Spring Homestead Checklist (What Actually Matters) After 20 Seasons

Happy spring! This is your exhaustive checklist on what to do to succeed this season on the homestead. We're talking gardens, we're talking chickens, pigs, sheep, Sasquatch, cows, and all the various other whatnots. We're gonna do this as I go over chores this morning. We're in the chickens, so let's start with the chickens. But first, let's start with goals. Checklist. You've got to have a goal What is your concrete and reason why are you doing this? At first, Rebecca got us on this journey for health. I got on it for frugality. Hey, it's cheaper to grow this stuff than, uh, buy it. And then I got into it for health with my chronic Lyme and everything. And you want to check the eggs? Actually, hey, let's get some nest— let's get some nest material in here. Oh, forgot. And we're both in it for health. And then over the last couple of years, I've been starting to burn out. And as I find healing from my chronic Lyme, it's been my identity for so long, I have to find a new identity. I was homesteading to heal myself, and as I start finding healing— that's the laundry— get in. I don't know who I am anymore, and I have to find bigger purpose. And I'm actually finding it in the soil. I'm learning that we humans, we were made from the soil, we are soil, we'll return to the soil, at least half of us, right? At least the flesh half. God breathed life into us. For the other half, the soul, I've concluded that, well, we can be no better than the soil from which our food comes. And I'm also learning we are made designed to toil in the soil. It's our happy place. I imagine it's why I like being out on the farm doing chores, projects, as opposed to domestics. I'm learning to find satisfaction in the means, not necessarily the ends, but that's my journey. So if my— my goal then is to connect more with the soil, it might actually not be as an intense production as it has in the past. I mean, we, we arrived last year growing all our own food. We did. We were able to quit the grocery for several months. We arrived. But it is stressful arriving. It is stressful growing all your own food. Is it our purpose? I believe so. Do we need to kill ourselves doing so? I don't think so. For us, it actually— my goal will be to maintain what we have established and built for ourselves, maintain the level that we established last year, ever so slightly growing but without killing ourselves, and definitely appreciating the process, the, uh, the working of the land, the making sure that happens, and then just being content in that. That's number one goal. Let's talk about the chickens since we're right there. Food. Hey, this could be our monthly sponsor spot for New Country Organic. Been using it the entire time I've been doing this and using organics. We're gonna let us run out of this whole grain mix. Let me give you a hack here. New Country does sell a whole grain mix that doesn't lose any of its nutrients until it's ground. I do— so I won't even ground it, just make sure the chickens have grit. This is a layer mix. Can you get this going soaking with some skim milk? Anything for water? And then if you need to eat, go eat.

Where?

