Putting the Animals to Work on My Garden

Let's go, niños! It's late. We stayed up later last night watching Christmas movies. That's our tradition. Watch Christmas movies going into Christmas. It won't hurt us to be a little late out there. Come on, let's go. Really? No, really. Maybe I shouldn't shame them with time. Maybe that's why I have guilt every time I sleep in. Because this is what my dad did to me. It's 8:30, you say. We're burning daylight. I gotta be careful. I feel so guilty if ever I sleep in. Okay, I don't want to make movies about this, but geez, these are the obstacles I come into. The doorknob came off when I tried to open it. How does this tighten on there? Actually, I think there's a little nut in there that actually comes back out instead of in to hold this on. In an effort to be more self-sustaining. I'm gonna try to fix that. The only problem is I gotta hurry. I got some chickens cooped— this will work. I got some chickens cooped up. Definitely one of the best days of their year. They're moving to the high tunnel where it's significantly warmer and 100% drier. This one's too small and this one's too big. There's no in-betweens. I think they're star bits. Maybe they are. This works, this Allen key. Okay, all right, yeah, I think that's gonna work. Hey, I fixed it. That does not come natural to me. I'm not Jonah. I don't have that kind of mind, but I guess I should quit telling myself that. I should tell myself new stories, like, it's good for your brain to learn something new. You can do it. You have all the resources in the world in your hand. Believe I have one more thing to do before checking these chickens. Fire's been going out on their wood boiler lately. Please be at the temp. Please be the temp. Refill.

Shoot.

Okay, well, at least the fire didn't go out, I guess. This sort of out of wood. We didn't lose the fire. The beach yesterday where there was still a lot of wood in there and the fire went out. It's normal if there's no more wood for the fire to go out. That's good. Happy day! We're getting the chickens in here. They're going in the high tunnel. They're going to be much happier. We're going to build soil, turn this wood chip into rich soil with their manure. And turning. Thank you for joining us for yet another day on the homestead where we're cooking— where we're growing what we eat and eating what we grow. Today's project in growing what we eat— let's get the chickens down here. They have been cooped up all morning. They're gonna be mad at me. Oh, wrong way. We're gonna put that posse in tomorrow, one posse in at a time. Whoa, look at all those turkeys! I can see how quick these chickens just get right to work. Make Boots proud, wouldn't you? Hardest worker in the room. Come right out and start working. They're finding some grass in it. Lovely bunch. I just love how everybody is just plump and slick looking. Healthy, moving about. It's a good-looking posse. Secret to a good-looking posse: replace them every 2 and a half years. Loading the rock wall. You're gonna do that? I was gonna haul the rocks down and I'm gonna stack them. Did he agree to that? Well, I was kind of hoping that you would tell him. Oh, okay. Can you clean out their tub of water? Set it up. It needs electricity out there. Uh, we need to run a hose out there and then get their feet over there. Dang, I got an idea for a video for your channel. How much do you think that costs? I don't know, $40, $50. Does it? This is the layman's one. Okay, the average one. What do you think a splitting maul costs? $40, $60 bucks. So $40 versus $120,000 splitting machines. Yeah, you do an hour on the splitting maul. We'll upgrade, we'll do an hour on the hydraulic electric gas splitter, unless any of you have a hydraulic manual one, then we'll add that. Get in touch. Then we'll go to the professional and watch the firewood processing machine for an hour. Yeah, probably do like 10 cords. This is a third of a cord. You might do a sixth in an hour. I don't know, he's going pretty fast right there. Shall we go, Josie? We gotta hustle. The youth group's gonna need to eat, but they're gonna get— need to be moved first, and that's gonna take too long, so we need to milk before all of that. Top of the morning to you, Blaze. Blaze may be getting a buddy soon. We got a pre-PPE, pre-something, something. Make sure the, uh, the horse we're getting ain't on drugs and isn't, uh, it's in good health. That Christmas grass jingle. It's making a noise when it— because it's frosty, sounds all Christmasy. Maybe they'll leave us alone while we milk. They're one paddock away from where we're gonna milk. Teach somebody only one thing about having a family milk cow, what would it be? I don't know. What do you know about a family milk cow? Just spit off 3 things you know. I don't really know anything. Why do you give the alfalfa? Keep them busy. Oh, hey, you know one thing! What do you give the, uh, the, the RC Go for? I don't know. Apparently I've done it to do— apparently I've done a bad job explaining the whys, huh? Yeah. What's that? Apple cider vinegar. Why do we do that? I don't know. Also probiotic health boost. Think you'll, uh, be in charge of the cows when you grow up? No. What will you be in charge of? I don't know. We need a head dishwasher. We need a chef. Huh? No, I think that grading position is looking more and more appetizing. Join Josiah as he teaches The Family Cow Class, January 5th. How to stay in milk ever flowing. You looking forward to teaching that class? That'd be something, wouldn't it, huh? You want to do that? I think you're ready. I think I just warmed you up. Okay. No, the beautiful one, I'll be teaching that class live inside Abundance Plus. Ever flow milk. It can be available to you. Cows are not nearly as hard as you think. They're much easier than Despite popular belief, the devil eyes much, much easier. Don't get mesmerized by those devil eyes. It's a myth. Cow class, January 5th, inside of Honest Buzz. I'm looking forward to it. Live, join us. Finally, somebody's gonna get an education. Couple Hispanic guys, you know, I kind of wonder, they're not so far removed from, from this as we are. At least from, not from my experience in Honduras. When we went to Honduras, it was like, it seemed like America 80, 100 years ago. Seemed like everybody had a cow. There were, to mow their grass along the highways, people would stake out their cow, milk it in the morning Move the steak. It'd be a great way to mow the highways, wouldn't it? Uh, manuring along the way, getting milk along the way instead of just using machines. That'd be fantastic, wouldn't it? We're doing what we can to make that happen, mowing our estate with these cows. All right, gotta get the mineral sled in. I gotta open that pretty big. Are they gonna get out? Let's see. You want to spot me, or do you think they'll not come out? Look at those geese. We better get them back in pretty soon. They're gonna wander off. Cute. Forgot to get my yogurt out last night. I mean, worst case, it's just more fermented. Means it's healthier, but it is a little more sour. Hey, I want to ask you something. You guys ready to see something gross? This is gum. Who chewed all this gum and put it together?

