Planting the Animal GREENHOUSE Garden

Super excited today. Getting back on the farm after 2 days of kind of being off the farm work. Smells like watermelon in here. There's no kids in sight. Oh. They're not doing chores early. They're having a watermelon party.

Well, bless their hearts. They, they really had a fun 2 days because while we were—

Yeah, because Will—

They were with Will swimming and playing and— having a very grand time, extending, expending a lot of energy. Yeah, they were in bed at like, well, most of them at 6 o'clock.

Yeah, so you feeling good after early bedtime?

Well, he didn't go to bed early.

I didn't. You're a beast. Oh my goodness, how's the watermelon party out here? 6:20 AM watermelon party. You might be a homestead kid. If you have a watermelon party at 6:20 AM—

Papa, look at my watermelon!

Oh my gosh, did you swallow the watermelon? You're not supposed to swallow the watermelon. Come on now. And if we're back on farm chores, we're gonna be back on a farm project, which looks like these beans have jammed and are totally ready to be transplanted. Across from the beans I don't know, I guess these are the pumpkins. Totally ready as well. Gosh, look at that leafage doing so good in here. Hey, Gideon, supposed to be working on these chicks. What about the chicks, bro? Oh my word. Yeah, yeah, we got to do something different. That stuff's terrible. And they've outdone their— they, they actually drink both their, uh, waters. I think they're basically out of feed too. This is nasty, really. Uh, we're gonna figure something out today. I think a 5-gallon waterer elevated. They're probably old enough now to reach it. Now the great obstacle getting in the way of our goals— no, don't turn on the light! Why not? Why'd you turn the light out on me? Is finding a water— hey, hey, look! It may not be keeping the lights on for Mr. Brown turning them off. Well, we got that. That's too big, that's too tall. Here's a complete one, so we could have used this bottom. Oh, there's an extra bottom. This one looks a little cleaner, a little easier to clean this morning.

Look at all those tomatoes rotting.

Oh yeah, our squash storage. Squash storage gone bad. Oh, we gotta take them then. Here, let's, let's stop delaying that, all right? Hey, are you working on that, Lily? Yeah. Thank you.

I know exactly what I want for my birthday.

What?

A Jeep tractor.

Ah, his birthday's not till October. He has a new idea every week. Let's take this. All right.

Oh, what are you doing?

So that's the good and bad thing about Having a couple days off chores, you come back energetic. It's good because you get this kind of stuff done, but it's bad because this kind of stuff distracts you from the other stuff. I was hoping that wouldn't have happened. This will not be eaten or composted. Wow, guys! Oh, definitely in the Nerf dart.

Please don't make us play a dollar for that.

He said, he said don't show that to Mama, she'll make them pay. Well, I'd be getting rich right here. $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $6, $7, $8, $9. Good morning, buddy. The kids have pushed this thing and gotten the cord underneath it. You gotta drag it out. The problem is middle wheel rolled over it, so you gotta roll it back. Ah, buddy has been weaned from his mama a couple days ago, but look, he moved in. He's going right to eating. Nacho's been good to him. Oh, look, that's perfect, Lily, perfect. Feed them out of your hand. We want to keep them calm. I don't think they're scared of you. Bad things happen when I come around right now. I separated him from his mama, from the main flock, but good things are starting to happen when I come around now. Fresh grass, fresh water, alfalfa. He'll forgive me in no time.

He prefers to give me a big heart.

One thing I was saying in this last episode of Rooted filming is we've kind of arrived. Like, Escalito's harvest was a redemption in a way. If you guys have been following us long enough, our first year with sheep in 2018 could be classified as a complete disaster. Lost 4 out of 5 of those sheep and then harvested the 5th because we didn't want him to be alone. So now, as what Escalito was— well, a long waiting list to get those hardier sheep from Greg Judy, and then it was a long wait to get them of breeding age, and then it was a long wait for them to have their babies, and then it was a long wait to grow up a lamb that could replace Escalito. Boom! You see what happened? We just did our first on-farm selection, and we replaced one lamb with another lamb that's better— that's better suited for our purposes.

Yeah, because that one was really— the other one would not even probably let me pet him. That's right.

