Powers Out! Lucky Strike and My Next Book Kickstarts Now

Hey guys, come help me. We gotta get the youth group back in. Come on, come on, Jonah, let's go. I mean, water is up under our covered porch. Austin, play some clips of just some crazy wind. If you've ever wondered what it's like to walk in 100 mile per hour winds, take a look. Again, wind, favorite weather. Okay, that might have been a little dramatic, but there was some crazy wind last night, enough to get us up in the night. Enough to blow their, uh, bowls off. And hear that? Enough to turn the generator on. Power's out. Uh-oh, cows have been up here. There's nothing like getting up in the middle of the night because everything went silent. The air purifiers, all that. Power went out and the generator didn't kick in. I was walking by that door going downstairs to check it out, and lo and behold, I saw one of the youth group walking back through here, but it was dark and windy and there was really nothing I wanted to do about it at that moment. Hopefully our redundancy protecting our feet. Hopefully that gate is shut and the board is up. So we're gonna go look in a second. Hopefully our feet has been protected. Our garden has! Woo! Austin played the other day when we were putting up that fence. That was an unsexy, unexciting job. But the cows, when they got out, did not get in Mama's garden. So they're still our cows. If they get out, they're my cows and it's her garden. So the garden's still ours, the cows are still ours. It's good. It's a good day. Happy Sunday seed day, y'all. Lily! Boys! We gotta go to the youth group trial. Get out of that garden bed, you silly. We slept. 12, 12, 12 hours last night. It's related, I think, time change, our trip to Alabama last week. Sorry we didn't post as many vlogs last week. We went down to Alabama, drove all the way down to Alabama, high hopes for a horse for Lily. We have tried 3 or 4 horses locally here for the last few months, haven't worked out. We found one near some friends in Alabama, went all the way down there to check it out, learned we needed a trailer taller trailer than ours. Thankfully learned this before we went. Happenstance, our friends have a trailer for sale, a really nice one for a really good deal, like half of probably what it would cost around here. And then the horse had some issues for us, and we were not feeling it in our gut, so we went with our gut. And it didn't feel like a total defeat because we visited our friends and we got a trailer. Hey, the gate was shut. What? They couldn't get in there.

Couldn't get in where?

The cows couldn't get in the feed. Some sort of leak? I wouldn't think so, because if it was wind, the whole— the whole bags would be wet. Nothing like some rain to show you your vulnerabilities. There's the fourth cow. Hey, you guys had a good time last night? We're gonna at least do some damage control today and go around and fix some things from the wind. Item number one, getting the cows back in. There's some tarps up, and we'll just look around for any more damage. I bet their fence got blown over. It's down along the creek. They all take advantage. The good news is, on our way back from Alabama, one of Lily's trainers, Miss Leslie, found Lily, a horse that can come to us on just a care lease, meaning we just have to keep up its care and otherwise don't get any charge. Personal circumstances means the rider, the owner, uh, just isn't able to ride him right now, so he's, he's out of shape and he needs to be ridden. And it's the best thing to do for the horse. And the horse— we went and met the horse. He was very calm. Lily really liked him. I liked him. He was calm, you know, and he's basically free. And so it buys us some time. We might end up buying him. If we don't, buys us some time until Lily can save up more money. We're feeling like our budget needs to be increased to be able to get what we want for Lily. The only caveat is this horse is scared of trailers. We went and tried to pick him up, worked with him for about an hour. He wouldn't get in. But this kind of problem excites me. You know, I trained Vanilla 30— over 30 days to the stanchion. Repetitive, day after day kind of training. I think we'll just do some trailer training for this guy once he gets here. She knows somebody that can help her that has helped her before, and they're going to deliver her— him And then we'll put a trailer in his paddock and just feed him near it, and then closer and closer, and then inside the trailer. And hopefully it works. I mean, it's worth a try. We don't have to invest much— anything but our time. Oh, I should have turned this fence off. In the meantime, the horses— the cows have gone all the way to the end of the path. Look who came out here. My adopted college dropout. That's fun. Always wanted one of those. Very proud of him. That's Austin, for those of you who don't know. That's the guy who's editing this video. Austin, if you didn't already, that's when you should bring in a picture or a video of you. Ding! That's it. Good job. You guys are scaring him. Get out of the way. Come on. Come over here. Oh wow, they're not excited. I'm kind of glad your horse didn't make it here. Wait, wait, wait, let's disconnect this fence. Is it on yet? Because you don't need to power this, nobody's in it. That was for her horse. I'm kind of glad he didn't, because if he would have gotten out too, he wouldn't have known where home was. These guys don't roam too far.

Are they coming tomorrow?

