Plant This Garden Once + Have Food For Decades

75 asparagus crowns. Where's my work sweater? So asparaguses are cool because they're what you call perennial. You don't have to plant them year after year. You plant them once and you literally have them for decades. Uh, do you know, Rebecca, where My sweater is—

it should still be clean. I'm just kind of—

it was dirty, remember? I washed it because I cracked up eggs.

I think that it might still be in the dirty clothes. Oh my gosh, I will wash it right now.

I didn't see it in the dirty clothes though. It's not in the kids' clean clothes, it's not in the kids' dirty clothes. What? Where's my coat? My coat's gone too. Oh well. It's not that cold outside. Hey, you gotta take him outside into the grass, honey.

I did! He's laying down and waiting to be inside again.

We caught him in the act, honey. Right there. I don't think he was done.

Can you take him out there?

No, I gotta go milk.

I have to finish getting ready to go outside.

Okay, well go tie him up out there while you do your chickens. Trying to teach him to potty train. Supposedly he peed and pooped outside with Jonah. First thing. Yes! But he started to poop again inside, and Lily took him out and she said he hadn't pooped. So how long does she need to do it? What if he was done? What if that was like a second wave? Maybe it wasn't the first wave because he had just pooped.

Oh, you see here?

Yeah. Hey buddy, was it the second wave?

Was that just a little bit that you had to get out? Or we scared him and he can't get the second wave out, it went back in.

So let's do this, Lily, do your chores and then come get him. Okay, cool. Gideon won't let you get up?

No, I came back here to get dressed and he said, will you please cuddle with me? And I said I will because We don't know how long this is gonna last, and I enjoy it.

Yeah, he ain't gonna lay with you at 26 years old, is he? No.

No, I don't think when he's even a teen— well, maybe when he's a teenager, but for sure when he gets married, I doubt he's gonna come back and say, Mom, will you cuddle with me? I don't think that that will happen. So I'll take it as long as I can get it.

There's something else. Well, there's something that goes good with asparagus. A companion plant. Looks like the boys got the cows. There's your coat. There's this other lovely perennial crop. Strawberries going right there. Eventually this is going to be a trench from all the rich cow water manure into a swale. What?

What happened to my little bucket?

I have no idea. It's probably down here in the garage. It's in Sally, he says. Lovely strawberries. You ready to plant those today?

Sure, I brought these for Mama.

Oh, that's nice. You guys got up and at them this morning. Nice, thank you. See why we did this tarp? Look at the weeds already coming up. Look at all those weeds. So this will prevent that eventually. See this trench from the cow spraying off the stanchion? I'm thinking let's dig a trench here and it'll slowly seep into the garden and complement each other. I see strawberry and asparagus in my future right here. Kind of like a eat your veggies, the asparagus, and a little bit of dessert with the strawberries. Do you need help with Donald or anything, or is he still in? He's still in. The boys did what they're supposed to and put him up last night, huh? Okay, so we need to get done with our regular chores and get on planting that garden. Good morning, hamburger. Good morning. Good morning. You want some alfalfa? Here you go, buddy. Here you go. Jonah! I don't think there's enough alfalfa here. Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Walkie-talkies would be nice, but to get everybody to wear them, plus me, that's one more thing to wear. Keep track of, charge, have. Eventually he'll come around, I think. Ew, alfalfa hands. Oh, look at these. Hey, look at him coming running from the flock. Hey, let's catch these guys.

Can you turn off the thing?

How'd you get in there? Hey Jonah, Josiah, we got our 3 rogue chickens, honey. We need to catch them. Uh, Brianna is coming back today. They've left, they've gone back to their home, started, uh, they're getting closer and closer to starting work on their home project from the huge mold issue. What's wrong? What do you need?

So I put the fish I put the, um, I put the bucket on the fence.

Then it sucked the bucket over and all the water fell out. Okay, so how'd you get over? How'd you get over without getting shocked?

She just went like this.

Okay, will you go turn—

I already did.

Okay, he got it off. Let's go. Can you let them out?

Not yet. These are leftovers from yesterday.

Hey, do you have a fishing net? Like a long one, like we could use to catch chicken? Oh, keep going, keep going. It only dripped— it only spills so far. Well, maybe not. There you go. That was a smart idea though. Is that too heavy for you? Keep going. Oh, okay, you're cleaning it out. That's nice. Where's Jonah? He was just here. And Josiah. So we've got to call those chickens, all the other chickens, but those 3 are staying in. I'm not going to build a fortress fence. Hey, come on, Josiah, I need help catching some chickens, please. Yes. Is Jonah in here?

No.

Well then, get Teddy on a leash and come with me. That's fine. Come on. You want to go with? You want to go with?

