No More Power Outages! Starting my Cummins Generator

I give up. I've been trying to find my ring to my milk filter. Now I'm just trying to find the extra one. I give up. Maybe this is where it was. Not sure. It's one of these type of things. Probably been looking for 20 minutes. I had it yesterday. This is where it's supposed to go with all the milk. Nope. I've got so much to do. We've got to get the sheep up. The generator's getting started today. We've got to get up beans. I don't need to be looking for this ring. Bye-bye, man. See ya. You've been a lot of help. It's been a lot of fun. Maybe we'll see you in what, a week and a half? Yeah. If you farm sit for my surgery. Just let me know. Okay. When it is. I will. I'll be back around. Yeah. Good time. I called Grandma. She said look in the pig bucket. She feels like it might have accidentally gotten put in the pig bucket when we were cleaning out the filter. Oh, gross. I've gotten down to this— oh, I don't know, more slop. Oh my word, you got to be kidding me. Look at there. Can you see it? Look at that. Yes. To be good homesteading, you gotta be good at finding all the things, or not, not throwing them in the pig bucket in the first place. Putting them where they go. Hey, you need water hose up here? Yeah, I'm on it. Oh, it's broke. Broken. Thankfully I have a replacement nozzle, but hold on, I don't know. I'll let you water, but hold on, let's see if we can— I don't know, it's not like a handle, you know. I kind of like that handle. It's kind of, kind of rough. Arun! Arun got our— we, in order to get the sheep in this sacrifice paddock, we have to protect the fruit trees that are there. You got the supplies yesterday?

Yes.

And you're ready to go? Yes. Okay, that's to be able to open them as a gate to get in there and weed, mulch. Yeah. Okay, good luck. We're coming soon. We might have to move them this afternoon depending on how far ahead you get of it. Do I have a different kind of nozzle? This definitely won't do it. This is maximum or nothing. 5 minutes. More to do than I have time to do it. Look at the little buds of grass coming up in here where they were. They're not big fans of watermelon rinds. What else you got for me? What else you got for me? The 2, 3 big things pressing: having to get the sheep into a sacrifice area, having to pick green beans before they get bad, I'm gonna fix the minerals on the luchadors. I have to look at the time I have right now. It's like, oh gosh, 35 minutes. I have to look at the resources I have. Very helpful little one. Jonah's prepping for this sheep move, and, and Arun is putting guards around the fruit trees. That's what I'm talking about right here. That's their second mineral to knock off. I really need to build a frame, but is that as dire as getting the sheep up? And once I get the sheep up into a sacrifice area, we'll have more time because we're not going to move them every day for 2 weeks. So we have to get chores done, that's a must. And then with any time we have left over after chores can be for projects. So I've looked at my resources Evaluated the time I have. So then I say, what is the most important? And I found out when I do that, I'm really getting a lot of work done on the farm. The most important stuff ends up giving us the biggest results. Look who it is! And we got Josiah now too. Boy, my resources are piling up. Now we can work on the project. We need to water the cows in a different spot every day. We need a longer hose. I thought there was one down here. That's not going to do it. Let me look in here, guys, for an extra hose. Here's a hose. Ah, that's where that hose— that's what I thought I was looking for about the cows. This is— we're having to tap into this one, this hydrant, because that hydrant's broke. Hopefully Randolph's coming soon. In. He's gonna fix that hydrant, but he's not here right now. I didn't find the hose. I did see the electrician, and we're still on schedule today for 2 PM. 2 PM, starting up the generator. I hear Jonah hollering for me. Sounds like a cow is out holler. Hey, look, there's a hose in the old barn. I think we need it for chicken butchering, but we're not going to be chicken butchering for a while, and we can just order a replacement. Check on Arun's progress. He's got the stakes in. You putting the T-post in and then the cattle panels? Yeah.

Okay, good deal.

