Rebuilding Starts NOW

Chickens don't care that there's been a hurricane. The chickens are getting out, taking advantage as they will, clipping their wings. One escaped me, and it's probably one who haven't been able to catch before who's got wings. No, but we'll get it anyway. Can you come open and shut this door for me? You got me. He's one that's getting out too. Cut along the wing pattern. Feathers become less long. The smiley one! You survived, or you're just really late. That's record tardiness. I'm gonna leave you to processing the milk. Our little solar energizer that could— it was swept a half a mile down the road and has been working for us in a week. For a week. That's kaput. I opened up the battery compartment Oh my gosh, do you think that has something to do with it? How did this work? RV outlet is connected to the generator. We haven't got the correct things connected to the generator yet, so we're doing what we can. An adapter to an adapter to a 3-way. We got green. Please be charging. Is solid red. All right, uh, I don't like how that's blinking without the battery. Why won't this turn off? I mean, it did float half a mile down down the creek. It's even got a dash in it. Constant helicopters. Feels like I'm in a war zone. Key to this is always have extra batteries. I don't know if these batteries have a charge, so we'll just hook it up and see. And these can be used while that's charged. What the heck? Phantom shock. Did not get shocked, but you just think you did. What does that mean? It means it should be blinking green. Maybe that battery is dead. Whoa, blinking! How is life that different for you?

Not at all.

Every day's Saturday for Henry, even through a hurricane. I'm feeling like every day's Monday right now. I get through the Sabbath and then I'm like— it's Sunday and I'm like, when's the next Sabbath? Feels like it's already our rest day.

Today is Monday. You hit it right.

Oh, it is? Okay, well, every day feels like Monday. Every day I think tomorrow is going to be the day we recoup, and I thought that was today. And then we have a volunteer group here helping in the area, and then they turned their focus on us and said, we've delivered our goods, have some time, we want to help you. And so I'm like, the boots in me cannot pass that up. Maybe tomorrow is recoup, or maybe we recoup in months. The kids were invited— well, we were invited to a soccer game 30 minutes away. Not, not far away, everything's 30 minutes from here, so in town. I said it's still there. It is. It's all still there. No, then they said they were going to do a picnic after. I mean, that pic— the word picnic, it triggered me. I'm like, picnic. I was reading in this book, The Zookeeper's Wife. It's a Polish perspective of them taking in, uh, Jewish refugees and stuff like that. Yeah, and their town's getting destroyed, you know, during the— during the World War II. Antonia. Said, she was the zookeeper's wife, there was a moment after, you know, it was starting to kind of calm down, the city had been destroyed, the kids were playing and she said, "It's good for the kids to play." I let y'all go. And did you have fun? Yeah.

If there's a horse that needs rescuing, can we rescue him?

We rescued 20 horses last Thursday by getting Noelle on to Lisa. Check out her show.

She's been hauling water to the horses. So we're gonna try to get her like a generator that like works for that.

We were able to help our neighbor and Lily's trainer. She had— she was watering 20 horses by hand. We helped her well get hooked up to a generator. That's on her channel.

It is great for the kids to play, and, and like, you see squirrels are having a heyday, all these acorns in town.

You should have seen Winnie just after. She was just frolicking about. Yeah, the goose— the geese were loving the storm.

Resilience.

I think we see a power company. Just had a visit with Grandma and we come back down and there's a service worker on the house, on the cabin. How can we help you? Oh, I'm fine. Some lemonade, some water? No, I'm good. Two very able-bodied men. They're volunteers through Reverence Farm. Reverence Farm organized some aid to this area. We hosted them for a couple of days. They finished early and y'all wanted to get sweaty. That's right. Yep. What compels you to come here and get sweaty for other people? For nothing. We just wanted to help out. We thought, uh, we know people in the west are hurting and we wanted to get out here and use a chainsaw. High up on the priority list, rebuilding the high tunnel area, hopefully in time for winter. The company and friends of mine, Farmers Friends, has already reached out to us and said we're gonna replace that high tunnel. Thank you, thank you, Farmers Friends. You are a friend. That's the name of their company. You are a farmer's friend. I thought it would— this this would have been over for the— this winter. But maybe not. That line so that we can be free without worry about getting— I don't think I'm authorized to cut the power line. Joan and I are going to work on this tree that's all entangled in the cables. You guys go to the, the further one. It goes all the way there to the pig port. And you guys start working up that tree. I will tell you, this is man heaven. It's a little warm. Chainsaw. It's gonna use a Mini X. There's other men here to help. The adrenaline's running. I can't get out there fast enough. It is all tangled up in this power line. We're going to be very, very careful. I had my electrical friend look at it. Can you tell how big this is? That's how big this is.

Probably 5 feet tall.

12 feet by 15. Huge hole. We got the tree cleared of the line. That was a pain, and I was not looking forward to that job. Glad it's done. Wow. You ready for phase 2? Yep. The ladies are back from Reverence Farms. They're wanting to be put to work too. I wished I was feeling filming about 3 minutes ago when you guys—

Suzanne does that to Hubert all the time. He looks at me, he's like, are we gonna redo that?