Really?

No. Come on. The one day he needs to wear pants. What is this? Why do you need pants? You're always wearing little pants. Now go. Okay. Can somebody leash Teddy? Well, that's the most we've heard from you, Teddy. Saturday seed day. Yes, I said Saturday, not Sunday. Normally we rest on Saturday. We take a break on the weekend. A break. We still do chores. Still find the kids' shoes. We just don't do any projects. And they're wondering why.

Are we still watching Star Wars?

Not today. Oh, I know. Tomorrow though. Tomorrow. That'll work. Now listen, we're not gonna watch our movie today. We're gonna watch it tomorrow instead.

No! Why?

You don't know delayed gratification? No. Tomorrow it's gonna rain. So we're working today. Now wait. Everybody, shh. We gotta catch these 3 chickens. So instead of killing them, we're actually giving them to Bree who has no chickens. She actually wants them. She totally knows they're rogue. I think she's gonna free-range them, which these guys would be good at. Hey, wait, hold on, Jonah. Jonah, wait. Jonah, they can get through this cage. Hold on, we need a plan. See, they can get through this cage. Hang on, hang on, hang on. You're only going to be able to catch one at a time with that net, and we didn't— nobody got a cage ready. Just that— will you get it? What?

Herd them into here.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Okay, but how are we gonna— Josiah, tie that dog up, please. I'll keep them from going out this way. You guys herd them forward. Good job, Lily. Good job. Hopefully they won't go under the cow. Don't rush them too much. Wait till they get going the right way.

Got one!

You got two in the stall?

Yes!

Wow, that couldn't have gone any smoother. All right, wait, wait. Now, do you think they can fly over? That's really kind of ideal.

Papa, I can just take Flossie out.

Out. That's a good idea. Good idea.

With her calf too. Can I give them some grain?

Yes, give them some grain and some water. Can you get me some alfalfa in here?

Can I go back to what I was doing?

What were you doing?

Inside eating something. Well, I was trying to find something to eat.

You can if you go inside, get something to eat, and then come back. Will you do that? After you give me a hug.

I'm knocking the bees down.

Good job. This is my polar bear. She's already ate all her alfalfa. We haven't even milked. Look at you guys.

I'll help you in a second.

You're gonna help him? Yeah. Okay. Here, Jonah, can you spot her?

Can somebody open the door for me?

Be careful. Wait, look, don't you want to look where the chickens are? Okay, I don't think they'll jump that with the clipped wings and all. Oh, you cold this morning? Yeah, just wanting a little love. Oh, thank you.

Is there any other tea?

Yeah, the whole other side if you want. Grab your stool. Are you just like squatting?

Yeah.

Jonah!

Jonah!

They went down to their newfound swimming hole. Jonah!

Hey, you should see it and go polar hunting there.

Yeah, I thought about it.

It's pretty deep.

Jonah, Josiah, come switch my cows. Switch the cows, please. Okay, Lily, round 2. You going with— yeah, got your audiobook. Hey, how'd you end up up there?

I climbed.

You missing a boot? Let's see if those chickens have stayed in. Yeah, you rebels, they've stayed in. Oh my, and we found your nest, guys. Look, can y'all see way over there? See over there in the corner? Mucho huevos and good milk producing mama. Guys, we still got to do the pigs. Hey, you got a plan?

I got my plan.

Okay, okay.

Oh, you want to tell me? You want me to say it?

Well, maybe not.

Okay, so we do trenches for the asparagus, and it has to be 6 inches wide by 12 inches deep, and then you have to mound up in the trenches 6 inches.

Oh, okay.

And the trenches have to be 2 feet apart, and then you soak the asparagus. They said compost tea, and I wish I would have read that because then I could have been making compost tea, but I didn't. So we're just gonna soak it in water and then put the crowns over the mounds, 17 inches apart. With 7 plants per 10-foot trench, and then cover the crown with the dirt. And then we put 2 plants, 2 strawberry plants in between.

Oh, fun. Gideon, what'd you say?

Teddy peed.

You peed outside, right? Yes, outside. You peed good. Is he going with us to the pigs?

Yeah, I guess so.

Are y'all going? All right, let's all go. All right, boys. I guess I got all my boys, including Teddy. We got them out of the A little bit of hay to eat, some food scraps, squash, and some milk. We got some replacement batteries. I noticed that the Energizer was blinking both red yesterday, Jonah. Means the batteries are dead. Somebody needs to watch Teddy and somebody else needs to help carry stuff. You help me to the side?

Uh, I guess I can take this squash.

Sure. Hey, I wouldn't show them Teddy yet. They're hungry.

Nope, they would eat him.

