Snow is Coming! My 11 Point Checklist

Nice. New airsoft gun? Yeah. Look, it doesn't look too good right now, but I've got a special meal planned. Sautéing— no, sautéing— what do you call that? What am I doing? Soak that meat overnight in sauces? What is that called? Why am I blanking on this? Marinate, marinate from the land for a special Honduran dish. Yesterday we got the animals secured with some windbreaks that also happens to be their food. We're gonna get warmers in their water. It's like we have a little poop in that water also, and the de-icer is not working. It's because two de-icers are going into one outlet and they blow the fuse. You got to have them into a dedicated circuit. Let's get it off this splitter. This had worked worked in the past. I'm just wondering, maybe the connections are dirty or something. Let's try that because this worked. Is that a thing, that this gets dirty and then it's just getting tripped? Because it was working, then we had a series of warm weather, and so we unplugged them. As soon as we plug them back in, it's not working. We're feeding her $5 worth of alfalfa for that. Is that all she gave? Okay, we might need to dry her off. She's She's too, too little here before she gives birth. I'm just a little nervous about it because I didn't see them breed. We did do a pregnancy test, says she's pregnant. This would be the first time relying on that. Rigged my drop cord up out of the bedding. It was draped across through there. Whether it snows or not, it's gonna be cold. Let's leave Blaze out, she'll get him when he comes. Here, want him— her in too? Let's get this sheet back in before they have a connection. It could be that that wasn't plugged in all the way. Could be that our drop cord's a little wonky. All right, we'll hope— we'll hope that works. It's still working. We've got hay. What about grain? Well, we got plenty of pig feed running a little low on alfalfa and chicken feed, and what has happened? Thankfully, I've got some coming today. Let's clean this and be ready for it. Look at all this wasted material. It's not wasted, this can be misdirected. We're gonna pick this up, then the chickens, and they'll pick through it. I didn't want to do it, but I needed to do it, and that looks dang good. Not only are we going to be ready for the inclement weather, we're going to be picked up and organized. Yeah, it's still going, it's still going. Oh yeah. Now to get these guys some water. We had to shut our water off at night because the water lines would freeze. There's actually enough water in there to last until the afternoon till the lines unfreeze, but Because it has poop in it, they're not going to drink it. I'm going to get them some fresh water. Some fresh water. Keep a water hose in the root cellar so it doesn't freeze. Salt out water hose, frost-free hydrants so I can get water no matter how cold it is. It shuts off down below the frost line. These have to be disconnected every night or they'll freeze. You ready to get started? Yep. All right, carefully take Sally there. Lifting that out, trip it. Let's hope that's just from exposing the hot water heater. A little more rare, but they pooped in there too. Hey, He-Man, you're drinking it, right? It's good and fresh. Well, stop stepping in it. Stop stepping in it.

It'll always be fresh.

Next on my list, firewood. Can we get 2 totes in here? Just like this? One here and one here so we can still have room for salmon? Okay, thank you. I'll empty this one. Where are you going with that? Where are you going with that? Jeez, guys, are you feeling down? Stop slacking. Sorry, I've destroyed all my good cameras. Seriously. 3 cameras, Canon EOS 5, all destroyed, falling over on the tripod every time. I should have sent them in individually, but I just waited. I don't have my nice camera on my nice tripod, so I'm using this M50 on a little Joby.

Here, you want to see it?

That's what I'm using. I mean, good starter camera, definitely easy to take along. Not terribly steady. Put it on anything though. Wood boiler going. We have some redundancy with propane. Of course, you want to check your propane levels. We're good there. I mean, we even have an indoor wooden stove. We've got a lot of redundancy with heat. Got this cleared, ready for 2 pallets of wood. Look at this though, we got this much material from the feed area plus this. The chickens are gonna love it. This is sort of a minor thing because it's not that bad, it's not that wet. But once we had those rains, you know, had some water come underneath and settle right here in the low spot, and it's a little wet. It also gets the chickens a little muddy and they get the eggs dirty. So let's, uh, dry it up and clean it up, you know, get clean eggs at the same time.

Borrowing some deep bedding.

Let's just use this as deep bedding down there too. I think they'll eat some of this alfalfa, but certainly not all of it.

And pick through and find that grain, and they'll spread it for me.

