Six Homestead Problems I Face Every Day | Eased

Oh my gosh! It's a miracle. It's like a miracle what one full day of rest, two nights sleep will do to my eyes. Look, and it's bright out here and I've got my eyes open. It's amazing. Getting a little bit of a late start, but that's better than no start. So I'm gonna try not to stress about it. Where do I think I'm going? I've got no boots on. All right, I remembered, I remembered. We have a naughty rooster that we don't need. I don't even know how he survived the great cold. Oh, you want to know how he survived it? He's the one that got out, Papa. Is he? Yeah, because he comes walking in, he comes right through that door. Come on, Penguin's perching. Come on down, Penguin, have a good He's the most afraid too. Isn't that something? Come here, Jonah. Can you come up and hold this open? We got a— we got a straight run of chicks to raise up as egg layers, and this is one of the roosters. So somehow he survived it when we culled them all. Sure, we could turn him into a cock de vin or a stew, but we have plenty of chicken and we really like bacon and sausage. Will you go dispatch this guy? Take care of him. Here, it's gonna be hard to do with two whips in your hand, bro. Can I get the grain instead? Uh, I know, I— it's already soaked and ready to go. And here's the pig, and I know what to get. Good morning, Josiah. Morning. Did you already dispatch him? Yeah. Well, how's it to be back on the farm? It's great. How's it to have me back? Good. You like me or your mom as boss better? You. You. Why? She drives you hard. Gotta pick it up a bit. She's a— she drives you harder? Yeah. Wait a minute, I dealt with the chicken and y'all are just now getting over here and didn't even get pig feed. I'll take care of the pig feed. Good morning, fellas. I should say gals. That's good. Over here, Sausage. You have a fat tub. You're a fat tub. You don't care if I pet you anymore either, do you? Are you scooting away a little bit? Aren't you adorable? I'm growing fast. Aren't you growing fast, man? There's something satisfying about petting a pig. Have you ever pet a pig? They're like bricks on sticks, so stout and firm. Efficient little boogers. Bellow, but they're gonna have to wait. We got one more thing to do. Now, many of you guys are watching because you want this lifestyle or you're living this homestead lifestyle already. Did you do your bird's bird? No, I'm waiting for you. Okay, I don't blame you for wanting this lifestyle. It's good, real good. Can I come with you? Yeah, go put on this— all the sweaters. And the coats I laid out for you. And there's your Crocs, and there's your boots. Okay, you're outside working, you're working with your family, you're growing your own healthy, nutritious food that you just can't buy. That said, I must point out that it's a lot of problems. All problems— not like 6, 6 problematic things that make up homesteading, like this morning. This, this I guess would be called repair. Our Everflow stopped working. For those that don't know, this is our Everflow water. This line right here is coming, being gravity fed from our pond. It comes down into this dispenser and then back into another pipe down to the creek where it was going. That's good because it always stays clean and it never freezes because it's always moving. Hey, what's up? You up there? What do you mean you fixed it? Sometimes it loses its suction. Okay, come with me. And we got to figure out why it is. It just got clogged? Yep. It didn't get put over into the bank or anything? It's still tied up? It's still tied up. Well, we got to get our trough and our post down. That's not where they belong. Our bucket, where is it? Right there. Donde? Right there. You can't feel the suction. Did you tie it to that branch? No, it's not tied to the branch. It's sitting on the branch, which is— oh, that's not good. Perfect. Get it up, please. We gotta tie it right. That's not right. That's just part of our problem. Okay, so if we want to see if we have suction, let's just take the, uh, filter off. Why is that on there? It's not sucking. It's lost its siphon because it got clogged and water didn't come in anymore. So we have to go fill this hose up. He's gonna have to go down there and shut it off. All right, you stay down there. I'll tell you when to turn it on. Okay, Jonah, is this fence on? Oh snap, spinning! Let it, let it run through until it runs through clear. Okay, we'll clean it out while we're at it. And 4 or 5 minutes later, this line is Finally running clear. Probably needed a good clean out. That could have been the problem too. And I have a little filter on here for— so