My Front Yard Chicken Tractor, I’ll NEVER Go Back

Get him to shake. Here, pull your hand back. Start over. Now say shake.

Shake.

Okay, now give me a treat. The boys have been out there, I don't know, 20-ish minutes hard at work. That's not it. That's it. Hey, Miss Birdell. I got it, Mr. Brown. I see you. Come here. Hop up. It's gonna be a little cold, but you can warm it up fast. Okay, take off your coat. Bring it in. What are you doing?

I'm getting wet.

Okay. This is a pain in the butt. I do take one day off a week. Not taking them. But I like to take them. I like them to be with me. It's a pain to get it going, but it's worth it. And if I leave them here, these Uno cards and these cloth diapers, they would be everywhere. Are you not finding them?

I am finding them.

I don't think you have gloves in here. Here's your little gloves. Do those. Now he's saying he's got a splinter. What does Og Mandolino say? I will greet this day with love in my heart. I will welcome obstacles, for they are my challenge. Let's get your splinter out.

I did.

I just went and found these. Here we go now, guys.

My hands are sweating.

Are you kidding me? All that trouble to find your gloves? I told him too, it's not that cold today. Come on, leave the crossbow. Jonah made a homemade crossbow. It actually works. It's really cool. But hey, not the time. Let's go. Whoa, holy smokes, that works! He shot all the way over there to the end of that chicken run. Gideon just demoed that a little bit. Can you give us a tour of this thing? Sure, I got a bow and arrow and, um, okay, so that's a regular, uh, bow. Yeah, and then regular arrow.

Look, and it's got this string.

You strapped it on with metal straps, and then you did a, uh, that's to guide the arrow, an EMT strap to guide the arrow. What now? I'm interested to see. Okay, so you put two boards together. Why didn't you do one whole board here?

Because I had to screw this in. Dude, it's screwed in right there.

That's right. So what is that though? What is it normally?

This goes up and down.

I know, but what is that?

It was the Kreg you never used.

Oh, you made it out of my Kreg? Oh, we might want to use that one though.

Your Kreg is all broken.

Wonder why. Trying to put that aside.

That's already cocked. How far do you think it'll shoot?

Uh, well, so he's got this strap behind the The Kreg.

Yeah.

Oh, it shot pretty far with Gideon. I think you might be able to get across. You'll get across the street. So you launch that to the string. Uh-huh. Okay, and then you pull down on the Kreg trigger.

Yep. Aim higher.

All right, aim higher and I'll go further. Oh, dud. Okay, we're gonna try again. Okay, you hit the barn roof. Oh my word, good job on that, my man! How are those chickens doing, Lily? Your chickens are on it. Hey, and do you have any eggs eaten? Should we put that egg eater in there? Are there any gone?

Well, no, I don't think that is it.

Yeah, okay, she's not eating eggs, so that wasn't the egg eater.

We normally get 2 eggs.

Okay, well, that was a good test, Lily, because what if we had killed that chicken? Yeah, that chicken was just pecking at the eggs the other day, and it made you think She's an egg eater, but no, maybe she was just curious. And we put her in here and those eggs are not gone, so we're gonna assume maybe she's not the egg eater. You tired? Good morning, Arun! Good morning. How was your sleep? Did you sleep good? Oh, thank you for asking. Yes, that was good. I got ozone treatment for the third time and that was the first time I was able to sleep past 2:45 in the morning. I think it was because I ate all day. It worked. It worked. I feel like I'm Herxing a little bit. Herxheimer's, which is like— because you didn't hurt in the first second. No, I didn't, but that means I'm like feeling extra symptoms because it's flushing things out, I guess. Because Amy got in the first shot, actually. Oh, she got Herxheimer's first time? First time, yeah, because she already has second time. She feels so much better. Oh, cool. Well, I'm gonna stick with it.

You're supposed to do 5 treatments.

To start off with, so I got 2 more. Yeah, Jonah. Okay, they might be moving wood. I'm gonna show you in a minute where they're so excited about moving wood. Gideon, where are you going? No, don't go inside. You can bring the crossbow, no arrow in it. So you can pretend, okay? That'll keep you out here. All right, all right, Zelda. Then you look at all you '90s kids, doesn't it look like he's Zelda? Ultra blonde hair, hair shooting out in front of his ear.

Look at how well they've done.