I don't, I don't think so. I don't know, they'll text us. It's on them now. They're gonna have a hot— they're just over the mountain, but it's on the cowboy who can help her load, and he's bringing his trailer, which is more open than our trailer, and it's just on them. She's ready to go, bless her. See this fence? There's one little section from right here— that's the end of the fence— to just right there that we need that includes this whole thing. It's like a 100-foot net. That we needed 10 feet of. Let's see where it's connected. See, see this connected to this? We certainly don't need this, this net. So if we disconnect this— this has to stay off the ground because it will be electrified. No need to power all that and weaken the main fence. I'm gonna say it's the wind, but it could have been ornery little Blaze pushing these cows through. He does that sometimes. If the fence ain't hot, they ain't too scared of that. Listen. We're tired. It's still winter. You can hear the signs of spring. I'm telling myself it's okay to take it a little easier today. I do feel pressure. I feel pressure to get really great content for this vlog for you long, long-timers, super fans. I know, I know what you're gonna say. It's okay to rest. It's okay, we'll watch, we'll watch anything. And that, for that, I thank you. For growth though, there's this pressure to have excitement, have novelty. That's something people can't resist. The click on, you know, like a hurricane video. But I don't want to summon a hurricane. Most of, of this life and homesteading is quite mundane, so you try to have to find the little interesting things like Vanilla and her wig. We're milking Vanilla, just putting them on top of them and milking her because she wouldn't even come 20 feet from us when we first got her. She was a wild heifer. You well rested? The boys want me to extend this, and I want to extend this for the chickens, but it kind of needs to be flat where we doing this. Okay, okay. Hey, hey, where we're doing this, if it's not, the wood chips are going to gradually float downhill. And when we were gone— this is nice— they built a rock wall up here. I'm like, how do you want to get more dirt up here? And this was their idea. This is Hurricane Helene recovery, and we're getting there, we're getting there. Our whole field down there is ready for the horse ring to be put back up. Our bank has been put back up here. Actually, probably level this Let me show you this. We have a problem here because our material— you can see the problem it's creating. It slopes down onto our fence. These chickens need to be brought out, and we need to level this whole thing. We need to bring in more dirt or level this whole thing and have a step down from the pole barn. Hey, how many more square bales do we have? This is not terrible. We're gonna have to feed around there. Yeah. Let's take a roundabout of the group, group, the youth group. We ran out of our hay over here, guys. We would have, we would have been screwed without the help of Hurricane Kelly. I realized it was Hurricane Helene that hit us, but there's a lady named Kelly who coordinated some hay donation. We got some. So thanks to anyone who helped with Hurricane relief to Western North Carolina. We don't get hurricanes until we do, and the land is not ready, or the people. This wasn't terrible to like have hay at the bash shed and then pull right up and you have a stand for feeding the hay. Hopefully we've got a good amount of good round bales. So what you do is you put a round bale here on its side and you unwind it. We'll get that in a second. Finished my assessment, and in the meantime, we've had a little household emergency. No, the chocolate chips have been put in a glass jar, which are easily accessible, and it's probably better that those be hidden. Nothing we can do with the machines today. Okay, you can't work on Lily's paddock. Electro light box. Hey, you want to help me? Okay, Henry. Yeah. Wow, I like it. This is one of those things I just tried to fix. It was supposed to be a quick fix, but I'm having to show it because it's taking a minute. This, this fridge is not working. Henry, uh, do you see any— do you see any trip breakers? I don't think these outlets are working. All right, we gotta find out what the problem is. So do you see a breaker switch? The crazy bad news is these fridges, freezers are working, but these aren't either. So it's kind of an emergency. Yes, bud?

Yes, find that a hammer.

It's up in the junk drawer. What are you gonna do with it though besides bashing iPads? You gotta bring it down. Bring it down to work. I will. I'll wait. I'm not going anywhere. What could it be? Probably has something to do with the Power loss. I think I've tested all the breakers. I don't see any tripped. There's that one, but that's the ice bath. Oh, I know what it is. I remember I saw the light to the generator. That's working. I remember not all these are on the generator. Well, we got to fix that. Yes. Okay, so put in word to the electrician. We gotta remember to do that. The question is— he's bothering me, he can't find the hammer. Okay, if I get you the hammer, can I talk and do?

Yeah.

Okay, where are you going? Sweater. Okay, come, come back in. I don't know why I'm getting you a hammer so you can further destroy things. Guess we have two junk drawers now. Okay, you happy? That's your question back. Okay, you remember how the generator isn't running all our freezers?

Yeah.

Uh, Is it worth it? Do I need to run a cord, or do you want to just see how long the power is going to be out? It's gonna—

I, I reported it.

It's gonna be—

it's gonna come back on by like 1.

Okay, well then they'll be fine for a little while. Yeah, it's the farm fridge too though, but that should be okay too. Henry, thank you for coming with me. Okay, you go get your boots. Mine are up here. Should I come up there and meet you, or you want to come back down? Okay, a sediment in our filter. Uh-huh.