And look how much calmer they are. Buddy's vibe is rubbing off on Nacho. Nacho's letting me pet him. They feed each other off each other's energy. Can you pour some in my hand? Thanks. Here you go, buddy. No, I know, I know, I know. Yeah, he remembers.

He's used to me, um, feeding him.

Maybe Nacho. Yeah, look, he feeds right out of her Lily's hand. Oh look, Nacho's eating out of my hand. Come on, buddy, you can do it. Let's get this 5-gallon water to the sea monster. I want to get this water elevated. Let's put it on that, but not too elevated. Let's put it on that. I think it's gonna be all right. I mean, we gotta get it up or they're gonna get it dirty. They are reaching over a little bit in some spots, but it'll be okay. That one's definitely not. Thank you, Lily. Let's do all our little feeders plus this feeder, or we could get us a king feeder. Maybe that's another day because I need to get on planting. Henry, are you coming to see the baby chicks? Pretty amazing how on that butchering day Our kids are just totally— it's just totally normal.

Yeah.

Totally different experience for them than us.

Yes.

It's all this emotional, let's find meaning, let's appreciate the sacrifice. They're like, this is just what we do. And they're just like, don't kill without me, I want to see it.

Yeah, they don't, um, they have grown up with this. I mean, I want to say that we were butchering within the— after the first year of Jonah's life.

And I used to think, is that a bad thing? But I don't think it is, because 100 years ago everybody would have been like that.

That's the way your dad grew up.

It's just how it is. Sure, you might have gotten a little emotional about a family cow or something, but yeah.

Oh good, you got a big waterer in here.

Yeah, I'm done. I'm over it. I'm over servicing them 3 times a day. We got to get Cubby back to a 4-seater. She's able to convert from a 4-seater to a 2-seater, bigger bed, but let's get it back to a 4-seater. Half for the feeders, half for the breeders. I'm feeling a little anxious. Over 7:30. Kind of like it when I can spend an hour on a project. About that one, I don't want to be working on that right now. House when the sun's out hot. I'm gonna help these pigs out a little bit, get a little training in, help these pigs out a little bit. They're definitely gonna be hungry today. Not much food left. I think my ratio, the corn, the compost, is too little. I think there's too much effort for them to find some corn. I finally found some corn. Probably dug 6 feet and there's a little bit down in there. It's in that, I think. There it is. See it? My hunch is that's not enough corn per carbon. It's too much energy for them to try to extract that, so probably gonna have to feed them a little bit. So maybe I can consult with Joel next month. Well, they made good use of Escalito's head. There's his jawbone. Nothing's going to waste. Supplementing with some grain here. I'd rather err on the side of too much feed than not enough. It probably just means I need to let them get a little more hungry and they'll work a little harder, but I just want to make sure. Yes, let's go. You guys may be wondering what's happening to Sally. Well, now it's kind of like, what did we do without two side-by-sides? Uh, Arun is, uh, gonna use that this morning, set up nets. I hate to drive on our pasture, but we got to get this bucket of rooster teeth up here. It does help that the wheels on this thing are super wide, so it's going to be low impact on the turf. Amy just came and visited her boyfriend. Jonah, you cleaned up the house nicely. Yeah, this is when I'm happy to go inside and get started to work on Abundance Plus, but we've got— we've got to get these plants going. Oh man, beans are already growing out the bottom of these things. So let's do like this, put as many plants as we can on here. Okay, you guys go ahead and get the trowels. Let's cross our fingers everything stays on. It is sticking out about 6 inches. Hey, look, our garlic's starting to die off. I think that might mean it's about ready. Let me set you guys up here. We'll get a nice shot of us backing up the, the beans. Did everything stay put? You stay put fine. Let me hold the little boy for a second. I like it out there. You have to get So many new outfits because you're growing so fast, so fast, you chunk of lime. Y'all get the weights off the silage tarps. Let's just, uh, fold it over.

I'm pulling weeds out, babe.

That is satisfying. I'm going to come 30 inches off my tomatoes and we're going to plant green beans. So 30 inches is right here. We have these These tomatoes is so interesting. That's the second time we've replaced them. One, that one, and that one. There's just something, probably a really high concentration of manure or something, because there's, there's those that are dying. Here's the other ones, they're doing much better. Let's plant every 6 inches. We've got the mulch out of the way. All right, Lily, let's give me one of those. Let's put, plant one of those green beans in here. Okay, you do that part. Go ahead, drop it in. Good. Let's get it all the way in.

