Keeping these food systems going

Happy day 18 of Grow 30. It's been 18 days since we've gone to the grocery store, probably a little longer because I don't think we went right the day before we did this. We've realized we've been dependent— most of you are Most of us are dependent of the grocery store. It's just, it's an apparent convenience. I'm not saying it actually is, because you have to work to get money to pay for that food, or you save a lot of money and grow it yourself, which is hard. Pick your heart, pick your heart. Go to work alone or grow some food together. And save some money. The boys said they want to come do this, but I don't see them. Oh, we'll get more milk, we'll get more milk if you let us do it. Okay, okay, well, where are you? Cows are the centerpiece of our farm, so this is the most important thing we can do in a day is get them taken care of and milked. Today is going to be a very interesting day because we are blending our crazy homesteading lifestyle, which is home. What's the first word in that? Home. Our home-based lifestyle with a bit of normalcy, normal people stuff, appointments, errands, town stuff. Hey, there you all are. Give you a little wake-up boost there. Watermelon popsicle. You guys grow that watermelon popsicle? The challenge today is living this normal life. We go to town, but also this other life where we grow and prepare— we grow our own ingredients. Here's my thing: we have a big breakfast at 8:30, then we have a hamburger lunch at 1 with, with veggie sides, not potatoes, because we'll have potatoes at breakfast. So we big breakfast. Eat like a king for breakfast, eat like a prince for lunch, and eat like a pauper at supper. When we get home, we'll heat up some of that soup. We have a plan. I think soup is going to be clutch for a busy homestead family. We had some leftover from the lamb. Oh shoot, we did a lamb roast with veggies, then we did a soup, and we still have enough soup left over to do it again. And it's all from the farm. And they tire a little bit of soup, so we're gonna let them get some rice. We are out of rice and it's gonna have to be at the grocery store, but they went and got those watermelon popsicles at the grocery store. I don't think they're on the same challenge. I'm realizing as I get older, my dreams are not necessarily their dreams. They want to go do soccer. I would rather us just all stay and be together, but I know this is a normal part of life. This is not a complaint. This is just a— just real— just being aware and realizing this is what's happening, and I want to be a supporter of dreams. That's our goal, so we're gonna do that. They've supported us and our dreams for so long, it's time to support them. Your first time putting up the little calf not in a physical cage, right guys? You think it stayed in the net and away from Mom? I'm not so sure. The fence wasn't hitting as hard as it maybe could have been. It was hitting at about 2K. I would really like to see 4K, but that might be plenty enough now that we don't have He-Man tempting the fence. Problem is, if that calf got through and to those cows this morning, we're not getting our milk. Now boys, you think— I've been getting 2.5 gallons. You think you guys can milk 4 gallons? Maybe. What time did you put the calf up? Oh, it might be 3. Yeah, because you put it up at like 6 or 7, didn't you? It was, uh, like 6. Big breakfast in the morning, okay? Potatoes, sausage, eggs. You got— you got that?

Yeah, 8:30.

All that's let out? Sausage is out and everything?

Is the sausage already made?

Sausage? Yeah, don't you have some of that sausage made?

Yeah.

What about the potatoes?

I think I used the rest of it.

You'll have to make potatoes.

Well, I think I used the rest of the potatoes.

Okay, you'll have to get more. There's plenty more.

Getting— get more? I have to do all the pictures.

Dinner, lunch at 1. Burgers, deluxe burgers with veggies inside. No potatoes because we would have had potatoes as breakfast. Okay, so big breakfast, medium lunch, and then a light dinner. We're gonna just heat up some soup and take it in the tumbler with us to the ball game tonight. Okay, so we'll pack paper bowls and all that stuff. Boys have a soccer game. Oh, their first soccer game! We're gonna take you guys with us, of course. It's gonna be fun, so let's support them in their dreams. Shall we spam the comments with Go Jonah? Go! I'm curious to see if those calves stayed away. Let's go see. You separated the calves, they stayed over. It's because there's two. Do you need somebody to— look how fat that one is. Yeah, do we need to stay here and spot you? No, see, they'll press it and they'll learn that it's off, and then they'll start pressing it even if it's on. 3 of these calves are vanillas and 3 of them are honeys. Really? The— all the ones with stripes, the 3 of the honeys have stripes on them, and then the other ones are vanillas. All right, that's awesome. It's so funny. Productive cows. Yeah. Okay, so I gotta show this. Oh my gosh, really? Okay, the best I could do is get this filled up. So what's the trick? What's the trick, guys? I don't know. You're milking them for all they're worth. Hold on, Gideon, we got to guard this. Do you have the pail? Yeah, you have to guard that like the white gold that it is. Okay, look at a very strong 3 gallons. How much do you guess?

