She's Getting Serious About Canning

Just make sure you get your hands out of the way. Now here's the core, right? Cut it right to the other side of the core and flip it around. What you making?

My snack.

What is your snack?

Eggs and cheese.

Hey Gideon, are you supposed to be on the counter with your, uh, dirty feet? No, no, I don't think so. Okay, let's get off the counter.

This is all from our chicken?

Yes. Wow. Yes. I forgot to tell you guys, the fat chicks are starting to lay. Look at these adorable little eggs. That's not too bad. Look, that's a normal size egg and there's a little egg. Pretty much almost there. We'll take it. Look at that Easter egg basket. Easter, we got green, blue, light brown, white, dark brown. That's nice. This is a big change. Holding a baby in one hand, put my shoe on with the other. Stand on one hand at one foot. Whoa, whoa, that could have been terrible. They're starving. There's the stuff. Thank you. Oh, 6 eggs.

Yesterday we got 14, but I think they're not laying an egg.

Well, you probably weren't checking it every day either.

No, I was checking it every day.

Oh, we've been out of eggs for a while because as we transition the fat hens as opposed to scrappy hens.

Yep.

I'm happy to see this. Been buying some from the neighbors. We're gonna be in like egg heaven.

These are from the neighbors. He needed 2 egg cartons, so I took them.

Oh, that's some from the neighbors. Well, that's why they weren't smaller. Show me the ones you brought in today. See if they're smaller. I was trying to compare normal-sized eggs to normal size. I was wondering why they weren't much smaller. There we go. There you go. That's a pullet egg.

See, but they'll get bigger.

That's a pullet egg. See that? I started a Boston butt this morning. My heart is singing. Gonna catch the fat and baste it. You ready to go? Boom! I'm getting close to being back to 42 years old.

Can I race you?

I'm more like 64 today. Well, that's better than 84 or 94 at my worst. Oh, this water is terrible and it stinks. Smoker keeps dropping below its temp. I've turned on the grill to get that back up. And then I'm gonna adjust the smoker knob to higher setting. Did pellets fall in there? Oh yeah, we got pellets burning. You can see the smoke coming out. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. All right, I got it back up to 250. My goal for this today is to get the meat up to 160 before suppertime and then wrap it in tin foil and get it up to 190 By supper, my mouth's watering just thinking about it. Look at the size difference between these pigs. Oh my gosh, there it goes. We're gonna get that filling back up. All right, we're almost at 300. Figured it out, it's, it's maintaining. I just gotta crank it up to like Set to like 450, but it's maintaining. Y'all don't understand, there is peace in my heart having pork back in the freezer and the Boston butt on the smoker. Come on, son. What are you doing? Caught the flies? Yeah, that's one way to get them off of her. They're like little— it's a new season of flies. It's like little babies because we don't have our chickens out here going through the manure, which is gonna happen soon. Are you guys ready to do it? I don't think— I don't think they're ready to stay in these sheep nets, but we could do a poultry net until they're ready.

Who's gonna be moving that every day?

All right, maybe we'll give them one more month and then we're putting them in the— behind these. Let's milk. Okay, bring it, Jonah. It's your turn to milk, Henry. Yeah. Yep. You want to hold this? You want to hold this? Say not quite yet. Now we want to get Maple over and treat her. Remember she had that weird, uh, weird blood scabs thingies yesterday. Can you grab her collar? Good job, good job, cowboy! There you go. You get around that, you can leverage it. Now pull on it. It's not bright red like it was yesterday. Maybe we are gonna have to put her in the stall. Is he going to sleep? Bless his heart. Maroon's got him and he's going to sleep. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I know, I know. See, that one just tried to mount his sister. That's the one breeding scenario you don't want. We're gonna have to catch them, catch them with alfalfa. Or I guess you have it lined up where the sheep— do you want to get Maple over first? I guess not. The boys got separated, so I'm gonna try to keep them up here. There you go, there you go, guys. Good job! And you kept the cow in here and everything. Nice. All right, we're gonna about knock 3 birds out with one stone. Get some vitamin D, weed the asparagus and strawberry patch. Much needed. Look at all the morning glory in here. Look at the volunteer tomatoes. It's crazy insane. Uh, we'll get some exercise. Yeah, let's see how difficult this is going to be. I think it's just kind of shallow weeds. Okay, let's just come through here. There's a lot of crabgrass. Just let's take care of it before it overruns us. All right, we're gonna come at it at this side. We've already been coming that way to minimize tread. We're gonna come up from this side. Two more benefits: sauna, sweating, grounding. I got barefoot. I'm probably doing too much, but buddy, it feels good to be able to do again. Pile it up right here. So I think we filled the cart, didn't we? All right, we did it. We got, we got one row. One row all the way through. 1, 2, 3, at least 3 that way, one more that way. It's taking longer than expected, but in a big project like this, you just say, I'm gonna do this for 45 minutes, do this till 11, and call it. And we made our 1% change. We actually made more than 1% change. Feel good?