Shackley, ACH, the natural soap. Half a cup of soap to 50 gallons of water. That's a natural dewormer recommended by Joel Salatin himself. All right, this is absolutely beautiful. Talk about turning a problem into a solution. He says he's got a mustache. He's got a watermelon mustache. Um, you know, we don't want to have to slow the cows down for 2 weeks, but hey, Look at this, look at this, look at this! I just want to do like that. Like, this is organic matter. It's going to improve this weak pasture. They didn't eat a lot of that hay, probably because they had a lot of grass still in here. They'll start eating more, but no worries because this is, this is feeding the soil. Spread the love! We're late to milk, but it's like 20 after. I just got to get this, just got to get done. Lily, will you come turn this water on down for me? Just follow the, just follow the green hose, you'll see it. We've got— just go, just go look. It's, it's where the green hose is connected. We put up our water in a new spot. It was down there. New spot every day, just keeping them moving around.

He's not here.

Gideon, can you bring me the soap?

What soap?

Quickly, it's in a glass, it's blue. Oh, you did it! Good job. Hey, did you even look?

Look where?

For that soap. There it is.

Oh, sorry, I didn't know that was soap.

It's time. I want to make sure we don't skip it this month. We're gonna have a little bit more parasite pressure. All right, Lily, we've, we've spread the hay. Water's filling up. We have a rogue chicken got out when it was up here. Let's get Phyllis. Lily, after I walk by with Phyllis, will you walk by with, um, with Teddy, or just to come back later for— oh, we'll get Sally when we bring the cows back. Good morning! Come on, come on. Good, good. Look, look at that agile calf. Wow, big difference. This calf's just 6 days old, keeping up with Mama just fine. Jonah came and got Phyllis. That was nice of him. I almost breathed a sigh of relief coming down and starting milking. Just kind of relaxes us from a hectic morning. Done with Flossie. I want to show you guys something Jonah's been working on. Wait for it, wait for it. Boom! He's made a little station. He's trained Phyllis to go in it. That's so you can milk while I'm milking. Yeah, got the calf up by the head. That's good. Here, let's get a good look at you. Everybody wants to get a good look at you every day, I'm sure. I'm sure. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you, little girl. I won't hurt you. I won't hurt you. You two are cute together. Come on, you're getting, you're getting in your mama's feed. That's kind of a little bit of a trial there. Another thing Joel challenged me to do was come up with some, a mobile milking situation where I didn't have to bring them into the barn, but we went to them. A lot to think through, that being one of them. Can we just get them in some, some kind of stanchion, or does it have to be, you know, mega? Apparently it doesn't. Apparently it can just be T-posts and pallets. All right, I just got the milk up from Flossie.

I love milking.

You love it? Hey, what'd you do? You came back over here with her?

Yeah, it's so much easier over here.

He's kind of breaking her in.

Yeah.

Hey, but you showed it could be done. We could easily train her to another station.

Ice cream and one cup of milk.

I like it. So it's almost been a week, guys. I think it's time. Aunt Phyllis is holding back on us. Let's bring the calf and let the calf nurse. And look, I mean, she gave what, a gallon and a half? But she's got more in there. We're gonna get it. She held back for the calf.

Go on ahead and nurse.

It's not hungry. She's not hungry. Oh, we named her Polly. Yeah, we named her after— this calf was born the day Joe Salatin got here. We said to Joe— what's funny?

Um, Amy said we should name it, um, Molly, and we named it Polly.

That's close.

Yeah.