And then I'll do the next one.

Let's cover it up with dirt. And be careful with the mulch not to get too, uh, too close to it. Okay, Mom's watering the plants. We got our beans planted. It's a little tough going up here at the, uh, it got a little deep. So we got the shovel. For those of you don't know, you can't plant directly into the wood chips. You got to dig down and plant into the soil, then put the wood chips back. Next up, how about a row of pumpkins, Beck? What do you think? And then they're easier, we just want every 2 feet, and they can go right in the middle of that because they need a lot of room. We've done it! We've completely planted this ginormous greenhouse. 24 by 50 feet, multi-purpose everything. This housed our winter chicken— it housed our chickens and our pigs, and now it's heat-loving crops. You excited?

Yes. And I just want to say thank you to Justin.

He's the MVP here because I'm sweating, going overtime here.

And he won't eat any of this.

Nope. Well, well, you'll eat the cucumbers, cucumbers and the pumpkins.

And the pumpkins. So you will eat some, but he— I just have to say, gardening is not his first love, but he loves me, and so he does it.

That's my first love.

He's the gardener.

Now I do— you'll notice I do all the gardening, like the, the— what I mean by that is the crop garden, market-style garden, open, uh, the wood chips, the container gardens. And I must say Definitely compared to planting in that wood chips, this is going to be heavenly. We removed the tarp. You can dig the hole with your hand, it's so easy. We got all the squash and pumpkins planted. We are past our hard stop, but we're going to keep going. It's 11:10. Rebecca had to go to take Josiah to the chiropractor, so we're gonna be late on lunch anyway. This is— this was interesting. We had this organic straw that wasn't too hard to move aside, and it will suppress the weeds. That's interesting. That could be something that we do in the future if it works out. Let's experiment it here because look at all these little weeds coming up. Now that's no problem to take your hoe in behind. That's why we like to do transplants, because the transplants are very visible and very much ahead of the weeds, and it'll be no big deal to weed between those things. I want to show you though one of my favorite things about— where is it heaviest— about the silage tarp. See these little round pieces of— looks like soil. Well, that's what you call vermicomposting. That's worm. They love these silage tarps. And we've been putting worm castings on the plants in the greenhouses we've planted, but I don't know if we need to do it here because there's so many already here. Sweet potatoes we plant, and I'm pretty sure we can just put those in by hand. There you go. And we plant them 2, 2 rows in a bed every foot. We covered so much ground, we planted so much garden today. There's a special place in my heart for sweet potatoes. Do you guys remember where we planted these sweet potatoes? Or we planted them over there last year, but in the fall my dad said, if you get— if I get better, I'm gonna plant sweet potatoes in the spring. Well, he never made it to that spring. We planted sweet potatoes in his honor, and so now I think every time I plant or cook a sweet potato. I think I'll think of dear old Dad. Let's call it a morning, everybody! Hooray! I can barely lift my arms, I'm so tired. Hooray, we did it! Went hard, but you know, it's more efficient that way sometimes. You know, we knocked out our show Rooted in 2 days, we knocked out all the planting in the morning. Uh, Apple TV. My app Abundance Plus is ready to be tested on Apple TV. I don't have Apple TV. We have a Roku, but let's see, let's see if I can't figure this out and see our app. That'll be exciting. That the Roku— our app is not ready on Roku yet, but for testing, but this, this will be the first time I'll be able to see our app on a TV. Okay, we got through all the technical stuff. I guess this is what's going to look like on Apple TV. That's sweet. Let's install. Am I on the install button? Oh cool, look at this, Becky. Look at that. Oh wow, Rooted 5 right up top.

Oh, that's crazy.

On new releases. This is cool. Favorites, search. Let's see what happens if you hit it.

You can favorite it then.

Oh my gosh, that's cool. Oh, I'm not— I guess I need to log in. But besides that, the documentary section looks good, the gardening section looks good. Look, we got a gardening basics section, gardening with chickens. So let's see what happens when you go to gardening with chickens. Okay, there's all the videos on how to— this is super slick. Current members are going to be— well, I hope you guys are going to be thrilled because this is so much easier. Uh, it's kind of what we're used to with streaming companies and stuff. There's cow section, sheep. Look, there's our electric fence master class. It is done and ready to go. There's when we castrated just the other day. I'm sorry, Miss Thing. Business, business section.