We're doing it right now. They, they came up to me and they're like, we're gonna get you a wood chipper, like buy us a wood chipper. I said, you're nuts.

Yeah.

She said, I know.

And we hugged.

Okay, reenact the hug.

Okay, come here.

We love you guys. So big shout out to you guys. Thanks for what you're doing.

Thank you. Thank you for hosting us. Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us.

And if folks want to help and help farms, they go to Reverence Farms. Where do they go?

Knowing Love Ministries.

Knowing Love Ministries.

Okay, it's a family friends nonprofit. Normally they feed hungry children in Honduras.

Okay, okay.

Um, but right now we're organizing efforts to help over here in Western North Carolina, but we're going to be shifting gears and start to help homesteaders and farmers who got impacted.

I should come give you a hug. We appreciate it. This place worked you to death this weekend. Oh, it And he's getting people to work. You know, it's coming out here and just looking around and it's kind of like, where do you begin? Another amazing worker. They don't even have an office right now. They got slammed, but they're out delivering diesel fuel. They couldn't even give me the bill. They gave me the gallons and said you got to call them and pay. It's like, oh man, the community right now. You guys already worked through that? Well, We did. How long did it take? You know, 5-10 minutes. That's it? This was a huge tree system down. Hopefully we'll get up there to document this before they finish. This was not an active stream. It became one though. Came roaring down that mountain. Never in my life have I seen water in these crevices. This is important work here, getting a trail access to our, our water reservoir at the top of the mountain so we can see what's wrong with it, keep it more consistent. We might get really lucky and this be our last blockage. Approaching work during a crisis is just like approaching work during growth and abundance on your homestead. You just— you got always got way more to do than you have time, money, and energy. So you prioritize. We got to get the garden uncovered. Winter's coming, a high tunnel's coming. So we cleared the trees there. We need to get the gravity-fed water working so we take pressure off of our pump. We don't know when electricity is coming back on, but the lady volunteers down there— I went into the mode of Zoning. If you don't know where to start, start right outside the door. So I thought, okay, zone 0, they could be picking up around the house. Zone 1, so I had them pick up zone 1-ish, you know, front yard, and work out from there. Small blockage. Thankfully it's the top of this tree over that trail, not this part. What?

Huge tree!

How big? Why'd nature choose this one? Pretty big set. I'm gonna go get my saw back at Grandma's. Somewhat close. Hopefully there's not any more big ones. No more trees. I thought there was so much more. I thought it was another hill over. I don't think so. Let's check the tank while we're up here. Good work. Well done, man. Unlock it. How did this not get blown away? Water was up to there. You can see the line. This was covered with 2 feet of water. Water's coming in. Where's our tank? It's buried in debris. I think the tank's somewhere in there. My bet is our tank is compromised. Okay, there it is. Goodness, why isn't it filling up? It's only to right here. Why isn't that full? We have a blockage right here. Jonah, how are we gonna dig this tank out? It's just clogged. This should just be blasting. It's gonna be hard to get in there and get any sediment out. Probably going to be easier to disassemble disengage it right here and try to just let this blast out right there and maybe clean it out with a stick. That tank should be filling up. It's going flowy in there, so I'm thinking there's some breaches along this line. Can y'all follow this line and go tell me if there's a leak? Another reason we've been building that access road is to run this water line up an access road and not through a crazy jungle. It's on this. Okay, that's on that. Probably pinching it. That log is pinching the line, and there's probably going to be several others. It's telling me it's not worth the patch job since we're just going to reroute this water line. It's a rehaul. That our insurance company might actually cover because it was wind damage. Look at this. Yeah, waking up this morning, I had no idea we were gonna clear my garden and a path to this water.

There's 3 fallen trees on the line in like 4 weeks, but they're like— the leaves are tiny, they're like little scratches with water flowing out.

Yep, that line's totaled. Got a green light, that means it's charged this battery. Meanwhile, America helping America, and look at all the gear they brought give out to people 4 hours from them. We're feeding our friends fresh food from the land. Butter, beef. Beef is what's for dinner. We've literally had beef for dinner the last 10 days in a row. Probably potatoes too. Lunch and dinner. Beef and taters. That's what's for dinner.

After talking to you both and what you guys needed, we decided we're gonna buy you guys a wood chipper. What? No, that's insane. Thank you.

That's what I said.

That's crazy.

Well, except I said they're nuts.

Because we know that you guys serve everybody else all the time, and we want you to be able to clean up, and we know you'll give back to the community. And we know you'll— you know, we'll be making wood chips for everyone.

Wood chips for everyone.

I know, right? People are gonna be like, I need wood chips. Be like, come to my house, we'll load you up.

Yeah, she talked to Joel too. Ain't playing. This ain't no Dr. Mower. This ain't no Dr. Mower wood chipper.

So funny. He was like, we need a wood chipper, not a DR mower.

DR mower.

Yeah, people are being so generous, right? Thank you guys. We love you guys. Be able to clean up and know that you're loved and supported.

Being in this crisis, we don't know what people say. What do you need? We don't know. I know. So it's good people just like So people just step it up.

You don't want to ask.

You know how I close these out?

How do you close it out?

Happy day! Happy day!