In there. Uh, 3 jars of D-milk and the rest water. Oh boy, I should probably train you on this. Skim is our byproduct from our milk cows. You're gonna be getting chicks Most likely we're going to be getting meat chickens, we're going to be getting layer chicks. Don't have them get here too soon. I know you're excited, it's spring. Wait, look at your last possible frost date and don't get them any sooner than 3 weeks before that. You get them here, they're in the brooder for 3 weeks, you set them out, there's no more chance of frost. That's the best timing. All right, and this is what I'm going to recommend. For most people from New Country Organic is a premix, already ground. Uh, it's going to look like this. This is our pig feed, but it actually looks like this. Okay, just make sure you, you use it within, I'd say, 3 months, 90 days, or it's lost so many of its nutrients. It's maybe— you can buy it by the bag from New Country, or you can buy it in totes like we use. We're going to start— as we are going to be getting our meat chicks, we're going to start buying starter feed. You have to feed chicks starter feed, and we'll buy it by the tote and we'll just feed everybody that. Sure, the layers won't get calcium in their feed, but they'll get high protein feed, which they don't mind, and we'll just make sure we feed back eggshells You could do oyster shells, you could do aragonite, and let them get their calcium that way. New Country has bags like this, 40 or 50-pound bags. You could call your local farm store, see if they have it, or they ship to you. That's at newcountryorganics.com. Thank you, New Country, for sponsoring this video. For the brooder, you can get them smaller than— these are hover brooders. You can get them from Premier One. They plug in, they They're not as dangerous as heat lamps. They heat like the mama hen and they put off heat down. This is for setting up a brooder for receiving chicks. You need some sort of bin. I've got all different size bin recommendations in Homestead Builds, my book that can be had at homesteadbuilds.com. Do you want to— we do these feed trays. They come in all different sizes. We just find them on Amazon. I think Premier One also sells them. This keeps the chicks out of the feed, but they can get their head in it and grab it. For most people, a gallon waterer is enough. I like in a gallon of water, I put in about 2 cloves of minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 2— 1 tablespoon, 2 tablespoons of honey. Get you some magic water, give them a natural boost. Did I say apple cider vinegar? 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Plan on 4— 1 square foot per 4 chicks for 3 weeks. On— do we have some wood shavings? I'm glad I'm going through this checklist. We need to go get wood shavings. We like, uh, fine pine shavings. From Tractor Supply. For when the chicks grow up, a stationary run like this. Also the plans for this in Homestead Builds, but it's just a permanent fence. The basic rules of it are what? Permanent fence. The chicks can't get through, predators can't get through. And then wood chips. We're at the end of the winter and actually we've had some grass spring up. The chicks— chickens are going to love that when we bring them into this. Critical there is get you some wood chips. You can get on Chip Drop .com. We just did that recently and we're successful. You could buy wood chips if you absolutely need to. Rule of thumb: if you're going to have chickens in a permanent area, it's good to have them next to the garden. They complement each other. Feed the excess from the garden to the chickens, and then the chicken— chickens on that— those wood chips, deep bedding, eventually that becomes compost and you can feed the garden from it. It's good to have them in proximity. Your other options for chickens is a poultry net. Right now we have it protecting the garlic and onions from rogue chickens. It's webbed enough so that they can't get out of it— in this case, in it. That's assuming maybe you have more than 12 birds and want to get a Chickshaw Mini Me. We'll go look at those in a second. Or a big Chickshaw if you have more than 24 birds. Less than 12? How about the Chicken Tractor? Door can open if you've got 12 and you can let them roam in the day. You could put a net around them if you've got less than 4, or say 8, and you want to— if you have 4 or less, just move this once a day. The handle can go on either end, and you mow your lawn, you fertilize your lawn. We've been using it as a broody hen station. Hen gets broody, we set her on some eggs, she can be alone in there. You can leave it in one spot and it will build the garden bed for you. It's the size of a garden bed. Add this in the Chickshaw Mini-Me Hey, it's good. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. It's a 4-foot by 4-foot. It'll— it's rated up to 24 birds. I've had a lot more than in it than that. We've got it in these greenhouses, move it around, uh, it spreads manure love throughout. The Chickshaw 5.0, 5-foot by 5-foot, 36 up to 36 birds. I mean, gosh, we have had 60 in there. Well, speaking of broody hen, these are good for moving around on the yard. Pasture. Yeah, discovered a birdie hen. We've covered food, we've now covered shelter. On by the— I hate to be redundant here, but homesteadbuilds.com for these builds. Got free plans for the chicken tractor there. You can get the rest when you get my book. Water— I love this Everflow watering system. Water is flowing gravity down from the pond. A good permaculture design, you're going to put your living areas below a water resource. Water's flowing down, it's filling up this barrel. The barrel's got the chicken nipples on it so it doesn't get dirty. It's got a drain, and you better believe I'm going to set this up in that stationary run up there. It's good for stationary run, not something where you're going to move them every day. We got it draining out here, and then it goes down into a pipe and back to the creek where this water was going. Because it moves, it doesn't freeze— well, unless it's an extreme event— and it stays relatively clean. Food, water, shelter, security. I've even— I think I've talked about security. I talked about these nets or housing them in the chicken tractor or the fence up there. Okay, shall we talk about milk cows while we're here? Before we get into pigs, we're going to be talking about gardens, but there's also one more you want to wait till the end. It actually has nothing to do with homesteading itself, but it is so crucial, and I've only learned it in the last few years. You won't want to miss this tip. Definitely stay tuned to that. But okay, we want milk cows. Well, then we need some stainless steel milk pails. That's a 2-gallon milk pail. We got New Country organic alfalfa. These cows are 100% grass-fed. We get a Yeti tumbler for our— with some soap, warm water, and that's how we wash their udders in the morning. In the winter, they are in this pole barn. They're on wood chips. We got wood chips undercover to replace and stay on top of as if it gets too sloppy. Right now they have so much wasted hay. It's helping us not stay sloppy. It's working. The retract erasable trough from Polyface Farm— or sorry, from Polyface Designs book. 50-gallon water trough with, with an auto shut-off. This allows little calves to nurse. Okay, I don't only recommend this this setup if you don't have enough acreage. And a lot of homesteaders are maybe in that setup. You can just put together a carport to get going with some wood chips. You can— you could do— you could do a shed to get going, guys. Don't wait on the pole barn. They're rounding up some hay. We're letting the— we're letting the grass come on good and strong. For us here in Zone 7, Western North Carolina, that's going to be about mid-April. We'll start hitting the grass. You want the grass to be somewhat mature. You do want to start thinking about sourcing hay. We take an inventory. This was enough for 10 bales a day for 100 days. Obviously we didn't do that. We probably did 8 bales. So that's good to know. I would be— I wouldn't mind being like Joel Salatin and having 2 years of hay stocked up. We want to make sure we line up hay. Where I've been getting unsprayed hay, it's very expensive. Just asking around, talking to friends, just keeping it on the radar. And I find some, and I find some about half as cheap. I also, though, with this new conviction of soil and being connected with it and tending it ourselves, we have made relationship with a neighbor. And over the years— it's taken years, uh, broaching the subject— he first giving us a little bit of the pasture and then, uh, more later. And now, and so now we're looking at— we could probably buy used hay-making equipment for what we paid in unsprayed hay for one season. So that would be worth it, basically pay for itself after one year, and that equipment would probably last 10+ years. Springtime is— that's the checklist: find hay. Spring? What are you talking about? You're not thinking about winter, you just came out of winter. But people will start cutting hay April, May for sure, and you want to get on those lists. Because they don't always have access. So you want to get lists on, on, on where you're going to be buying this hay. How do you estimate hay? One cow equivalent will eat one square bale a day, 40-50 pounds of hay. I say cow equivalent because maybe Harriet is 75% of a cow, uh, the bull there, he's not nearly fully grown, maybe 75%, 50%. That little calf probably not even a quarter of a cow in what eats in hay, probably a tenth. We'll move those guys out. Sometimes people worry about bloat, and I imagine it's a possibility, but it's more so or less with grain-fed cows. These cows have been eating hay. It's not such a terrible transition to just then put them on grass. Uh, just get the supplies, just get all the supplies ready. We don't have to do the work, just get the supplies ready. Do I need to spell it out more for you? You're gonna go get the stuff from Lowe's. So we're working on another project this Friday though. You'll see a video where we're going to post about moving our greenhouse. Yeah, we moved our greenhouse. We've talked about food, a little bit more about water. We do those 50 gallons and even our 50-gallon troughs, so little, little little calves can get it, but also we run the sheep behind the cows, so the sheep can also get in there. We found the 100-gallon trough is too tall. It's too tall, and the, the sheep or the little calves can't get into it when you first start. Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. And steers, we'll talk about their water in a minute. But okay, for the cows, we actually use Premier One sheep net. Do you need to use sheep net? Absolutely not. For cows is a single strand electric. Some fence posts. What are these? These the O'Brien? I think these are O'Briens. Help me find these, Austin, and link these. Maybe take a screenshot and ask your AI what, what these are. Yeah, this is literally it. Okay, this is what we did with our first steers. But you unwind it here, of course. You, you start here and then unwind it, and you can keep them in with single strand. That's enough, Jonah. And just a Premier One solar energizer, or they make ones that go off the grid too. I'm a big fan of the grid. You get so much more for your buck getting an electric energizer that you plug in. And for water, guys, a hose hooked up to your well just to get you started. I did that literally with my meat cows. Maybe we should go talk about the meat cows. You think the sheep could stay on one strand? Greg Judy's got them too. At least one or maybe two. You'd have to have it always hot. Why are you trying to tempt it? Well, the problem is that they— theirs would need to be lower. Oh, you can put it— we could do sheep and cows in two strands. We'd have to have one for lower for the sheep. Put the cows at that length, they'll stay in at that level. Yeah, but the problem is you have to wind up two different fences. Well, it's just easier to do in that. If you put it at this level, I think the sheep could stand at that level. I think they'd go right under that. I mean, we could try, we could try to try it. Is that too low for a cow? I don't know, we could try it. Okay, let me demo beef cows while we're at it. Now's the time to get one. Hey, you want to get started with cows? You get two. Don't ever just get one. You get steers, you get them right now, a yearling. You can look on Craigslist, other places, just search the web, have AI find some for you. You take them out in the field, you do the single strand like Jonah explained, and you move them every day. So this is their paddock today, move them tomorrow. How do you know if you fed them enough? You're just beginning. Well, you guess, you guess at first. And because you move them every day, you get really good. You say, whoa, did they eat it all? Maybe I didn't give them enough. Give them a bigger paddock. Did they leave too much? They didn't eat it down enough. Make the paddock smaller. You get the hang of it with practice. Just, you have to insist on moving every day because if you mow this down, don't hit it again, don't hit it again. You know, roam around different paddocks until that's grown back. Then you can come hit it again. You want your grass to have, in textbook, 20% of it's gone to seed, your blade has recovered, it's not chopped off looking like that, and it's ready to hit. It's full and lush. This obviously is, it's not ready. Sure, some of the blades areas are ready and regrown, but, uh, you can tell it's spotty and other areas need growth. You could put them out now, but it would be better to wait another 2 weeks. It's better on the grass to wait. It's all about the grass. Why do we give this rest? Because if they came back and just eat this delicate, super edible ice cream, they're gonna kill it. If it starts growing back and they hit it before it's mature, they kill it. It's a very yummy bite for a cow. Yeah. How do you, how do you tell when they— how big of a paddock to make? You've had no training on how tall the grass is and how many cows there are. And I let them eat the first paddock, and if it's too small, I'll just make the next one bigger. There you go. Don't overthink it, right? For beef cows, there it is: a single strand electric, some posts, an energizer, a 50-gallon tub, and a hose to get it out to it. Eventually you can do Look, you can do plastic hose lines, poly pipe, but I like the hose first because it'll help you know where for sure you want it. If you start installing like us, we started too early, installed some of this plastic line, and it's not really where we want it now. So it would have been better had we kept it temporary. Certainly don't bury it until you've had it in the same spot for 3 years, right, Jonah? Because now we're stuck with a system that Yeah, and it's so much effort to do it again. It's just, we just make the, the old one work. Jonah wants to show me something in the— for the project this week. So say you've gotten some experience with some beef cows, you're going to get into milk cows. You can get you a calf, that's definitely going to be the cheapest way. You could buy an experienced milk cow if you could find it. Basically, you're gonna have to you're probably definitely going to have to settle. You do want to be careful. You want to get— if you don't want to feed grain, for example, you can't buy a grain-fed cow. That's the big tip I can give you in this checklist. Get a cow and how you're going to manage it. That may mean you're going to have to get a heifer. You're just going to get what's available. That may mean you're going to have to get somebody's old family milk cow and get started again and hopefully get an offspring from that. Because you can't take a grain-fed cow that's been grain-fed for generations and start feeding it just grass. It's not going to happen. I actually advise people who have tried to do that, and they're saying, what do I do? I say, you're gonna have to feed us some grain. Rebecca, you got a minute? Yeah, talk to me about what people need to get starting seeds.

