Overwhelmed

No, no temperature. Another one's biting the dust. Jonah was the first to get it. Boy, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be back in the day when I had all little kids and I was doing everything. She's negotiating with a terrorist. He did say he would eat a sausage. The reality is he's probably getting sick too. Overwhelm is a very common feeling in homesteading. And in life for that matter comes from having more to do, usually important things to do, than you have time. It might be just you and I, babe. I'll do both the chickens, running the whole farm. I'd appreciate it.

And then I could—

hey, eggs, feed, check their waters. Mom's taking care of the teens and likely the baby. How do you feel? He's going down, I think. Small temp. Okay, it's gonna be a particularly overwhelming day. Big boys and— get in— and then Henry seems to be going down— are down. Mom will be busy in there with them. I got something though. I've been doing this a while, been homesteading 20 years, and, uh, have had 5 kids and they're already in their teens. I've found my sanity. I can get through overwhelming days. And it's raining. No worries. Right? Too blessed to be stressed. Your chicken's out. What we did yesterday was not enough. There's a chicken. All right, Austin, let's show them this. This is just my chicken scratch from this morning, but I've got a 7-tier pyramid. Actually, Austin, I wrote it upside down. I'm gonna hold that there so you could maybe make a graphic. There's a lot of good things you have to do and need to be done, but you need to know how to prioritize them. And this structure can help— helps me. The structure of thinking helps me prioritize what most needs to be done. At the very foundation is why. You gotta know why. Why are you existing and doing? And for me, it's for fulfillment. Just what gives us the most fulfillment And for me, that is having fulfillment myself, but then finding joy in that, wanting to pass that on to others, the ones I love the most, which is family. So why I do what I do is for legacy, to secure fulfillment in myself and those in my family that will come after me. A lot of people get into doing things and they don't even necessarily know why. Look at the pole barn. But this will help you not only in overwhelm, to help you figure out how to prioritize things, but it will help you prevent burnout. You'll remember why you're doing what you're doing. I'm gonna do chores in the rain to create a legacy. Every day that I tend to the way these animals are raised I'm making this land a better place. Oh, we have to talk about the second level when I get back. I can't take— here, look, I'll show you. I can't take the main camera because you can't get wet. This, on the other hand, is waterproof and pretty dynamic and cool. So, uh, let's get the chores done, which is a level And we're doing it now because it has to be done in a certain time. Okay, I'm so happy for this rain because of the local fires. Austin, show that little video clip you have of getting pretty close to the fire. It's been so dry and windy, it's a bad combination around here. These onions need to be We're just dry and needed water. Pig's done. Lily's even milking the cows. I mean, not milking the cows, haying the cows. Did you do the chickens, honey? Okay. Where'd that chicken get out? Although that bothers me and needs to be done. Today's not the day. I'm going through my list of priorities. Oh look, looks like our compost might have heated up. It's steaming. Heck yes! Notice the why. It's the big why, not necessarily why you're homesteading, and that's good to know too. But you gotta know why— your why for life, the big one— because then that allows you to homestead or not. You're like, or not. The apron-wearing permaculture chicken ninja master. Maybe I should change that, by the way. Okay, we're gonna have to get more hay. Apron-wearing permaculture chicken tending master. Yeah, I'm not the ninja anymore, I'm the chicken tender. Tender, okay. Chicken tender master. Apron-wearing permaculture chicken tender master. Find my buddy Randy Klyman in Minnesota. Visited him on the farm tour, featured his little farm. He said this homesteading is getting in the way of my family. They're young, they're about to go off to school. I need to pull this out, you know. I have to have my job. I need to pull out the homesteading and be with my family. Boom! Yes, we're still friends. If anything, it strengthened the friendship because you have soul and purpose and deeper meaning. You're not shallow, you're deep. Next level in the pyramid is self-care. Yep. When you hear those people— when I first heard the people in the safety thing in the airplane saying if we need the oxygen, oxygen masks come down, don't put it on your kid first, put it on yourself. Now that's what— that's no Mother Teresa kind of thing to do, is it? You've got to take care of yourself or you're no good to anybody else. And so when you're injured or sick or ill, the best thing you can do for everybody else is say, nope, I can't, I can't care for you right now. I need to care for myself so that you can care for them in the future in a bigger, better way. It's more important than anything else. I got up this morning before everybody else, trained. Austin, bring in a clip of training. I love how