Yeah.

Feel good to be done? Yeah. Let's dump that to the pigs. Since there's the Henry cart and there's the pigs, you can't really see them. Would you say it needed weeding? Get these greens. The pigs or chickens? Well, what do you like more? Well, I like pork more than I like chicken. You guys will get it. No, it's just closer and it gives them something to do. It's just a beautiful sound, pig chomping. Can you do it, Lily? All right, look at her tail wagging. She's so happy. I don't know, getting this Boost Energy, I'm like, let's get going, let's get going on our next step, which is market farm for pigs, which means probably more companions for Beefcake. We got an acre in that woods, we got an acre up there, we might have an acre up on top of the mountain. We need to get up and see. 10 pigs per acre, twice a year. Now look, it's keeping up. Let it cool off a little bit, baste it. Wow, okay, we're already at like 176. You know what that means? My dream is going to come true. Wrap it in tin foil. I put parchment paper down. We don't want tin foil on our meat. Hey guys, stay with me, stay with me. Don't, don't slip your head. This is the best part. So now this is just going to keep all the moisture in as we heat it up more. We don't need this pan anymore. And so hot, and it's only 11 o'clock. We got till 5 o'clock. Let's turn it down to like 200. Another day of packing. Boy, we're sending out the books. How many you guys sending out today, Rebecca?

I think it was 300.

Over 300. 300. I think we've sold, what, 500? Yeah, guys. We only have 4,200 total, so now we only have 3,700 and we haven't even really started to push it yet. Done well, guys. Not fast, not fast. Give me a first name, Rebecca. Let's shout somebody out. Diana, thank you for your order. Here you go, Shawna. Your life has just gotten that much better. Ryan, your world is about to change. Mark, you're a smart dude. You're gonna be homesteading like Joe Salatin would homestead. Who we got? Give me two more.

Oh, it was Shayna.

Sorry, Shayna. Sorry, not Shawna. I bet there's a Shawna in here somewhere.

I'm sure there is.

There's a Shawna watching being like, yes! Oh, Jennifer, Casey, Jennifer, we love you guys. Lacey, Casey too. I'm sure there's a Casey. We love you guys. Thank you guys. You're not going to regret it. So what's the excitement about? Joel Salatin's new book, Polyface. I'm giving you a sample, guys. I'm giving you 3 chapters plus my foreword. Foreword by yours truly. And let's see, what chapters am I giving you guys? Actually, and I'm giving you the, uh, the master class that goes along with this. Uh, what are we going to give you today? We talked about livestock stewardship yesterday. You're getting that chapter today, the animal why. So why animals are so important to the homestead. Get the video and the chapter from the book, polyface micro.com, totally free. And plus, if you want to get in on one of this, there'll be a special link there to where you can, uh, actually order a book if you want one and get membership in Abundance Plus.

So no, no, no, no, no, no, just the top one, honey, just the Ambitious boys.

I have a feeling they're very excited about this chore right now, but hopefully you guys are going to be staying strong. Yeah, yeah. Look how many more books. Our goal is to unload these 4,200 books by the end of the month, so it's first come, first serve. When we did his last book, we sold like 8,000 copies, so this is a lower price point and it's about homesteading, so I think we're gonna sell them like hotcakes. Well, We are selling them like hotcakes. How much for the last one? They were $90. This design book, $35. Oh, different. Yeah. And last call for Abundance Plus members, check your email. Uh, we are giving you guys a discount because we love you so much and appreciate you so much. So look for that email if you are an Abundance Plus member. I'm gonna sweeten the pot a little bit while I'm sitting here. How about a few of you I'm not gonna— it would be crazy to sign all 4,200, but why not just do as many as— hey, you know, I'm sitting here holding the baby. You guys want an autograph? Somebody, somebody, somebody's getting one. I'll sign as many as I can. And a few of you guys will get a signed edition. I wrote— I did get to write the foreword. Pretty excited about that. Look at this, this is just one day. We haven't even officially launched it. Wait till you see what's in that. You homesteaders, you're gonna get excited about this. Ball jars, like 240. What are you gonna do with all those?

Can.

What are you gonna can? Last week, a week and a half ago, we weren't canners. Now we have a whole pallet. You move fast. What are you gonna can? Butter?

Uh, no, I'm gonna can broth, and I want to can soup and maybe baked beans.

How about chicken?

Chicken?

Thinking about chicken.

