Late Frost Threatens to Kill our Garden | Acting Fast to Prepare

Well, it's that time of year. We got another call this morning from the US government. This time it's our 10 extra turkeys. Here you go, G-Dog. Hey, you gotta leave the toys behind, my man. Come on.

Can I bring this big toy?

No, you can't bring that. I'm sorry, just your snack. Let's get one for Lily. You want to go too, Teddy? It's not a bad idea. Your shoes are right there, bro. Where you going? What's wrong with your snowshoes? Oh, don't let him in. We want him to go. What are you doing, Mr. Brown? Come on, let's go with your snowshoes. Let's go with your snowshoes. Come on, it's a chilly day. Or not. You could do your town shoes since we're going to town. Josiah, will you go start the Suburban for me?

Sure.

Lily, did you do your chores? Yeah. Oh, oh, I thought Where'd you get those snacks? I think you must have gotten Gideon's. Gideon, you can have these. All right, there you go. Josiah, did you not start the car? Okay, before we go, we have so much to do. Well, we got to get the chickens over. Oh shoot, somebody's out. Yeah, how'd that happen? That's the box, must be falling over. We got to move the pasture chickens from there to there. Oh, it might be on. It should be on. I just stepped over it. Uh, wouldn't be farming without problems. You can't just quickly go move the chickens. One's got to be out. It's a pretty big move. Yep, they got out through the nesting box falling down. Okay, Josiah, chicken ninja master skills to the test. Come on, help me catch this bird. It's a lot easier with friends. How are we gonna catch this bird? How'd this one— that's not a fat hen. How'd she end up in here?

Oh, she, she got out of the other flock.

Oh, she's from the other flock? Yeah, yeah. That— I thought that was an icy. Maybe she'll, maybe she'll follow, man. Oh, so close! You want to do this? Run that side. Just run that side. Now that's an Icelandic. Let it be. I think— come on, she'll see us going over there. Hopefully she'll either come to these guys over there or back to the breakfast posse. All right, we'll see how this goes up this steep bank. I'll go a little crooked. All right, yay! How was the ride, ladies? Just as getting the feed, we have the Suburban here because we're about to go get the turkeys. What we wanted— what I wanted to do this morning was get out all the, the covers for our garden because it's gonna frost. Yeah, it's like May 7th. It's gonna frost tomorrow night, May 8th. Last average frost date is May 1st, so we put away all our— why can't I think of the— Loctite? No, Agribond. We put away all our Agribond frost cover and we're going to get it all back out. Okay, thank you, Josiah. Free the birds!

Yeah, yeah, we have a broody here.

Do we? Hey, yeah, we actually kept this one because she goes broody, because we want to hatch our own. She's too old to be producing eggs efficiently, but she's good, she's good for broody. All right, you ready to go get these birds?

Yeah.

Good job. What do you see, Gideon?

Nothing.

What do you see back there? You see our pullets? Hey, you ready?

You ready? You ready, Teddy?

Teddy's ready. Let's get home and get these pulps warmed up. And we're back. You got them ready? Yeah, let's do it. Let's get them in. Let's get them warm. It's gonna be interesting mixing them. They're only about a week apart. They're gonna be a big difference, I think. How we looking, Josiah?

One died.

Okay, well, that's normal in shipping. It's not uncommon. Go ahead, Josiah, start, uh, dipping their beets. I'm getting them under these heat lamps. Good, good. Let me see one of the new ones and one of the old ones before we get mixed up. Wow, big difference already. Just one week, just one week difference. You can tell easy, right? We got 15 in our first batch. We meant to get 20. You have to have a shipment of a minimum of 10 to keep each other warm. So that's how now we've ended up, and we lost one in this new one. So 24, that's what we wanted. 20, 24, because we want 12 in our freezer, one turkey a year, and some room for failure. But I think they're only a week apart. I think this is going to be just fine.

What happens if not— if not that many die and we have more than 12 in our freezer?

You know, that's actually our hope, Josiah, and then we can bless people. With some Thanksgiving turkeys. Uh, maybe we have some that, uh, we could sell. So the options are open. We spread the abundance, my friend.

Okay.

Hey, did you do the, uh, pigs? What? My man! How they doing?

Good.