Actually probably kept them in here a little too long. They started digging instead of scratching on the surface, but we'll take it. Let's get our little hoe, level it out, and then cover it with a tarp. Boom! All right, we got this thing covered. I got the sandbags on it. I'm just loving this system. The chicken tractor is fitting in perfect. I love the work they did. I didn't do that work. Look at the work they got ahead of us, ahead of them. They love it. I've lived with them for 24 hours. That's all they want to do. Look at this cover crop. If I were to do that by hand— here, let's, let's get that hoe— what would this be like? I mean, it wouldn't be impossible. I mean, I'm getting it, but why not feed? Where'd all this go? They ate it. They ate it. Free food for the chickens. The chickens then fertilize until the garden feeds the chickens and the chickens feed the garden and us. Our shims from the trellis to the end work nicely. They transferred over nice. We must have measured good because it transferred from one to the next. This makes this very teachable, very buildable. I'm going to work on this and one day get you guys— we'll have the plans for the chicken tractor. We'll Maybe get you the plans for the, uh, the raised bed. You know, I want to work this out a little bit more, make sure— I might build this a little bit longer. I don't know, we'll see. We'll see if this is 8 foot. You kind of want things to be in 8 foot. It's a good garden bed size, but it's also like how lumber comes and minimizes cuts. So I want these builds to be super easy to build.

Papa, we've moved so much wood. Okay, uh, I want you to push it with the tractor now.

Okay. Hey, you want to see why Jonah and Josiah are so motivated to move that wood? Because I said when you move that wood, you can have this. Does anybody know what that is? Yes. What?

Mountain board.

Fun fact: I used to be a professional mountain boarder. In this sport, if you're not going full throttle, go home. You can have this, but you gotta move that wood. I've never seen them so motivated. Get the tractor so you can push all of it closer.

Okay, okay, I'll try to help you a little bit.

We've been slowly knocking out this huge pile of wood. Actually, you guys don't have as much as I thought left. You've been working hard. You guys have stacked it outside the stall. You got a support wall. Well, you guys got mad country skills.

Yeah, Papa, at some point I want to get this walled in.

I love it. You know, most people don't know how to do this. They don't know how to stack up a wood pile with wood.

I've always wanted to do that.

You have to do that at the end. You've always wanted to do it? All the way.

So I would do it on our porch stacks.

Yeah, well, you guys did a good job, and then it holds it back. It's its own retaining wall. Let me see if I can help them by pushing it a little closer with the tractor. You know, it's funny, I've been asking them, on to them about picking up this wood for a long time. You know, we tried using this as exercise. I tried using it as a negative consequence. Say you were mean to a sibling or something, go get a load of wood, put it in there. But the moment I said I got you a mount board. Want you to get the wood pile finished before you can ride it. They're like, can we start now? It was night. That's when, Jonah, you thought of the tractor. Why didn't we think of the tractor before now? We pushed all the wood over here, making it so much easier. I'm thinking that's a good life parenting lesson for me. Work, work shouldn't be like a negative consequence. Work should be a means to an end. It should be enjoyable. Yeah, let's see it. I'm not saying work in the moment should always be pleasant, but why do we work in real life? Well, we work in real life for what? So we're just training them for the real world. We've got a little mound right here, a mound of dirt to keep our water on the concrete. And over there, the concrete is gradually leaning this way, so that should be good. I have a little runoff here that keeps the water going down to the creek and not into the deep bedding. Their water stay clean. How are their minerals doing, Lily? Wow, they've crushed these minerals around. They've eaten a lot of mineral. A very generous deposit this morning. I just love it. We're gonna pick it all up, we're gonna pile it in an area, cover it with wood chips. Uh-oh, there she goes after Teddy. She won that hay bale. Keep doing that, you got her. Let's, let's feed her that hay bale too. That'll occupy them. Lots of deposits. Looks like we piled there yesterday, so we're going to keep on with that pattern and just get higher and higher. We'll, we'll make our poop pile right here today and then just keep going down the line.

Look at all this poop, we gotta get it up.

We got a problem in here. This is a good way to come through. Show them, Josiah. Perfect size for him. His hay is leaning over though. All right, okay, that's clean now. It can fall. This definitely works better with the camera. I'm gonna kind of stand over here under this. Oh, come on, come on, fellas. Wow.

