No More Dairy

We have milk but no cream. Have you ever had tea with milk in it as opposed to cream? It's almost night and day. Don't worry. This is one of the few normal things that we do. Set out our trash and we have a trash service. Speaking of normal, when normal people run out of cream, they just They start the car, go to the store. Oh, we're not gonna do that. We gave up normal a long time ago. I'm gonna take a four-wheeler to get some cream instead. Did you guys already milk?

Yes, but we need the net to get set up.

Okay, I'll take the milk and then I'll come help do the net. Are we slowing down the milk?

Yes, because that one quarter is off on honey.

Oh boy. Is this halfway full? What's going on? This used to be full in our prime. This represents our supply chain issue. We're getting a little lower than maybe I would like to be. When a cow, you know, what you call freshens, has her calf, milk supply goes like this, shoots up, but then it does gradually go down. We got no doubt we have some of that going on. A little over a gallon and a half. No doubt it's this cold weather, so the quality of grass this time of year and us having going through a drought. At least these supply chain issues, although they are out of our control, are more in our control. Does that make sense? We at least are very much in touch and know exactly what's going on. We have full authority to say Well, do we want to keep this as milk? Do we want to harvest cream? Do we want to make yogurt? Are we going to make butter out of the cream or just use it as a liquid cream?

1.5 gallons of cream.

Nobody offered me plastic or paper, so I'm just gonna carry these by hand. How about butter? How about cream? Uh, yeah, we had to break open a store-bought butter. There's no more butter either, but no worries. Bring this up to room temperature, we'll churn some butter. The moment we've all been waiting for. Uh, boop boop boop. Starland. Right there. You training? Yeah, it is inconvenient. To go out there, milk in the cold, work on the farm. But it's also inconvenient to work to be able to go to the grocery store. Dinner. I want to work on this pig port today. Winter is coming, and before you know it, the cows are gonna need the hoe barn, and we gotta get the pigs out of there, and they need somewhere to go. Pig port, here we come. Lily's got another on-farm arm horse lesson in about 45 minutes. First, we got a lot of service workers here on the homestead house remodel. Let's just check in with them, make sure they don't need anything. Hey, good morning. You need anything? Uh, yeah. Okay, that's what I'm here for. Location for that range over there.

Okay.

Anything from me? Um, did you ever figure out anything on that dryer that you know of?

What do you need to know?

We're Starting to get HVAC. It's coming along nicely. Randolph, you need anything from me? Ah, I don't reckon. Okay, good. What's the plan today? Plan's, uh, finish that bathroom wall and turn that door in, then tear that other one off. Then I guess I'll go to shimming this stuff in here. All right. Getting our zone zero, our base, our homestead house Priority numero uno. No need having a home for the pigs if we don't have a home.

Hello?

Hey, hey, I got some questions for you for the remodel, guys. Okay, uh, where does this— the stove in the, in the garden kitchen, does it go on the center of that wall? Yeah.

All right, the wall that has the window?

Yes.

There's gonna be a counter that goes all the way across that.

Okay, underneath the window.

Correct.

Okay.

So I don't want it too close to that counter. Does that make sense?

Yes. And down here we need to come 2 feet off this wall and that part of the wall too, kind of jets out right there to represent our counter. And then from there to there, we want that stove right there in the middle. Measure from our counter to our wall. Let's, let's mark this. You ready for your horse lesson, Lily? I'm gonna kind of get you started with Leslie, but then it's all you, okay?

Okay.

You're eventually gonna have to be able to do this by yourself.

Yeah.

Think you got it? Yeah. Miss Leslie, a godsend. I'm trying to distract them so they don't go and get in the horse's way. Yeah, y'all play right there. Gideon, alert me if he leaves. Let's do a cross beam on the side. Should we have a goal? Let's at least get the cross beams up. We want to shoot for the moon given all that's going on with the horse and the remodel. Henry already bored with that dirt. We could shoot for put some tent Going inside?

Yeah. Okay.

Is this your first time lunging? Yeah.

All right, now point at his butt.

Say walk on. It's okay, I know. Good.

Now hold your rein like this.

Does that make sense?

Like a triangle. Yeah, now don't walk. Try not to walk. Pivot. If you start to walk, then he starts to make you travel. You see there? Like if you would have took a step, then the circle starts going over there, right?

I just realized I want this brace to be more than a brace. It needs to hold up the wall. Might as well add some strength to the wall while we're making a brace. This is the start of my wall, the 52-inch shadow panel. I don't see what it would hurt to put it on the inside and it'd be halfway up, so 4-foot mark, and it helps hold hold the cattle panel in place. See, 12-3 is right in the middle of this, so I guess we just cut it. See our problem? Our cattle panel needs to end about right there. So if we cut right there, we can't have any extra. Well, can we have extra? Maybe that— I don't see why that would hurt. If I brace it instead with a board holding these in place, where I can also nail them. That I can put a board over it, 2x4, 2x4 going down, and then I have a place to mount the inside, the, the, this other wall right here, this wall. We got our pig water down. It's gonna be better than the little hose we've ran to them because that's too— takes more for the to freeze because it's the mass. So this is a good winter option. Let's put this one in the front though, it's bigger. Remove that one. Can I get to that nipple? Yeah. Do you have a fence for them ready? Yes. Heck yeah.

