In this vlog, the narrator (Justin) walks viewers through a day on his homestead focused on converting a basement horse‑stall area into a functional shop, coordinating remodel tasks, and sharing family moments. The video opens with a brief discussion of back stiffness and foam‑rolling, then moves to the basement where the family clears out old stalls, labels tools, and plans storage solutions. Throughout the day they juggle horse lessons, weather challenges, and a visit from the framer Sean to discuss framing, siding, and inspection requirements for the house remodel, emphasizing the urgency of completing HVAC, electrical, and framing work. Interspersed are cooking segments featuring egg‑based lunches, homemade pizza bites, and a lamb roast, highlighting the homestead’s food production. The narrator also promotes a free workshop and a downloadable homestead design booklet, summarizing three permaculture‑style lessons: plan on paper, avoid analysis paralysis, and fail small. Personal health updates (Rebecca’s illness) and family dynamics add a human touch. The vlog blends practical DIY advice, permaculture philosophy, and everyday family life on a working homestead.
Chapters
Just finished my Simple and Sinister. Now I'm gonna foam roll for the stiffness in my back. She says it's a miracle. I'm not convinced yet. Chiropractor wanted you to make your mid-back, so you just go like this. She said that's better than stretching because stretching can just pull at where the muscles are attached, but maybe this will help the stiffness in my back that keeps on getting injured, probably because of the stiffness. Not the coolest. Exercise training in the world, but maybe it'll help. And after training during project time, it's raining yet again. It rained yesterday, today, and I think it's gonna rain tomorrow. Forget spring cleaning, you know what? I got time for that in the spring. We're gonna do some winter cleaning. Hey, good morning! This is what we're looking at, the bottom of our house. Look at all these horse stall. The horse ranch that never was. Really cool about this is we have this amazing opportunity for a shop in our basement. Really wide. We need to go through everything with these boys. You better watch out, guys. Annie will grab it and growl. We're gonna rip this wall down. Yes, eventually it'll be a bigger storage area. You're never gonna use this. Any— probably where you come in is when we have things like This tool, uh-huh, you'll find a way to store all our tools along these walls. Come here, this totally empty. Go through these batteries, guys. All of them. This Annie will need a drawer or something for. Oh, you already have a thing going. Taking a break for a second. We gotta coordinate some things with Lily's horse lesson this afternoon. What do you think, Lily? It's too wet? I don't really care. Well, decided it's probably too rainy for a horse lesson. Let's get this tape for marking stuff. How's it going? I don't have a chair. All right. Okay, you sit in your chair. He says nope. You want me to sit in there? You want to give them a tour? Our temporary chest freezer storage. Boys got a bin of quick charge DeWalt station. We have a chainsaw sharpener tool. That changes everything for sharpening the chainsaw. Where did this bench come from, Josiah? This is not my dad's. It's a good bench. This is the beginning of what will be— we've labeled this tape. All these will get labeled. Charge cords, markers. Actually, we're going to take these doors down, open up those stalls in there, and I think we'll have some hanging spots. Do we still need this workbench? Yeah, we might not. Why do we need it? The welder. Welding table. And I can't convince them to let it go. They're convinced they will use this, so we just have miscellaneous miscellaneous building stuff. Here's our future too— containers with labels, hangers, basic hanging equipment, a nice chop saw. Although I don't know if we need this big of a table for it, right? Do we, Josiah? I think they make mobile tables for these chop saws. Crazy how warm it feels out here right now. Happy to get the shop clean, which is a foundation of what we're doing here on our homestead. Time to eat lunch. Making a bit of breakfast for lunch. Fried cabbage. Oh, our homegrown bacon, squash pumpkins, squash pancakes, gigantic oranges from Florida. Look at that orange! Look at Mom's Easter egg collection of eggs. I vote we eat more breakfasts for lunch. Our chickens have started laying eggs again, and I'm starting to think— rethink— since we have so many eggs, have egg-based lunches. The breakfast-type foods are the types of foods that we can easily grow and have this time of year. You gonna eat with those clampers? Made her shine. After meal walk. Ooh, made Rebecca some pizza bites. This is clutch, guys. Zero carbs. Mozzarella cheese slice, organic