Our Brilliant (or Crazy) Idea to Keep Pigs Downstairs

He loves him some boots. Now don't go to Mom, she's busy. She's ordering me some beef roasts. We are totally out. We certainly added a new level when I went carnivore. Gaps, because all my meat needs to be boiled. That means I eat separate. Oh, okay.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be boiled per se. I mean, technically it's boiled, but you don't have to call it boiled.

You can roast it a long time too, I guess.

Yeah, and a lot of—

The point is I have to eat separate things oftentimes. Making the kids some bacon this morning. These vlogs are really— what's the plot line? Well, They're a man on a journey storyline, hopefully getting 1% at least better every single day. The 1% change doesn't have to just apply to farm life. They can apply to my business, family life. Today I'm making bacon to give the kids a more enjoyable morning experience. Rebecca read something or other Yesterday about how important it is for adult, for parents to kids, wake-up time, meal time, and bedtime. I think we got meal time dialed. 2 times a day together. Your mom said I should sing you a song. Anything. She said it would annoy you guys, but you might remember it fondly when you grow up. It's time to get up in the morning. It's time to get up in the morning. It's time to get up in the morning. Seems like it has an ending jingle, but I can't think of it. Do you remember it? Never heard that one. Maybe I messed it up. Bird, you waking up? Yeah, got some bacon coming down the line. Maybe it's a big old hug for you. Maybe it's not a song in the morning. Would you rather have a song or a hug? A hug. Yeah, me too. Hey, where are your socks? I've noticed since I tackled this hard yesterday that it's not nearly as bad today. Do you notice that? If we just keep up with it, it won't get so crazy. I'm talking about the order of cleanliness of this kitchen. Hey, look, I got something came in the mail. I want to know, has anybody read this? Saw this in the Epic Times and I was like, How to Be a Farmer: An Ancient Guide to Life on the Land. That ought to be interesting. Let's play random read game. Okay, let's see. Okay, I gotta read it. Versatility Ease of care and hardiness are qualities worth their weight in gold on any farm. All right, versatility, you gotta be versatile. Ease of care, so tender. Hardiness, tough. We got to be tender and tough. Quality, that our quality is worth their weight in gold. Okay, let's remember that. We got to be versatile, versatile, gentle, hardy today. That's pretty neat. We're on a mission to finish that mineral labeling. Is this the— I don't think I think that's it. It's a book. I actually ordered two of these books for our house as we're building a house. I'm building the house. Passive solar energy book. I already got it, so I'm gonna— that was an accident. I'm gonna send that back. Basically, I learned from that book I need a consultant to come out and help me. He's coming November 2nd. I gotta get me some long cooked roasts going. All I've got This beef tenderloin, probably not the best for that, but that's all I got from the farm. Rebecca is back at it with all your concoctions.

Potions and potions.

Anything new? Mm-mm. Even some for me? Bee pollen?

Yeah, but I think you're gonna take that later because you're fasting, right?

No, I'm not fasting. You're crazy.

You're not fasting like that, but like intermittent.

Intermittent fasting? No, I'm not.

Oh, okay.

Next fast after my birthday. I'm eating clean until October 31st, then this southern boy is getting some fried chicken, biscuits and gravy.

Oh, is that what we're having?

Sausage gravy. Yes, heck yes we are. Creamy good dreamy grits.

Finally!

It's like my life. If I was on death row, this would be my last meal.

I love how you talk about if you were on death row. You would have to do something really bad to get there.

Skinning and some baking grease. Bonus meal. Breakfast. Look, everybody's sitting down together. More bacon. Bacon, eggs, smoothie. This is on my radar. How many rows of garlic do you reckon that is?

I can't remember.

Garden beds.

It's just one.

Okay, it's on my radar.

We always just only plant one.

We have a window, don't we? Like 2 weeks past— oh, by the end of November. Oh, we're good.

I think because we're It's just starting to get cold.

Okay. All right. Got my morning electrolytes. Just simple magnesium. No, not magnesium. Uh, what is it, Rebecca? Well, it's boron, salt, and potassium. I take magnesium at lunch. Chilled out on these yesterday and didn't sweat salt, so that's pretty good. How are Percennas doing? Oh! We've done really good, Becky. We haven't had so much success with trees, but something found it before we did. Look at that. Giddy, you want one?

No, it might frost this week or next, depending if it— but next week it will definitely frost. It's going to get down into the 20s at night.

But what you're saying is they'll, they'll finish—

they, they are best after a frost.