And water and everything.

Heck yeah. The thing is, Lily's water for her horse up there, she keeps on undoing the hose. Which is supplying the pigs. This is fail-proof. Like, this has water in it or doesn't. There's no turning it off. There's no turning it on or off. Okay, Lily's raring to go. Problem is, I see the sheep and the steers are out. We don't need to be walking the horse up through there with Nacho loose. He can be kind of aggressive, our ram. Did you forget to turn the fence back on?

I did.

I connected the alligator clips. Uh-oh, the horse is paddocked out there with them today. And, uh, I was kind of hoping she forgot because now I don't know what the problem is. Don't think the fence is working and they're out of water. Which is the higher priority? Pretty dirty, but we're not froze. Let that dirt get all out of it. I'm sure it's probably clogged up our pressure regulator. We've lost a lot of pressure. Does that mean our tank is drained? Yeah, boy, that is not good. Ah, shoot! No, it just compounds. Oh, I just broke— oh, and it's off too. No way to turn that on to clean it out now. Ah, all right, we gotta go get us a replacement. So cold that plastic's gotten brittle and busted. But even when I get that fixed, it's not gonna cause water to come down from the mountain. We're gonna have to hike the mountain. It's gonna take me a minute to fix this water, so I think I can fix their electric fence really quick. I mean, we'll test it. It may be working, but I don't hear it. Dead. The fence tester's dead. Compounding problems. I want to throw this. I'm not going to throw this though. Oh, I don't need really a fourth problem. Here comes Lily. This fence hot? For sure before she comes though. Hey, don't go yet! I haven't got the fence working. I mean, maybe it's working, I don't know. I need to test it. Looks like this one's going to be dying soon too. Okay, and that explains why they got out. Nothing. All right, let's find out what's wrong. Definitely see the problem. This strand of electric that's going out to the cows isn't connected. See, we have power coming to it. Yeah, 9.8. So all we got to do is attach these alligator clips. Fix one problem, fence is working. You're getting a neighbor, stud. We're acclimating the horse to the cows and the cows to the horse. She's made a little paddock in here with them. They can't get to each other physically, but they'll be right next to each other. You have some water in here? Eventually he'll be with the cows all the time. They will let them come check out each other all day. Horse could care less. We'd have a lot of trouble, wouldn't we? Let's see if we have water right here.

Some.

I'm fixing to get real wet because I gotta unscrew this and put another one back on there. I think they have no water down here. We're gonna have to hike the mountain, see what's going on. You know what's possible? The line's running through this wood. Sun's not getting to this woods. This is the north slope. It's frozen. The line is probably frozen somewhere, but we're gonna have to hike up and double check. This is usually a stream. We may be out of water. I've never seen this dry. Maybe putting the cows in the cow barn. Probably gonna mean a couple— another $1,000 worth of hay. See, this is always a creek. We got water up here. A little water feature here. We have water up here. Now to figure out— now to figure out if our water tank is full. If it's full and we have no water down there, that means something has frozen along the way. That can't be good. The lid's off. That means debris can get down in there. Shoot. And I think it's drained. Oh no, it's full. This is good news. And it's flowing, so we're getting water from our spring. Water's going out our draining valve back to the creek. This back on. It's quite the mystery though. So water's coming down through here. It's here at our relief valve here. Cleaned it out. It's clean now. Okay, that only means from here to the bottom there's some sort of stoppage. Not broken, or this tank would have drained.

I don't know.

We'll just— I'll just walk it to see if there's anything obvious. Oh, you know what we could do? We can drain our— we can open these up, make sure there's no air in it. Look at this dirt in there. Let all the dirt go. All right, and that might let air out. We could have an air bubble stopping us.

Ow, I hurt my finger.

