Learning New Things

La la la la la, let me be free. Get these cows up here. They gotta come get the stanchion over. Normally we don't need the stanchion to milk the milk sled. We do need the milk sled though when they're gonna be in this paddock and there's no shade, because the milk sled is their— well, they should have got them anyway because it's got their minerals. It's their minerals, their shade, and stanchion if you need it. Today we need the stanchion. A little stanchion head gate there. It's a nice physical holding for the gal while I stick a shot into her tail to collect blood. Gonna see if she's pregnant. Normally we see the activity when, uh, the female cycles and the male is on her for 3 days and, you know, all about it. We haven't really seen that where they're more discreet and secret. And if she's pregnant Or worse, is she open? You're gonna get her turned around. That's a pro. That's a pro. A pro knows to get the cow going uphill, that way her back legs stick down and you can get into the udder. Do this while she's very excited. This would be the first time I've ever done this myself. Like I said, we normally have— don't have to do this. Okay, let's move the bucket out of the way. Supposed to be a vein there. Is there a vein on honey? It's more obvious. I'm doing something wrong. All right, let's, let's commence. Did I do that wrong by having this on first? I think I was supposed to put this on and then put that in. A long time ago we had a cow that was open, we had a vet come out, pregnancy test. But you watch, it's not the same as doing— problem is she's not pregnant, she's not gonna have enough calves, she's not gonna have more milk. Bad news. Good 2 gallons, honey.

Happy day.

Happy day. Did you do your turkeys? All right, how are they doing? Good. I say we go up the mountain and mark out the rest of this access road. Josiah's got us to the top of the mountain. Now we need to traverse over to our water tank. Exciting to think we could just have that in a few days. I'm excited. Let's go mark this trail. This will be new trail, but I'm pretty sure it's very easy terrain, so I think it could be quick work. That is where the new path that we've built is going to come up We're up almost to the top of our property. We're gonna take this road instead of having to go down this gnarliness. I mean, it's gnarly. It's probably 45 degrees straight up. Well then, wind through here, meander on up here. Come on, Gideon. Already got some sort of path right here. You could hike up here and catch a glimpse of the sun early in the morning. We don't see that for a while. It's got to get on up over the mountain, shine into our valley. We'll go up here. This is a little thicker than I remember it. That's not going to be easy to get out of the way. Hey, this is one of those things where I got distracted and I was hoping it was going to be a 15-20 minute distraction and I was going to pick up right back where I left off in the woods, but it's turning into something. So I need to film it just for the content, and I guess it's part of The reality of homesteading. Jonah and Josiah needed some refereeing. Henry has lost his— Rebecca got him some toys yesterday to occupy him. It's doing great, but he lost them already. Supposed to go get some meat to thaw it out for tomorrow night's dinner. You need something?

I gotta take a potty break.

All right. Did you get the, uh, hole in the root cellar patched up? No, I was waiting on—

do you want to film it or something?

Yeah, you want to? Yeah. Are you about ready? Whenever I am. Yeah, we gotta get Mom's an outdoor burner going. She's gonna be canning her salsa today. See if you can find those legs. We have a camp stove burner. There's the legs. Grab two of them again. We're gonna have to get that meat thawed out. Gonna give up on Henry's toys, hoping they're just gonna show up. Oh, I had a little brief meeting with the painters today. They should be done tomorrow. We're gonna do a walkthrough tomorrow morning. That means end of next week is quite possible. There's still quite a bit moving parts to totally predict it 100%, and so much of it is out of our control. Floor guy needs to come and do one more layer, and we've got the cleaning people. They think 2 to 3 days. So that would be— let's get the floor guy in by Wednesday, get the cleaning people here Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next week. And then we're moving in Labor Day weekend. Now we're gonna get somebody going on this blueberry harvest from yesterday. Just found out we have a meeting with the carpenter, framer, pretty much the GC on this job. Co-GC, how about that? And he's coming right after these horse lessons. I was going to take Lily on her horse lessons. More important to everybody that we'd be moving in next weekend. So we're gonna do a rinse and then he picks them out one at a time. Scrubs, everyone. According to the internet, this must have been Josiah's bowl. He picked them perfect with no stems. We had so much fun the first time picking these blueberries, we went again last night. Y'all find his toys? Dang, pegboard's in the back of that. Don't think I'm gonna get time for that today, organizing the shop. I think one of the first and most important things we could do when we move in is get these freezers back in our house.

