She’s Making Compost Tea Now

It's a rainy one yet again in this temperate rainforest of western North Carolina. How you doing, Almanzo? How you doing?

Cut!

Did you load the dishwasher?

No, not yet.

Did you eat a ton of these cherries?

Yeah.

Good, keep eating them before the gnats do. Time for the milk, Gideon. That's probably good. You can do a good bit more. Several hairs. There you go, that's good. Next, turkey broth going all night long. I've been eating broth at my 2 meals a day and it's hard to keep up with it. I'm drinking a lot of broth. I'm thinking that's part of me feeling better. Uh-oh, what happened? No, give me a towel, Gideon, quick! Come here, come here, Gideon. We got a gallon and a half of milk today, so mark that from yesterday. That would have been 5 26. Oh, there's the problem. Broken glass. That's gonna have to wait a sec. Ready to brave the laundry? It's now pouring.

I can help you do that.

Is it gonna stop?

Let me see what the weather says.

The boys, I'm glad, got up early for some reason.

They got up early because their friends are coming.

They knew it somehow, and they did their chores before this heavy rain came.

It's raining like this till 12 PM. Get the laundry going.

Well, it's 100. You can be working while we're working. We got to get it going. We should probably just take one of these at a time. I'll get you down, you can get started, and I'll come back for the other one. Will you spot me while I carry this? You're gonna hold that for me? Yeah. Two man's down. Two man can only handle so much rain, but luckily aerial predators aren't about either when it's raining. You can't go down there with that.

I'm sorry.

Everything is just that much more difficult. Wait until you have your washer and two dryers.

I don't know, I don't know if I'm gonna have two dryers right off the bat because the dryer that I wanted to buy is out of stock.

Did you bring the clean baskets?

Yeah, I did, but the problem is that this needs to be rewashed.

It's been sitting in there too long?

Yeah, I can't let it sit in there longer than 12 hours.

We're out of this. There's some at the cabin, the cleaning closet. This is definitely one of those farming situations where you already got in motion a certain amount of elements, uh, you know, with the things that we have going on on the farm. And we knew about the homestead house rebuild, but we didn't know we were going to get displaced from the cabin. We're very thankful for it. This is not a complaint. But we didn't know we were going to be living in the 700 square foot house. Again, not saying that to complain, just saying to say workload outside of the farm, just living life, increased. And really, like, if you get injured or sick, something like that, you can't just Slow down the part. So definitely, uh, we slow down and cut what we can. We switch out the ice packs every day in cold water. That gets it down to about 40 degrees. Put your milks in there. If you can get your milk to 40 degrees within an hour, goes a long way in preserving it. Keeping it fresh for a while. You want to zip tire? Okay. You want the hood on? 5% chance your shoes are there.

What?

Oh, get in! Shall we go move your chickens? Look who's starting driver's ed. We got one on the road and one on the driver's ed. Rebecca, that's our life for the next— because Lily will be after him.

Then we'll get a— we'll get a year break before I get in.

I see. And we'll get a long break before this one. If you go in Selma, you don't even have to wear shoes, okay? You can just stay in Selma. Well, I went over there to see monsters. Looks like somebody might have done them. Did you guys do the sea monsters this morning? No. Josiah, did you do the sea monsters? No. Jonah, did you do the sea monsters? Lily, did you do the sea monsters?

Um, a little bit.

Did you move their coop forward. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Let's see how the compost brewing's going.

Well, we haven't started yet. Okay, so I mean, I've got these that we could implement. We want to do that, and we could— Justin, what do you think about this, putting a lid? I mean, I doubt Henry will be out and about much today because it's so rainy.

Alone?

Uh-huh. Well, he's not supposed to be alone ever. Yeah, I mean, because we're trying to figure out where we can hide this so that nobody messes with it.

All the supplies or the running bucket?

Actual running bucket.

Okay, why can't you put it on that shelf where the bucket's too crooked?

Oh, I guess that's a good idea.

Why don't I get you—

even just put it right here.

What are you gonna do with this compost tea?

We're gonna just water with it.

We're just gonna—

we're gonna feed.

What is this?

It's just water.

But where did you get all this stuff? Um, there's a regular 5-gallon bucket. I'm gonna be near the— how long does it take to make compost tea?

24 hours.

Okay, so you could do water that much every day.

So this I bought, it's a contraption that I bought from somebody when I bought—

I bought it. Yeah, it's got holes in it.

You got to see. Oh, all right, so it'll bubble.

Where are you getting your recipe?

I'm doing it just from the Garden Tea Company website. They have, they have, um, recipes on here.

Is that where you bought the compost tea maker.

They don't sell the kit though anymore.

Oh no, what do they do, sell a—

they just sell the ingredients for compost tea.

Where do you get the kit now?

Well, I guess you gotta make it yourself. I'm gonna make a 55-gallon one of these.

Nobody sells one?

Well, you know, they do. There is one on Amazon. It's called like the Compost Snake or something.

Okay.

Stinky stuff. Yeah, stinky stuff is usually good stuff. Very scientific.

I'm very scientific in this.

How often can we feed everybody with it? Well, we could do some sort of rotation or something. Yeah, where like once a week, once a week, where we do— we could either make it like where we feed everything once a week, or we could do it where we rotate where everything gets fed once a week. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So I don't know, I need to figure that out.

What'd you just put in there?

Let's put Azomite in there.

Tablespoon?

Just a little bit of sea salt.

It's a wonder this all survived the, the move and the remodel, right? Was it 2018 you did this?

Let's wait because we might— no, I've done it since 2019. Okay, so this is the fish emulsion.