Okay, I'll push the rest.

I reckon that's where we'll get our hay off this line next. We've gotten our outer layer off from the weather.

Watch out!

Let's store this at the wood chip guy. You guys can help move the hay. You can give mine to the sheep. Still clogging up a little bit. Something blocking it. There we go. All right, now I gotta wash my hand. All right, we are on our way to the—

stop it—

oral surgeon. Hopefully you didn't see that, it's kind of gross. Got some teeth missing in the back. Uh, it's been over a year, Rebecca, since we started this process of implants.

First surgery was January 10th, 2020.

So here we are. This is an appointment to see if my gums have been built up enough. We've had to do some surgery to build the bone up. We're gonna see if that's built up enough. 4 weeks ago it had not. He wanted to give me 4 more weeks.

Yeah.

So we're gonna see today.

I don't know because Snowball is still coming and could come at any point now. Like, we're getting to those states.

Yeah, but this is just gonna be like, okay, it's ready. Let's schedule this.

But are we gonna wait till like mid-March? Until we know for sure that Snowball will be here, or—

No, we'll talk about that with them.

Yeah, I guess they'll let us know. He said it's gonna be a much easier surgery.

Yeah.

He said it's gonna be very easy.

The problem is I need a little bit of recovery and you'll have to— I mean, you took care of me these last ones and I was kind of out of commission, at least you're supposed to be for a day or two, and they got to do this soon. Or we got to wait till after Snowball gets here. And it's gonna have to be a couple weeks.

What if I go into labor when, when you're in surgery?

Well, why don't you just tell Snowball to set a day, you two talk, set a day, time, preferably what, 2 o'clock in the afternoon? 3, 4 hour labor, we have supper, we'll get into bed, have a good night's sleep. Yeah. That sound good, Snowball?

And can we also put in on that request that I get a really good night's sleep beforehand and that all my to-do list gets done before he comes?

Take it up with him. We're there. We're waiting on the doctor. We'll see what he says. I'll tell you guys as soon as we know something. We'll probably be back in the car. Well, that was the best news I heard all day. We're ready. The worst news is they can't do it till March 5th, which is way too close.

Like, right now.

So we are gonna— we've had to put it off. We have to put it off to early April.

Yeah, which is kind of a bummer because that puts it off another—

because I gotta get the implants, but then they gotta set and they gotta test them, and then the dentist finally gets to put them on. And reason why I'm so excited about this, guys, is because one, well, it's— I can't chew on that side. And have you ever been on an animal diet where you eat mostly meat and not had one of your sides to chew on? That's annoying. Well, we also think it's throwing me off, and it could be this part of the source of my, uh, back pain. Back pain. Jonah has texted me from his iPod. He's gotten that wood done. There it is stacked, and he's wanting to get on the mountain board. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please. That's amazing. That kid got that done. He recruited a route. He got me to drive the tractor. He's been bugging Josiah. I think Josiah wanted to wait till tomorrow. Yeah, Josiah was like, uh, but I want him to wait till I get home. It's their first time. I want him to be safe. We don't need any broken bones, and that would just be a better happy ending— me getting back with them, them mountain board. Guys, I'll even get on it. How about that?

Which I was like, please don't hurt yourself.

Mary, don't you remember I was pro?

I know, but still, like, we're having a baby really soon. And you have— you, well, I guess that was in your non-pro days when you had a broken finger.

We won't speak to that.

And then you rode a mountain board and you ripped your finger apart on the other hand.

We won't talk about that.

So we show up at the ER cast. He had a cast from his, like, he had these two fingers casted all the way to his elbow, and then this one was like bleeding everywhere.

The underlying quality that's in everyone that mountain boards is everybody's a little bit crazy.

What the—

Really? Ha! Nice! He's a natural. When you don't have a mountain board, use a cardboard. You guys don't need toys, you just need cardboard. Got a little secret for you. When I was a pro mountain boarder, I wanted to name my boys Dustin and Durton. We call them Dusty and Dirty Rhodes.

I'm going higher.

You guys would have been a roughneck bunch.

We already are.

I'm about to do this. It works better with pig socks over the pants. That's been a while. Got a little wobbly. The, the trucks need to be tightened up for that kind of speed, so I'm actually glad I hung on to that. I was afraid I was about to bust it. Not quite what I used to be on a mountain board.