3 gallons and a quart.

That might be about right. I'll say 3 gallons, although you're probably right. Verdict's in: 3 and a half plus almost a quart, so almost 3 and 3/4. I gotta let the boys know. Think about how much we're gonna get tomorrow. We put the calf up at 6 or 7 last night. What if we— we're gonna put it up today at 3 o'clock? Yeah, bud, look at that. What would you do with all that milk today? I went ahead and got rid of some of our drinking milk, skimmed it off a little bit more. And so that's what we're gonna do with the milk today. We're gonna make use of that skim. We've been laying off some cream, but not all of it. We haven't been too picky. And that becomes our drinking milk. It's not proper skim milk because we have— which skim milk is terrible for you, by the way. I then, before I give it to the animals, I get that little line off. That's what got us this cream. I'm gonna take that, which I've been more picky and gotten most of the cream off of this. That's gonna become a skin milk for the animals. That's gonna save us even more money. I got an idea. I can't wait to show you guys. Gideon, are you in the fridge? No way. Gotta always watch these kids. Dweeb, get out of the fridge! Gideon, are you in that oven? I hear him. Faintly, which the oven isn't even hooked up. Oh, really?

Really?

You ever look for you? I know where to look. Fridge or the oven. Project of the morning to keep this food system going: we gotta flip this garden, boys. From, from here over, we're feeling real saucy. We'll pull up the plastic, compost it, and cover it with silage tarp. Why can't we do it, plant into where the holes are? We're gonna get get rid of the, the plastic mulch because I'm afraid it's going to leak— leach microplastics into the soil. We're still thinking about it. It was phenomenal planting in the weed fabric. Phenomenal. Partly why we were so successful this year. Favorite part of weeding actually makes it all worth it because it feels like I'm just growing a pig garden. I'm not weeding, I'm feeding the pigs free food.

Remember our skim milk?

Here's our feed for tomorrow's growing hogs. How about let's just soak it in the skim milk instead of water? That'd be added nutrients and protein to their grain. Some pig feed for the breeder pigs tomorrow. It's a little bit harder to predict because we don't have much food scraps we're gonna have, so I don't know how much food they're gonna be needing. But let's just get, I don't know, 4 pounds going. I want to soak it, but by tomorrow I want it to absorb it all. But we could just feed that. Yeah, it'll be pretty soupy, but I think it'll thicken up by tomorrow, which is good, but not completely dry out. We'll look for that sweet spot. If it's too runny, it's not really gonna feed well. It'll start breaking down the anti-nutrients and it's soaking. What's new in the bakery? Oh, little, little sticks of bread. I like it. I like it. You did good. Good job.

I'm doing lemonade popsicles. Popsicles for us. We have so many popsicles we're making. I am recipe testing for Holidays on the Homestead Volume 2. It's coming out in November, so I will tell you about that when it's coming out. But I'm recipe testing a scone recipe, so gluten-free, fresh-milled, um, flour. I'm very excited. This is literally my first iteration of it. I have to have this recipe to be done by September 8th, so I have a good 2 weeks. And my plan is kind of to do it one every day until we get the right recipe. I don't want to do it like multiple times a day. Oh, I don't have time to do it today. I have way too much to get done. Um, all right, so I'm going to start on the pizza crust now. I'm going to start working on the millet, uh, or on the focaccia bread. I think I might actually make and for Kasha bread to go with dinner because we're gonna do soup.

Gonna make the burgers a little special today, doing the smoker grill. That's what you want to hear. Hear them go. You want cheese on your burger? One of the good things about homesteading is random Monday lunch, it's a barbecue. Hey, we gotta go. We gotta eat and run. I got PT. Leaving 20 minutes. The side of yours is there on top.

This is what they look like. I think they look pretty delicious. Everyone not tasting them is giving them two thumbs up. If anyone's wanting to know where this focaccia bread recipe is, you can get it at, um, Loopy Whisk. Just Google Loopy Whisk for kosher bread and then you can get that. So it's really good, but the, um, thing is like the, uh, it's called the cranberries, the cranberries, they like really abrupt. Okay, so my kids don't like the pecans. I'm getting that feedback. Josiah, what do you say?