So we said, Joel, we're gonna name this cow after you. You like Jolene or Polly from Pollyface? He said we used to have a Polly, so we went with Polly because they used to have a family milk cow named Polly way back in the day. Okay, so there goes Polly. That's fitting. I remembered we don't— we don't do what we try to do until We're separating the calf at night, and then the calf's actually hungry, and then the calf would nurse, and then she would let more down. But the calf could have ate right before we brought her in. Who knows? Would you, uh, would you venture to say we're a little behind on the dishes? If it wasn't between yesterday's power outages and today Randolph's fixing the hydrant, we got a little behind. And it's not just there. There, there. That means Randolph got our water going, but the hydrant obviously is not fixed. Randolph informed me that, you know, he— we tried the kit, uh, it's, it's busted. He needs a pole. He needs this thing. This thing got bent or something and it's causing it to to mess up. So we're actually going to replace this thing. So we're actually going to have to dig this up. It's not one thing right now today. We could check on the electrician though, and the generator. Her Cummins generator, gonna crank it up today, I think. I mean, I'll ask Dave. If nothing else goes wrong, that's gonna be cool. Oh, I need to put fuel in this thing. Is this where it goes? Yeah, that's where it goes. It's almost 1 o'clock now. I'm gonna go get as much editing as I can done. They're on schedule. The other people are supposed to be here at 2, so in 1 hour we're gonna crank this thing up. I think I'll fill it up right at 2. They'll probably have some stuff to do before they push the button, whatever we do to get it going. I think I might hear ready to move them. Not quite yet. The head— it's 3 o'clock. I finished the edit. Wait, they were supposed to come at— when they were supposed to come at 10? Well, the electrician had to put them off. No, they had to put us off. They're going to be here at 4, which means let's move the sheep try to move them and be done with that before they get here. You guys think we can do it? Okay. Just talked with the electrician. 3:10. They're, they're fine. They're gonna be ready. They're gonna be on time. And the local Cummins dealer is coming to help get this thing going. And 4 o'clock, take them about 2 hours. So let's go do the chores. That might have been too easy. Oh my gosh, really? We're gonna set up a gap here. They're just going right in. Lily calls sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. She's got the alfalfa. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep! Jonah, go around and give the sheep some pressure. Wrong way, Jonah. Go around, go around.

No, they're gonna get out.

You know what I'm saying? Go around. There you go, there you go. They're on to us. Keep calling sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep! Keep calling them, Lily. Let's regroup. We weren't ready for this. We just weren't ready. Well, maybe they'll go in now that you're not in there. Get him a little out of the bucket. There you go. All right, Josiah's got the emergency door open. Lily, once you get them in, you can go out that door and you don't have to come this way and scare them out.

Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep.

Jonah, they're up here again. Come give them some pressure.

That's the problem.

If Josiah come there too and give pressure. Okay, only 2 left. There we go. One left, but these guys are gonna get antsy and jump out too. No, boy, I can't wait till this winter. We're gonna deep bed these guys and pet them. They're just— they're getting too wild. There you go. No, you gotta walk soft. Oh boy, here we go. Try again, try again. All right, we got Mom in there luring them in there. We'll give them some pressure here. Wow, okay, we're gonna have to make a chute. Try number 4, 5, 6, I don't know. We're trying to move them in a the trailer and the tractor because we're going over there. I don't know, it might be worth just to put a temporary lane up down the road. Hey, should we just forget moving them on the tractor and just put a lane up? No. Josiah, if she gets them in, get ready to shut that door. One gets looking back this way and it's no good. Josiah, they responded to you coming up. There we go. This is it, this is it. I got him! Oh my word. Forget Belle, she'll come up to you anyway. Who's the scoundrel? This is Roxanne right here. So this one broke out, gave us a hard time getting her back in. She says, I like my mama, I like my shepherdess. This winter, deep bedding, petting you guys every day. Ready? I got you. Get out that way, out that way. This is, uh, actually enough grass. Y'all won't even need hay for a few days. All right, Carolina Energy Systems here, local Cummins dealer. So what's the word, Aaron?

Back on formula. Well, we're about ready to get started. Yeah, see if we can make it run.

I put the fuel in. Now all I got to do is what?

We're going to check the battery charger on the other side. To make sure that it's working properly.

Yeah.

And we'll check power, obviously, to the block heater. The block heater has a thermostat in it to where it will kick on when the engine temperature drops down to a certain temperature.

Yeah.

And then start back up or shut off when it reaches up. That's probably a 100 to 120 thermostat, so it may not kick on right now. But, uh, we'll check it here in just a second.

So we're going to simulate a power outage or what?

Yes, sir. Okay, here in just a few minutes. We got some preliminary checks we need to do to make sure our safeties are working. Okay, I'm gonna check, make sure it fires up. The block heater, it's probably a 100 to 120, so it did kick on and start running just like it's supposed to. 0 PSI, which means it's no Oil pressure is obviously because it's not running. Half an hour, which is what it came from with the factory.

