MiniMe’s Ruggedly Handsome Apron Saves Gobs of Clothes

This is what happens when you cream separate 2 rounds of this, probably 9 gallons. That's what happens. What do we have to show for it? Where is it? Where's the cream? But is that a homesteader fridge on gaps or what? Jars just full of milk and broth. Cream. And this, my friends, is a surprise for Jonah. We're gonna open that in a little bit. He's gonna love it. He has no idea what it is. I can't wait. Kids made us decorations for Valentine's Day. Isn't that nice? That was yesterday. Ooh, somebody's looking at the bus. Hey, you ready to open this?

Yeah.

Okay, be careful. What do you think it is?

An apron or something.

How do you know? Why are you guessing that?

Cause Mama said it was Sturdy Brothers.

It's from Sturdy Brothers. If you guys ever want to know where I get this awesome apron, this is Sturdy Brothers. And what, so what got you guys started on this?

We, um, we started out, so I worked in coffee and then Spencer is one of the owners at Grassroots Coffee here in Thomasville. And we're both baristas looking for a cool apron, and so Spencer broke down and decided to make one. Cause I couldn't afford to buy one.

Nice.

So you spend twice as much to get all the materials to actually make make one. So, so that's kind of how it originally happened. Then we're like, you know, we should really go with this and we can make some other things. So we kind of built a product line around the apron, which was the original.

Now the pin did fall out, so that's what they're— they're sending me a pin. So this is from Sturdy Brothers. I don't know if there's anything else in there, Jonah, but pins. It just— it got unscrewed. And I didn't screw it and it came off. So right now it's tight, but this is a waxed canvas and that got soaked with milk and manure this morning. And guess what? I didn't have to change my clothes. I just hung up my apron. Okay, look, they sent me some bonus stuff. Look, Rebecca, did you even know they, they sold hankies?

I didn't know that.

And that's, that's my thing, to carry around a hanky in my backpack. Oh, look, look how soft. Yeah, it's nice. Jonah, look how soft.

And that matches your shirt.

How much junk do I have in those pockets? Okay, now the grand prize, buddy. What do you think that is?

I'm curious.

Ah, maybe it's for me. Yeah, I think it might be for mom.

Wait, it's a tiny apron.

Oh look, it's a little apron. All right, I did ask them, I said, hey guys, can you would you— could you do a custom apron for Jonah? And they said they would. And what this is is the woman's apron. I love it with shorter straps. You look sharp.

Oh nice, you like it? You look like you put a pen.

Yeah, you're looking sharp, bro.

And I could store handles.

It fits you perfect. Now we just got to get you a matching hat.

With all this hair, it already almost fits.

Yep. Let's go right back, huh? Fix my apron. I'm going, buddy. Hey, look, we're gonna match. I guess mine used to be that color too, huh? I've got 2 full buckets of skim. Mr. Brown, you get our eggs from up top? How many we get up there? 2? Anyway, have you checked the ICs? There's one out. Josiah, mini me, see if you can catch that chicken. Put your egg basket down. Grab that bird. Good job. Keep going.

Good job, Papa. You can look.

See, that's a nice rooster. Come on, let's get in there. Now, are you going to be able to get under that chicken? Are you not going to be afraid? I wonder if she's broody. It's about time to start setting eggs. We want to have 3-week-old chicks. At about the end of April, which is our last frost date. So we need to set that first week of March, so we're not quite ready. I think— Gideon, I got her off, honey.

Where are you going?

Set her in because she doesn't have feathers to stop her butt from hitting the ground. There you go. All right, we need some more hay in that one. Who's gonna get more hay?

Jonah, can you carry this? Okay.

Wow, that's a lot of hay. Stuff it in there, Mr. Brown. All of it? Yeah, just put it all in there. We have to get this hay off the floor or poop gathers. What are you doing, Jonah? You demoing? This is what happens. This is what happens when you put wood chips and then chickens on top of it. Can you believe this? That is a foot Jona, that's a foot of just super rich soil.

They'll come and find—

what do y'all want to grow here this spring?

Uh, something that deep roots. What about them?

Yeah, maybe carrots or rutabagas, turnips, huh? Turnip, maybe not rutabaga. You guys didn't like rutabagas? Wow, that's incredible. I forgot to put the energizer. I should have put it back on, but it just shows you they're trained so much to this, they're not even going to try it. It's been off all day. Oh, you got them some greens, huh?

Yeah.

Who are you gonna give that to? Oh, okay. Well, they're eating it, Lily. They love it. You accidentally cracked some too. Okay, here, we'll turn that problem into a solution. Give me the other one. You, you lost some eggs, but we'll just turn them into a, uh, bacon and sausage. Go give this pan to Lily, please. Start spraying it out. Not me! Oh, not me! Oh yeah. Loaded up with grass. What else do we want to turn into bacon and sausage? How about some chicken slaughter? Okay.

Hey, that's enough!

We don't want a mud pit, buddy. You ever wonder why I carry a handkerchief in my back pocket? Come here, Mr. Brown.

What?