Probably time we get Henry, check in on things. It's taken me a little longer than I suspected. Let's put this RV outlet again. Hopefully because I flipped it out and the heater was exposed, tripped it. Henry, are you being okay? You want to bring your bike and come with me? It's— I know, but not right now. It's chore time. You want to bring your bike and come with me outside? Really? We'll start cooking lunch at 11:30. Okay, looks like Henry's okay. Radio me if he changes his mind. Goal is to get all 12 of these checkpoints done before lunch. I think we've done before, but we are intermingling it with chores. So in a minute we're gonna get to really put the gas on this. Maybe we can do this while we're here, particularly if it starts fast. We started the generator, the main generator, I think just yesterday. Roll that, Austin. It's working. I really like redundancy, if you haven't learned that by now. We have a second generator. Really, I should have emptied it because it's been sitting here so long. The gas can goof up the line.

Let that warm up for a minute.

Oh, we finished these big chores. We're good with power. We love the grid, hence the whole house generator, diesel, plus a backup generator. Got a heater, drop cord, power strip, a D-ring, and a young lad eager, willing to work. This will make great bedding because it's a little bit of mold in. They might not want to eat that. Or maybe it's not moldy, maybe it's just dirty. Yeah, that's even better. So yesterday I did a thing and I asked members inside Abundance Plus. I said, hey, what's your 5-point last-minute checklist for getting ready for a winter storm? By the end of the day, I got like 20 replies in like less than 12 hours to demo just how cool the community is for questions like that. And I may have asked the questions, but I learned and other people learned. This is one of the things we're gonna do is, you know, animals fresh bedding so they have a nice nest. I'm gonna name drop here in a second as we go down my list of 12 and give credit to some of the people and their ideas. Keep those baby piglets warm. What we need to do here we have Pound Cake, a heater. It has an immersible trough heater, drop corded all the way to the house to its own dedicated outlet. I've got this to speed up a scald if we need to. And about a long time ago that I'm going to try— I think it's only 1,000 watts as opposed to 1,500 watts, so maybe we'll have an easier time running both on one circuit. You know, now that I think about it, I'm glad if that tripped that because it got knocked over. What if people knock this over and that heat— you're sitting on hay. So I think it's designed to where it trips if it does— it's not, uh, underwater anymore. Drop cord to this one. Got the main power supply right here. You know, I could have made a cute 12-point video having had all this set up, this video might even be more popular. But that's not the reality, I guess. Those cute little checklists, sometimes it's hard to set that up. This might be— need to be reset now. That's working. Hey, it is working! Okay, all right, we're good. The idea for starting that generator, that was from Anthony S. This is still lit. Henderson added, which is something I probably wouldn't have thought of: secure your sleds and snow outfits for the chidlers. We need a happy place. You're all right, you're all right. Let's put the sled where it goes in case it snows. Yeah, don't mind me. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's already full. Some emergency drinking water. This is a 5-gallon— I think they call them carboys. Why do they call them carboys? And then we have this carboy cover, and then we have this handy dandy mechanical, no power required carboy pump. Fuel is definitely on the checklist. Since Hurricane Eileen, we try not to be under 50% on fuel. We were fortunate enough to be above that and in a really good position when a disaster struck, but was sort of lucky. I would like to say we had prepared that, but from now on we like to keep our diesel tank over half full, our propane tank over half full, which we have 1,000 gallons, so that's a lot. I wish I could say that about cars, but we generally just wait until they're a quarter full. All right, we got full tank in this Suburban, only half a tank of diesel. Jonah's doing a dump run later for the— for his cabin remodel. He could fill this up this afternoon. Here's one that I just added to my list. Why is this not on my list? Make sure you have the most important tool of the homestead. Let's make sure the chainsaw is fueled up and ready to go, which I'm glad I'm doing this because we're out of chainsaw fuel and maybe even bar and chain oil. We got plenty of fuel the other day. You want to stay in fuel too, because if you wait to the last minute on these kinds of things, everybody else is going to get fuel too. It can be hard to get. All right, bar and chain oil and two-cycle engine oil. See if it starts. Small engine mechanics. Why is my chainsaw stuck like that? I suspect I didn't put the right mix in. It's a little oily. I have a little oily fuel. Let's— if that one doesn't work, we have two backups. Redundancy. I mean, it's best practice to keep your chainsaw in good working order at all times, but we're using an event like this just to make sure it won't work. I haven't used this plow in years. Probably all the more reason I've been getting supplies for it lately, like missing pins, books for Sally. All right, now I feel like I should probably just get it out. I think it's only calling for like an inch now. We're not gonna need a snowplow, but you never know. Okay, and it'll be good since we haven't used it yet, just make sure it still works. Hopefully I don't pull out my back doing this. Okay, I think it'll work. I have all the stuff. I think I remember how to do it because the last thing we want is a foot of snow coming. My wife being like, I told you to get this stuff ready. Am I gonna finagle that on there? Okay, we got so close. It's almost— as much as I want to hook this up, if it was just going I would. The appliance repairman is here and it's time to do lunch. We're gonna have to come back to it. You ready for this, Dar? We're making baleadas. Baleadas. I think I said that right. Baleadas. Baleadas. Traditionally with flour corn— flour tortillas, but we're gluten-free. We're gonna do corn tortillas. We can use the jarred chicken broth. Oh, we've already used it all. Guess we have redundancy in our chicken broth too. We have it canned, we have it frozen. Nice little super cubes. I was hoping to be done by now and this lunch would be the happy ending, but I'll be real happy if we get through this lunch and I can get that plow on. You know, it's just Fry our rice real quick, the bird. Yeah, flatten it out and let it sit there for a minute. Okay, I didn't look up how the Hondurans make the rice. We're gonna make it like Chipotle makes it. You ready for the broth? This is very Honduran, just raw cabbage to go on these things. It's a thing, it works. You do the tortillas and I'll do the carne asada.