it won't bring in a lot of dirt, big dirt. Um, but Jonah said that was clogged too, so that could have been it. All right, Jesse, you coming with? Tell them to turn it on. So we got it siphoning from above, got a good draw. That could only be half the battle. We could have to clear up this lower line too. Is it working? Let's see. The lower line's drawing it too. Yay! Uh-oh, y'all didn't wash the stanchion out. You know, I'm gonna give them some— I'll give them some grace. Had to run it by themselves yesterday. All right, Jonah getting Phyllis this next part. Okay, so you saw repair. Well, this is maintenance or chores, really. You're just maintaining and getting regular stuff done on the farm. All right, come on, floss. No, no, no, no, we're milking. Hey, hey, Josiah, go herd the calf. I'm going up and get a calf. Calf's going the wrong way and she ain't going anywhere without her calf. Good job. We almost have to herd the calf. Oh my gosh, come on, here he comes, he's coming. Come on, here he comes. Oh good. Good, here he comes. You keep him coming. Oh, we've got to somehow get Moose out. Let's go, buddy. They're going in the right direction, so I'm gonna help Josiah get Moose. Come on. All right, Moose, let's go down the right way. We ended up catching the calf because he's running everywhere and Flossie's following her. Oh, he scooped in the water. Don't drink it then. He's soon— he's just gonna fall in. Really? Papa, you better get out of there. She might be coming in. I got it. That one easier than usual, Papa. All right, we got everybody up. Speaking of which, this handy dandy stanchion, one of my very first builds. That's another aspect of the homesteading lifestyle— builds. You're gonna have to build a lot of things. Your crazy eyes like your mom right now. Calm him down, it's okay. We're just gonna pet you, just gonna pet you. Look at him, he just fights. He can't just relax there, he's got to pull against the rope. Good morning, beautiful one. Good morning. Is it good to have me back? It is. He's so cute. So there's an H on his head. There is. So it either stands for handsome or hamburger. Hamburger, lest anyone forget. We don't want anybody to get too, too attached, right? That's right. I mean, I'm pretty attached already. It's gonna be hard for this one. I mean, I cried when we harvested Bear. I know. So this is gonna be— Bear was a pain in the butt at the end. I know, he really was. But this one's so compliant. This one is so different, so it's gonna be hard. How does it feel to be back? Boy, it feels really good. I felt so useless in bed. Oh, it felt horrible. That's how I felt for a long time. Felt so guilty. Months I felt like that. Now I know how you feel. Hey, hamburger! Is that— is that— oh, it's okay, Fly. Is that what we're naming him? Mama, watch out, Jonah. Don't come fast. You could— you could be what? Yes, hamburger. Flossie's such a good mom. You tolerate us, don't you? Hey, Dad. You know, I'm kind of going out of order with these 6 things that make up homesteading. Well, the first is dreaming and planning. The dreaming part tends to be like some of the most fun. And then you kind of got to sit down and make a plan, even if that's like sitting down making a plan in your head. This part, the moment we all dreamed about, right? The harvest. It's a lot, especially if you have a cow. If you have 2 cows, it's like, I don't know, 25, almost 30 pounds of food a day. Afternoon chore time in the rain. All right, somebody come grab this flake of hay please for the luchadors. You got it, you got it, Gideon. Thank you. Bring it with— can you carry it? Yeah. And the final thing, prepping, and then eating of the food. That's what it's all about, right? So really, if we're going to be successful homesteaders, we need guides in all those areas. I've been working really hard lately to get you access to some of those guides. I'm being one of them. I teach you intro to permaculture because what permaculture does is it makes the connections. That's where I fell in love with Permaculture, when you make a connection, you make things easier on yourself. You work with nature and you produce more. Let me give you two quick examples in the garden of how permaculture can work with nature rather than against it. So in the garden, we have grass growing. Nature wants to cover herself. She's very modest. But in the garden, we don't want grass. We want vegetables. But how do we work with nature to make that happen? Well, instead of covering her with grass, what could we cover her with? Mulch. Work with nature, not against her. Also, chickens till. Oh my gosh, do they till. Holy smokes, do they