Back to—

I want to say back to reality. Let's go see if we can't get with Randolph and seal the roof sailor. Here's the thing about moving in this house and setting goals. Our first realist— what we thought was a realistic goal was Rebecca's birthday, May 6th. And then we thought, oh, for sure about July 4th. And then I kind of jokingly was like The next one's September 11th, but in my heart I was like, surely. But we're looking at the first— we're looking at September 1st-ish as our next reality. Uh, let's go get Randolph. I was hesitant to say a date. In fact, I would just tell people and myself, just 2 weeks, 2 weeks. And then my heart didn't get broke when we didn't make the deadline. Hey, where's he at? But I found now that we again have the courage to set a date on it, even though there's many variables. Maybe it's impossible. I'm acting better than I would. Like, I'm moving towards it. I'm, I'm coordinating. I'm texting. I'm on top of things. I just texted Rebecca. Do we have mattresses to sleep on if we come over here? Randolph? Oh, he's right here. Hey, you ready? Oh good, that's what I like to see. I was going to tell you we're going to try to call in electrical on Monday for Monday.

All right, we'll have them all.

So that means you got to get all these plates on. What's the plan?

We gotta mix 3 parts of powder to 1 part of water, and it says it sets up in 3 minutes.

Wow. What's this? Quick Creek cement. Hydraulic cement. I heard that stuff hardens up. I think that's what we use on our spring. Yeah, hold down the—

did it work good?

Gaps in the rocks. Yeah, yeah, it hardens in the wet. Even a little harder to do it in flowing water. We have quite the divide and conquer going on right now. Brandon and I, Randolph and I, and Gideon are fixing this leak. Jonah's taking Lily to horse lessons. Mom's ordering stuff for those blueberries, working on the salsa. And Josiah— I said blueberries— she's working on getting us in the house, like getting us mattresses.

Good gracious.

Oh, is it set already? Yep, it's set.

How are you supposed to do that?

That's too quick. Gotta hurry. It's probably been a minute and a half, huh? Yeah.

What about that crazy stuff?

You gotta go take some care of some things with Grandma.

Yeah.

All right, but we're trying to seal this. We got some, uh, what do you call that? I'd say Quickrete, but it's not that. It's hydraulic cement. Wow.

This don't work, I'll get a bucket of tar.

Yeah, let's put a tar over it even on the I think we just should. We ended up putting a little more water on that mud and it went a lot smoother. My thought is if it will dry in water, we should be able to add more water and make it more pliable. It was. We smoothed it on there. I'd like to cover it with tar while we have it, Randolph, open. Yeah, won't hurt. Look at this. Going to your lesson?

Yeah.

Have fun. Mom going up to help Grandma. Me having a meeting with the carpenter. This is handy, having a 16-year-old. How do we do without that? 16-year-old to help us with errands. How's the blueberry going? Good. Okay, so he won't let you pull him out of the bathtub? Yeah. Okay, I can't just side do it.

I, I, I don't want to.

Just one more round of blueberries. Okay, Shawn will be here any minute. Almost done. I don't feel too bad about leaving you since you're almost done. Come on, get in. All right, Shawn, you gonna get us in here by next weekend? That's the plan, my man. Labor Day weekend. This afternoon I got the crew. We're gonna hit it. We're gonna mow Big Daddy's yard for him. Two string trimmers and a mower. Let's do it. And weeding. White Springs. Henry and I mowing. How's it look? Boy, we knocked it out in short order with them boys. I think that's one of life's great joys, working with your boys, getting something done, looking and seeing what you accomplished when it's over. Next job. Fix these lights that are not matching. Okay, so are all those matching? Go through it. Look how orange that one is. Okay, slow down, slow down. Okay, that's good. Do one more. Okay, see how orange that is? See how orange this one is? It's not matched. We are back at it. What is it?

