Last Chance for He Man, our Bull

Kind of looking around as I get going this morning. Happy day 12 of Grow 30. It's actually day 3 of retraining our bull to an electric net. The internet say this should take 1 to 3 days, so we're down to the wire here. Did he not tempt his fence last night? That's the question I'm dying to know, because if he didn't, that means he's ready to go back out and will likely not test this fence in the paddock. And if he did, we're probably gonna have to put it back out anyway. He's totally gone. No way, no way. He tempted the fence, that's for sure. I don't know what to do. He hasn't been tempting it at all during the day. These guys need wings clipped. I thought Gideon picked them up last night. They need to be marked before I can tell them from the older chickens. We have to we mark our birds so that we know who's who in age. This fall we harvest the old ladies. Well, we don't want to inadvertently harvest some young ladies. Can't do that. But it does look like we can consolidate the posse. We've got the com— the, the pasture posse. That's all we got going on. We're going to consolidate it, put it on the compost, which in the end helps the pasture anyway. There's so much going on with, uh, harvesting the garden and preserving tree crossies, it's honestly hard to keep up. So to do a better job by them, we're going to consolidate. All right, rain's a bit of a challenge filming and milking in the field. Let's see where the kids are at with everything.

Probably start chopping tomatoes because I would like to make salsa today. I also probably need to go through the peaches and see how they're ripening, softening, and if they're ready to be cut. Yeah, these are— these are nicely— I guess I'll start working on peaches first. It's gonna be— it looks like it's gonna be a rainy day today. It looks to be a rainy day today, so I'm gonna hopefully get A bunch done inside. I can go pick tomatoes at any time because I have the high tunnel. I do need to pick squash. I picked squash and I need to probably freeze some of it. Lots of inside stuff today. I've kind of not— I've been like really tired. Like, abnormally tired. So I was thinking that I'm probably— maybe this cold was more than just a cold and my body's fighting it off.

I don't know.

I feel, I feel good. I've just been tired and Justin's been really tired too. So I'm thinking that there, there's something to it. I don't know if it's mid-August slump.

I don't know.

I feel good today. I feel like I can get a lot done. So, so I'm gonna start on these peaches first. I've got to get the peaches out of the freezer and into bags.

You're up and at it dark and early.

I know. I think it's because I went to sleep so early last night.

Yeah.

I'm gonna get these in the freezer. And then I'm gonna move on to my next task. I'm trying to use less parchment paper. When we had that toxicologist come on the podcast, if you haven't looked at that podcast, I would highly recommend it. We were talking about originally the pesticides and things of that nature, and then we went to just in life in general. Anyways, there was, you know, she's like, I don't really trust, um, like silicone stuff. So I know parchment paper has that on it. I use really good parchment paper. I do, when we use it. But she's like, we just don't know enough about it. So I'm like, all right, if we don't know enough about it, I'm gonna You know, just pull back. We still use it, like we used it when we made pizza. I'll still use parchment paper because I tried to use, I tried to not use parchment paper. That did not go well. Um, so yeah, I think that there is a time and a place to use parchment paper. I think that maybe it's overused. That is that and why I have to scrape the peaches off with a spatula. Next up is I'm going to use the chopper to chop tomatoes for salsa. I would like to can salsa today. I might even can sauce, so we'll see just on how the day is going. I don't have anything planned to do today to leave the farm at all. I don't have to work out. I don't have to do anything other than preserve food. I have a bunch of tomatoes up here. Some of them are going bad, so I'm gonna get started on these tomatoes.

For the first time in a few weeks, I feel like the cows are under enough control the boys can take back over it this morning at least and milk. And Lily wants to show me what she's been doing lately on her horses.

So Blaze got out of his paddock last night. He said he'd rather goes under or over it.

But he wants his greens, so we came up right up to the south side. We're gonna get breakfast to Austin and Ashley again this morning. They just had their baby, our editor. I'm gonna see if we can't— we have the pork fat, we have our ground pork. I've been putting it in the mixer, but do I have to? Just another dish. Just another thing to get out, another thing to put away. Can I just mix it in by hand? Don't know if that's a pound, so— Hey Austin, everybody— I mean, my word is one thing, but I'm partial. How is this breakfast as someone who was normal more recently than I was? It's been a while since I've been normal. You were normal not too long ago.