You have your class in there from, uh, yes, I have.

The Homesteaders of America class. Becky, we're watching Rooted on TV. Bring those animals out for the first time and they've been on hay. We set up these temporary lanes to get them out there, but you can't even barely walk them through there because they're just picking every little thing. Springtime for a room to animal is like an ice cream buffet. I'm, I'm the first generation to bring that in. This is why this is so special. Family getting together and watching something special. Other guests in the video you may recognize, Ben and Meg. I've been spending a lot of time on how, because, well, I should probably do this up here. I think I got it.

What is this one about the tour? I think about the tour and I just want to cry. Yeah. Out of like the fact that we did it, but then also the exhaustion.

It was so tough.

Like there's so much, and the fact that little Henry will not have ever experienced it. I know it.

We'll take him on an abbreviated version when he gets old enough. Calendar. We've talked about launching June 27th. We've had to push back our spring registration. It's becoming summer registration. As soon as I approve this app on the iOS anyway, it'll be up in 5 days. And then we're looking at Apple TV and Roku's gonna follow close behind, I'm sure, and Amazon Fire. So can we just— can we go for it? Can we? Can we? Can we just hope for the best? And actually not just do a normal registration but actually do a launch June 27th. We're here. Maybe we get it worked out with them, then we have a 5-day window to get an app up. That gives us like 10 working days. I say we go for it. What do you guys say? To promote this thing, let's do a countdown these 2 weeks. Let's have a website up. Let's get you guys email. But look, look, I'm giving you the behind the scenes of business marketing here. You got to have a big idea. So what's the big idea? You know, all of 2020 it was kind of this, you could grow your own groceries, this resilience because we wanted, you know, stability because the grocery stores weren't having it. You know, that's still relevant, but we might be moving past that now. Because so many of you are now homesteading. Let's grab a chalk. Whoops. Marketing and good business is really just solving problems. So what would, what would be a good big idea here? How do we make you guys the hero? Well, let's start with you. Can what? Well, similar to Joel Salatin's Famous, "You can farm." Isn't that amazing? What about, "You can homestead." Boom! That's the big idea. It's enabling. You have doubts. You don't know things. You feel inept. You feel lonely. Well, guess what? Abundance Plus. We— some people call me Uncle Justin. Aunt Rebecca, Abundance Plus can help. That's the big idea. That's the truth. And Abundance Plus covers— what does it cover? 3 things: inspiration. That's the Rooted Series. Okay, I won't write it all out. Inspiration. What else does it do? Know-how. So now you saw some of those know-how videos on the on the Apple TV there. Chickens, gardening, permaculture— guys, there's like 400 videos in there. Inspiration, know-how, and maybe one of the most important and most popular ones, community. So you can direct text me at the premium level, you could get on a show with us, uh, every 2 weeks with live webinars, or you can get in our Facebook group. Inspiration, to get you going, know-how to get you there, and community to keep you there. This is really literally how ideas start transforming into something real. Let's— what is that? Oh, that's the freezer fridge. One second. So I don't know, to build hype and excitement, I know you guys are excited, um, about a countdown this 2 weeks before, which would be starting next week. But let's not just, oh, sign up and join the waitlist. Let's, let's make some benefit about it. Remember, good business needs to be about you guys. It needs to be about the customer. Let's give you an early bird special, so you'll get first chance, but we'll also have an early bird special. And then how about some free videos while you wait, starting next week? How about a rooted sample from our show? Uh, oh, how about some of that from the master class, from the fence? We have a homesteading crash course. So if we're going to go with the theme of you can homestead and Abundance Plus can help, let's give you some of our videos from Abundance Plus. The know-how, getting started with a family cow, getting started with pigs or chickens. There's one in there on gardening. There's intro to permaculture design. So I'm going to help you out, guys, whether you can afford Abundance Plus or not. I'm going to give you some samples next week. We'll see you guys next week. I've talked to my assistant Heather, at least I text her. Hopefully she doesn't text me back saying nope. But next week, let's start the waitlist. Free samples. Let's do it. Next week.