It fell on the floor and then they had the bright idea to rinse it Yeah, it like went and—

Oh, he asked me, the kid ran to me, I said sure.

I know, and then they, then they just mushed it together with their hands.

Can I throw this away? Or y'all been eating all this?

No, no one's eating it, they're playing with it like Play-Doh.

Okay, you want this? Here. Are you gonna go with me? Do you want to stay with Lily? Burgers for me. Beef stroganoff for the family. That's tonight. Mom gone to the grocery store for supplemental groceries. What book you listening to? Wow, all right. This guy, he says he's done it all. Almost. You've set up the chickens, you set up the youth group. We're gonna go double-check. Step 1. Get these poor confused geese back at it. Probably best thing to do is get them in this net and then we can corner them. What do you think? Just grab them. Okay. It's actually how you properly hold a bird backwards— arm underneath its chest, it can't poke you, hands holding its feet. One of them will. One of them's pretty mean. All right, you got the water out here. Their feed— was their feed— did their feed have anything in it? And you have the, uh, dust bath. What? It's pretty impressive. Is that a hose right there? Okay, great. You want to get it and I'll go get the electric? I just like to put eyes on these hoses. We've got more hoses. Oh, but they have electricity. How? You should use an Energizer. Oh, I'm sorry, for heating the heat coil in the water trough. Hey, you guys decide to come? Thank you, Lily. Hey, you get all warmed up and come. I got the link, but we're gonna bring it out here so it's in the sun, right? Okay, Gideon, can you run this out for me? No, this in. Take this and see if it goes to the— see if it'll make it to all the way to the chicken. My 3 boys. Mom went with Rebecca, bless her heart, she's having a bad day. You don't know. She lost her mom. She's a mama's girl. What's it been? Has it been a couple of months now? And Beth was a big part of the— our lives and farm. And like Rebecca said, she said, I don't like to go to bed at night because I don't know how tomorrow is going to be. Is it just going to hit me and I'm not going to be able to function, or is it— or I'm going to be okay? Just say I went with her. It's companionship. Couldn't quite reach. That's crazy. It is going to be a pain in the butt making sure we put that hose out when we're not using it to dry. I'm kind of hoping I'll get on a gravity-fed water for them. This one's broken too, not because it's a weak hose, but because, uh, somebody's mowed over it probably. All right, we're out of luck. No more hoses. But I think we can make this our end. And it'll just run. You think that'll be long enough, Gideon? Oh, it's not, because look, look, it didn't come back all the way. You run that to the end of that one, and I'll run this one to our water source, and we'll see if it's long enough. Hey, wait, what you got? Will that go the whole way, Gideon? Nope. All right, see if adding this to it will, will allow it. Here, this is right there. We don't have a shutoff on it, but I think it's one of those special orders because I like a stainless steel one. Come on, get in, get in, turn it on! That didn't take too long, did it? No, I don't think so. You can add it. The young man can have that. Henry, you want me to lift you up? I don't really want you doing that. You're gonna tear up the greenhouse. We're gonna make sure we take this off, get it out of the shade here. Look, see, frost still on the ground right there. I've got a hot temp. It's supposed to be 185, I think, and it's probably because, well, it's not calling on it. Like, our house is so insulated. The fan ought to get ignited. It's midnight. Coal's still in there. All right, we gotta build up a coal bed. Jonah's got the idea, put it on another log. There's something else. He's turned into a man, huh? I guess. Do you think two people splitting