Salmonella Relapse Has Me on Light Duty

I feel like I'm relapsing. Yesterday I had so much energy. Probably was from the UV the night before. I think I've got to go to the bathroom again. Rebecca is letting me touch things. It's been like— it's been 3, 4 days since my fever. They say salmonella poisoning can— the effects can last like 10 days. And that's how it happened to my buddy Casey Ostwich, so happy anniversary.

Happy anniversary.

We're obviously gonna have to celebrate it at a later date.

I know, I'm sorry. I feel like, I feel like you should get back in bed.

I hate to do that to you.

It's okay.

I just want to take Cubby and ride a little bit around the farm, and I'll take my notebook and I'll make a list. I won't even do anything.

Okay, good.

I'll talk to Arun about it. I don't think he's got a pressing project. Okay, good. If I can do it, because It's when I get moving that, you know, the bowels get moving. Don't think I'm gonna take you in there. You guys are thankful for editing right now, that this isn't— what was it called— The Truman Show where they filmed 24/7? Holy moly, sunflowers have jammed since I've been gone. Looks like Mom's raised beds are doing all right. That's the cool thing about raised beds is they pretty much go on without you. We put the grass clippings in and weeds are at bay. Somebody's left my nice hoe out. It's running on empty, bro. Let's fill it up. Lettuce though, doing great.

Oh yeah.

All right, can you open that lid and fill that up for me? That's a nice squash. Almost too nice. Pretty much too old. The peas are taking off nicely. Just say let's inspect the squash anymore because it'd be better if we got them a little bit smaller. You sprayed yourself going overboard with it. All right, uh, screw the lid on. All right, these plants are suffering. Those are wilting. They've been watered, but they're gonna need more water. These plants are yelling, they're running out of nutrients. So they need to get transferred. They probably haven't gotten watered this whole time except what I saw you do this morning, right? No, I did it, uh, Monday, yesterday. Oh, I worked on Sunday. I think weekends I didn't go. Okay. All right. What is going on here? Are those turkeys 6 weeks yet? They're probably getting pretty close. The geese are still sheltered. They water, grit, feed. Wow, good job, guys. Turkeys also water, grit, feed. As much as I'd I'd like to walk around and inspect. I think I'm gonna need to take a couple. I'm taking feed inventory. Looks like we need chick starter on its way. Might get a little lower on alfalfa, and then we'll order like a 2,000-pound tote. We can, because we can. Uh, pig, pig feed, and we're probably all right on that. You know, we're getting low on layer, but we can feed everybody starter, so we might just let that go out. Our beef and our lamb are ready. We gotta get Grandma and Big Daddy all the coolers we can. You want to spray it off? I think there's another one in here. So much has been done. I need to focus on that. I tend to focus on all the holes, all the gaps. Like, our meat's been ready for 5 days. Let's get these coolers out. That's out to them. What's this, babe?

Apple cider vinegar.

You do— do I need to drink it with a straw or can I just guzzle it? You can guzzle it. It's fine. And what's it for?

Well, hopefully diarrhea.

The internet's saying this is gonna stop diarrhea, so— It burns my throat. Oh, drinking apple cider vinegar always works better with a camera.

Holy crap. There was reports that this made the diarrhea stop. So I don't know, I'm basically throwing everything that I can at him in hopes that it will alleviate his suffering.