I think it's gonna be okay. Gotta be more careful. One of these days we got to clear a path. This isn't necessarily what I was planning on doing, but if you want the convenience of meat in your freezer, milk and butter and yogurt in your fridge, this is, this is what you got to do every once in a while. Well, we got a leak right here. I didn't bring any tools. That wouldn't do it, but we should probably fix this leak. I know what I'm going to do for my after-lunch walk. I'm gonna hike this mountain again and fix that leak number 2. And it's got a bunch of ice on the outside. Of course it does, because water's sitting on the top and outside. So we'll fix that leak too. I don't know what causes those leaks. Maybe just a tree falling. Eventually we've got to bury this line, which will be quite the job 'cause you can't get to it with a machine. Here's a third leak. Between all these leaks, that could be our, our deal. I know the leaks aren't the problem problem because if they— the tank is filling up faster than those leaks are draining. Does that make sense? Because the tank was full. If the tank was empty, that means a leak from the tank down to the pasture would be bigger and draining more water than we're collecting. That's not the case. You know what, let's get this above the ground. Let's get this on top of the ground where it can fall easier. What could happen is we could have a kink somewhere. I bet we have a kink. Did I find our problem? There's a tree down. I don't think that was too imagining it. Oh, you know what I just realized? For this fourth leak here, this ice could be getting in there and causing a blockage. That's probably what's happening. Ice is forming on the inside and then going down through. Yep, I believe we're empty right here. Here's the reality, I'm about to call in from work this second. Good afternoon. I have a water emergency. No office work. It'll take me a while to fix 4— 4 breaches— 4 breaks. It's gonna take a while and the cows are out of water.

I have an idea.

Think this will work? You know, gets water to them right away. I have a male. And I have a male. We'll have a female to female connector. Okay, pushing water back into the line from below. Oh, you're kidding me. Kidding me. We're that close. Second hose reached. Here goes nothing.

Let's go see if it worked.

Be working, please be working, please be working. Okay, working, but judging on how full it is, means it was starting to work from the mountain. Things must have started to thaw out. Well, we're gonna have to call it a day on this, that's for sure, because the afternoon we're fixing those water lines. We did get both crates done. The well is a good temporary solution. It's no long-term solution. We'll wear out the well. I've got a walk after lunch. We just had lunch.

Anyway, for my blood sugar, might as well climb the mountain and fix those 4 lines.

That definitely caused it to freeze in there. It's pretty much solid ice. There comes the water.

Look at that.

I couldn't put it together. Too much pressure on the line. It filled up and it's pushing me out, so I'm going to hope I can turn it off up at the top. Surely there's a cutoff up there. There's no way to fix it with this water running through. Looks like we do have a shut off. Whoa, we drained half the tank walking up here. Kid you not. I'm out of torch. This is unbelievable. I just can't believe this. The problem stacking today, it's crazy, guys. It's a probably 300-foot elevation gain, probably 45-degree slope. I'm gonna go down it, up it, down it. And then back up it to turn on the— turn the water back on. Well, let's say that again. I'm gonna go down it to get the torch, back up it to resume repairs, back down it along the line repairing it, and then back up to turn it on. I had Rebecca bring him— have him bring me a tank. Go with me up there? I got Oh yeah, heck yeah! Thank you, my man. Second time climbing up this side, third time climbing up if you count the time I climbed up over there. Trying to be positive. Have a hard time when I had other plans. This is one heck of a workout. That I got going for me. I think of that Nick Bare video I just watched over the weekend. Last Man Standing. He did that race. He went 100 miles. I can climb this mountain 4 times. Thankful for this mountain. I love this mountain. This fresh air. I ain't in no office. While we're up here, let's clean off the catch. It's catching, but let's try the spring box. It's got a lot of soot in it. We made it up and our fix number one— no, you're kidding me, it's the wrong fitting. Back down. That's one way to get up here. Don't grab one of those. Looks like it, but That's not it. Tell me we don't have one. Climb number 2, 3, 4.

Yeehaw!

And the sun is shining on me. I love it. Okay, I didn't give up. We got it. I'm gonna climb this fifth time. This time it's a— well, I don't know if it's any easier. It's not as steep, but there's no trail.

I don't know if the adrenaline—

some adrenaline's wearing off.

What?

I'm almost to the access road. Oh, my knees are feeling it now. I won't say buying at the grocery store didn't easier.

It's prob—

it's not easier. Look at that. Now hopefully we don't lose this There wasn't anything convenient about climbing this mountain 5 times. Pork and beef butter finally going. Guys, it's almost dark. That was quite the detour this afternoon. We are out of chips. I cut up some corn tortillas and we'll just fry those. If only I could get everybody on board with carnivore, we'd just all eat pork skins. Just fry these until they're crispy. To speak, which doesn't take long at all, like 20 seconds. I'm gonna cook my pork rinds, which I think are just as good if not better than corn chips. Certainly better for you, and they are from the land. We are eating what we grew here. How are your chips, Dar?

They're delicious.

I hiked half a mile vertical feet up and down. Is it worth it?

What, having our own water?

I got water to the cows, which means that's how we get our cream and butter. The butter's done. Beck, you need— you have use for buttermilk this time?

I want some buttermilk.

What are you gonna make?

I can't remember.

Okay, well, we'll get it. We'll get it.

I hope we have buttermilk still.

All right.

Um, and then I want to— I want to use it for something, but I can't remember what that something is.

Happy day. Hope we figure that one out. Maybe for the next one.