Yeah, I'm gonna pig out on those on my birthday too. How about that? We've been neglecting Zone 0 inside the house. The most visited— not even visited, just the, the foundation of the home. Inside the house, particularly the kitchen. You know what else we've neglected? The Zone 1. I've been going right past this Zone 1 problem. That is to start right outside your door. Well, Let's start addressing problems right outside our door. Holy chicken squat, in there. Hey, get in, get your basket. What's evil chicken poo when it's in the— in with the eggs? This is what it's supposed to look like. Nice. Speaking of zone 1, this yard, this construction zone, they got to put in a sidewalk, they gotta pour footers for the, the root cellar. Finally getting a root cellar. I'm gonna make sure we're still on track. Zone zero, the kitchen. It needs a total rehaul. All I gotta do to fix this is come out at night, put something over this, turn it over, and they can't get in it.

Do that for a couple weeks, they break them the habit.

Can you guys remind me to do that? Gideon, can you remind me to do that?

Yeah.

Somebody help me. I've made a mistake. And I've let our young birds grow up before I marked them. One of these— one group of these chickens is a year older, and we would need to cull them and not the others. So I don't know what I'm gonna do. Looks like our zone 2-ish needs some work too, but we'll get to that kitchen first, right, Rebecca?

Great.

I don't want to do it. Do you want to do it?

I do.

You actually want to do the work? Well, you want the results? Yes. But do you want to do the work?

No, nobody wants to work.

No. Oh, we got a bunch of it cleaned up. All right, you guys gonna— am I carrying both? You have to.

I'll carry the camera.

Here we go, Henry.

That'll love me. Goes to my rabbit.

How about there?

Yeah.

How's your Rabbit doing? He's getting brown. Oh yeah, nothing's wrong. She— well, Lily, you've kept this one alive for a while. 2 years.

I've been feeding it.

Is it gonna rain?

It's gonna rain today. Hold on a second, we gotta do something.

It's gonna be a perfect day for cleaning out the kitchen if there ever was one. We've got to pull up all these sweet potatoes at some point. Okay, get this comp— we'll wait until the compost gets here. Okay. Get this compost shaped and compost. This got to get shaped and compost and covered. Where do you want to put these onions?

The garlic?

Garlic. I'm thinking over here since it's been covered.

That's what I was thinking.

These weeds will be killed. It's probably going to be too late to cover this for 2 weeks and then plant cover crop.

So I was thinking—

I think we're too late.

I was thinking maybe what we could do is— I don't think we are too late, really. It probably germinates because we have warm days. Like, we're gonna be in the 60s, but you start—

you, you stop having light at Thanksgiving, so it needs to all grow up by then. Then nothing grows more after Thanksgiving.

We got 6 weeks to Thanksgiving, I think.

Well, it would be amazing if we could do the chores in 30 minutes, then we have a couple hours to do the kitchen. Good news and bad news is Josiah forgot to put up the calves. So the bad news is we're not getting any milk. The good news is we don't have to milk this morning. It's gonna happen today.

Oh no, it's not happening.

Is it? Is the sidewalk the same guy? Probably does sidewalk. This— what should happen today? Yeah, it's supposed to happen this week.

Well, no, he's coming to plan it out. Oh, it just takes forever.

Okay, I'll have to dig it out.

This is— you think this is—

it's gonna be nice.

It's gonna be so nice. Speaking of the concrete, Seth said they're coming this morning. Jonah's coming with these days. Come on, guys! Are you finding any?

Get in!

You picked like the very yellow one.

Oh, bad.

Is it good? We already got the sheep moved, we got the cows moved. You ready? You ready to just explode this kitchen?

Could we get it done in one day so that we could Start fall gardening so I can move on to the kids' room and bedroom and all the things we have to do too.

Do you mind if I do the fall gardening before I help with the kids' bedroom?

I don't need your help.

Okay, we have it on record, right? What did you say? You don't—

I don't need your help with the kids' bedroom. I'm gonna make sure I didn't put a G over here.

We got it on, we got it on tape.

So I was just going over it with him and how we're going to take this sidewalk and turn it back to the other one, you know, for these steps, right? You just want to leave room for a planter over here?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Okay, okay, that's fine. I mean, I was thinking maybe just go against the house and get the water out there better, you know.

He was talking of, you know, going from these steps, pointed all the way to the chimney, all the way over to the left side of these steps.

Maybe that's why we had so many problems with water.

Well, no, but I mean, it would—

if we put a—

you know, it's going to trap water in there because you got that concrete. You could do a raised planter over there. Yeah, there's something on the concrete. Just be cleaner.