till. That could be a problem. That's not a problem here because we're working with nature and we're having chickens prepare our area. Look, they've already gotten rid of a lot of this grass. Now, leave that too long, it's going to be a problem. Have them till, cover it up with wood chips, which the chickens can spread, and then move them on. I teach you how to design your best homestead ever. You're gonna walk away knowing how to lay out your homestead. This is going to be your best homestead ever because you're going to know how to lay it out. We make plans for our houses and other things, so why not make plans for our homestead? You're gonna walk away with a plan to maximize output, minimize input. I'm giving 6 of the 12 of those lessons right now away for free inside my 12 Days of Christmas. Merry Christmas, y'all. It ain't over yet. I also brought in Al Lumna and Jason Contreras, both out teaching you 10 building tips. So one of the things I love doing is having my square with me and my circular saw. These two tools right here are irreplaceable. You can do pretty much anything with them. This replaces a chop saw. So if you need to cut stuff to length and you want to be accurate, you want to have straight cuts, I keep my carpentry square with me and my Skilsaw. If I know I need to cut it right here and I got a line already, and I line my line up with my inside line so I know I'm getting a straight cut. Keep my square tight up against my board. Then I can line it up. Adjust it front and back wherever I need to be. And I keep the fence of my circular saw up against my square. And Jason teaching you top tools that he uses in homestead builds. I like these quick clamps because you can close it with one hand. And then most of the time whenever I'm building something on our homestead, I'm working by myself, and these clamps pretty much act like a second pair of hands. Like if you needed to hold something up while you drill on this other side, you could hold it up with these clamps. For instance, if you wanted to hold these two 2x4s up, maybe you needed to drill on one end, you could clamp this one end without having another person. You could go at this other end and drill into here. And then after this is drilled in, then you could come back on this side and then finish it off by drilling on this side. I also brought in Jill Winger. She's going to teach you how to make hamburger buns. That's the harvest and eating part. And you can use an egg wash on really any sort of breads that you make, and they just give it a really nice finish. Amy Fuehl on what— something goes wrong with your chicken, how to keep it well and treat it naturally. So a lot of people don't free-range, or they're not able to free-range, and they want to have chickens in a chicken run. And so it can get dirty and muddy and wet and gooky, and that is a cesspool of germs and bacteria and yucky stuff for your chickens. Coccidiosis runs rampant in wet areas, especially wet states like the Pacific Northwest and even down south where it's really, really humid. Now you can combat that and actually using the same Joel Salatin method as he uses for his pigs with your wood chips. You would have a huge layer, at least 6 inches deep, of wood chips in your chicken run. There's also Morgan Gold if you guys are interested in keeping ducks. I know I am. I know that's one of our few possible animals for the future of this homestead. Duck poop. It's kind of one of the hazards of the business. So whenever I tell people I raise ducks, one of the first questions they're going to ask me always is, "Are you insane?" Whether or not we have a pond or a lake or some sort of body of water for the ducks to live on. And that's actually a huge misconception when it comes to ducks. When you're raising a farm breed of duck, you don't actually need a body of water, but that doesn't mean that water itself isn't important. In order to eat their food, in order to maintain proper hygiene, ducks need pools of water to be able to dunk their head in and wash themselves off. They love to go in for a little bit of a swim. So if you're thinking about raising ducks on your homestead, just remember that water is going to be this critical thing that you're going to have to think through. You don't need a body of water, but you do need to have a regular source of clean water. Then there's Mike Dixon, the Fit Farmer, keeping us fit without having to go to the gym, which is very important to our health. We're gonna start off today with covering push. Okay, so this is going to be a level 1 push exercise that you can do, and this would be great for anybody who is a beginner or who