Rain Ruined My Garden Plans: So I Fixed Everything Instead

Oh my gosh, I really need to get this new weed fabric down so that I can get my brassicas out. Look, oh my gosh, they're so huge! I thought they were going to be big, but not that big. The problem is it's raining. Well, it did rain, and it's supposed to rain more all morning. Well, Nature had different plans. Plus, we need the rain, so I'm not going to complain. And we have some other very important things to do on the homestead, like fix some very critical machines. The mower will start. Go ahead and do that, Jonah. Uh, not really. Let's see if it'll start now. Okay, I guess the mower won't even start for sure. The blades don't engage, right? I took this off and I was looking at everything. See, we got to test that too. That isn't working. We got to test the switch. This is a fuse right here. PTO switch. And once fuse is good, okay. And then these two are fuses. While we're here, show them what's wrong with the four-wheeler. Two little tires on. Oh, you've got a squat! All right, let's see it. Let's see, let's see the squat in action. Hey, you dork, you have a squat! Should I do it even farther? How could you do that? If I take the shock off and replace it? No, we had a flat. Not just a flat, we had it where the tire came away from the rim. Hey, what's the matter? Open it. All right, there you go. Thank you. What you doing? I'm gonna make it squat squat it for this a little bit. Like, really compressing the shocks. Show Austin that. And do that for the parade next year. And Lucky won't start. Nothing. All right, go ahead. Cruising. Everybody's gonna think you're so big making it squat down this much. You want to borrow our four-wheeler? Put a squat on the four-wheeler. They didn't drive down, uh, south to fit into that. He's gonna go cruise Patton. We've been on this self-reliance journey for 20 years and have really honed in the food aspect of it. We are growing most of our own food. I'm excited to tap more of this, uh, what is it? Grow things, build things, and fix things. We're learning how to fix things. These, although we could probably tackle them, would probably take us 3 days to figure it out. My man Mark is coming at lunch. We'll have a nice guide. We're gonna go right alongside him and hopefully get all these very critical machines going back so we can keep going with the homestead. For some reason, these are not as high growing as that. Oh, they're different. So we have collards and cabbage and broccoli somewhere in here. That's cabbage. This is collards. Collards. We have this bug netting over it because, uh, bugs are bad to get brassicas. Okay, and this is broccoli. Broccoli's a little worse stuff. We didn't grow nearly as enough, enough broccoli last year. We ran out of it, what, a month, 2 months ago? So we're growing twice as much, if not 4 times as much. Collards too, we ran out of. We go ahead and cook them and then freeze them. Cabbage, we like to eat fresh. It's hard to beat Bub, Bubby's sauerkraut, so we're not into making our own sauerkraut yet. I really don't like the looks of this. Because look how big this plant is. This has got to go out like tomorrow. Let's see if— oh yeah, see the roots coming out the bottom? Okay, okay, so it's not a nightmare yet. It's not starting to spiral around it, but it's getting close. We do not have much time. Tomatoes too, but I believe the beautiful one will do what you call potting these up. Somebody said I want those. Trays. These are silicone, so they're reusable, they're flexible. We've been using them a couple seasons, really like them. They're called Silly Seedings. I'll leave a link in the description for them. The new me takes this as shop class. We're gonna go see how Mark figures this out. We're gonna learn something. Looks like we're starting with the tractor. How'd you know to look there first? Ah, I just got lucky. Let me check the power. Does sometimes it not get neutral proper, or would it still start? I guess even if it's not neutral, I guess it has to be in neutral. Battery alive? Yeah. Is it getting to it? This was kind of loose. We tightened it up. Yeah, we got 12.28. What setting you put that on? The volts? Yeah, just volts. You test everything with that volts? Everything? Yeah. If you were to test the switch, just like a test light. All right, so there's that 12 volts right there, so it's working. It's just not connecting. Not connected. That's your starter? Yeah, it's going to the solenoid on the starter. Trying to find where it goes. Yeah, it hooks on that solenoid. I'm trying to Okay, I can't see it without taking these filters off, but I can feel where it's at. I can hook it back up. How's that come off? It's just— make