Okay, a container.

We can do that if it's better. We should do what's better because we don't want any more problems. We don't want to have to redo this project ever again.

There's no more water going to leach through the block, right? You know, all that's— that's what that drain at the bottom— I mean, it's all going to hit that. But what he's talking about is just, you know, like puddling on the other side of the sidewalk before it would like drain through, or it could run onto the sidewalk, you know, in a heavy rain.

Okay.

As far as having leaking issues, okay, those are all fixed.

Okay.

We quit just in time. Yeah, you guys hear that hitting the roof? I don't know if you can see it, but it's raining. It's a nice drizzle. Let's crush this. Kitchen. I think we need to go at the counters first. Lily, can you take Henry so you can free Mom up? She put a kibosh on the counters. Let's put this first. Uh, I have an approach. What if we don't use it more than once or twice a week? It goes into the loft and we'll have shelving in the loft and right outside the loft so that you can still go out there and get it real quick. Yeah. Okay, that means stuff like this stuff like popsicle holders, stuff like these storage containers can go just in the unfinished room. I think we should put a shelf there.

What happens if we put a shelf right here?

Yeah, heck yeah. Yeah, then we'll have like a little grocery store here. Yeah, we go through— we could probably get more efficient about our, uh, well, maybe not. Maybe we're doing pretty good. We could always get a little more efficient. Then you put Buck You just want it to be close to your door. We're gonna put it in bins until then.

Okay.

Okay.

The other option would be to do like that island that was at the Airbnb.

Yeah, it was a little island. Could it fit right here?

No, no, no, no, I'm talking about in that instead of doing a, uh, shelf. Oh yeah, I think a shelf would service better than an island because nobody's out there doing anything.

No, except where are you gonna put my milk washing station. So guys, if we can get all this out of here, that's a big deal.

Well, I feel like maybe if we— I feel like it might be better, better used to not put your milk stuff out there. It will just free this up, and then we can—

if you're gonna keep these shelves, we might as well just keep our milk stuff here, and we'll have plenty of room. Yeah, but I was thinking if you wanted to express the fridge, get an island in here. What if you remove this? Could you get an island in here? Do they make little islands? I don't know. She wants to buy some counter space. Oh, mobile counter space. Did that just give way? So what if instead of this rolling thing you had one that was a counter?

Well, that's kind of what that's been. I mean, this is kind of like a counter. Oh, it has all this stuff on it. That needs to be somewhere.

But I'm saying sometimes it's hard because I'm cutting up chicken, you're wanting to prep.

I know, but if we get some of this stuff out of here, I feel like we're gonna have space.

Good, I like it. What did you just do?

Well, I had calendula blossoms taking up a huge jar, taking up a huge jar. I put them in here. And I'm making calendula oil.

What does calendula oil do?

I use it in my lotion. I make my own lotion and I use this. And you can see up there, I have some still floating in oil up there.

Nice. Look who, uh, when you're gonna harvest that?

Um, I harvest it as I need it or process it.

Okay. Look at this guy. He is just in heaven. Is this heaven? Is this heaven? It's all you need. Boom! What are you gonna do with all that space now?

I don't know.

We didn't do a hard and fast rule of if we don't use it more than once a week, we don't have it in here. Obviously, see, you don't want to haul the dehydrator in and out, so it stays. The racks stay.

The Instant Pot stays.

The Instant Pot, we don't really use a whole lot. What about this? Tell me your reasoning behind the cheese kit being in here. Super Cubes stay because these are kind of things that when you're going to use them, you just want them to be right there, right back.

And like the— I don't want the cheese kit to get lost out there either. So some of the smaller stuff like this, this is all my fermenting stuff.

That's kind of grab and go. You don't want to go looking for it, you want it to be ready.

All the milk and stuff will be in here. I'll probably put my Instant Pot back down here.

Mhm. Milk stuff up here.

Yeah.

Okay, water bottles stay there. All glass jars over here. Still got a couple things we can get out of here. Look at this, it is finished. Oh my word, it just feels fresh in here. It's fresh. We did the whole wall. Oh, that's kind of getting to me. I want to put it on the shelf, but she says it'll get lost. Jake's here, we got to get training. It's, it's so the Lance— they were so kind to give us a meal there in Jonah's. That we gotta get it back to them though. Jar lids and stuff, we could probably go through that. But look at this, Mom organized the food and we have food only in there. Milk tape and lids, I could probably, probably go over to the milk things. And more bolt storage. I like it. Papa's happy, Mama's happy. It's time to train. She's got to go in a heavyweight again.