pepperoni, onions and Italian spices, salt. And the sauce? Ricotta cheese. It's hard to believe there's no carbs in that. It's so good. We'll let that cool off. Beauty's not feeling well. She took a turn for the worse, guys. She's struggling. Both of us have the last year or so, just up and downs. Her especially. I just did it. I just finished my homestead design book. 1,300 words. Not 1,300 words, 13,000 words. Is this rolling? Because we're rolling. And her pizza bites are ready. The workshop and the opportunity to get this booklet is coming up on Sunday. Free workshop at 2 PM. What shall I, uh, I give to you today as a sample from this workshop? Well, what I did today was I came up with a conclusion. I gave folks this final challenge. 4 bites enough? I made 3 points. One is Jeff Lawton, my permaculture teacher, taught me it's easier to make mistakes on paper than in real life. So make a plan, put it on paper, then go out into the field. And paper could be in your head. Just get a plan and then go and try to execute. That doesn't mean you can't change it later. Got a couple other points for you. Put a hair too much salt. Oh my gosh. Our second thing would be, now don't get too caught up in that plan. You don't want to get analysis paralysis, feel like you got to know everything to do something. You don't, guys. I've been doing this for 15 years. I don't know everything. Even if it's wrong, you got to make mistakes. That may lead me to my third thing, which is fail a lot but fail small. So got a plan on paper, you're going after the things of your heart which you want to grow the most. We need more cows. Well, we don't up and get 3 cows, okay? We start with 1. We first started with 2 beef cows. That's how we got our first experience with cows. And not all year round either— bought them in the spring, harvested them in the fall. Highly recommend that. We got all kinds of experience. We had all kinds of failure. Had we just jumped into milk cows, it could have been a disaster. In a few more minutes, Sean, our framer, will be here. We're going to go over what else we need to do as far as frame— to get the framing inspection. He's here, so join us for The workshop this Sunday, first opportunity to get this booklet. And stay tuned because the booklet is only going to be available, and the workshop replay is only going to be available maybe a week after that, so February 10th. So if you're seeing this before then, link in the description. We've been working on our homestead house remodel. It's, it's the critical piece because it's our zone zero, you know. It's, it's everything stems out from there, so it's so important to us. We're in this rush to get the electric done, the HVAC done, and the framing done so that we can bring on the insulation. HVAC is done, electric's coming next week, and Sean's coming today to go over what he needs to get done for the framing.
I came by because, you know, Justin's the only dude in the plant, in the state, that gives me anxiety, man. We were, we were off to a blaze of glory.
Yeah.
And then it just seems like we need to try to find that. Yeah, I know, find that gas pedal. All right, they fail us for something, it's something that I don't foresee. I don't know what you want to do here. All of these jams are too wide, dude. Did I?
Wow.
What's up, little dude?
Have you met Bull? Blaze.
I have met Blaze. He's Peach's sidekick.
Yep. Well, we've gotten to a point where we need the beautiful one. Beck, sorry to drag you out of your— it's okay— much-needed rest. I tried. It's okay. I got pretty far. I was like, I got this. You need me, that is fine. Oh boy, Rebecca's being a real trooper, not feeling good, getting out in the rain, pushing through. This is how bad she wants it, it's how bad we all want it. We only figured siding up top. We figured right here.
The point is, where does Hardie start and stop? So does this become Hardie now?
I was thinking— or is it all poplar?
Or is it all poplar? Or where is that transition?
I was thinking that it would go to here. Basement in it?
You want to go all the way to the end?
Yeah, all the way to the end. Oh, the meeting took a little longer than I thought. And sure enough, well, I overdid the lamb. We ate the lamb, but it was definitely Burn It Up Cooking Show times 2. I think that lamb got up to 195 degrees, so it was a bit dry. It wouldn't be the Burn It Up Cooking Show without overdoing it sometimes. Felt to me like just another mundane day. But folks, guys, if you keep going and working at it, mundane after mundane after mundane, you come into grand day— I wish that was a word— these little days stack up and you've arrived at your goal and destination before you even knew it. So I'm working on enjoying the process because that's what these days are all about, the process of a family just growing their own food together. Happy day.
