Prepping for 60 MPH WINDS

What is this?

A play?

Is this Gideon? Are you the cowboy? Action!

Oh Princess Peach, it's time for the excellent ceremony! All wave everybody! Woo! Pause! Oh no! Guys! Guys!

Is that how it's supposed to go?

No, it was supposed to be him.

Oh.

He didn't get the memo.

Henry!

La la la, let me be free.

Don't you love how you can go from just an idea to a rough set of plans, and then your idea becomes a pile of lumber, and then you have to order more things at Lowe's because you didn't get everything you need in the first place. So that's where we are. We'll be building this soon. That's gonna have to be another day. We got more pressing things like clearing and 60-mile-an-hour winds coming. Look at this. Pull that up so we can see that.

What?

Rebecca is laying out our garden plan. You're gonna be busy.

I am.

I'm so excited. That is so much more efficient than just writing it out on paper.

I feel like this is going to revolutionize our garden.

That is a gardening planning software Rebecca and I just discovered. You can watch us learn that software and all the really cool things it can do to make your garden more efficient. I mean, if we're gonna be serious about quitting the grocery store in 2024, we need some help. We need all the help we can get. Sally's back! Desires. Isn't that always the case on the homestead? I need to be with the boys clearing some woods for pasture, but I also need to be getting the farm ready for the 60-mile-an-hour winds that are coming. Icy wind chills. Ah shoot, I forgot the grease. I'll go get it. Wow, you smoothed up here. What's the plan, boss man?

Chop down a lot of trees.

Chop them down and then part them right away? No, chop them all down, then part them. Yeah. Where do you want to go? I think up. I like when they're boss. Problem is, I don't know how long windproofing the farm's gonna take. It's 10:20. Let's go to 11, and hopefully I can windproof the farm. Remember the hurricane? I have to put a board on the pig port because the tin flaps.

Do you remember the hurricane that was gonna come and blow everything away?

Yeah.

And then it hit the water stream on the side of Florida, and it was barely anything.

Oh, so what you're saying is fake news? Yes, weather is hyping us up. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, because I think it was going to be 60 and then 40. Yeah, everybody wants to watch that and sit through the ad, but the Boy Scout motto is always be prepared. First tree, most dangerous job on the homestead. My impression is you only need 45 minutes. With this powerful chainsaw and these machines, you get a lot of work done. I'm sweating. Hands down the best farm investment. Yeah, well, besides the chidlers. Those machines, a lot cheaper than buying more land. Consider this like raw land around here would be $10,000 to $30,000 an acre easily. And with these machines, we're going to clear 2 acres this year, so it could be as much as $60,000 worth of land. Oh, you got a helper in there?

Yeah, it seems kind of dry.

I could not be any happier right now. The investment of my children paying off. They're so wonderful, so wonderful working with them. And then these machines, what we're getting done in so little of time. Hmm, some of you stay with them and the rest of yuns come with me on the little Z. Guys, we got 2 more lambs. 2, 3, 4, 5. You guys are doing good. We need 12. We're gonna have 6 more mamas pregnant. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. We need to get one more mama. We harvest 12 lambs a year. It's 5 pounds of lamb a week for us, and that's what we need for our lamb consumption. We lack in lamb this year, we're gonna make up in steers. That's one of 6 that are gonna get harvested at the end of the year. You guys going with— yeah, that's the cool thing about a homestead. Instead, it's so diverse. If your lamb harvest is a little short, your beef harvest makes up for it. A little distraction, but the pigs need attending to. Uh, if mild wind pulls that up, what's a 60-mile-an-hour wind? I've got more sandbags. We can reinforce it.

Come on, let's race back! Come on, Henry, let's race back!

I'm gonna win! Josiah, how'd it go?

Good.

You get it cleaned up?

Yeah.

All right, let's weatherproof the pig port. This is what I'm most worried about. See that tin sticking over? We don't have a side— it's called a soffit— going across. Is that what it's called? Um, we need to secure that edge because it goes like this in the wind. I don't know what it would do in 60-mile-an-hour wind. Whoops, I'm a little short, but better than nothing. All right, Josiah says he's gonna get up there and do the tin later, secure the tin, and now the tin won't flap. And I think this will withstand it. I don't believe it. There's skeptics, largely because I don't think they want to do this. Yes, smells good in here.

What?

4 inches of rain.

What?

Rainfall totals reached 2 to 4 inches with locally higher amounts.

We went from droughts to floods this afternoon. I got some business to do. Rebecca's gonna be crunching away on the garden plan. Whoa! Hey, good looking, what you got cooking?

Hamburger buns.

You made the kids hamburger buns?

I did.

You really like that recipe. Recipe book too. The Glam Fried Ketchup.

This— I've made this. I have not made that yet, but Lily's talking about it. And we made the pizza dough too.

Oh, you know what I like to see these done? Start with the ice cream in the middle. Yeah, our ice cream, not, not whipping cream.

No, no, these are different. These are ice cream sandwiches.

I want ice cream. I want those ice cream sandwiches on my cheat day at the end of the month. Oh, what else you gonna cook us, Dar?

Um, I was gonna make french fries.

Okay, I've got to get the grill going. Get me a lighter real quick, Josiah. Rebecca has made more progress on the Shopping seeds. She's got 4— Beck, you're shopping airsoft pistols? Oh, she's researching Fortier. That's where it's at. The green egg. You about to take a break?

Yeah, I worked for probably like 7 hours.

7 hours? How close you getting it done? I mean, I want to talk to you about something, but that's our plan for the entire growing season. Look at this. No, this is like a restaurant come to us.

Yeah, I know.

Blood sugar at 80. That's what I was hoping for. I think I can try the triple cheeseburger, little bun. I'm gonna first eat another burger. Think I can stay under 120? Because it'd be awful fun eating a bun.

Oh no, I know, it's been so long since we've had buns.

This is so good. Doesn't it make the difference? We could get excited about Monday Night Burgers if that was the case. You like to be taped because you like to watch this later, don't you? Evening walk. You think I've kept my blood sugar down?

I don't know. I'm curious to see.

We're gonna find out. All right, did the burger bun put me over the edge? Barely affected me at one bit. Only got up to 100, and now I'm at 78. Crushing it. How close you gonna be for being done with the seat binding?

I'm hoping that tomorrow I get closer to being done. I want to go over some things with you.

Halfway done? Three-quarters done?

I feel like I'm probably halfway done.

Go girl!

Now I have to like order all the things.

So is the homesteading life. Peace. Happy day.