They might eat— grab a bite of him. No rush into the hay. Don't turn it off yet. I didn't see a feed pan. I forgot a feed pan. I hope they have a feed pan up there. Okay, is there a feed pan up there, or does it matter? Any kind of pan? Oh good. I was going good and then Jenna called me over. Okay, what happened?

I hooked the wrong ones up. Okay. You can't hook this up to the black.

Are we off?

Yes, you can't hook that up or you can't hook this up.

She had accidentally put the negative or the positive line to the opposite one in the battery and I've done that before. It just fries it.

That's the red. That's the red. Don't hook that to that.

That's the See what the mistake—

I just made that same mistake!

And in the past I've just gotten my Leatherman. It's got a file on it and you can file out the— it just kind of wrinkles. Thankfully that worked. Here, got the red one on. But we went to hook it up and there was one spare cord. Why do we have a spare one?

Cat's day! Cat's day!

It's Friday. I'm like, this has got to go somewhere. And sure enough, it got fried so much, the cord that connects the positive from one battery to the next had gotten completely fried and separated. The only thing I thought I could do is take the— cut off the connection, expose the wire, wrap that in the other connection, or put it in the other connection, and connect it to the battery. There, look at that. I jam those two together. Hopefully that'll work. No tester. Seems to be working. I hear it. We don't have our tester up here, but I can hear the fence clicking and grounding out. That's good. I learned this trick from Jordan Green. Have your spare batteries and have them charging. See, we just took fresh batteries out there, replaced them with the old one. We're still running. By the time we need these, they'll be charged. Listen, what's he doing? Trying to play with the cat. The cat not having none of it? Nope, there he goes. Hey, the poor cat! Leave the poor cat alone. We're gonna cut Polar Plunge somewhere a little different today. The boys' swimming hole. Lily's already beat us to it. She's got a trough as a boat. Oh, this is deep. This is nice. Oh my, different, Becky. Oh boy, we don't have a place to sit. Squat down, I guess.

What is it? Yeah, it is.

The sun feels good. Nice. Just finished making breakfast. Fresh eggs. Ooh, a little bit of leftover rice last night. We fried it up this morning. That goes good with eggs. Some broth going. All right, I made the deal with the kids I would clean up and you guys could get started on the compost. They were happy to take that deal. You ready, Rebecca? Look at this. From MI Garden.

This is the time— this is what I planted.

Oh good, I got good stuff.

You did.

Yeah. Hey, just trying to help folks out. This is going to be a special gift for my members. Uh, seeds. We got quick-growing spring crop. Everybody's getting excited to grow a garden. It's becoming more urgent for them. This is lettuce, kale, and spinach. So quick-growing stuff, like you grow some of that and you grow some sea monsters, you've got your own supper in 60 days.

Got your own salad.

Salad and chicken. Come on, Teddy. How's the compost coming, guys? How's the compost coming? Well, it should be in here. Oh, we've been using it on the fence. Arun was the last to use it. I'm not sure where you would have put it. Jonah, do you know where our twine is? Do you know where our twine is? Do you know where our twine is? You and Arun were using it on the T-posts. Well, there it is. I would start on one end, whichever end you want to start on. It's been on this side or this side. Yeah, and then go put your other one in down there and then tie a line. Gideon, can you come play with Teddy? You can bring him to you.

Look at them all. Holy smokes, they're just everywhere right here.

Let's put our 4 stakes where we think they go and then we'll, uh, measure our corners and adjust. We've laid it out. We've got— how square was it when you did the diagonal test? Um, we have our, our lines drawn to mark the two ends. So now, Rebecca, all we have to do is tell me where you want me want your first row. You're going rows this way.

Well, I wonder if we should just put it on this, or no, we should—

I don't think so. No, I didn't account for that. I figured— wait, let's measure. Let's do that 6 inches or so.

It looks 6 inches. Okay, I was close.

We'll go 8 inches, it's fine. Why? Because we're going 6. Okay, you're getting closer to that greenhouse. It's fine. Now we can't dig right on that line, so that line is going to mark where we're going to We're gonna dig just to the other side of it. Okay, so tell them, Rebecca, why we did a perennial in what technically would be a zone 1 garden area. Like, this should be high maintenance crops, but it's not.

Well, I feel like this is the perfect amount of space that we need. Yeah, to grow these two crops too.

Yeah, because down there it's too— we forgot about it. Just 100 feet that way, it's too wild. We forgot about it. Now this means we can't put chickens in here in the winter.

Yeah, I know.

I think we'll blend them all into one flock, actually, save the kitchen garden chickens. We got one furrow down, uh, you're just putting it in by hand back in just to have a mound so your asparagus crown can kind of hug that. Yeah.