I noticed that's your method. Finally back at it outside. Check on them in a minute. It actually looks like we're getting some greenage out here from 2 rounds of blood fertilizer. We actually have some Greening plants. These guys have been struggling. They are planted into field dirt. This watermelon actually looks like it's starting to start. Well, they've been chilling, so yep, out of water, out of water. Can you get the hose over here please, Jonah? These guys are good. They need a little more. It looks like theirs needs to be cleaned out. We just fed them the old chicken guts. Almost a week ago. We were supposed to feed it every day from that time. I don't know what happened, but that's what I'm doing. I'm just filling in those kinds of gaps. That's just gross. There's some thought that, hey, maybe I got salmonella from the chicken butchering, you know. I mean, you could get it from, uh, old food scraps going to the pigs and not washing your hands properly. Who knows? Handling the brooder, I scrape out the shavings and the manure in the feed Got that clean, filling up. They weren't out, but it was nasty. Look who came see me. We got it filled up, super nice and clean. Let's go for the rest of the inspection. Here's where I left off with my project. How did that get wet? I guess dew from outside. You know, it's been raining outside, but it hasn't been raining in here, so we should probably put the water on for this. Uh, I think we have a few more days, maybe till Sunday. But look, these are— this one's starting to lean over a little bit, but I think it'll be okay. These cucumbers down here kind of suffering with something. This patch right here never really did good. I don't know, it's probably a concentration of too much manure. Down here the cucumbers are doing a little bit better. Peppers are jamming. Tomatoes are good, and that's her favorite, so I'm happy about that. And the beans seem like they're gonna do okay. Oh, funny, you guys see something missing? We sold our greenhouse in the front yard. I was just tripping out a little bit because I'm not used to seeing it like that. Wait, this thing's made our life easy last couple days. Power has gone out a number of times, and me being sick and the power going out, are you kidding? Thank you, Cummins. Yeah boy, it's getting overrun with little weeds. Overrun's a little strong word for that. It's getting a little closer to being overrun here. You can still see that these are the watermelons. You can still see them clearly. They're doing good. Nothing the quick hoe job won't fix in here. I can't even wait a few days, but I'll put it on the list. See these squash? See how big they are? Those ones in the— at the pole barn are like 4 weeks old. Are half the size, so this should probably be double that size. The onions are jamming. The potatoes are nearing the end. This is when they become ready to harvest, when they start wilting. You can see a new potato right there. There's a potato sticking its head out a little bit. The garlic too is probably getting pretty close. What? What's the problem?

One of the water pipes went off.

All right, wouldn't be homesteading without problems. Yeah, I'm sorry this, this, this week's vlogs haven't been that thrilling, but you know what, this show has always been about the good, bad, and the ugly. Homesteading isn't always unicorns, farting rainbows. Uh, you do get sick and you do put your projects on a halt. You already fixed it? Did you? How'd you fix it? Did you screw this back on nicely?

Yep, I screwed that back on myself.

Oh wow, yeah, you did. Wow, you did fix it. Wow, I'm impressed. Now go turn it back on. Okay, okay. Here's the hard reality of homesteading: the work has to keep getting done or something's gonna die, and we hope it would not be an animal. My kids can't like run the farm by themselves. They can do the chores. By themselves, but they can't run the farm by themselves. You know what I'm saying? It is working good. And thank you.

Okay, if me and Ezra are playing and we come over here and we see that broken, now I can fix it.

Yeah, Arun pretty much owns the cows and the sheep. Uh, he does those chores a lot regularly with me, so I think those are in good hands. We should go check on the sea monsters out in the field. Let's put that on the skid steer to smooth out Arun's garden. This is what we call it. Garden there when we were gone on the Great American Farm Tour, uh, and we'll smooth it out and plant, plant a nice yard there. It'll be nice. Even when I'm sick, I can't bring myself to drive in the field. It's a nice view. You do kind of forget about that kind of stuff. You take a day, couple day break. Fence is on, this is tight. They have moved it to new grass. They've got water, they've got feed, they've got feed. I'm looking for the grit. That water looks terribly nasty. That water is almost empty. Hey, who is in charge of the sea monsters? This is nice, represents us well. The vlogging cam, the vlogging rig. Another bathroom break. I guess it was a bit longer, and I had quite a bit of movement, uh, before I had to do that. So that's a change. She's gonna make me do apple cider vinegar again.

I put honey in it because I read the honey is also very soothing for the digestive tract.

Okay, that's better.

Vinegar, not that much better.

Yeah, do you want some more water in it?

Burning a little bit. Okay. Oh, I like the bath idea, the Epsom salt detox bath idea.

You can pour some apple cider vinegar in the bathtub.

You know, this might be a rite of passage.

What do you mean?

Salmonella.

Some people get it.

I'm doing pretty good. I've gone 15 years. I don't think this is like, oh, we need to change our practices drastically.

It's— we've been—

because this hasn't happened to me for 15 years.

This is like, it's just an unfortunate event.

Yeah, it just happens to the best of us. I know.

We've been here for how long? We've never had this issue.

She be trying to be giving me— what's that one crazy one you're trying to give me? It's crazy.

Fire Cider.