Okay, it's got 13.7 volts on the battery and 85 Fahrenheit. What does that mean, outside temp or the engine temp?

Okay, you reach your hand up there in the wintertime, you walk down here and the engine's always going to be warm. Okay, reach your hand on top of it.

Is it always going to make this noise when the block heater is running?

You feel it? It's getting warm inside there. Put your hand around it.

Here it goes.

Everybody's clear.

Just going to check the voltage inside of the transfer switch. How's the voltage?

Looking good, looking smooth.

It's 240. And that sink right there, 120, 120. Nice. 60 Hz. That's good. Good.

Anything else before we do a power transfer?

You okay?

You okay to go? Okay.

And then boom. So he just turned off the generator. We're going to simulate this, correct?

We're going to simulate a power outage.

Dave's gonna— Dave or who's gonna—

yeah, Dave.

All right, and it's gonna go dark, correct? For how many seconds?

Up to about 10 seconds.

Okay, Dave's got 20. We'll see. I can live without the grid for 10 seconds. Look, he's got his timer going. He's gonna get his timer going. All right, here we go. It's gonna get dark, boys. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi, 7 Mississippi, 8 Mississippi. Oh, just a little over 8. We're on, we're on generator right now.

Yes, sir.

10, 12. We are on the generator right now. These lights, the ice machine. Erin actually wants me to actually put a load on it to turn stuff on. Let's test it out. Hey! Hello! You know the power's out, right?

Right.

You're still going. Woo! Hot water going. Yeah, lights, fridge, computer. They want you to load it up. They want you to turn on the oven. They want to turn on the dryer. Oh, the dryer's going! The dryer and the washer are going. Printer's on. Lights are on. Turn on the oven. What else? You could turn on the TV. I don't think the TV draws a lot. It's been a while. Doesn't draw a lot. What else?

I gotta turn the light on.

He said burners. He said burners, but you guys have probably used stuff on the burners. She's got stuff on the— oh, she's got stuff on the burners. Okay, dryer's going. Okay, let me go let them know. This is exciting. Never gonna be without electricity again. The whole, the whole neighbor hood can go down. Look, it's cranking away. It's hauling. Normally it does have panels. It doesn't need to be open like that. They're just monitoring it. It was only at 35%. 35 amps is only pulling 35 amps. It could pull 100. Okay, I think we did all we can. Man, washer, dryer, dishwasher.

I just cut it off. I just cut off the stove. Okay, it was, it was approaching the 100.

We want to avoid the stove and the dryer at the same time. So what happens if it hits 100 max?

It'll trip the breaker on the generator.

Oh no, I thought, I thought that you— it's rigged so that it will cut off the stove.

It's not in here yet.

Oh, that's— oh, okay. Yeah, Dave will come back. And so we're up there, we're getting carried away, having a party, it'll just turn off one or two units? Correct. Okay.

Now it's back down to about half capacity.

Yeah. Okay, you're saying once a month come turn this off?

No, that is hot.

I won't, I won't touch it now.

They'll have a cover over it, so all you'll see is that. Once a month or once a quarter, you want to come and turn that breaker off while you're down here working or outside working and let the generator power your house for 1 to 3 hours. The biggest problem we see with standby generators is the lack of usage. It's still the overusage. Because you may go a year and have 5 hours worth of an outage, you know, one afternoon or a couple afternoons or something. If we don't have a bad snowstorm or hurricane that knocks out power or something. So a lot of times it'll just be the weekly exercise that you get for your yearly hours. Yeah, accumulation.

So we're running 60 amps right now, we're 60% and 55. Oh, 50 amps right here. Okay. All right, it's running the AC and everything, correct? Yep. But now you So you just turned the power back on?

Correct.

So the electricity came back on.

Electricity came back on. It'll have a delay in here where it'll transfer over. So you see this comes down and feeds up. This is your utility feed. It comes out the bottom and over to your load panel, which is your load feed. The front set of contacts here is your generator power. So right now you can see up top that off is green, and that means the utility's off and it's transferred over to the generator, which is on. In a minute, it's going to transfer over inside there in reverse state. The top will be on and the bottom will be off.