hasn't exercised in quite some time. Simply just find a wall where you can place your arms just a little wider than shoulder width, so that way when you push, you come down, you're getting your elbows at about a 90-degree angle, as well as about a 90-degree angle between your body and your elbow. And you're just gonna push into the— come into the wall and push right off. Thanks for shutting that for me, Jonah. Okay, well, let's do the pigs last because we want to separate the calf from mama. So I'm giving you lessons from me and all those guys, the essentials Home setting right now for free. You just got to sign up, give me your email. Guys, hold on, hold on. Can you go load Sally with a bale of hay? You guys even see me there? Are we backlit? Here, let's try this. Okay, so guys, I'm giving those to you for free. Sign up below. But also, that's part of what's— let's see. Yeah, that's good, Lily. Find a lid for it. Seal it. That's part of my Do It Yourself Abundance member area. You guys, some of you know about that, but there's hundreds of instructional videos in there, access to a private community at the premium level, access to me, text access, help when you need it, direct individual quick help. Anyway, I'm launching that Monday, Monday through Wednesday. That's it. We're— because I like to focus on the content not the marketing. It's only gonna be open for 3 days and there's limited spots. So if you guys want in early, I'm gonna offer that to those on my email list. So you want to sign up for this 12 Days of Christmas, get on my email list, and you guys will have one of the first chances to get in on Do-It-Yourself Abundance, probably Sunday-ish, uh, so probably 24 hours before the public. And for those of you who want to wait, we'll talk more about that Monday through Wednesday. Hey, you guys soaked your feed for tomorrow? That's good. All right, Lily, let's see what you got here. Put a splash in there, Lily. A little more apple cider vinegar. All right, that's good. Does it matter? Is it? I don't know. Come on, here we go. All right, roadblock. We'd be able to get Sally up through here without having to open up our lane if we just move— we remove those two little trees right there. I don't know, John, that's a big job for your Sawzall. Don't you think that's a huge job for your Sawzall? That one? Yeah. Where's the Sawzall? Hand it to me, please. Getting late on that one. All right, y'all take these and throw them in the woods. We cleared our path here. That Sawzall— look, let me show them, Gideon. That saw— Sawzall saw through that. That's thick. That's a handy little tool. Kind of like a mini chainsaw, but much safer. Okay, let's put our line up here now. And we cleared out here so we can put our other post right here and still get through. So we had to clear a bit of— a bit more right there. I need the hammer, my friend. Okay, ready? Wait, you gotta do that one diagonal. You have to do right here. I pulled so much slack through. I guess we'll have to go over here. Look how short we are. What, 2.5 feet? Could you get slack there without it hitting the woods though? All right, that's how much slack you need. It's hooked here, so there you go. All right, Jonah, help him. All right, let's see if she'll go through. Jenna, open our line right there. That's where we're gonna go with this hay. Stud muffin's there. The two cows are over here. I'm waiting. Yeah, I'm waiting. I'm coming right back. Come on. Hey there. Hey there, you stoic thing. Huh? No, no, no. Let's go this way. Get their own idea. Buddy, come on, Flossy. Stud's way over there. Let's go join him. There you go. Oh, catch her, catch her! Hey, come on, let's go get some hay. Come on, come on, come on, go get some hay. Now she sees him. All right, now where is Moose? I thought I saw him over there. There he is, he's He's way down at the bottom. Well, Gideon's bringing him up this way. Which way you trying to take him? Do you think he'll actually— I don't think he would go home. I think we're having a better bet getting him up to his buddies. He's going right up there. Now the cows are happy. Let's move these sheep up and then get Moose in there. All right, you say you want to call him? Got a huge paddock set up for them. It's not that much grass there. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Okay, now walk just— good. Keep calling them, keep calling them, keep walking through. Keep walking through. First time calling them without any hay. You did it, buddy. They listen to you, and now they're getting rewarded. Do it, boys! You can do it! Jump that fence! Whoo! Josiah! Oh, y'all running downhill! Show y'all something.