could beat somebody on a hydraulic gas splitter? No. Oh, maybe that would be a fun game. Is start with one person and then add a second person and then add up to 4 people, and we'll find out how many men it takes to keep up with a hydraulic gas splitter. We should go to the youth group real quick. Oh yeah, it didn't run out. It's a blazing. There's some fresh wood right there. I don't know if fresh wood's easier to split or harder than That stuff is rotten. It's little thin stuff. All right, we got him busy. How's the youth group this morning? Jonah, you know how we normally clear 2 acres every winter? Yeah. Well, we kind of aren't going to be able to do that because of the— why is that tied in a knot? That's not the knot I'm talking about. I had to make this knot in it to get it unstuck out of the mud, and I guess it tightened a little too tight. I can get that undone. No, you cannot. You might be able to climb outperform me in a high tunnel, but I can get a hose undone. Jonah, what? How? Hey, I wonder how you swing from bar to bar in the high tunnel. He's got the youth now, I got the brains, I reckon. To be clear, I'm definitely not saying you're dumb. To be clear, I'm just saying I've got 30 more years on me. We'll finish setting that water up first, but Let me let the rest of the group over. Probably a day's worth of grass in there for this amount of animals. Our call, which I think is she calves. I don't know what it is, but that's— that was my dad's call, probably Grandpa Henry's call. And it's neat to just call that on the land they also worked and walked. I just had communion with my late father and grandfather. That's, that's special. Jonah, when we feed them hay, we're gonna go up there, okay? All righty. And then walk it in. So let's take our Energizer up there, disconnect it real quick so he can turn it on, and then I can pick it up. Definitely let your kids boss around. You want them to take over one day, right? You want them to stick around, right? Then they need— they become boss. They need to become bosses. At some point, so they got to start practicing. We got a couple nets up. Was that all the nets? Lily's calling us, she's got to go to horse lessons. I bet she's late. Hey, let it warm up, bro. Lily and Jonah have just gone to their horse lessons. We only have about a half hour of project time, so I don't think that's enough to go over there and start splitting wood. Why don't we go ahead and just get this Chickshaw mini-me over? This would be the perfect Tool for the job, the Chickshaw Mini Me. This excitement, huh? It's a good crew. We got a Chickshaw 5.0 and a Chickshaw Mini Me. The difference is the Chickshaw 5.0 is 5 feet by 5 feet. The Chickshaw Mini Me is 4 feet by 4 feet. So difference between holding 36 chickens and home 24 chickens. So what does that make it? My— me have 36 plus 24, that's a good even number, and that's 60. I think that's what we got. By the way, if you don't know how many chickens you have, you might be a crazy chicken lady. Happy birds equals productive birds. Boy, I wish you could feel it. It's so much warmer in there. It's so much brighter in there. Oh, this is totally worth it. To get them in this. They deserve it. They deserve it. They give us breakfast every single day. You all deserve it. I'm gonna set up you guys a time-lapse in there. There's just chickens going to town. If anybody ever calls you a chicken, be proud, because chickens work hard. I'm gonna go get some office hours in, primarily working on that cow workshop plus booklet. I forgot to remind you there's a booklet if you sign up by January 5th and join. And if you sign up for Abundance Plus by January 5th, we give you a booklet. So maybe you can't make the class, you still get the booklet, or you come to the class and the booklet is a nice, uh, follow-along. Let's watch these guys go to town, getting some driving hours right now. Hey, bless you. I want you to rest. Okay, I will.

