On a Hunt for More Land

Happy first day of training our heifer cow. She's about to give birth to her first calf. We'll see how this goes. Also, we've maxed out the pastures we have, and we have to get creative in looking for more around us. And I get to taste peanut butter after 44 days without. Let's see how it treats me. I just made y'all a smoothie before I even ate, and nobody's even eating that. Henry, come eat that smoothie. Y'all, milk. Move everybody over, leave Harriet by herself. We're gonna start trying to train her. The project is to catch up from the trip, assess the farm, and see what needs to be done. Okay, thank you. One thing. Okay, that's where I want to be. I can't find him. I didn't find my shorts. Here we go. Hey, you can't go out in shorts!

Why?

Get ready, I gotta find my pants. I barely keep my pants up after the fact. Really? Yeah. Here, if you want a snack, grab an apple to go. That's what's in season, bro. They're the most important. They're the most important. Need to get out there and train Harriet though. Hey guys, we need to get out there and train Harriet and feed our chickens. Let's do this at breakfast next time, all right? Do you want this peeled? Yeah. Do you want this cut up? Okay, just peel. All right, that's the most important thing. Remember, tell me, tell me in the comments, how do you live in the moment? How do you— I need some advice.

How do you live in the moment?

How do you not constantly think about what else needs to be done as if it's more important? Okay, we'll come back to this chicken stuff. We have got to do an area. Hey y'all, come on, put that up. Let's give that to Austin. I don't like spicy and he might like spicy. I do like spicy. Okay, that's what I thought. Austin, here, let's show them some of our work. I put Austin's footage right here on the floor. That's awful nice. There's the footage from our tribal HOA. I'll put the meat there and I say the cards are on the table. I told him there's a piece of meat for him too. Austin, show me your reaction, you eating that and enjoying that. That is good. I'm probably gonna eat this whole thing right now. Glad you enjoyed it. All right, Henry, let's go.

It's a big bee.

Hey, we ready for Harriet? Been in this new stage for about a year. I have a hard time accepting it and adjusting. It used to be this whole farm depended on me. Now the kids have their separate things. And so if I want to intervene, like train Harriet, I've got to work with them and they get ahead of me. It's a, it's a timing issue.

Now you want to stockpile up some grass. Yeah, once you reach the end of this little section right here, we could bring them back down through here. Yeah, and rotate them again and save all of that.

Is that ready?

Yeah, it's ready enough.

I guess we could. Now here, here's my thought. Let's stockpile this instead because it's just going to get colder and colder and we want to be closer to the house.

The only reason I say that is that grew when it was warmer, so it's got a little bit more.

But if it's ready, it's still a minute before we get to it, right? I think your idea is good. It's just, do we want to be on that mountain in December?

We would have not hit this If I— if we would have thought of that sooner, and we could have just— yeah, looped back to there instead of taking both these pastures.

But well, let's think about it. We may have to do that if this isn't even ready.

It's ready, but okay.

So I'm saying we have more animals than we have land, so we got to really work on getting things from neighbors. I texted you boys, and I'm thinking, you know, our most close neighbor has let us use— it might be 2 or 3 acres, but we need to get those trees off of it from the hurricane. And do him right. And then maybe one day be able to get more if we do it right. You know, you got any ideas on getting Harriet trained? Okay, I didn't want her over. I kind of— let's get her some alfalfa. How wild's Harriet? That this morning, day one, be an assessment. We're gonna have to think of a way to train Harriet to eat alfalfa without— I mean, look how crazy these sheep just went for it. Like your new sweater? Harriet is due. Okay, here she comes. Good, let's get her out of there.

This is great.

Nice.

Stay up. It's okay, it's okay. This one's going fast. Let's keep going with this. I might get to her udder today. Get in, get me some more alfalfa quick. Further down I go, the more she doesn't like it. Ultimately what we want her to do is let us be down there touching her. Does anybody want to fix that tree today? Push it up and put a stake on it. Oh my gosh, I got a lot further than I ever imagined today. Would it take me 20 days to get to that with Vanilla? These American Milking Devon crosses with the Jerseys, I don't know if that's it or what, but my other heifer I trained that was American Milking Devon and the Jersey was easier like this. Polly, when I trained her, I think it only took 7 days. We might be putting a collar on her tomorrow. All right, let's get this collar. It's never worked. This wasn't pulling this up. How can we get this off? Hope the tree already hasn't grown into this thing. This is a good silvopasture tree. This is a good locust growing right in our pasture. So you can do it on the inside. Okay, what's y'all's milk score? I got a gallon. And you got that full?

You got a gallon and a half. Can we talk about this greenhouse?

What do you want to talk about?

Get rid of it.

No, why?

And move it over there.

Well, we were gonna move it to the front yard. We want a front yard. You just don't like our front yard. Well, it'll be right there next to sidewalk. That's okay.

I still don't like it.

Ooh, do you guys want to build a fire pit for the fall in our front yard?

Yeah!

What?

No! Yes, I do not want the greenhouse in our front yard.

With nice seats that are inviting and little like Christmas type lights. We need to do that now and eat supper out there. Eat supper outside by a fire. Come on! Do it. I'll start now. Henry, don't go too far. We're gonna do the chickens. Henry, that's a perfect job for you, holding the cow tails. Garden kitchen was so nice, so nice and neat after Annie. Let's keep it that way. We're back to getting protein and our own fat to our chickens. We got an exciting video coming. I'm switching over to a more high protein based, nutrient dense chicken feed. No corn, no soy. Take those up to the fridge, please. Hey, why you got your dress shoes on?

I like them.