Shoulder, knees back, hips, hips, hips.

Lock everything in. Right hand up, right hand up. He says, nope, I'm going for the big one. Jacob just told me he wants to see me at 180. I'm 167 this morning. What are you gonna put on me, fat or muscle? Muscle only, lean tissue. How do we put on more muscle? Eat more meat. That's it. Okay, thank you. That's it. Let's keep doing what we're doing. And then not heavier weights.

That'll happen over time.

Okay.

Yeah, but the biggest thing is, yeah, just keeping your protein intake really high.

How long does it take to gain 13 pounds of muscle?

Oh wow, probably about a year, you know, at the rate we're going.

You know what, 5, 6, 7% of my body weight. Yeah, we could prioritize it and then like make it happen faster, but I like to hurry because I'm gonna be weight training for 40 more years, Lord willing. Maybe 60 more years. Okay, let's see how this turned out. Extremely okay. Jacob says eat more meat. I can do that. I think I have hit the bottom. I think I would be concerned if I started losing any more weight. 167, all-time low. I got an awful brown meal— broth, beef broth with stew beef. We're talking about pigs. If we're gonna sell the 10 pigs as Uh, breeder feeders.

How big it is?

You got 1,200 square feet? Okay, 10 pigs at 60 square feet per person, that's 60, so you need half the greenhouse. That's not even counting the beefcake and the cake ladies. Winter might not be the best time to grow pork. How do you feel about having pigs on your greenhouse? All half your greenhouse?

No, it can't work.

Well, can't— we don't say can't.

The chickens, they'll eat the chicken grain.

Everybody will eat each other's grain.

Well, the chickens will be on one side and the pigs will be on the other, and then Beefcake has to be separated from everybody. Yeah, you'll have to have a division for the ladies, which they might give birth in the winter at some point. You have to have Beefcake in his own. Now we want to do a pig port for our book design book, so do we build a pig port and keep, keep Beefcake in that? Because a pig port would go really good next to the garden because we're always hauling it up here to the chickens. But what if we could haul it to a pig?

We have two stalls downstairs. Could we cut that, put them together?

Oh, there is that one stall with the— we had the sheep in the one, the two down there. Oh, that's not terrible.

Cut a hole and put a door in front of it so we can shut it if we want to.

What if you put sun, sun tubes in that or something? I don't think we want to do the open panel like we did in the last one. That's not a terrible idea. Yeah, go measure that stall after. Make sure, see if you can put all 10 in one. What do you say, Beck? We build a pig fort? Okay. In order for us to do this building plans book, we have to— we got these mock-ups from the printer. What I like about these design books is it's a lay open. And do we like this company? They happen to be the cheapest so far, and I don't see any difference in quality. They happen to be the same company that did these amazing butchering books, also lay flat step-by-step guides. And we're like, let's go with it. And actually, we're going with this size. So Chris, my partner in this, has gotten the first design done, the chicken tractor. And now it's my turn. Rebecca, she's smart. She's out there getting sun exposure and working at the same time.

I finished it.

What? Now what are you gonna do? How many days did that take you?

I think like a week.

Okay, kept you busy for a week. Now what you gonna do?

I don't know.

Take it apart and rebuild it.

That's not really possible. It's too technical to do that.

Yeah, well, good job, my man. You did good. Yeah, maybe you'll play with it.

Yeah, maybe.

Becky searching compost. Our regular composting source fell through. We just did the math. We need about 8, 9 yards of compost. That's a dump truck load.

So they have—

it's like 18 50-foot beds.

They have screen topsoil, garden blend, organic compost, pine bark, nursery mix. Okay, soil conditioner or leaf compost.

Oh sweet, yeah, let's do it tomorrow, 9 AM. Well, that was easy, Beck. It's gonna have to come in 2 truckloads. Just order 10 yards if we need 9. Let's have that extra.

Yeah, put some on there.

Let's put it on thick. Yeah, put it up here in the yard.

Well, I can use it where I'm gonna plant plants in these planters that are terrible.

So tomorrow we start the fall gardening. Look who's been busy in here while I've been doing the business. What do you think about this? I mean, right outside, if you just— it's not that hard to walk from here to here, and we freed ourselves up so much. I mean, like, just applied some permaculture principles to cleaning the house. Put it in zones. This doesn't need to be in zone 1. We did— we don't use it that much, right? When we do, because we use it somewhat often, we can just come out here and get it.