That's a good job. Good job. Okay, do we have any extra time? It's 8:30. Should we just go ahead and milk, go at it a little early, and then maybe do this, uh, garden covering project in the afternoon. Rebecca's going to town today, so she's gonna get us some covers, some low tunnel covers. But how many do we need? Well, we need to take inventory. Let's do this together, boys, and fast, and we'll know what we need to order. Oh yes, and I wanted a weed in here too, so Anyway, we're gonna need one low tunnel there. Shoot, this is— okay, one there and one there. So 3 there. No. Oh no, what am I gonna do about these guys? Well, those are more cold hardy crops. I guess I'm not too worried about those. I guess I'm not worried about these either. So I think we're just worried about covering our summer crops. So the onions need covered. I need to talk to the beautiful one. Talk to the beautiful one, got some more information. Also want to cover this herb garden, and we— about Arun's garden, we don't know. I think, you know, I say they're cold-hardy crops. I think they'll be okay, although it could, it could actually freeze, not just frost. So that's kind of crazy this time of year. So we might be covering them too. We're just gonna look into it a little bit more. The onions we're looking into. But you know what, it won't hurt for us to get our stuff out and just see what we have. We have more sandbags and some dirt. That's one brand new one. Put it down, please. We all take each of those and just stretch them out. Hey, look, that one looks like it's in pretty good shape. We're gonna roll up the ones that are in good shape and put them in a pile, and we're gonna— we're gonna call it on this one. Trash can. See, this one's good, guys. So straighten it out and then let's fold it up. It's got a few holes, but it'll do the job. Y'all want to fold it? Just do it. It's okay if it's a little wadded. It's going to be practically impossible to fold it super nice. I'm very happy with the way that turned out. It was not that hard. We've tied strings around the good ones. We folded them, tied strings around. We have 5. 1 brand new. 5 plus a bunch of junky ones. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Missed.

I nearly got you.

So say we want to cover them all. That's 1, 2, 3. We'll use some scraps on this one maybe. Oh, wait a minute, 4, 5. We have enough, we have enough to cover our garden. Trying to laugh so mean. I'm trying to get something done. Oh, oh, he got me good, he got me good. Boy, good job! You're good at that.

You get them by the feet, you can jerk them.

Here, let's go tell Mom the good news. She is stressed out about it. Rebecca, I cannot wait to tell her. She is getting dressed, so we'll wait a minute. We'll get started. Let's get started milking, Lily. Once she's getting dressed, and then we'll tell her. Well, she's got to go to town still. She's still got some other errands, but no, I don't think we need row covers. Yeah, if she says that's fine. You looking up the weather?

I'm so confused.

Just trust me, babe. It's gonna frost Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday.

Yeah, Saturday morning and Sunday morning too.

That's fine. Oh no, we left our trunk open. Come here, you stinker. Oh gosh, if I'm not catching Chickens, I'm catching cats. All right, look who's snacking together now. It happens sometimes. Here, come on, honey. Come on, come on, come on, come on, let's go, let's get out of it. Come on, come on, come on, come on, let me have it. There we go, good. That's why we have the reservoir. We didn't lose it all. Sometimes you're milking and they just step in it. I mean, it's not the end of the world. We got a lot of milk right now, and we also have a lot of pigs to feed, so it becomes pig feed. Problem is, it just takes time. I'm gonna have to go now and wash it. You watering mom's plants for her? Yeah, that's nice. All right, that could have very well been the problem. She had only had 2 scoops of alfalfa. She's accustomed to 5, so we'll see how it goes. Okay, well look, we still got 2 gallons, so that means you gave like 2 and a quarter gallons. Like, that's more than she was giving last calf. Plus, he's a good one. We're done with cow number 1. Cow number 2 in the stanchion. Beautiful one's out. Can't keep you away from your plants. They're staying in here today, aren't they?

I think I'm gonna keep them in here for through the weekend.

Look at your outfit!

I'm cold.

May 7th.

What?

May 7th. I know it's cold. Frost or freeze coming, babe.

It's what I would wear in the really cold.

Yeah. Rebecca, I totally forgot to tell you, but we have 5 good row covers.

Okay.

And we have 5 plots to cover in our crop gardens. So I don't need to go get them? No.

Oh, awesome.

Is that all you were gonna do? I was gonna go—

I was gonna get Agribomb, but I was gonna get some other things too.

Yeah. Okay, so we're good. That's the good news.

That is good news.

And we have sandbag bags. We're gonna have to put sand in the sandbag bags for Burke.

The boys are supposed to be doing it.