This is literally like tea You have a tea bag.

Yep.

And now it's just gonna sit for 24 hours.

I'm gonna put the aerator on it.

Isn't that something? This must be a, uh, an aquarium aerator. So you're going to be able to find a big—

did it come with a tube? Okay, good.

Are you gonna— are you gonna—

very small tube. Oh no, is there not more tubing in there?

You need a longer tube.

Yeah, I do.

Well, you are going to Lowe's.

Same thing.

You scared?

That what you did is they put, I guess, this in there, however that fits, and then they had a bunch of different— it was running a bunch of different 5-gallon buckets. You have to get it over to this, and that's not even a big enough tube. Well, they're thinking it's going in an aquarium and not a 5-gallon bucket. Well, that's janky. And then you put that in there like that, and then this Can't you just aerate it with this? How? How will I get that in there?

You could put the motor right here and put that in there.

Well, I wanted to use this.

All right, well, now you're gonna have to turn it. Now you're gonna have to go get adapters.

I know everybody said this in the comments on Amazon. Nobody told me about all this.

Well, you're gonna be the pioneer, honey. Maybe you'll make a video on the beautiful one life.

I will when I make my 55-gallon one. Definitely can't wait for that.

Rebecca, did you have something that said You sized up from this to this size?

I don't remember.

Mom, I can't let you go do all this. She's got to go grocery shopping. I'll be okay. I might not. It might take me a while to find all this stuff.

I want to be in charge of it.

Oh, okay. I'm trying to convince her to drop me off at Lowe's to figure out this aerator. The beautiful one stepped on a nail, if you don't recall, a week ago. Trying to get her to let me go, but She won't have none of it. That's okay. Well, we have separate cars too. I could just go and I could go to that aquarium place first and y'all just go do your thing. Look at you, you're gimping around. And I'll take these little kids, get them out of the house. All right, where's his shoes? He's got them. Lucky us. All right, stinky feet. We got you. This is actually perfect. Get the kids out of the house on a rainy day. For 20 years Rebecca and I only had one car, so we kind of sometimes still forget we got two cars. We don't have to carpool to town. So we're gonna give it a shot. I guess you guys will see. You guys will think this is interesting. It's supposed to be open on Monday, but it's Memorial Day, I bet. Let's go, folks. Home away from home. 5/16 tubing fits into our nipple, but that's way too big for our PVC connection. Are there adapters? I cannot believe it, I found an adapter from a 3/8 hose to a— I guess that's an official— I don't know, whatever it is, it's the size we need. But in the meantime, we can get you a fire truck at home, okay? We don't need to get a toy every time we come to Lowe's. You want to get that plunger? Can that count as the toy? Show me what you guys can do with it. Well, we're not getting them both. Here. Nice, nice. Maybe this gets me out of having to buy him a toy without a fit. Okay, come on, and we'll actually get something that's we can use. You're gonna get that and then you'll be happy? A hammer. Okay, let's be happy. Let's go. Better than buying some junk toy they'll be done in 2 days. Maybe they'll get excited about work. Right over here. You don't even see this. All right, come on. Okay, we got off light. Didn't have to buy a toy. Beck, you just bounced back all of a sudden. How's the foot? You even putting weight on it or no?

I'm kind of not putting weight on that part of it. Like, I, I can't really walk like— all right, like I can't go off like that.

It—

okay, it still hurts kind of.

I think I've got everything we need. I think I got all the right stuff. Okay, I'm gonna get 99% chance.

I'm gonna get me a pickle. Now I'm coming.

Hey, well, it has to be in the dark. Oh, it has to be in the dark. I was gonna say, why don't you put it on that little table Annie's brought out here?

When we— when— look at— when we have an electrical outlet here, that's what we'll do is we'll do it here.

But it's too— it's too light though.

Well, let's go.

All right, I'm gonna bring it out here so we can hook it up in the light. So you have to go— that actually fits in there, but I did get an adapter. Oh, you did?

Where is it? Oh, there's an adapter. Okay, good.

The question is, does that big tube fit down into that little PVC?

That is not gonna work.

It's too big. Okay, um, the other question is, can you just do this short one? Does it have to be sealed? We'll eliminate a tube.

So what happened was is I had a, a lid on this, so we might have to put a lid on this, and then the tube went in that and it stayed kind of—

uh, yeah, because I bet the tube was that. Henry, can you go sit down and eat? Okay, it'll hold it, weigh it down. Yeah. So I wonder if we should do a cap though, even if that would work, because mice and dust and dirt and chitlars. You had just a peel lid, didn't you?

I did.

All right, let's try this now.

Okay, but let's take it off when we drill because I don't want it to drill plastic into it.

I'd be careful. I touched it plugging it in.

No, it bubbles, baby.

Does it? Yeah, I feel like it's blowing very hard. I got it working. With some— this tube is too big for the hole here. Air is getting out, so I just then— I got lucky. Put some, uh, electrical tape on there and it's blowing down through there. We've got bubbles. We got a bubbling door.

Hey, that's— you got— didn't tape it.

It's evening. Jonah cleaning, Lily working on potatoes. We got some condiments. We got stud muffin burgers. It's been a minute. The beautiful Little one made us some buns. It's a home run meal. This is a way to make Monday feel very special. Come on, Henry, get up here. He's breaking down. It's right before we eat. Looking back, it's a win. We got the compost— we got compost working and making for us right now. We got chickens manuring the grass, picking bugs. We got cows manuring and growing milk. We got beef on hoofs, pork rinds. And bacon and hams growing right now while we are sitting here enjoying each other. Happy day.