Plant this Now + Get Food ALL Winter

I got the gardening dream team here this morning. What's your names?

Emma, Ben, Justin.

Funny. And Casey's wife inside, Tori. Let's pull the bug nets off of these guys. Let's weed in these rows. Everybody's got their favorite tools.

This one's actually pretty cool, Elliot's. I haven't used it. The bend in it right here makes a difference so you don't have to bend over.

You can What was here? Nothing? Nothing.

Okay, just seed some carrots.

Okay, Ben, what motivates you to get up so early and come work somebody else's farm?

Gaining experience just for our own farm. And just, I mean, locally, just knitting hearts together and having, you know, just fellowship as a community.

It's Monday. Aren't you supposed to be in school?

Yeah, but in my opinion, I thoroughly enjoy being out here more than I do in school. And not that my education doesn't matter, trust me, it does matter. But personally, I learn better with hands-on experience rather than book work sitting at a desk.

I think— I personally think you're learning more today than you would in the classroom. Uh, but wait, if I put you on YouTube, are you gonna get busted? Are you playing hooky?

Huh?

Do I need to cut this part out? Teacher might see this.

Ah, I've emailed them, they're good.

Oh, okay. What about you, Emma? Why do you get up early? So early? What time did you get up early? What time? 5 in the morning. How old are you? 14. How many of your 14-year-old friends got up at 5 o'clock this morning? Zero. What motivates you to do that?

I don't know, I really love farming, and I mean, this is, this is gonna be my life forever, so I love hard work.

Oh my, good job. Casey talked me into planting carrots. Yeah, they'll grow even now, even, even though it's October 5th.

I seeded carrots, um, on my birthday last year in November.

What?

And harvested them in March.

Nice. They'll grow slow. Yeah, but they'll grow. Yep. And even though we're not— we're gonna run out of daylight, they're Daylight's gonna be 10 hours a day around Thanksgiving, so they'll grow till then. Oh, they grow some after then too.

They'll keep growing after.

Teddy, if you don't mess it up. So how do you get Addie not to run in the rows?

She knows. She's been around it for like 3 years now.

She's trained.

Yeah, she'll run like around it and down the walkways if she's really excited. Otherwise, I mean She's getting older, she just kind of sits around, does nothing now.

She's a nice dog. Teddy will keep you young. Lily, you haven't stopped. What motivates you to get up early? Nothing. Come out here and help Emma. In the meantime, this one hates gardening, loves building, so I am going to let him run the drill driver and make some adjustments to our— this is our pretty shawl. It's coming along nicely. I got a job for you boys.

What?

See those ton— see those, uh, metal hoops? See those? We got to get them out. Get in and Josiah will get our posts. I'll grab our, our actual cloth, our Agribine. She just watered the carrots. Yep. So Casey, we have this row here that just, you know, we gotta overcome with weeds. Should we just tarp it or should we hoe it first?

Uh, you can tarp it. No, are you gonna let it sit or do you wanna—

it's gonna sit all— well, where should we put our, um, garlic? What's your thought on garlic?

Uh, are those— well, those beds next to that tall are ready, right?

Yeah, they're ready as long as the chickens don't get out.

Right, because they could, you know, scratch around. Yes, but those beds are ready and garlic's about to be shipped out.

Okay, how are you young folks doing down there? All right, almost done. All right, we're gonna get the frames out. All right, he's got us planting one more. It's ready, isn't it? That's nice. Look what that silage tarp did to this. And just like that, we can say let's plant another one. Hey, hey! We have a whole nother row we can plant.

But what about garlic? Did you talk to them?

Yeah, but that's— garlic doesn't need to be covered. Okay, so what are some things you would want planted, um, and that you have seeds for?

Well, I would like snow peas, and I have seeds for them, but don't they have— do they have to be staked? Can they just go on the ground? You could ask them.

I would stake them up.

You would? But if they're gonna be under low— they're not low tunnel. When we have our high tunnel, when we have our high tunnel, we'll be able to grow these in the winter. Yeah, we'll people grow them in their low tunnels.

So your choices are like lettuce, lettuce, uh, more carrots.

Um, I don't think we have enough carrot seeds unless he thought we did. Um, I have a ton of lettuce that we can just do.

Look at you guys, you got them all out here. Thank you very much.

Where should I plant my garlic? Where? Over there?

Yeah.

Okay, like the whole time we've been here, we've been in the shade and that's been the sun.

Okay, yeah, that's a good point. So we picked that good.

Let me go see.

We put that— we placed that good instead of right here.

The morning light is really important, especially in the winter, because it can get cold in there, but the faster it warms up, the less time the plants actually—

that's good, that's good.

So you're probably gonna need more seeds than that, or do you think—

I don't know, try it out.