Jonah, my man, did you— did you work on the sandbags? Yeah. How many did you get?

Uh, I didn't count them, but Do we have more to fill up? I think.

And are you out of dirt over there?

About. Okay, I'm gonna go move the cows.

Okay, well, wait, uh, let's let them be till this afternoon, then we'll move them right before we move the sheep. All we really got to do then is we got to cover those gardens, put up our hoops, cover them, make sandbags, make sandbags, and I think that— is that it? We'll be ready. Well, wait, your herb garden. And maybe the instant chicken garden, we'll just put some scrap. We have plenty of scrap cloths. Yeah. Okay, I just hit publish on your video. Rebecca, you're at— back at puzzles. Did you have a good birthday yesterday?

I did.

Good. All right, you guys ready to go do this? You are not looking forward to prepping for this winter. Crazy.

No, I'm kind of dragging my feet on it.

All right, we're gonna need some special help from you guys. Oh my goodness, they're chickens! We're a little behind on our egg show. We solved our egg eating problem, but we're gonna start it up again if we do not— we gotta keep feeding them these eggshells so to get their calcium. Some for these guys, mucho for these guys. You hungry for that or what? Some in here where our fat hens are coming later. Hey, Rebecca. Hey, I'm gonna go get the sheep nets over here for the boys, and then you and I can work together. Okay, you can be doing this or weeding in the garden number one. But looks like you got plenty of weeds to take care of there. Yeah, do you want to put down paper and fresh wood chips? We don't have to do a big old layer.

See, like right there I have calendula, and then right here in here I have calendula.

This is turning into soil. Maybe we could mark your calendula with flags. Yeah, and stay clear of it, maybe even a foot. It's up to you though, honey.

Yeah, we could maybe do that and then mulch that, maybe this weekend. Not this weekend, it's gonna be cold.

Oh, staying inside. Hey, that sounds good actually. Take advantage of this one last cold, cold run and then hit it hard from then on. Maybe take a little rest this weekend. That garden we passed, that's where I want to be. We got to get it covered. It's not gonna be crazy cold tonight, 39. That is cold enough to frost. Don't know if it's in the forecast, but tomorrow night it's gonna freeze. Like freeze, like frost for sure, but maybe freeze, like 31 degrees. It would be good to set it up tonight, especially since we're so busy tomorrow. And I don't know how long it's gonna take. Like, maybe we'll get it set up today, but if we run into any problems, we'll still have tomorrow in an emergency.

But what button do I hit?

You got it. Thank you. The first thing we— well, we got to help the boys. It's hard for them to get up these nets, so I'm gonna get them up and then they're gonna lay them out and I can start gardening. Okay, you gonna get that? Sure. Okay, that's a helpful dude, my man. He insists. Can I help you?

I want you to lift it on my shoulder.

Okay, here we go. Ready? Yeah. Got it on your shoulder. Is that better? Yeah, that's a dude right there. Hey, beauty! Good job weeding. I will, uh, start getting the, the covers ready. Okay, you can help with that, or you can keep weeding, whatever you want to do. Okay, right. And once— and I have these kids too, they'll help me fill. I think the first thing we'll do is fill some sand buckets, sandbags. Is this amount of sandbags good, you think? Okay, so maybe this spacing, 1, 2, maybe 1 every 2 steps. I counted that we need 12 bags on each side, so we'll need 12 there. Well, should cute. We have these, so we could probably loop into that. We got our pole for this thing. It really— I don't— I'm trying to see if we're going to be able to use this tarp, sandbags, and the carrot covering sandbags. So we have that side, we can use it for the carrots, but will this thing stretch all the way to here? I don't think so. We're gonna need 12 bags here. Again, 12 bags. 12 bags. 36 bags. We've got these bags we can use. We'll need bags over there. We can use these for this hoop. We'll need bags over there. 36 plus 24. 60? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Alright, come on Gideon. There's no more in our storage over here. There's none in our storage over here. Hey, now we do have some of this hose. We could fill it up with water and it would be a weight. All right, Jonah made us like 4, I don't know, 10 sandbags. That's the only bags we have left. That's not going to be 60, that's going to maybe be 20. So I'm telling— I remembered this old resource, this fire hose. Reason we didn't use it is only 36 feet long. We used it on a 36-foot garden. But hey, that's a lot of our spacing. Then we just have to use a few sandbags if this will work.