Crazy.

I would do it.

Don't even tell them what's in that.

Okay, do you want to stop peeing out your butt or not?

Well, this isn't working.

It is working. You have to give it some time. It's not gonna work.

You said the charcoal was gonna work.

I hoped it was. Just do it one more time.

I'm 178.6 pounds this morning. I've hit my goal. I've lost 15 pounds in 2 months. I've lost, I've lost the last 6 in 3 days. I got to get our affiliates lined up for Abundance Plus. It's Wednesday.

I gotta do something with my—

they need a little better notice than this, so I've got to get on that. I've got to secure some content so we can get it up on time. Our people are forgiving, aren't they, Mom?

Yes.

Is that fun? Is that fun? You know what I miss? What? Hugging everybody. Hugging everybody. Letting people on my lap. Reading to you guys at night. Give Mom a hug. Having you in the bed. It's our anniversary. We know you're going to be in the same bed. We've never been those people though. We can celebrate our anniversary.

We'll celebrate when you get better.

Anytime.

Some— a special dessert, and I'll make iced coffee.

And we've been married 20 years.

I know, it's a long time.

You got any advice since you're such a pro now? How do you live with me? How do you put up with me?

You just have to walk in each other's forgiveness. That's a good grace. That was a good line, Mark.

That's a good line. Good line. You have to tell each other when you have a problem with the other one. Yeah, you tell each other all the problems.

We talk a lot. A lot of communication.

Sometimes it has to be via text with all capital letters because we're so hot, right?

But I'll say this, that's, that's a good, that's a good point. Lots of communication. Talk about everything, everything, everything, every little thing. Don't leave anything because the temptation is to let the little things go.

Oh, it's me. I should just—

well, you maybe should let it go so that you're not so mean when you talk about You might, you might have some timing. Yes, there's timing. We have a 4-month-old on our 20th anniversary. Serious heart attack.

Oh my, that's sorely outdated. Let's see, you'll see this video Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Shoot, you guys got 3 days to go buy the Plus, we already switched our current Abundant Permaculture members over. Everybody's loving it. It's so user-friendly. It's renewing older content, just making everything more accessible. People are enjoying the uncensored vlogs. Uh, they add free vlogs. So can't wait to show this to you guys on Sunday. I think I like this theory better. I just called that a theory. I think I like that, um, treatment better. Get the bath going. I've been in the bed a while now after the bath. The bath was good, got a sweat up, got the heart rate up. Resting in the bed a bit, doing some business, making it feel a little bit better. All right, we got to deal with all this meat. We've got 5 coolers full plus Uh, cardboard milk crates. That's a good problem to have. That's crazy that we have that plus the 5 coolers. Yes. Oh boy, we're gonna have a big packing issue ahead of us. That's the pork freezer. A whole lot of room.

Where's the lamb?

Another pork freezer. Hamburger skin. We're probably— we just have to give that up. We never got around to it. What is all that beef? This is a lamb right here. Okay. And this is beef bone. Is all the lamb together? Yes. And that's it? No, it's in a cooler. Okay. This is leftovers. All right, so lamb can go in here. Wow, that was a task. Hamburger surprised us. That's him. That is him. He was 440— he was 447 hanging weight, which means, uh, we didn't get all the bones back and stuff. I don't know, probably 375-ish pounds. There's some of him in here, uh, more of him in there. Uh, the lamb, where's he at? This is the lamb remnant. There wasn't so much of that. We were not surprised. So maybe 50-ish, 60 pounds. We had to jam some of hamburger over here in our beef freezer, which— this is maybe why I haven't enjoyed ribeyes like all the carnivores are talking about. I haven't gotten that ribeye. Look at how dark red— show Rebecca that— dark red and fatty. You know, we got American Milking Devon bull and Jerseys. This is one of the big reasons. Beefy steaks, but also tender from the Jersey.

Oh, there's two in there.

There's two. But wow, those are boss, aren't they?

That's really nice.

That looks nice.

It does.

How's lunch?

Good.

Henry just watching you eat. Wow. He thinks it's a fun game. He loves to shove that hand in there, doesn't he? I think I'm gonna try this again, eating. I really got excited yesterday and really ate it up. You don't think it messed me up, do you?

No, I mean, you have to eat.