I will not fight.

And then make that awesome supper that you mentioned to me at 3 o'clock. Get rested up. Any Christmas goodies?

Yeah, I got some Rice Krispies.

Rice Krispie treats? No.

Well, we're gonna make the marshmallows.

What'd you get Rice Krispies for?

To make Rice Krispie treats.

Oh, okay. I said that and you said no.

Well, I didn't get Rice Krispie treats.

She's got to make everything from scratch. Beef gelatin, marsh— homemade marshmallows. This is sad. We had to buy potatoes. Why we need to expand our garden. We, we already ran out of our homegrown potatoes and we saved a lot. We did like 4 rows too. You guys are always acting like you're so starved. Pigs are the most dramatic of all homestead animals. Chickens, who are pigs with feathers, are second. You guess what? Mom wanted the chicken. Uh-oh, people just got out like crazy. The hash was so good, Mom wanted it for leftovers. That passed the test. She's making dinner and making a video for her channel.

You don't have to follow that step, but I had some kids that came up, needed attention, so just going to put the garlic.

So Such a natural. So excited for her. Our family— it's from her grandmother— beef stroganoff recipe. We're just mixing up. We're tired of the same old, you know, Burger Monday. Um, the family is. I'm still gonna have burgers. I'm gonna have burgers, no buns. That's fantastic. Of course, I'll leave the link for that video in the description. Rebecca's cooking. I need to see Jonah about something. And he's working on his cabin. Looking good, my man. Oh hey, who's that? It's Randolph. Oh, Randolph's here! Well, look who's back. You couldn't— you can't— you missed us, didn't you? I did. You going over there, Job? Well, we gotta get this. Oh, you're getting even harder for one. Yeah, just for them big things. Yeah, get this big breaker here. Yeah, because see, this gets flat, water gets in here, and then it gets It tears up the— but then it looks so good, this. Yeah, he wanted all that loose bark off of there. That seems to be rougher than anything. These boys done pretty good though. They did good, didn't they? How'd your stroganoff turn out?

It turned out fabulous, as it always does. Nice. And now I've shared it with the world.

Good job. Got big problems this evening. We know why these cows are getting out so badly. He-Man has figured out to flip the water trough onto the fence, and then everybody breaks free. That's why we've been having these problems, him knocking over the trough. Of course, messes without sitting in the fill. These boys might have some sort of solution. If it would just fill with water, he couldn't flip it, but he's not gonna work. That will totally work. All right, well, let's get it. Can't we get it down further? I don't really like it. Why aren't we just putting them— why aren't we just putting this trough at the top of the hill? Because it's way harder. I don't think he'll flip it going up, and then it's sitting flat, it'll be full weight. It's better to put the trough at the top of the hill anyway, because then they hang around more at the top of the hill, so there's more— there's more poops, which then that gets washed downhill. Beck and I just walked Did a walk. That's great, wasn't it, Rebecca? Rain, sleet, cold, we're walking. Family Christmas party. Our tradition for us is tonight. It's the day before New Year's, Christmas Eve. So that's National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. What's this? Marshmallow.

It's just regular marshmallows.

And then is this all the Rice Krispies? Uh-huh. Cool. Thank you, Lily. La la la la la, let me be free.