it vibrate loose. Oh, okay. You turn the fuel line off. We're gonna get these filters out so that we can get in there and find where this connects. Oh yeah. The filter off. You see it? Yeah. Oh, doesn't that slide? Probably just vibrated off. How can you tell? Have we looked inside? Oh, okay. Woo! It feels good to be able to fix things. So we came up off the rim, but before that we had a slow leak, so we got to fix two things. I know you got to like blow it up somehow. It'd be interesting to see how they do that. I don't think we wanted to do that on our own without somebody teaching us how to do it first. They're saying we got lucky. It's actually pumping up. We didn't have to explode it. Spraying it now to find the leak. Sprays it with this soapy water, you'll see it bubbling where it's leaking out. I know that much. Hit the tire with the Mini-X blade. Oh, is that what happened? I thought I was past it and then I turned and then the X blade just hit it. That'll do it. Yeah, you got to be careful. If you put too much in, it'll blow them up. How much did you put in? 40 pounds. Yeah, we put too much in. You put too much? Yeah. It's gonna blow? No, it didn't blow. It blow while you bump me dead. You hold your ears. Just pump the crap out of it until it pops into place. You want to put the wheel back on? Yeah. You don't like this? Say goodbye to your squat. How do you like that squat, Mark? Yeah, you see him with them trucks, he's spotted it. Yeah, 2 down, 3 to go. And for right now, that mower is probably the most important one. You see this grass? And we're going to be putting the cows out soon, and what they don't get, we need to mow behind them, especially in the spring. See, we're going to need to mow our yard. Hey, we don't want to— what jungle for a front yard? But We also want the grass clippings for our garden. It's hard to beat grass clippings for mulch. So on this one, the blade isn't engaging. You checking the fuses first? Yeah, yeah, they look like they're all right. You're gonna just get it started? Yeah. Okay, now it isn't starting. It's got 14 volts in it. Yeah, I'll start. Okay, let me get a bunch of that on. It's going from 14 volts to 12 just starting it. Yeah, let it pull back up there. Turn that key plate. 14.3. Oh, see, that pulls it all the way down to less than 12. He's gonna grab his jumper cables. That was not our problem in assessing things. Our problem was it would start but then the blades wouldn't work. Started right up, hooked up to the truck. Yeah, we have a flight case for each one. We have, haven't we? Yeah. Yeah, we have. What it is, battery— don't make the battery stop. Oh, I mean, it's going to let it run there for a little bit. Okay, okay. Y'all know it's working? Yeah, cuz I saw the— it's keeping the battery. It was 14.7 volts. I was starting that. Yeah, I think your battery's shot. Yeah, so y'all didn't do anything but hook a truck up to it. That could have been the battery. No. Well, I don't know, John. They got it started. They just hooked the truck up to the battery. Yes, but what about this? Yeah, that worked too when it was hooked up to the truck. So the battery's not strong enough, man. I was going over this this whole thing trying to find it. So the mower needs a new battery. You could be mowing today, bro. You charged it up with the— oh, it won't start. It's got a good amount of juice in it. You have— I have to go get a battery. Look, this one, this one I replaced, the spare we had. I already replaced it. 11.52, that's something. He needs 12. Not even a noise. All right, you gonna go get it? How's the salad? It's so good. Yeah, I really like it. How do you like it? He don't like it. He's going straight for the, uh, wood. Got it all over his hands. Okay, Jonah's back. What took you so long? We had to go back into town to get some stuff to make it connect. Okay, he's working on our pressure washer. Did you get a battery? What, you're telling him he has to go? Yeah. She was like, "I'm gonna mow tomorrow." Because I'm putting myself in charge of making sure the party gets— party stuff gets ready. That's okay, because guess what? What? We fixed our mower. Well, we'll see after supper. Right. We're gonna crank it up, right, Jonah? Go. After supper. It's raining. It's been off and on raining all day. Supposed to clear up tomorrow. We should be able to put in our weed fabric tomorrow. All right, you think we should cross our fingers? I think it'll work. Did not start. Oh, you got to get on it. Let me get on it. It might be something messed up. We fix things with the help of Mark, but we're learning. Thank you, Mark. Tomorrow, trying a new approach to help us with a weed-free 8,400 square foot garden, grocery garden. Happy day.