Exactly.

Big pots out here, that makes sense. Now you freed yourself up over here.

Yeah, so I could actually do some food storage over here, um, or just put stuff that's on the ground. Yeah, up. Now I'm gonna get a shelf for here for all our camping stuff because this is kind of like our camping disaster corner. We've—

everybody's got a camping disaster corner, they're honest.

Yeah, so basically I am culling things out of here.

Listen to your language.

I know, I'm gonna get rid of junk The other thing that I think I want Randolph to do, and I don't know exactly where you want it to go, but it could go up here.

You know what this is turning into? It's turning into a large pantry for us.

Yeah.

And look, look, the shelf in the middle, like, why not?

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but I'm like thinking he needs to build a shelf across there. And then we can put our coolers up there.

Ooh, I like it. That's just dead space.

And then they're out of our way.

Yeah, I like it. Keep on keeping on. I have the ham in. I'm gonna go do H-Bot, get some more business done in there. I'm gonna take this. Have you guys read this book? I read this book a long time ago, The Independence Farmstead. So good. Visited these guys on the vlog not too far— not too long ago. They're the ones farming on the convent, but they, out of anybody I know is growing the most, or I should say it this way, living off their homestead more than anybody I know. And I think their message is more important than ever now because their whole shtick is like growing 90% of your own food without, or at least minimized outside inputs. Like, they grow all their own livestock food. After being at Homesteaders of America and meeting y'all and getting a pulse for what you need as we go into this fall Abundance Plus University registration— so that's, that's November 1st— I'm thinking, what's the big theme? What's the big idea? What kind of classes and courses we can add? How about homestead independence. That's what we really want. We don't really want to prepare, so to speak. We don't want to like be preppers, so to speak. We want to be independent. And either way, good times or bad, we're thriving and we're experiencing abundance. And Shawn and Beth Doherty can help take us there. I'm excited. I just talked with Dan and Shawn and Beth, and they happen to be available Next week, October 24th through 28th, for filming. And so not only are we gonna film instructional courses with them, we're gonna get a television show, Discovering Home. It just all came together last minute, but just absolutely beautiful, just in time for the fall registration. I already have some topics in mind, like how to find affordable land.

That's particularly of interest right now to a lot of people. And then also, how do you make impossible land possible?

That's their personal story. They had a talk at Homesteaders of America. It was sustainable homesteading, especially during a recession. That would be good. And so I just want to take this book and just, you know, just skim through it. I've underlined it like crazy and just make sure there's not any more relevant topics that we might have them walk, walk us through. The cool thing is Dan's going to their homestead, so we'll be teaching and showing us stuff from there. So let's get some work done.

Okay, identified one more class. 5 in all for them for the fall semester.

If it goes good, we'll do more with them, of course. But the fifth one, how to inexpensively and quickly set up minimal livestock infrastructure. That was a good session. Hadn't done that in a while. Let me hold this up or get my handle.

I'll do it.

What I was thinking is we could lean more permanent. We could have a slope so they can't land. But then you can't put it against the wall because the wall— I'm thinking if we put an arched something or another right there and it just pivots with this and it comes down over it, and the chickens, if they jump up there, they just slide off. See, it'll be like that. I'll take him over it. Oh, let's just say 10 feet, a little more than that. 11. So 110. I wonder what Joel says to put pigs out. Well, he only gives cows 30 square feet, so I doubt he gives— so I'm sure that's enough for pigs. Yeah, 5 pigs in here in case you don't do your door, because is there a block wall in between? No. Can you go check there?

I know there is. I've seen—

well, then all you gotta do is cut a door.

Yeah.

And that's so you can only do one feeder in water. Now I have a question.

We're gonna put it—

I wanna—

how are you gonna keep deep bedding from blocking your door from shut?

You're gonna have to have a deep bedding barrier. I'm gonna build a gate that goes to here and then just—

then you didn't have even less room.

No, I don't have a—

it'll have a barrier and then a gate on top of it.

You gotta understand what I'm saying to you. Yeah, you gotta have an 18-inch, foot and a half barrier so that wood chips can build up in here and you can still open your door. Yes.

And then get on top of that.

Why are you gonna put a gate at the top?

So I can get in there with wood chips.

That's fine. We should probably bring them in mid-December. Yeah, you gotta hurry up and get better. Jonah, this is your project because if it was up to me, I'd sell them as feeders.

Yeah, but I think you can make more if you sell them.

You can, you can make more as pork.