New Baby on the Farm

Big news! Austin, the editor, his wife had their baby, Stetson. Congratulations, both of you. Happy day 11 of row 30. We've been training our bull to a fence. He's been putting his horns through it, lifting it up, causing everybody to get out. We're looking for a day to go by where he doesn't bother it. I should have showed y'all the fence. That would explain why I'm back down here at the the hay. He's in, but he's still tempting the fence. We need our bull to breed our cows so that our cows have babies, so that our cows go into milk, so we have milk, milk cream, yogurt, and cheese, and calves that we can eat as meat. I'm not too excited about this. This means he's pulled it up. The fence was hot enough that he didn't go over it. We got him in this small paddock higher webs with your poultry net, just so maybe it would make more contact with his head. This afternoon will be day 2, 48 hours of being in here. Says it takes 1 to 3 days to retrain. Wow, is this on? What is this faux shock? It's not on. It got so bent it broke. Water feeling. Let's go get a post. Good news is he's not tempting it as much as yesterday. He definitely tempted it last night, but not as much as yesterday. I'm discouraged that he went after the fence last night, but encouraged that he's not pressing it nearly as much as he was this morning. He went right for that hay. That's something he didn't do yesterday, so hopefully We were having progress. Hopefully tonight is the night. With He-Man gone, the little calf hasn't been getting over. We've been getting our milk. I think what happens is he lifts up the net, it takes some pressure off of it, or, you know, weakens it, and the calf, just so much pressure, gets over. I've noticed if you tie her head up close, she'll stand still even without alfalfa. Okay, my yogurt seemed to turn out better than last time. It's like barnyard. It's extra runny and extra whey-y. Yeah, that, that looks more normal. A little bit of whey up top. Not 2 inches.

We are working on peaches. It was yesterday we froze these peaches, but now I went through the peaches again this morning and we have all of these that are ready and these are still softening, so we're gonna let them do their thing. We'll save some for eating. And then we will freeze a bunch because that is what Lily wants. Lily loves them frozen, so that's what we're doing here.

Oh, look who grabbed the tray! She don't miss it, buddy. Ashley caught last night during supper and she started walking as soon as you saw who it was.

I did. She said, you mind coming?

Oh no, Ashley Oh man, you left your plate, everything, buddy. She dropped it. All right, hey, she got to witness a birth last night.

It's so beautiful. It's such a miracle of life.

I love it. We gotta take care of them.

I know, they need, they need sustenance.

You want him to go with you? Hold it. Yeah, I got it. Well, we won't see you for a while. Save you a plate. Maybe you'll get it by lunch. You're a big brother now. Yep, y'all ready? I'll set it up. Hey, do you fit right in? Say, yeah, I fit right in. Cheese, cheese. The kids need some waffles. Your mom and dad, they're gonna see this because your dad's gonna edit this. You want to tell them hello? Can you say hi, Dad? You might even be on his lap while you do this. Can you say hi, Waylon? Oh, she came back! Oh my gosh, call the Inquirer. There's a day-old baby on the farm and she's not over there.

I realized I'm in mother-in-law training. This is training me for when I'm a mother-in-law, bringing food. Yeah, they were so excited when I told them we're doing lunch too.

Bring stuff, no comments.

No, no, no, we have to go back after breakfast. Yeah, and they're like, everybody can come and see the baby.

Yeah, well, this is how you get in. You, uh, well, you gotta, you gotta be a giver.

We know what this is like.

Oh, it's so hard.

So you're just tired and so hard and you just need—

yeah, I wish there were— I wish we had us as neighbors when we had babies.

That would have been nice. We're gonna be the people we wish we had.

So we're on a mission. We need some wood chips. And we had a choice to make. We can buy wood chips for the value we're going to get out of them, being animals' bedding, and turn— and they turn into compost. It's worth it. But we did find some for free not too far from here. You think this will work? Yeah. Okay, here's my thought, boys. We could buy wood chips and I could go inside and work some office hours to make that happen, or we could go get the wood chips, be together, save some money. Sure, when you don't spend money, you don't have to make money. Boy, the cop's really gonna like that. It's dirty. All right, well, let's go. Well, that was a big bust. It's a recently graded job and there's no driving on this little access road. It's too muddy. She said we could use her wheelbarrow, but it would be wheelbarrowing like 50 feet, one little dinky wheelbarrow at a time. We saw somebody tub grinding. We could go try there and maybe they'll load us up and we can pay them some cash. If that doesn't work, we can go to the actual place and have them load us where you buy them, and it won't be as expensive because they didn't have to haul it. So we saw this, um, tub grinder making wood chips on the way here. We could see if they're— how much they would charge to load it. They do not have a load ready for 30 minutes, but it's the best deal I could find. The next closest deal is $27 a yard. They're gonna do it for $20 a yard. We just ended up buying a load from those guys. They can bring out 12 yards. We would maybe be able to put 1 yard in our trailer. It's only $20. The next nearest competitor is $27 a yard, so that's about— that's as good as I've ever seen it around here. So we pulled the trigger.

I'm gonna eat to like 2 o'clock, keep the goodness going.

That's what I'm learning during this Grow 30 Challenge. Uh, today is grocery store day. We didn't go. It didn't even cross our minds. Uh, it's about staying ahead of things, so You don't want to have to buy sauerkraut, well then you've got to do this now. We doing purple first or we're going to do this?

Yeah, we'll do purple first.

I told Rebecca, should I just stay in my lane? Should I just stay in my lane? No, it's fine. It's sort of her lane, but it's raining. What am I gonna do? Is it weird going to the grocery store today? No. Kicking that grocery store habit?

We've done that.

You think you can do that at least 3 more weeks?

I'm hoping I can do it for a really long time.

Hopefully you do it forever.

I do need to find Brussels sprouts because I do need Brussels sprouts in my life.

Well, that's what this Grow 30 is about. It's about figuring out what must we have in our life.

I must have Brussels sprouts. I'm wondering if we need to try to grow them this fall.

You could have them. Well, they could have them at Heinen's locally. All right, I've got crushed— I've got weeping crushed it for about 5 minutes with salt. Beauty says we're covering it for 2 hours. Getting with it. There's a job for everybody on the homestead on this day 11. Bourbon burgers, burgers from the land deluxe. Lettuce and tomatoes and onions, fries, little cube fries, and then some fried zucchini. Kids made some buns. I'm opting out of those buns. Trying to behave, trying to behave. Keeping it close to home, keeping it close to home. Quick meal for homestead meals. Stud muffin too. This all turned out great. Buns, potatoes, squash. I could eat that, and I did. There they go again. Hey, I think you're making these meals so you can go over there. We're gonna call it there so Austin can have plenty of time to edit this. He's still editing. He's a machine. You're a machine, Austin. Take your time. We're getting it to you early. Happy day.