It won't take much because it's so thin. What?

Hey guys, look at this. I want you guys to pay attention, please. I present to you corn baleadas. Okay, put your corn tortilla down, spread the bean dip on it. Okay, and then I guess you basically make a taco. That's it. Oh wait, no, this is what makes the Honduran, I guess. The raw cabbage.

Cabbage?

Yeah, and raw too.

That's what they do.

All right, let's see it. Baleadas. Of course it's good. What am I saying? Was it worth it? We can make this work with ground beef, which I think we can. We have a lot of it. We don't have a lot of steak. We can have this more. Yeah, buddy. And it feels like you're getting it done when you're framing, but I've learned that's only like a third into it, isn't it, Randolph? Yeah, if even. Maybe more like a quarter. Yeah, as far as the whole project goes. But it looks good. It's satisfying. You learn anything good? You gonna run to the dump today before it closes? Might be too late. Get some fuel in the diesel. Oh, we were gonna get diesel, but I mean, we do have a half a tank. All right, this would make my day complete. Well, no. I'm gonna have one more after the plow, but let's see if we can't get this going. And I want you guys to enjoy— join me in Abundance Plus with your own ideas on this and other things. I took it out, we're gonna try it again. And right now you get $30 towards a Joel Salatin book. Sign up by Friday, New Year's registration. Let's make 2025 our best year yet. Oh wow, I think I'm getting it this time. Just gonna lift up on it. All right, there it is. Now how do I do that with one hand? Wow, how do I do this by myself? Do you think if I hook this up and start it Lifting it'll help me. I don't know if it will. Yeah, there we go, there we go. I mean, Henry could help me with this. There it is, there it is. Yes, yes, we are one step closer to this. And guys, you can join us inside Abundance Plus, abundanceplus.com, or you can just get the app at the App Store. I love these D these shackle rings. It seems like that— oh, I was probably supposed to put it in this one. Yeah, I'm rusty. I'm glad I'm getting this kinked out right now. Should raise it up. Oh hey, oh, we're plowing now! I like it a lot. I kind of hope we get to use this thing, you know. Chances are we've put this out, we worked it out, we've did all this prepping and it's not going to snow. Hey, what do you think about my plow setup? Nice.

Nice.

Think it's going to snow?

No.

Hopefully. What are you doing with a lighter? I made a firecracker. You made a firecracker? Yeah. All right, maybe this is a bit too long of a fuse, but yeah. Freaking— is it going to explode? Yeah, cuz we put A lot of gunpowder in it. That is very unfortunate. I gotta complete my joy, share this with somebody. Going down a 12-point checklist. This is checklist checkpoint number 11. One more tonight.

Oh, tonight?

Yep, don't let me forget. It's pretty good with that thing on there.

And as I said, when we purchased that snowplow.

I know.

What is it?

I said now it won't snow for 7 years.

We purchased it— I think this is one of the first things we got after the Great American Farm Tour.

Well, we got Sally.

Yeah.

October.

Yeah.

So almost the whole year.

Is it upside down?

No. How you like it?

It's nice. Okay, park it in position, baby. Hope it—

or should I go put it under the shed?

Should we do a snow dance?

See that? That's the key. That is. But you got to do this when you dance.

Come on, snow!

Park the truck too, ready to go. Park the truck, ready to go.

Oh wait, wait, what's today. They're coming in the morning, hopefully, the dumpster.

I know, so park it back so that dumpster people can come.

Let me be free.