Well, right now I would like to make coffee for Ashley. I'm going to make her a homemade iced latte. Yesterday Justin went to the store and bought one for her, her favorite. So we're making them breakfast again this morning. Look, he's up. He went to sleep last night and he slept almost 12 hours last night. He's feeling good. He told me, I slept good. Did you sleep good? Yeah.

Making a little swill for the, for the, uh, pigs. Little, uh, cabbage core, potato peels. They're not gonna like the potato peels uncooked. They will like the cabbage core better if it's cooked.

Now I'm gonna put that in the fridge and let it cool. Henry really needs to has to go see the baby, and so I'm gonna go also to see the baby, and then I'll resume my food preservation. But one must see the baby first. I guess everybody's coming to see the baby. Yeah, everybody but Gideon. Gideon is on a lesson, and we'll go back. We'll just have to go back. Should I have another baby?

Yes.

No. I don't want to have another baby, so I'm okay if they say no. I do love that they love babies.

Everybody just went to see the baby. Really? Really? Okay, thanks. All right, somebody's got to stay and work on this.

What are you doing? Hey, I brought, I brought everybody minus Gideon. Josiah, you want to hold the baby? No. Come on, you gotta hold it. Lily's like, give me the baby.

Hi!

We need more seating in here, huh, Jonah? Look at that baby, he's so cute.

All right, some cabbage we harvested a bit ago, put in the fridge. We're gonna do sauerkraut, but I want some green ones. I don't know, there's something about it. I guess they're all the same, really. But did she clear out the fridge? She did. Here's one. A lot of junk up front. Maybe buried deep we got something. Gotta flip these garden beds. We need a dry day. It's been so rainy. I believe it's been raining for 2 weeks. While we're here though, I hear the— I hear the pigs munching. You know, what was that story in the Bible? Was it Mary and Martha? Where one was working and doing the right thing and getting stuff done, and the other one was sitting with Jesus. He basically said to the one that was working, come on, come sit down, have a visit. Okay, I should probably go visit. I feel like I'm missing out on something. All right, let's go. We're gonna squeeze into this little house again.

Oh, look who showed up! That's a fun trip.

Good job, Waylon, stepping it up, vacuuming, putting in the work, being a big brother, helping Mom out. Just so I can—

okay, he does not— he's not happy.

Just so I can stop begging us.

Who, the baby or Josiah?

Yeah, who's— Baby's fine.

Josiah's not happy, so I'm like, I'll take the baby. Hey, I am in nana training, okay? You guys have been— No, me. I am not me. Big mama.

Call me me.

Meemaw. I'm a nana.

Back at it, here we go.

Stayed longer than I was supposed to. But it's fun. Everybody came, even Gideon. Gideon came and we were all— 7 of us were over there for a minute. It was fun. I've not gotten into the high tunnel yet, but I'm not too worried. It's overcast, it's not going to be hot in there. Once I get the coffee drinks, then I for sure will get the cucumbers. My milk in my blender. I'm gonna put in protein powder. And also collagen.

You don't need to actually get swole.

She's not going to get swole. What are you talking about, you dork? I'm going to put a little bit of cream.

What is it?

What is it?

Look at that.

Oh my— that looks like Oh my gosh! Can I have a taste? Wait, no, you can't have a taste. This is for Ashley. Oh my gosh, look at that marble effect! I did— so it's a protein coffee. Oh my gosh, it's beautiful! They loved them and I love serving, so that was fun to do that, to treat them to fun drinks.

Let's get Minty, our little heifer we don't want bred, back up in the 2 acres with a buddy. So let's go get that set up, and then we're gonna attempt to put He-Man out. He's still going at the fence. I can only keep him in that little space, I felt like, for 3 days. So maybe, just maybe, that's too much pressure on him in there and he's pressing it. And once he gets with everybody again and, uh, more room Maybe he won't press it. You think he's learned his lesson? Yeah, probably. Well, I hope so, or else we're hunting another bull. The bright side is we need meat. All right, Josiah's mowing a paddock. We're gonna go— let's go see about getting water coming off the mountain. Could be full, overflowing. Like it is. That means it's leaking somewhere down through there. It's taking its drain. That means, that means it's going down this water line and leaking somewhere. While we're up here though, we can get it going in a lot faster. Got it going down more into the weir. Already hear it. That helps a little bit. It's enough to fill this up. Use as much as 50 gallons a day and it filled back up before you need it again. About 200 feet vertically up from the valley. It's gonna be a lot of pressure coming down through there. It means it's leaking somewhere, or else that tank would be full. Which is interesting. We have a leak here. Does that mean there's a stoppage down there, or is it leaking as fast as we're gathering? We aren't gathering it very fast, but this has got water on it. Well, there it is. Okay, you can't have that much because the tank is, uh, tank's empty, so there can't be that much in there. That might be such a bad leak. We're losing it all right there. Okay, it's shut off right here, meaning it can't go down. So that's why we don't have water down low. Hear that? That'll do it.

