We can cut it down and do it again. Try it now. See if just tightening that up helped.

What do I do?

Put it on the tester.

10.0.

That's probably what it's supposed to be. Uh, that ground, it's awful dry under here, and maybe it's not getting a good ground connection. I think 10.0 though is probably all we're gonna get. It's probably not bad. 10.1 helped us a little bit. 10.2. Let's test it at our first cutout.

I'll go test it.

We do need our little knob. How do you order knobs? It goes down through here in a buried line, I think. So cut that off. Now test right here. That should be straight to the fence.

9.9.

So we're already losing. No, there it is, 10.0. So test it right here just so— yeah, and it's probably going to be like 8. Test it right here. Yeah, it wasn't connected to the fence. Yeah, 8.0. Okay, so now we got 8.0 here. It's lost 2 through there. That probably means there's a— there's something hitting there somewhere. We shouldn't lose that much.

I bet we need a deeper grounding rod, Papa.

I just know because—

oh, it's not even hitting.

No. Okay, ready? Now that should probably give you the reading of the whole fence system. Okay, dang, 5.7. Give us a good test on the fence just so I— I mean, it's good enough if it's 5-something. Okay, what?

3.2.

One thing I've noticed is it's not mown here. Is that because our mower's out? Yeah, we do have string trimmers though, guys. We're losing like 4K right here, somewhere on this net. Let's go in. Trying to get some margin in my life so I can stay tidy. Put stuff away from this morning. Josiah said our maggots are growing. We purposely put this grain to attract maggots.

See it?

Yeah, I think we can do a lot better than that.

Just let them go for a little bit longer and put it in the sun.

I think we're on track. It's sun.

Put it in the sun.

I was thinking shade. How long has it been? 4 days? 5 days.

Yeah, just feed them a bucket.

We could just have a line of buckets going. All right, what are y'all going to be doing?

Digging. Digging.

You want to— you want to get a couple GoPro shots of your progress?

We're going to dig out all of this and put a little peduncle right here and dig all this out. And so far we've dug in this whole thing out.

Getting ready for some errands today. Willie! Some people wondering where Willie's at. Well, there he is. Rebecca might be upset at me for calling him a he. I'm pretty sure Willie's a he though. She thinks he's a she. But anyway, had a little accident and We're gonna take him to the shop. It took a minute to settle things with the insurance company, that kind of thing. Uh-oh, water on the seat. Wait, what are you gonna do?

I don't know.

Okay, can you get me a towel real quick? Let's get all that stuff up. Oh, some old socks. All right. You know, I hope this, uh, I hope it fits. Is our trailer big enough? It's a big machine. Ding ding ding ding!

And besides, this is down here.

All right, we are ready to go, Mr. Henry. You ready to go see tractor? Okay, I kid you not, Henry woke up from his nap saying tractor tractor. You're gonna like this. We're gonna go to the Kubota Tractor. Stop number 1, Phipps Stone for the siding on our house.

First stone. Oh, we hit the—

What happened? Rebecca, did you hit a mud puddle? I guess.

I don't know.

All right, you got your—

I do.

What'd you narrow it down to?

Um, the Biltmore Select, Ashlar, and shut the door for mosaic.

The nation will be on the left.

Kubota USA, here we come! Look at that. How you like that, Mr. Henry? You a tractor driver? He wants it to go. Next stop, the West Asheville Farmers Market. I'm going to take the family out to eat at our friend Ben Holtz food truck. That's it. We're not ready to eat yet. We're gonna check out the farmers market. You guys want blueberries? Sure. Let me find you another good one. Got 4 of those.

He's trying a plum.

You want to try a plum? Oh no, is it sour?

They're probably not ripe yet.

What are you gonna do with those flowers?

Keep them.

All the kids want hamburgers with their buns.

Okay, look at this. Wow, look at the carnivore burger, all animal. Becca got extra lettuce for you, babe. A burger I didn't have to make, and I don't have to clean it up. Burger number 2.

It's still—

you make it? Maybe, maybe. He's slowing down. What about you, Tank? You gonna make it?

Yeah.

Burger number 2. Everybody give me your best review. Root down, grass-fed. Yep, Tuesday nights at the, at the West Asheville Hartsville Farmers Market. That's the best grass-fed burger in town. Did you boys eat your burger?

I finished mine.

I crushed it. Both of them crushed.

Hey, I finished Jonah's.

Jonah, you couldn't finish yours?

I gave it to Lucas.

Oh, well, that was nice of you, buddy. Good boy. It's early evening, but the day ain't done. We got to get this calf separated and that fence hot so that calf stops breaking through. Uh-oh, starting to drizzle. Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to put you guys under Sally. Maybe you can watch from here. Hey, are you soaked? Yeah.

Can I show you a hairdo?

I'm soaked. We're getting it done though. We got this fence tight and we got string trim all the way around. Cows are there, sheep are here. We're gonna put the calves one more paddock away. All right, 45 minutes later.

Oh, that's not how long it took.

Are we ready?

I hope.

If we're not to 4, we probably— we need to go get pig panels. 5.1. 5.1.

Woo!

We did it, guys! And it's wet out here. It is wet out here.