Come here. Whoa, don't spray me with that. Well, it might be to dry myself off in a second. And these are so soft. Those regular hankies are kind of rough. This I wouldn't mind blowing my nose with, right, Mr. Brown? Okay, why are you just muddying up the place?

Because there's mud.

Do you want me to go get the eggs or are you gonna go get them? Stop muddying up the place. Put the water up higher. Okay, let's put it up here. Oh my word, it's doing a wheelie! Not only do I improve the mineral— I need to improve the mineral. What's the matter? Okay, hold on, let me get this down for you.

Okay, go.

Not only do I need to improve the mineral situation— let me show you the mineral situation. That's the problem. It's right here. You have to bend all weird to get in here. Sure, I could lift the lid, and it's caked with manure. It needs to have a guard up here. And then this needs to be removable. Oh my word, there's a ton of eggs! Mr. Brown, grab them! Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Oh, they love it!

Wow, and that's just weeds off the bank, huh? Yeah, y'all just got those weeds off the bank.

Yeah.

Oh man, you guys aren't as cool as the guinea hogs. Those guinea hogs will eat anything. Come on, you're losing— you're losing credibility for a homestead hog, guys. Right now we're holding it up with that. We did have a 2x2 kickstand on here. I think we just need to make it more heavy duty. It would get caught on some things in the moving, so I guess we just needed to make it more secure so it wouldn't flip down during the moving. Okay, good to see you guys working that now. I'm happy to see that because we're getting these kind of— we're gonna give this kind of pig a try. April is when we're supposed to get some piglets. April, we'll raise them. That's probably nearly 30 eggs, Lily. 6 pounds of dry feed there, Mr. Brown. Put some of the skim milk in there, buddy. That'll fatten these pigs up like no other. We'll just soak it in that. That's it, stir it in, buddy. Now it's time for us to get the calves, cows in. Normally on Friday we don't put the cows and calves up. Normally on Saturday we don't milk. We take a day off. The reason we can take a day off is because we do something called calf, calf sharing. The calf we do not wean. You've noticed that we're not going to wean until the calf's 10 months old, um, unless they unless they wean earlier on their own. We— if the calf's always on— see, the cow's got to always be milked. That's why people have to milk twice a day, or in our case, that's why we have a calf on them during the day, and then we, we separate the calves off at night— separate the calves at night, and then the milk builds up and we can harvest in the morning. Normally we could take a day off a week. You could even take a small vacation let your calves nurse and you'll be fine. The problem is when they're young, like with Aunt Flossie and Aunt Bessie— Bessie's still just almost 2 weeks old. She's not going to keep up with the production that Aunt Flossie's got, so we're going to have to milk 7 days a week for the first month, and then I think that calf would get all that Aunt Flossie could ever dream of producing. We still want to take some sort of break, so we don't actually have to milk Aunt Phyllis because her calf's old. So let's just put up Aunt Bessie, she's only 2 weeks old, and then let's put Bear with her so that she'll have a companion, and then everybody else can go back out. So guys, we could theoretically not put any calves up and just herd Flossy in in the morning and milk her. We won't get as much Let's just do that. We'll get more if we put them up, but we could just want to leave them out. Okay guys, let's do that. Let's not go through any more trouble. Let's have a relaxing evening. We'll milk her in the morning and we'll see if the calf's keeping up. There's milk in there, the calf's not keeping up. If there's not, the calf's keeping up. So that's tomorrow. Tonight, movie night. What are we gonna watch? Normally I don't vlog on the weekends, but I will tell you the truth. I just miss it. I just miss it. People say, how do you crank out so much? One reason is because I love the moviemaking aspect of things. I love capturing these moments. All right, we found our movie. Wild Horses Wild Ride documentary. Yeah, 100 different wild horses trained by 100 different people in 100 days. Sounds like our kind of movie. Yeah. Okay, Mr. Brown, how was it? Oh, okay kids, how was it? Give them your best review. Did you love it or hate it? On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you love it? 10 being like Incredibles 2 and 0 being like Music. Uh, school lessons on television.

Oh, um, 7.

I give it about a 6.5. What did you guys learn?

That you can train a horse in 100 days. I learned what if you get a horse you need to train them.

Those are pretty wild horses. Does it make you want to train, um, Bessie or Nellie?

It's— I want to be Nellie.

I would say what was good about that movie is to see 100 different people, 100 different horses, the way different people did different things, and it all seemed to kind of work out. And different personalities. And it was cool to see how the human bonded with the animal as they began to work it. I mean, some of them cried at the end, and the animals got adopted and auctioned off, you know, because they couldn't afford it or whatever. So it was kind of neat to see that. And it motivated and encouraged me to continue working with our animals. Laurel, more training on her. Working more with the cows, continue, you know, encouraged me to continue in that effort. Calming these cows down, handling them more, the calves. We tend to watch our movies every Friday night on Amazon. Speaking of which, wouldn't that be so cool if like, that'd be just a trip if my movie's on there. The Great American Farm Tour, it's on there. It could be next weekend. I'm gonna check in to see if somehow miraculously it got published in one day instead of the 2 to 4 minimum. It's not published. It says it's publishing. It's showing like, it looks like it's halfway full. So, all right, we'll continue to wait.