Going.

All right, we got one of our hoses open. This is the fun part right here, filling it up.

Okay, did you put the end on?

You want to hold it? The end's on down there. We're gonna have to cap it here. All right, we got it filled up very quickly. I'm just going to tighten this strap on it, put the cap on it. And pan out through there, Josiah, show them how long that is. So just a couple more sandbags at the end, we're good. Let's see if this leaks. Okay, we're good. All right, we took about 30 minutes and hoed this. We've got about 30 minutes left. We've got one hose full of water, we've got 4 lined up ready to go to be filled. Hey, Daddy, it's okay. Mom left. Mom went left with Jonah to move the sheep. She's got me putting up the hoops. The hoops, that's better than pipes. If we put one of these every 5 feet, it's 50 feet. We need 11 because you got to count for the ends. I only counted 15 and we need 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Rose, that's like 55. Guys, is that all of them? No. Okay, let's go get them all. Besides, do you know where more are?

No.

Oh look, there's some in there. Okay, mucho in here. So you go get the other ones from the other stall and I'll start getting these. Let me hand you one.

Okay, I want two.

All right, here you go. Can you just take one? Okay, here's you two. Josiah, you want to grab a bunch of those and then I'll grab the rest? Let's see if I can gird up my loins and get all these out. It's okay, it's kind of hard to get them. I think it'd probably be easier just get them all at once. What? What? Yeah, we got them all out here. Now let's see how many we got. So I'm gonna measure every 5 feet, mark it, and that's, that's where I'm gonna put my hoops. Just do it once and then we'll eyeball it from here. All right, now we go through and— oh, that's not bad. It's good soil, goes in by hand, no problem. I like it. All right, we got our poles up. We got just enough to do it. Seriously, that's crazy. Up here and there, we even have some for the instant chicken garden. So we, we're out of time. We got to eat supper. And guys, we're gonna have to come back. We're gonna have to come back after supper, get these covers, because it's gonna be— what did you say it was gonna be?

34 tonight, 31 tomorrow night, I think, and 26 Saturday night. It's crazy.

Okay, well, all this work is going to be worth it because there is probably thousands of dollars of produce in the ground, isn't there? All right, let's go eat. Looks like Jonah and Rebecca moved the sheep and cows successfully. Good job, guys. We like to decorate our landscape with animals. This is a simple supper from the land. Our chickens our chicken and lettuce in lettuce boats. Pretty soon— Gideon, you know what we're doing tonight? We're covering what will be our potatoes. So this will all be from the land. This is our bacon. That's what's going to make it worth it going back out after supper and getting it covered.

Basil. It's our basil. It could be our lettuce.

It is our lettuce.

Is it?

Yeah, I think it looks like— no, it's the one.

I'm pretty sure it's store-bought. Yeah, that is it, guys.

It's right out there. Mucho lettuce. It looks so good. You thought we got it? It's a perfect store-bought.

The only thing that we won't be able— we couldn't do in the chicken salad is the cheese. I mean, unless I made cheese, but I don't know.

Oh my, we had a good supper, but look, I can feel it. I can feel it getting cold. Jonah's got a sweater on. Let's get these covered as fast as we can. All right, we got the blue weights, hose weights in place. Let's try covering it. All right, that was relatively painless, uh, except the only problem is the Agribond is only 50 feet long. We made our garden beds 50 feet, so it's awkward there at the end. Maybe we'll sacrifice a little bit at the end.

I can water it in the morning. I'll just come and like—

yeah, you could do that. Thank you. I did that one. You've kind of got to do it early though. Frost is coming early.

No, I did it in the morning.

Watch Teddy, watch Teddy! He's gonna bust the thing. The blue fire hose is working great though. Next up. All right, we got these covered. We put a little hay at the end because the opening here— oh, we had to improvise a little bit since we didn't have clips. We used our alligator clips for our electric fence to hold this thing up. Put some onion— put some hay over the open end onions right there. We even took a scrap Agribon and covered our Instant Chicken Garden Miracle. Next, we're going to cover up the herb garden. Okay, well, we might have the jerriest yard right now, but we got it done. Clothesline clippers. This is the scrap Agribon we have. There's some holes, there's some holes, but we patched it with some clips. Mom covered her flowers over there. We look like somebody toilet papered our house, kind of, except we did that to ourselves. But anyway, yeah, we're those crazy food growing people.