I've got to Do a good look at that.

That's from after the hurricane.

Yeah, I know. We've never had sediment like that in our water. Well, all right, that's why we did this.

Normally you only have to change this out about every 3 or 6 months. Yeah, but hey, stay for a second. Look, we got to show this dream come true. We saw all the kids eating at this island. We're missing one. When we envisioned this house, if y'all behave tonight— this afternoon, don't burn the house down like last time. Wait, it was almost perfect. All right, come on, I'm coming. We'll go. This one wants to go with me. Slow down for him because that's what it's about. All right, pressed for time just to get the chores done. Okay, I hope there's no more wind damage surprises. So far I think we can do our chores and cover the tarp where it got blown up. Come on. I'm surprised there wasn't more damage. All right, so Mom and I are having a little bit of PTSD because the BAMP Film Festival is in town. It's an outdoor adventure film fest, tours. It goes to Brevard College. Where are you going? You're gonna meet me down there?

Yeah.

Well, last year we went, we were rebuilding this house, and we came home. We were staying in the cabin, and the kids came running down to greet us. We're like, oh look, they're happy to see us. They weren't happy to see see us. They were coming to tell us they had had a grease fire and they had to use the fire extinguisher, and it moved us— long story short, it moved us out of that cabin into the 700-square-foot farmhouse for the remaining several months. So at least now we can say we've lived in every house on this property. Oh, are you gonna climb up this? Okay, I've got it. I got it. I got it. You're doing great. What are you looking for? Okay, there it is. Let's do this. Do you want to help me? Okay, we're filming this in March. Do you realize it's been 10 years? 10 years since my debut product Permaculture chickens got me started in this content creation space, this, this homestead influencer space. We had already been homesteading for 10 years, and, uh, Lyme disease— for those of you don't know, gosh, has it been that long? It's been like a dozen years. Well, I started having the symptoms of Lyme disease. Of course, we didn't know it. At the time what it was. Yes. And whatever the strange thing that was plaguing me, we had— I had to slow down physically because I was— I was— I had these strange pains. I was low energy, and our bills were going up because we were trying to find the cure for this. We were eating cleaner, we were going to different doctors. Long story short, we figured out it was Lyme disease. Had to slow down. I couldn't market farm anymore, and but still wanted to be in the food growing movement, still wanted to grow our own food. So what was something that I could do? We were sinking, guys. I mean, we were sinking. Bills were higher than what we were making. We weren't making much at the time. We were happy. We were living frugal lives. We didn't need much. We shared a car. We shared a cell phone. We never went anywhere. Dumpster dove. We rented a spare bedroom on Airbnb. We grew our own food to make ends meet, but still it wasn't cutting it. I mean, what was cutting It was cutting it until it wasn't. So you get Lyme disease and then you have the extra medical expenses. I actually had to start doing some credit cards. I mean, we didn't believe in debt. We had gotten out of debt. We had no debt, um, not even a mortgage. But I even went into some credit card debt. Have I ever told you guys these stories? I think this story is out there somewhere, but, uh, I had to go into credit card debt just to provide for my family. The farm didn't provide everything. Don't pick it. He's at the onions. Is he picking the onions? So a mentor handed me this book, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. It's changed a lot of people's lives in entrepreneurship. Uh, essentially, okay, here's my takeaway. Here, let me get set up. I fed you some, honey. Let me get the water going in on her water. My takeaway from that book was I needed to create a, uh, a video course and a companion ebook And at the time there were DVDs. You guys remember that? So I was going to create a DVD and I said, what do I know? What am I best at? Homesteading. Oh wow, did you hit that with your hammer and break that glass? No.

Okay, I'll find stuff and I'll gamble with stuff.

Okay. Oh, what was I best at on the homestead but wanted to learn more about? Well, it was chickens. I had been doing chickens the longest. Even more than cows, and I decided to go with chickens. I mean, in some ways I was so lucky because chickens are really popular, and, uh, you know, I didn't necessarily know that at the time. We had a lot of lucky strikes. There was a lot of hard work in there and some good ideas, but a lot of lucky strikes too, you know, or blessings, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, I went into this Kickstarter with 7 followers. I had built an email list of 7 people just by doing a little shout out on Facebook. Thankfully, folks like Jeff Lawton, Paul Wheaton from Permies, Fresh Eggs Daily, uh, Jill Winger from The Prairie Homestead, they saw something in it and they were willing to share. I was willing to make them part of the project or do blog posts for them or whatever, whatever it took to, uh— when you don't have an audience, you have to borrow an audience and you're at the mercy of other people's audience. I lined up Joel Salatin. I I said, hey Joel, you know, I'll give you, I'll give you, uh, $1,000 to come up there and give us an hour of your time. I had to nail Joel Salatin, okay? He couldn't say no because I needed a star that somebody else knew in this program. I'll never forget it. Joel said, I'll give you two. Give me two hours. And that's the kind of man he is. But, and you know, we slowly built a relationship after that, and now he's a good friend and mentor. We got Joel Salatin Ben's name in it. That was important. We kickstarted this thing and it made it. Oh my gosh, it made it. It made it. Henry, I think we've done these guys. Here, let's— Emergency. Okay, Mom went to draw her bath and our hot water heater is not on the generator yet either.