And so it'll just automatically go back onto the grid?

Yes, sir. That's correct.

Will there be an 8-second outage?

No. You'll just see the lights blip and then the generator will run a cool-down and shut off.

Aaron, thanks very much.

Thank you, Justin.

We appreciate it.

Yes, sir.

That's Carolina Energy Systems. Aaron, really good guy. If you need a Cummins generator in this area, Western North Carolina, Upstate South Carolina, 30 minutes. Try to wrap up these chores. Big thanks to Cummins for believing in us, sponsoring us, sponsoring us, sponsoring us, in exchange for some attention. I believe in your product, I believe in what you're doing, so I'm happy to do that. If I can get a discount. Oh my gosh, boys, boys, boys, come on, come on quick. Oh wait, I'm getting it, I'm getting it, I'm getting it. So that's cool, right? That's cool of Cummins. Thank you, Cummins. Uh, but they didn't stop there. They wanted to be even cooler and actually give a generator to you guys too. Now until the 18th, so it's coming up really soon, you can sign up and win one of their portable-ish— no, it's portable. Why did I say ish? Portable. I was— I'm thinking size-ish. This size-ish portable generator that would be enough to power your fridge-freezer combo, definitely get you out of, out of a pinch in a power outage. With, you know, I mean, it's not going to do 10 fridges and freezers. But if you are interested in a big system like mine, or a medium, or even a small one that goes to the house, or, or just buying one of their portable portables, you can actually express interest when you enter to win their portable. I'll give you the link for that down in the description. You enter to win this thing, and then you— I'm waiting for Jonah to You gonna turn this on for me, buddy? He's gonna turn this on. Um, so then you enter to win, and you can there express interest, say, hey, I'm interested in having a Cummins dealer contact me. You can prefer any reason. It can be for a portable, it can be for a big old I Love the Grid unit, or whatever. Now, you don't have to check and show interest to increase your odds of winning, so don't check that box unless you are actually interested in Cummins contacting you. Also, there's no reason to enter more than twice. Don't be that guy. Don't, don't be that guy answering twice. Don't be. They'll catch that. They'll catch that. No necesito. Jonah, are you turning this on? It's hot, hot out here in the afternoon sun. Here it comes. We need Shackle in here. Now to get the calves over there. Thankfully we halter trained them a little bit when they were young, kind of. Having a little hard time with Hamburger, huh? Come on. I mean, we halter trained them enough. Come on, he giving you a hard time? Well, come switch. I don't think they spend as much time with him. Look, Moose is going right with me. All right, come on, come get Moose. There he goes. All right, we're gonna try the one at a time. It's just fine with a little pressure from Jonah from behind, me leading. Get your halter off. I will. In the meantime, Grandma, a special pork chop meal. How'd you make that gravy?

With just sour cream.

Well, how do you brown it?

Brown— well, first what you do is you brown your pork chops, and then when you put the sour cream in there, all the drippings. You just kind of cook it for about 5 or 10 minutes and there it is.

So it's from the grease from cooking the pork chops, correct, in a skillet, right?

And then we picked the green beans about a half hour ago and Lily snapped them all.

And then of course, right, and then rice we grew down in the wet spot. Yeah, so we're about to eat. Thank you guys for watching. Do check out the Cummins generator Giveaway good until the 18th. Description down below. If it's past the 18th of August, no worries. I'll leave a link to Cummins and you can find out more information about them. Blinking light. I kid you not, I cannot make this stuff up. We had our first genuine power outage. The, the generator kicked in in seconds. I can't make this up. I promise, guys, I'm not making this up. The internet kept going. I'm uploading footage that didn't get interrupted. I mean, I have a battery backup on that, so it didn't even lose 2 seconds. Progress is still being made. It's crazy. Lights are on now. I don't have much diesel fuel in there, so I went around and shut off everything that we don't need. So next step is a pump onto our— we have a 350-ish gallon tank— so that we can pump more gallons in there if we need to. And next step is to fill up the 100-gallon tank, which when all those parts come in, they're going to bring that out.