Oh my gosh. Okay, Gideon, can you empty this water or bring it and we'll use it as our soak? Then the protein with their soaked feed. They're clamoring. Come on, Gideon. That smells. This smells. They got to get out of here. Let's get that. Hey, let's put them up tonight, okay? And put them out on pasture and get this compost out. Is that a timer for 7:30 PM to put up the chickens. Look what we got while we were gone. Thanks to Chip Drop, it actually works. Put $20 in, these people who are working nearby look it up and say, hey, we'll drop it there. Instead of paying $20 to drop it, they get paid $20, and that's well worth it right there. Can you go feed that to the chickens? I'll meet you back down at the feed. My number one needs me for something. Drop everything for your number one, gentlemen. Nothing. Nothing is more important than that garden of peace. Treating your wife like the queen that she is. Dropping everything when she coughs. Treating her like number one because she is. Boys are loading up on trash. We got a PT. Let's see how it is. I feel like I've been stretching every day. And it's better. Is it better? Come on, come on. I don't want surgery. They're threatening surgery. Shoot, it's right there. Wow, wow. Okay, okay. At least that hurts. That makes me feel like I have more to go. It's not like not hurting and I'm hitting a wall, you know what I mean? That would feel like it healed back wrong. Hey Gideon, come on, let's get the rest of this feed.

I did.

We'll grab the rest of this out by hand. I just shook that off. I don't know if I'm gonna do that anymore, bro. I just shook off the little fake nesting material and it just slung up and hit me. I have some chicken poop on my neck. We gotta take our buckets back down and soak feed.

No, we do that tonight, remember?

No, I don't want to do nighttime chores anymore. Why? Because I don't want to do it. I get tired, I burn out. Let's do it right now when I'm feeling good. Great, I'll meet you down there. Chickens were bare bones, no food, so we're gonna We're gonna up their feed a little bit, trying to find that sweet spot. Soaking makes it go a lot further. About 110 chickens, really I would need something like 35 pounds of feed a day. I'm only feeding, uh, 10. I'm soaking the feed and then I'm giving the meat. It's pretty amazing. Okay, interesting shoe choice. A little big for you. That's the third pair of shoes I've seen you in today. Where's your town shoes?

They're actually free sales. That's where they are. That's all the— that's all somebody's shoes.

He's not as bad as Mr. Brown losing his shoes. I'm not.

I thought it was my town shoes.

Mr. Brown, why are you so bad at keeping up with your shoes? Well, I know you got some today, but why do you think it was so terrible?

Give me some toys.

Do you want to know the story that all y'all relate to. It's always keeping up with the kids' shoes. Where are your shoes, Mr. Brown? A lot of you at the HOA realize— I didn't realize you wrote a children's book. Yes, I wrote a children's book all about it. Check it out. All right, baby, see ya. You're leaving, right? Yeah, I gotta go to PT. All right, I'm leaving as well. All right, we're that family now.

Bye, Gideon.

I met PT. Nobody brought him a snack. You might have to go get him a snack. You're taking Gideon though, right? Oh yeah, Gideon, you're coming with. I just put a feeler out to the community for, hey, does anybody have any pastures for lease that we could get hay or graze our animals? We need to— we're running out of grass. We've got more animals than we've got land, and we still need more animals. Okay, yeah, we do got hay, but it's expensive where we're getting it right now. I got one hot lead. He told me where to go over here to see this field.

Oh my gosh, that is crap.

It's not the most beautiful. It's, uh, it's pretty weedy, but it's a, it's a big field out here. It is inexpensive though. And this is something. This is where we live, you know. Big development right there, right next to a big highway right there. We're all just nook and cranny farming here. How'd it go clearing at the neighbors? We do have about 3 acres the neighbor's letting us use for hay if we clear the hurricane trees off of it. Hey, come here, give us a hug. Last week of practice. Yeah. All right, be dangerous. That's what driving is, it's being dangerous and playing soccer. Let's be real. You get a hug too, buddy. You're dangerous. Okay, bye-bye. Oh, did somebody put up the calf? Do that on your way out. Let's start doing that after lunch. Office hours. The thing about working from home and having kids at home is you do get interrupted a lot. This is the second apple I've made him. Hey, I could use some help. If you're gonna interrupt me, that's, that's half the disruption, guys. Getting out of the work mode. Gideon, you can come with me and help me. The cows— Lily has kind of gotten me and said there is no water to the cows. Being an entrepreneur is conducive for having a homestead because if I was off at work and those cows were out of water, they'd be screwed. That water is good. I think this one's filling up, so they have water now. She said it was off. Can I trust her? -ish. Retread this in. Are you guys going to the leaf pile or what?

Yeah.

Okay.

I hit the leaf pile! Oh, hey, we're about to do the epic flip!

Oh my gosh, we get peanut butter by the bucket. And there's a diet. I mean, this diet's for me. There's not a more farm-friendly diet than the GAPS diet. Not more animal-based. Look, I'm gonna make pancakes with acorn squash from the farm, eggs from the farm, butter not from the farm. I haven't had Peanut butter since the end of August, September, almost 2 months. You can have peanut butter on the GAPS diet? I'm at that stage. Look at this, I'm just gonna do a little bit because— whoa! Remember when we quit Chick-fil-A for so long and then we had to break down and we had to eat it and First bite was good, but then it was just awful. Yeah, that's not so— I was gonna say with peanut butter, that's crazy.

That would be nuts if it was, right?

So you've been eating— that's just not, you know, it's not for me. That's like last meal quality. You're a dork. How'd your meatloaf turn out? It turned out good. Good, pink inside, that's perfect. Pancakes turned out nice.