Why is there a chicken? Chicken?

There's not chicken in it.

That's chicken. Taste the chicken.

Where did that come from? Did you put that in there?

Chicken?

There's a piece of chicken in it.

Be careful eating it. Who knows where it came from? Well, if it's turkey, it's real old. Aside from the chicken. Oh, that could be a little sweeter.

Take out the pecans. Add more sugar. I'm— that's what I'm also getting. I'm back from, uh, taking the scone to Ashley and Austin. They liked it. They liked the tartness. They liked all the things that my family didn't like. I'm still gonna recipe test tomorrow and see what happens, but it seems like I've gotten the crumb correct. I don't know what you call it, like the ratio of flours is— was the thumbs up, which is what I was more concerned about. But we're going to keep recipe testing and see how we like this. I've got my mozzarella on the stovetop. I've got a mess that I still need to clean up, and I'm gonna make like eating cheese, like string cheese, like for us to eat and also to make my tomato basil salad so that everything but the balsamic and olive oil will be from the farm. My mozzarella and my saltwater brine here. I did some like longer cheeses and then I just did a couple like flat ones that we can use in the tomato salad. My focaccia came out. It's looking good. The pizza crust, it's a little thicker than we normally do, but that's all right.

And, um, on errands this afternoon, it was PT and then it was Lowe's shopping for a freezer. One of our freezers went, and we had the He-Man beef processing coming up soon. We're selling tickets for that. Many of you have already gotten in. We only have a few spots left. Check that out, link in the description. I have a confession. Well, we're 18 days without going to the grocery store, and we're at the grocery store. I mean, it's a co-op, but it's grocery store-ish. Maybe Rebecca can explain. Day 18, we end up at the grocery store.

What? This ain't for me.

This is for them.

And I got toothpaste, which I needed.

Yeah.

And I bought cilantro for salsa.

Hey, I was curious, do you think that was local? It wasn't.

Then it doesn't count. I did buy some more cilantro plants though.

Okay, but here's our reasoning: she's getting cilantro because she's canning salsa.

Yeah, we didn't have cilantro, which I think that chicken was eating my cilantro because like I had branches and they were all picked off.

And then now that's what happened.

You clipped wings and all of a sudden the cilantro is growing.

So for our overall goals, what was the bill?

$66, and I didn't include the, the bars.

Wait, what was so much money?

Well, I did get some homeopathic medicine for Joe.

Oh, okay, okay.

So the cilantro was $12, but I got all the chews for my— I will get, because 7 quarts is 1 cup, they were kind of small, which is why I got 3. So I'll probably get 14 quarts of salsa for the $12.

Okay, should we give ourselves a strike? We should probably give ourselves a strike even though it's going to enable us. 14 quarts.

So the plants were $18 because I got some lettuce too, because like the chicken scratched up all my lettuce that I had planted.

Well, that beats a— it used to be what, $600 here to go to the grocery store?

$400 to $600.

Yeah, shouldn't have to come back.

When the garden was in, it was like $200. I have to say, I really enjoy not going to the to that grocery store.

It's nice.

I really enjoy it.

Just quit. Only in a pinch. Like, just— Hold on.

Like, well, I could have bought my toothpaste on Amazon, but I decided to give it to a local company.

Yeah.

Um, the cilantro I tried to find, I could not find it locally. I needed orange juice for my recipe testing.

Yeah.

Uh, the homeopathic medicine I could have bought online. I could have bought the plant starts somewhere, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, oh, you bought lettuce plant starts? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. What did you think? I bought like actual lettuce?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh no, no, no, no, we have some.

We can live without lettuce, but if the chickens get to it, we have—

you, girl, you live without the lettuce. Yeah, I would like to have a nice salad.

Yeah, all right, can you give me that face again? Would I suggest we live without lettuce?

Well, you live without it.

I do.

You just keep your chickens in, mister.

Lily, thank you so much for heating up the soup. How was the focaccia, babe? Oh, it's good.

This is my dream.

Cucumber sandwiches, slides with soup. Hey, how's her— her popsicles? They're good.

They're so good.

Yeah. How do you like them, Lily? Turn out nice? Homemade popsicles. Yeah, that's game. That changes things. You know, you have that strawberries and peaches, you could make it— yeah, strawberry peach popsicles. Is it good, Henry? Yeah, spicy. Yeah, it's good. All right, good way to end of the day. Happy day, y'all.