There's a taco meat that I— in a book I got, there's like so many things that I want to can because I'm like, it'll be— so what I'm thinking is I'll can all those things in the winter for then when we're in the summer and we're busy on the farm, we can just grab a jar of taco meat and then we can have dinner.

Good idea. And Rebecca is Cooking up a storm. She's got some beans in the Instant Pot. She's got some butter melting, some broth melting. She's scraping out—

go ahead, making baked beans and coleslaw to go with the Boston butt.

She's scraping me out some acorn squash for my sides. This is from the farm.

Remember we cooked some the day we picked it? Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah, we probably need to let it cure as it It's gonna be a lot better. Yeah, it was a little— what would you say, stringy?

It was mealy.

Mealy, yeah. Grandma got me a new plant. Thank you, Grandma. It's a lot less beat up. Uh, just cutting and pasting chapter 2 of Joel Salatin's book Polyface Micro. If you're on my email list, I'm sending that to you. If you're not on my email list, get on my email list and get the first 3 chapters for free. Plus the first 3 classes of the Polyface Micro Masterclass. Link in description or Polyface Micro. I'll give you a little glimpse of it now. This one is on the 7 animal whys, so like why to get an animal. And many of these are going to be reasons you never thought of. Here's Joel with 3 of them right now.

So now let's talk about the why. Why would you want to get animals for a homestead? I think one of the first and most interesting reasons to get animals for a homestead is because they are a way to upcycle margins. You know, every acre, every square yard of a landscape is not conducive to, you know, growing watermelons and squash and having gardens. And so, you know, you'll usually have some, you know, some marginal rough land, some you know, non-crop areas, places that are maybe inaccessible, you know, tucked around the edges. And so animals can take those edges, some of those marginal areas. And, you know, that's where you can graze, you know, a cow. That's where you can run some turkeys. Those kinds of marginal areas can now be upscaled to where that they would have just been, you know, not very usable beforehand, suddenly they can become very usable. You can't, you can't raise crops on every square yard, and so the animals allow you to raise something really nutritious around the edges of your acreage. Another aspect is that they can upcycle waste streams. So, you know, there's a legal term about the house and the outbuildings right around a homestead, it's called the curtilage. It's called your house and your curtilage. And usually, for example, cottage food laws that allow you to, you know, sell things from your house include the curtilage. It's kind of a legal term. Well, historically, that curtilage, that farmstead, homestead kind of hub area included a chicken house, a few pigs.

Why?

Well, because they took, you know, kitchen scraps, they took whey from cheesemaking, there were things that the homes— weeds from the garden, you know, they took things that would have been waste and, you know, they didn't have landfills 100 years ago. And so these animals around the homestead actually take waste streams and are able to, again, upcycle them. You know, the most famous one, of course, is whey given to pigs that upcycles the pork for you. So you take this waste product, you run it through a pig, the pig now yields that. Certainly kitchen scraps for chickens. You know, goodness, if we had— if Pat Foreman, who wrote City Chicks, You know, she calculated that if 1 in 3 households of America had enough chickens to eat their kitchen scraps, there would not be an egg industry in the United States. That's how much, how much waste there is. And so on the homestead, you're constantly generating waste streams of things. Animals can upcycle that. Next why for animals on a homestead: manure. Anyone who's grown anything understands the magic of manure. In fact, right now I don't know of a single organic commercial operation in the world that, that exists without manure. Even the gurus of organics who don't have animals, they buy in compost that's— that has manure in it. Maybe they use fish emulsion from the sea. The point is that animals offer an incredibly nutritious food source for the soil, for the agronomy of your homestead. There's nothing like manure. And so different animals have different carbon-nitrogen ratios. We'll get into that later. But the point is that these animals are yielding something that you simply cannot, you cannot fabricate. You can't, make manure artificially, you know, in nature, the full complexity of the, of the biome and the microbial activity and the balance of all that. You know, it's, it's never ceased to amaze me that the, the nutrient analysis of manure, for example, from a cow that's fed kind of marginal, marginal feedstocks versus one that's fed extremely good feedstocks, you know, the manure doesn't change that much. Somehow that cow is able to, to, uh, you know, metabolize and, and create, uh, in her own body a similarly balanced material out her back end, even with a very varied intake. So manure is really magic.

Yeah, so you'll, you'll want to see the rest of the 4 Reasons? They're really good. Check it out. Link in the description or Polyface Micro. Look who woke up. He's happy. Are you a watermelon? Are you a watermelon? Mom's making a mess. That means it's gonna be extra tasty.

I just gotta put the beans together and I just gotta chop up the cabbage for coleslaw.

That's it. The mail has come back with a truck or a van, and that's gonna half fill it. Well, there it is. That's a good load. That's just one day.