they know what to do. Vanilla's the only one wearing milk right now. Apple cider vinegar, also probiotic. You haven't seen me do this in a while. It's good to have those teen boys. Speaking of teen boys, family next on the level. It comes first. I am not gonna get the cool projects or work done that I had hoped to get done because my family is in need. The, the children are under the weather. And you know what, let's real talk, let's real talk. We had that young couple yesterday come. You're young, you, you, you, you're young, you're full of energy, you have very young children. They came, um, they're inspiring to me because of their energy, but in that stage, it's very overwhelming, that young family stage. And there's a lot you want to do, but just Can't, because you're Katie barring the door. A lot of y'all saw that as I've been making content here now for nearly 10 years. The early stages, we didn't have nearly what we have now, you know. We had one chicken flock, we had one milk cow, and we were just getting them by. There wasn't a lot of projects, you know, because we were rightfully so prioritizing family. Whether we found great peace and comfort in that didn't matter, you know, because it's not always peaceful, is it? I mean, it's frustrating sometimes that you can't do the cooler things or more or what you really, you know, what interests you. I got— I just ain't gonna help me. Should I do this? We're just gonna be worse off. But so annoying. And we're trying to talk. Peace and quiet. And I'm not saying knowing and obeying these levels is going to bring a peace. It's not necessarily gonna. You're still gonna have underlying frustrations, but at least you can know you're doing the most very important thing, doing the most good. As, uh, who says that? The Salvation Army. I am doing the most good. At least you'll know you're doing the most good. Thank you for quieting down. They're acting like spoiled brats. I'm not helping rewarding them for that, but I did quiet them. I did get some sanity for 15 minutes. I think the solution might be getting them the heck out of here. Self-care push-up day, Beck. It's a test. How you doing on the test? 60? Big fail. No, 30? 10. A 10? 10 is better than a zero. Next up on the priority pyramid is a job. J-O-B. Unless you're living 100% off the land, you're gonna have to have a job, and that's gonna have to be prioritized for anything else to happen, like homestead. For me, this is my job— creating content surrounding homestead, hopefully inspirational, entertaining, educational. Look at that Easter egg presentation. And have been doing this now as a job for 10 years. We're currently launching my next book. This will be my 4th book. I've written 4 books. I've put out probably 3,000 pieces of content here on YouTube. I've written blogs. I've— I don't know how many, uh, Instagram posts or Facebook back in the day, or now X posts. And what's the other one? Even TikTok now. But going back to my why, it's— I don't know, heart for legacy, right? So this time my piece of content is book. I feel like a book, timeless, right? We're not ever going to get sick of holding something in our hand and learning in a sort of physical, hands-on type of way. My first product was a DVD. You may even have DVDs anymore. It's all streaming now, and I've adapted to that, you know, with Abundance Plus. We even have our own streaming app, but the heart is still there because it's not— listen to a podcast with Seth, Seth, uh, what's his name, Seth Godin this morning. It's not about tactics. Tactics change, but strategies don't. The strategy is I have a heart for helping people live this better life of growing their own food with their family. So the tactic may change. It was a DVD, now it's a book. It's kickstarting right now at chickentenderbook.com. You guys want to check that out? There's only a couple more days. We got some exclusive bonuses in there. And as of this filming, it's a little bit over 24 hours of starting. We're almost to our goal, so it is socially proofed. People want it. We're gonna make it happen. You think he's getting sick? I'll put on a show. What we're gonna do so Mom can take care of herself— we're not gonna win all the battles right now. Let's put you on a show. You want to get in the sleeping bag? How's that, little boy? Good. Okay, good. Check on your boys. How they doing? Next level. We still haven't gotten to the level of the farm yet, right? Permaculture teaches us about zoning, and you start right outside your door with the farm. Well, you have these zones, you develop what's closest to your house, and you place the most intense things close to your house, but your house is zone zero. It's the most intense, most— the one you should focus on developing and have in order before you go out and do the exciting, sexy things. I mean, nobody wants to put away silverware. That's the foundation. Nobody wants to take a moment and put away— this is basically what I'm looking for. I'm not going to be able to get all this done because I do want to do some projects. You could be on domestics your whole life. But so I'm gonna make sure we're not right— no food is rotting. How about that? And maybe I'll empty one of those dishwashers just so that people have silverware when they need it. How's she doing?

She don't have a fever.