What's here?

What's— Oh, even though it's an hour before supper, it's been kind of one of those days. Sorry if this vlog sucks. Boys stayed up. Well, the boys had a campout last night and it went awry. Well, they had a lot of fun. They got bit up by bugs. 1:15, they texted me. I didn't even get it till this morning. They went to the cabin because of bugs, so they've been grump. I've been only 5 or 6 hours of sleep. I'll just put them to have a rest. There's the Property line. I needed this. I need to feel like I've completed something today. The lights wouldn't work. Well, we did get Big Daddy's yard mowed. Here, let's reevaluate things here. Get in. We did go over the house with Shawn. Rebecca's killing it. Well, we did sift through those blueberries. Rebecca's probably gonna have done the salsa. Just need this to clear my head. From a couple of grumpy teenagers. I see a potential path along our— we're almost at the top of the ridge on our property line. We're not to the ridge. There's Sally. Come up here. And it's a long way. It's a lot further than I thought. 300-400 feet just to this old chimney. There's this old chimney. People used to live up here, and then it's another ridge to the water. We don't have time to explore that today. We need to go cook some steaks. The good news is we got some forest time. The other good news is because it's on the property line and it's still marked, I'll just say, hey, go on and off, go 5 feet off that property line. Well, I should look and see how close you can put a pathway to a property line. Going good for you. How many pints of sausage? I don't know, maybe it's my attitude. Did you get all those blueberries we just saw in that process?

This is them.

How good?

There's more in the canner. I'm going out there.

That took no time. Mama provides.

It's quite, quite something.

Quite the cramp. How'd the outdoor burner go?

It is so awesome. It has worked so well.

What's so awesome about it versus—

well, all this steam is going outside. Ah, all this steam is going outside. All this water— see, look at the water that drips down. Hmm, all that's going outside, meaning it would have been hot inside. See all that? That'd have been inside our house. A jar cracked.

Why do you say that?

The water just looks really dark, but it could just be because they're all dark in there.

Oh wow, somebody is leaking. They all are.

I don't know what I did wrong.

Rebecca had a semi-emergency with her mom she's got to go take care of. Annie to the rescue.

He's reckoning has something to do with their leveling, the headspace, the amount of headspace. Well, but see, like when it's all mushed down, we need a half inch headspace, so maybe it's, maybe it's too much. Got just a smidge.

What are you gonna do, see what we did right?

No, I'm just checking the tightness.

We gonna reprocess those? Yep. Yeah, yeah, because there shouldn't be anything warm.

We're gonna try to free up some headspace. Space in these guys and tighten the lids a little bit more. Now we're gonna have a purple bench there forever. We took a little bit out, cleaned them up a little bit. We have them going again. It's a vigorous boil. So Annie, is that okay? She assured me it was. Hey, we've been doing this 19 years and we're new to canning. Amateur to many of you. And I imagine it would, because that'd be one of— that could be one of the very first things you guys learn, like in an apartment or something. You could start learning how to can. You know, we've been growing what's close to our heart And we have amazing meat systems. It took quite a while to perfect dairy systems. Vegetable preservation has been lower on the priority list, but super excited to add something new. Keeps it, keeps it fresh and exciting around here. You know, had we not said, hey, we're gonna quit the grocery store, even though we never did, it's that aiming for the impossible that extraordinary things happen. That mindset to like go to the neighbors twice, and they're so happy to have us come and get it because just going to the birds. We just killed some steaks. Your second batch of blueberries came out nicely.

Yeah, we ended up losing one of the—

what's happening here? Oh, these are— but that's from the old ones.

One of the lids wasn't on correct of the salsa, so we had to— we just talked.

So what do you think we did wrong on the blueberries? Just toast?

It could have been the temperature. The temperature drop was too much for it.

It could be in the headspace too, but the temperature drop was the same on the second batch.

Well, if you don't pull it out right away and you let it just like cool a little bit, it can help it. But Jessica at Three Rivers said— I asked her. Yeah, you can see there's all the salsa in there. It's okay, it was my fault. That was my— I didn't put the lid.

At least we know what happened with that one, right?

Yeah.