So we have a lettuce that is bolted. Planted it too early. Some though is okay. Bolted, meaning it's shooting up, it's starting to set seeds. The problem with it is it gets really bitter here, but the chickens don't seem to mind. But this, I bet this is not bitter. No, it's fine. These are 10-foot half-inch conduit. So how do you get your row cover to last more than one season? It's so fragile.

Um, don't mess with it that much. All right, like a lot of people just try and leave it on, but the more sandbags and the less it blows in the wind, the—

So when can I put this on and just leave it on?

This is lettuce, right?

When's it too hot?

Um, Let's see, here probably 70, above 70 is too warm.

Okay. So what motivates you, Casey? You're a professional market farmer and you're going to drive an hour and a half to come up here and work on our gardens. What's up? What's wrong with you?

Uh, really, it's the mountain scenery and the fall color.

I want the cool air.

Yeah, and I want to see your tunnels.

Oh.

And it's, it's always— we're in a pretty good spot with the, uh, the farm right now. So we've been at it 7 days a week for like 2 years. So it's like, now that we're like at a point where we can chill for a day, it's good.

All the beds are pretty much made. Yeah. You have to— you have these 2 guys helping out every once in a while.

Yeah, big help.

Yeah. Are you burnt out? Tori? No. Fall?

Uh, like midsummer I did a little bit, but I don't know, there's just a point where I just like got over it and I was like, okay, I'm good.

You guys are giving off like a spring vibe energy, man. Aren't they, Rebecca? This is like some energy.

Burning out is for weak-minded people.

So it's all mindset.

Yeah, you know it's coming. Like, you know it's going to be hot in the summer and you know you're going to work a lot. It's just— I've been working outside forever, so It's not, it's not that crazy.

So you just know it's coming?

Yeah, you just gotta listen to your body and you know what it's telling you. Like, if you're really that burnt out, like, just sleep for a day. Yeah, there's eventually—

there was one week where we needed a lot done and we just paid for a lot of extra labor and got it done.

Yeah, so she's saying sleep, he's saying more work, do more. So what the heck?

Yeah, that's me though. Okay, okay, to what your body's telling you personally.

So does he ever take a nap? Never.

His body was telling him more work.

What time do you go to bed?

No, he paid for one.

He will stay up till like 2 in the morning if he's got somebody to talk to that's like good conversation. He will.

I haven't met him like that. Or some videos and video stuff. Okay, what time do you get up in the morning?

7, 8.

Okay.

Depends.

9.

Noon.

What do you guys have? Monster Truck City. Monster Truck City, I like it. The reward for your labor, homegrown pork pig. Tori's washing some eggs for us. Thank you, Tori. And creamy dreamy grits. Have you ever had—

we've had grits, but we haven't had creamy.

Oh, you haven't had grits yet? Are you guys from the South? I would say so.

They're from—

no, Florida. Somehow Florida is exempt even though it's the southernmost. It's totally not the south. Fort Lauderdale?

Fort Myers.

Fort Myers, is that south?

Yeah, it's very south. It's us on the west coast. It's a little different on the west coast than it is on the east coast.

Yeah, I got you guys some eggs stirred in sausage. How's it coming?

Good.

Ever had creamy dreamy grits? Nope. All right, he's not a grit fan.

I am.

We're gonna try to change his mind. You're all about it. Is it worth it? Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, it's really good.

Everything's homegrown but the grits. Okay, we got to see you, we got to see you guys take some of them grits. Everybody, of course. What are you gonna say? Good, it's good. Well, we'll see if he gets seconds. I will. Oh, I'm getting seconds. You'll get No doubt. Mm, you would get seconds? Mm-hmm.

That's good.

That is really good. All right, I just got off of an online test. This weekend, you guys hopefully have heard of it, Homesteaders of America. It's usually an in-person conference in Virginia. Rebecca and I are keynote speakers there. We wouldn't like to invite you guys— it's gonna be online this year, so no matter where you are, you you can come. We're gonna have 2 live presentations plus a panel with me and Joel Salatin and others. There's all kinds of great speakers in this. Sally Fallon, my friend Jason Sowtherland, the Fit Farmer, all kinds of good stuff going on. You guys can get access to this. It's coming up this weekend. Our live show is on, um, well, you'll get a schedule on the internet. I've got 2 talks One is on designing your best homestead ever, permaculture design. Another one, we're going to try to share it with Jonah and Josiah and Mama, and that's very first debut talk, family-friendly homesteading, answering hot questions like how do you get your spouse on board, how do you get your children on board, how do you work with young children in tow, those kinds of things. We're going to be talking about that. Two presents— I'm, I meant two presentations. One's post one panel live, and there's— plus there's all kinds of other folks live and pre-recorded. Anyway, I'm just going— just check it out. I'm excited about it. This is our third year participating in Homesteaders of America. It's a wonderful event. The folks that put it on are wonderful. Uh, check that out, link down in the description.