Oh yeah, we got some zucchinis here. Look at this one, that's a nice looking one. If you let them get too big, they're still usable, but they're just not as good. Oh wow, there's a big one down here. Oh, look at this, this is a gigantic zucchini right here. I completely missed that. Now I'm going to get me some tomatoes. There's still so much out here. I have way more than I need, which is awesome.

I love that. Next task, we've got to herd all the cows over there in order to get Mindy over there. They're not responding to the machine, so we're gonna have to do this by hand. Much better. It's funny, these guys, you can't herd them out of their paddock. Is it moving? A couple snakes in there. There's one right there. Oh my God, that's freaky! Whoa! I forgot you, didn't I?

I forgot you.

I'll have to come back for you. Those are two we wanted, right? Yeah, they cut ahead and got in there. We're training them as much as I feel like we can. It's gonna be 3 days this afternoon. Oh, he showed you, buddy! Kick that tire. I thought is maybe he mans now with a bigger paddock. He's in with everybody else. He got a shoot shocked a few times in the training. Maybe, just maybe. Crazy, they're going right to the door of it. They want to be back in their paddock. Of course the heifers missed it. You'll get to pull the trigger when we harvest him. Sure, he's going if he keeps doing it. Really, if we could just get him through to breed Vanilla, we could separate him in the pole barn or something, and he'll probably grow out of this. It's just an immaturity thing. It's a rebellious teenager thing. This, this is what a teenager— all right, let's go around the fence, make sure all these are stamped in. Yeah, we got a He-Man over here. So far he's content. I do not like that one bit. All right, well, we'll hope he's back with the ladies. He's had some training on the fence, I hope. There's your guard back.

I just tasted it. It's pretty delicious. That's where I got— making the soy scum. Got my salsa on in the pot heating up.

I've got my water.

The recipe that I am using is Ruth Ann Zimmerman's recipe. Henry and I went into the garden and got cherry tomatoes and basil. And we came back in, we made our most favorite salad. But wow, we were there, the, um, salsa finished.

How's salsa going?

It's going, baby. We're doing it.

You're with it, girl. This afternoon I just did a session with Lily for her channel, Austin Play a little bit of that. Also, I got your baby. I got your firstborn baby. Hey, you guys ready to go put up some calves? You're fit. You look like you got the right fit on. You got the farmer's outfit. All right, let's go, Winnie. Don't you camp out in there. She got trapped in there last night. How's she gonna be guarding the farm if she's under the house? Look at this bundle of boys. I'm gonna get the work done now.

Can you say hi to your dada? You say hi, dada.

I just mended things like that, and we, we went from hitting 0.5 to 5. He-Man's been in He's been in all day. I think he's happy to be back with the ladies. I've went through and made sure every one of these is hard into the ground, so if he picks one up, the other two will catch and this won't fall over. Hey Gideon, he's got to stay in here. We're gonna have to shoot him in the head.

He's gotten three strikes.

I know, he's lucky. It's hard to replace a bull. Lily, what are we gonna do tonight? We got to do something besides raw tomatoes. We're doing tomato burgers. This is a classic we learned from Darcy. Want to spruce up a burger farm style? Let's do this. Frying them fries. Do you have a fry cutter or do you cut them by hand? I cut them by hand. All right, pop the little mozzarella on there, pour some tomato sauce on top of it. There it is. We haven't had tomato burgers in a minute. We're actually gonna have to do some things with ground beef. Because that's all we have left of beef. We only have ground pork left, so we're gonna have to— but you know what the good thing about ground is?

It's very versatile.

There's a lot you can do with it. Happy day.