And well, no, because I only do one every 17 inches.

So that's where the string comes in that we did too. Not only makes a straight line, we can measure and mark. Hey, you want me to go get my flags? Let me get my Lexan flags and we'll put them up every 17 inches. Rebecca and I are talking about how to help you guys who are maybe wanting to get a garden started fast. I think there's ways, but a really nice garden takes time. This has been years of chickens And wood chips.

So it's not—

these aren't wood chips anymore. So measure me. Well, you could start right here.

Here, let me start here so that when we're up there we can do it.

Somebody could tarp an area, or better yet, put chickens on it. A small garden area, if they had like a chicken tractor, 4x8 or something, chickens on there while you're growing seeds, and then the chickens out hoe and plant. That was fun. Putting the flags up. Okay, now we know exactly where to put our mounds, exactly where to put our asparagus. All right, Rebecca, every 3 feet. I'm gonna put a time lapse on this, but, uh, should we get a water first?

Yes, let's get a water.

Let's do a real quick check-in here. Row 1, we ended up doing 1 strawberry in between asparagus because we have 96 strawberries. So 1 strawberry for every asparagus roughly. We have like 100. We gotta check in. We're, uh, what? We're almost halfway done, Rebecca. Almost to 3 rows. It's 2:15. We're gonna have to keep this in a high gear. Mom kicking because Brianna's leaving at 3. She's gonna want to come get these chickens. You come to hang out? Yeah, good.

Look at these strawberries. Strawberries.

All right, 3 o'clock. Actually, it's 10 after. Rebecca, I thought we'd be done by now, honey. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We're going on the 6th row. Do you think we'll need 7?

We have 26 asparagus plants, so we are going to need a 7th row. Yeah, they're done.

Are you ready, Bree? Are you ready for your chickens?

I don't have a box.

I have a box. Do you have room? I have a— it's kind of big. Rebecca, do you know where I put my— where I put that box? I thought I brought Bree's box down. Shoot, where did I put that box? Oh, it's right there. Can you fit this in your car? That's great. Some shavings in here. Okay, I'm gonna let y'all get in. I'm gonna spot y'all and then I'll come in. So everybody get in, but don't start catching them yet. Let's see Bree catch a chicken.

Oh, just missed her! Grace got her!

Grace is the queen chicken picker at our house. Grace got one.

You got two.

You got it. Yeah, enjoy y'all's chickens, guys. I had hoped to been done, but I still got maybe 2 more rows. Hey, they're not paying attention. I maybe got 2 more rows of planting, and then I want to work on the lane. So you guys do that for the chores?

Sure, if you'll do them tomorrow.

I don't know, I'll let you play. Fine, I'll let you play down there instead of doing seed day. Load ahead. You guys got to play in the creek for like 3 hours.

Yeah, I'm just gonna use this as a water bucket since it's already clean.

No, no, never ever. Remember, that's one of our never ever rules. Get one without a lip on it for fluids. Do not go in our garden. Y'all get out of our garden. Boy, it's a beautiful day. Was that not fun playing in the creek on this beautiful day? Get in, we're happy to have you. Is that all we got left?

8?

No, 2, 3. We did it! Boom! 4 o'clock, Rebecca has to go in and cook though. I think she's getting sunburnt. I'm probably getting sunburnt, but we gotta do the prudent thing and clean all this up. I really want to go work on a cow lane, but we got to do the prudent thing and clean up. Yeah, the boys are moving the lucha doors and evidently they're having some problems, so let's go check it out. It looks like it got caught right here. You can only push it through so much ground. Come on, here's how you do that. Come on, hop up. I'm gonna lift that, Josiah, and you're gonna push, okay? Gonna get me hurt quick. Okay, what we got to do is lift it this way and then we'll get a wheel on this tall earth here. There we go, now it should go no problem. Push! 1, 2, 3! It's 4:30 now. I guess I've decided before I run off to another project like a niño— I'm as bad as a niño sometimes— I better clean up. I'm gonna finish cleaning up. It looks good. Y'all been kicked out of the house. Mom's making— I don't have any time to Going into that thing on the cows. I got 20 minutes left.

7 plus 7, 14.

So let's go help Mama inside. Hey, can you guys help me carry this stuff? So let's go clean up the inside for supper.

Come here, Lily.

Carry this. This. How's it going, Beck?

It's going great.

Do you feel like you did a good job making this call, working today? Yeah, instead of yesterday. Wasn't it a perfect day?

It was. I got really sunburned.

You got proof? You're, um, that's not from cold plunging, that's from—

No, my face. I can feel it all on my face and my nose.

Hard working, hard playing people right here.

We swim all day, basically. We swim basically all day.