Papa, what?

Okay, time out on the story. We're gonna have to find an outlet.

What?

We have to find an outlet. Where's the nearest outlet? Oh, it did work. Okay. Don't push this out.

We're making it up.

We're making it up.

We're gonna go back, forward, back, forward.

Yeah, don't push it out because you won't be able to push it back in. Oh my gosh, a red cardinal. How pretty. On the fence. We had a fantastic Kickstarter. It was kind of one of those things where I was like, oh, I'm afraid we're gonna get the Kickstarter money because then if you do, you actually get the money. If you don't make your Kickstarter goal, you you don't, and then you go forward with the project. And I'm like, what if we just get enough to live off of and make the project happen? That's basically what happened. So by the time the product was out, we needed a really good launch, and I picked up a book at the library called Launch by Jeff Walker. I heard him on a podcast I was listening to at the time, Smart Passive Income. And just long story short, we had another fantastic launch. Shout out to any of y'all you have been with us and can remember the permaculture chicken days 10 years ago. Here's the thing, that was a DVD and an ebook, and we're 10 years later, and I'm a sentimental guy. I'm thinking, what can we do for our 10-year anniversary? Well, that was a DVD. It was my first performance. Play that, Austin. It's a little embarrassing. It's good info, bad performance. Play another one. Yeah, I mean, it was just a little stale. Nervous. Things have changed. DVDs are— does anybody even have DVD players anymore? And books are timeless. So I'm thinking let's do an update. I've already been working on it. Let's do an updated version of Permaculture Chickens, rebrand it. We're going to name it The Chicken Tender— Chicken Tender's Guide to Raising Chickens Naturally from Chick to the Plate. Yes? Um, can I clean the horse trailer for my project this Yeah, I'm updating all my permaculture chickens info, turning into a book for the 10-year, and we're doing a Kickstarter that's launching today. I'll leave the link, but I believe we're gonna also redirect chickentenderbook.com to the Kickstarter during this time. It's only going to be up for about 10-ish days. There's lots of bonuses in there with that. And the reason I'm launching this Kickstarter is I want to get you guys enough information, you supporters, to get you started this year. Like, now is the time. I want to go ahead and get you started even though the book's not ready. It will be ready by this Christmas, the digital book even sooner, but I'll get you some stuff that you need right away, enough to get you through and started this year. That could be used freshening up. Let's freshen this up and then work on transitioning to our date. Okay, what are y'all doing?

We're building this tire.

All right, I like it.

I like to do this.

We don't go on dates enough. Of course, we're not in that season. We figured we're not in that season, we're gonna have plenty of time for each other when the kids not around, but it's good to take some time now. We look forward to this. I look forward to this all year. How do I look? How do I look? Have I gotten bigger? Have my pants shrunk? Or have they been sitting in the closet for months on end without being worn? Don't burn the house down. Hey, Gideon, Jonah's the boss, okay? If he's a bad boss, just tell me when I get home, but obey him until I get home. Okay? Yeah. You're a little boy. Little boy.

He's a big one.

Oh, Lily, hi, big girl. We're there. Look nice, Beck.

Thank you.

How do I look? I look nice?

You look so nice.

Well, you see all those trees down? Thank you.

Oh, all the branches.

And there was power out on the way here.

We were nervous. There was like a lot of, um, stoplights out.

Yeah.

So then I was like, oh! What happens if— there was like a whole section of town.

I think he was—

there was no power. Like, all the restaurants were shut down. None of the stores were open. There was no lights on.

Like, we didn't think about it. We didn't think about it. The power came back on, you know? I know.

So then I was like, I checked my email and it's— we still didn't get an email. So I think it seems like there's power.

Here we go.

In these buildings.

Thumbs up, thumbs middle, thumbs down.

No, I liked it.

Good as always. Yes.

They do a good job.

You think our house is still, uh, standing there?

Yeah.

All right. And we're home. The kids did not burn the place down. We had a nice fish dinner. All together, it was a successful day. Power's back on to the freezers. Despite 12 hours of sleep, we're all tired again. Nightly rounds. All right, you can tend to chicken. I can help with my new book kickstarting now. Go check it out, chickenoftenderbook.com. Happy day, y'all.