All right, Millie, you want to do domestics or you want to go help me on the farm? We can kind of do the mix together and then go do the barn together. You're the last one standing. Remember yesterday when we ran out of onions? Austin put to that— we didn't make it quite to the end, we ran out of onions. I found a bunch. Okay, levels. The next level is chores. Those are the next most important thing, the daily feeding caring for the animals, which we have done. So these pyramid— this pyramid structure, it's the best they could come up with, but it doesn't necessarily mean order. I mean, most the time it does. I mean, no, what am I trying to say here? The way I looked at it was, if it were a bigger crisis, certainly I would have forsook the chores. But I got the chores done because I knew it was important, and I got it done when it made most sense surrounding everything else. And chores have to be done at a certain time. You got to milk a cow at a certain time every day, at the same time. Yeah, but I've totally— during the hurricane, we just didn't milk them until like 10:30 because we were just surviving. That's why we calf share, so that In this event, if they were still on their calf, then you dry them off at some point. For the most time, they have a calf, and we could have just totally put the calf on them and let them nurse and then not milk. And what you probably see the most of in the vlog is most exciting to me is projects. In fact, tomorrow I'm just gonna give you a tour of our backyard pig farm, so it'll be less of a vlog and more of a special, and we'll talk about how to raise— how I raise pigs. In my backyard with no stink. I'm thankful for the rain, thankful for these onions. I, I made a little project for today, you know. Today I need to move these pigs. They need to go out to the pasture, help us recover from the hurricane. They need to be weaned from Mom. Mom doesn't need to be eating all she can eat anymore. You're gonna just get fat. You can be dried off, honey. You can water them. I'll plant these onions. This was perfect. We made it. 250-foot beds of onions. Yes.

You know how you guys are going today? Okay, could I get paid extra money to watch everybody?

Sure.

Take care of everybody?

Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. Geez. And I remember back— these kids are old enough we can leave them. It used to be we couldn't do that.

Yeah, we got town 5 years ago, you couldn't leave.

No, I know. So hang in there, young families. I know most of you are young families. 13.

I think Jonah would be 13. Yeah, no, he would only be—

hang in there. There's time in the future to get more done, but right now, uh, you're getting the children done, and that's what it's about. We're raising chidlers, not cabbages. So that has to come first. You like cabbages?

Kinda.

Or did you say I don't like cabbages?

Fried cabbage. I used to like cat fried cabbage, but we eat it way too much.

Oh man, fried cabbage is— I don't like many vegetables, but that's it. And it's especially good as a rice replacement. I should say alternative, it doesn't replace it. We need to, but guess what? The track loader needs fixed, and to do that I need to get bits when I'm in town. So we're gonna have to get that hay bale later. Go in there and do what you need to do, take care of yourself, okay? Start with a foot wash. Or you could wear shoes. Everybody's taken care of. I can't believe it. I might have another time for another thing. Uh, nothing says domestic like a mailbox, right? So this is the state of our mailbox. A little trouble with Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Helene. We had to build back the post. Uh, flag, little plastic thing here has broken. The door has gone. These little pivot points have broken out of there somehow. Let's fix the flag first. It's your barefoot and my boots have holes in them. Go get that battery. It's under— it's— Jonah stored it underneath the treehouse. Or you can work on it. Meet me at the shop. We gotta get these pivot— pivots out of there. I actually might do that better, the grinder. Set this down, push that up, and I just nick it and grind it. All right, drill's where I thought it was. We're trying to fix this track loader. Looky here, we got big problems. We've got a tooth that has been ripped out of the tread, and there is no putting it back in there, and it's staying. So we're trying to drill a hole and bolt it in. Problem is, that's some hard steel, and it's already worn out this drill bit. Anyway, we need our track loader to all kinds of things— get hay over to get the compost out. We want to put the compost in the chickens. I have this idea to get them out where we're gonna need it. We don't have to make compost right there. Why not make it where we're gonna need it? I got a drill bit. We're gonna have to make a new hole for my new pins. Pins are too big for the hole. See if this— that'll do it. All right, I got my new holes. Here's to fixing things. Instead of buying things. Guess what? I'm a fixer of things. We did it. It may not been the most exciting projects, but we got through things and we did the most important. We did the most good today. Happy day. Join us tomorrow as I teach us how to raise pigs and how we raise pigs in backyard that don't stink. Happy day.