To get started, I have— this is the dirt that we use. It's local to us. It is a seed starting mix.

That's what they want to look for, seedling mix, correct?

So you want to see starting mix, correct? It's not potting soil, it's a seed starting mix. And then you need a place to put your soil. I'm actually going to have— Justin doesn't know this yet. I'm gonna get one of those. We used to have this, we used to have a tub, but then we started using it as a water— it's a watering trough. It is a watering trough, but we're going to buy another one of those, and I'm going to build just a little stand right here, and the soil will go— build a little stand, or Jonah will build it. Well, someone will build it. It doesn't need to be too soaked. That's enough water.

How does it feel to be such a magician? You just say, no, hey, move that greenhouse, and it gets moved.

Well, how does it feel to have such a wonderful gardener who lives in your home?

By the way, guys, this is a tease to Friday's video.

Get your seedling mix. Then I'm gonna have a little— I'm gonna— I want to make a, like, a potting station here, make a potting soil station, because this is too low. It needs to be up higher. It hurts my back to, to do it. And this isn't a great— it's not a great vessel for this because the, the legs stick out. These are wind strip trays from NeverSink. NeverSink, thank you. And their bases They're, they're pretty, um, tough.

Very tough.

Okay, so you can use this. I also like these. So these are called Silly Seeds, and, um, they have stainless steel trays, which I do love the stainless steel trays, of course. And like, okay, so this is all used obviously, and I, and I don't wash it. And maybe you're supposed to, there's some rule out there I think that says that you're supposed to wash it from season to season. I never do. Um, and everything seems to turn out just fine. They have all different sizes, so they have these— this, this size, which is 6. This is a 10, and it's deeper. I like that. And then here's a 4. It's even bigger. It's even, it's even deeper than that. I like the— I really do like these ones a lot. So I have my lettuce.

I—

these are bunching onions. They were old seeds. They didn't come up, so I just need to get some different seeds in there. But I've got all my lettuce in here. As you can see, it's doing so good. And I love it because this is not an ad for them or anything, but I'm just sharing. So I just like it because like when you push it up, like it's just— it's, it's a nice— this—

yeah, so that's ready to transfer.

Yeah, it is, it is ready to transplant. I need to break this up and make it into lower. Those are the options we have. Also, um, this is a really gigantic one. But there's also soil block options where you— this is a 4-inch block, which is gigantic. We have smaller 2-inch blocks and even smaller than that. Um, you can do that and then not use any plastic. It's completely plastic-free. But, um, we've moved away from these because I guess I don't really know why. I just wanted to try different options. I've also done like—

very time—

it can be time-consuming. Did you know that I've seen where they make like a real— they make a whole bunch of them at once.

Yes, but we might not be big scale enough for that.

Yeah, so anyways, so there's just lots of options for anyone. If you don't want to use plastic, if you don't want to use the silicone and the stainless steel, um, you can also buy like the paper pots that you just break in. We've used those before. I didn't really like those that much, but I tried them, and then I was like, you know, I don't really like this. So you just have to try what works for you. Okay, I'm gonna come over here now, and then I'm just gonna Basically just bring this in.

That's a perfect little pocket. It is.

That's why I like them.

Where'd you get these? Uh, these are gonna want to know.

Where did I get my seeds or my overalls? I got my overalls from Patagonia a long time ago, so they don't make them anymore.

Oh no.

Um, so if you want to buy them, like, go to like a secondhand, like, eBay Poshmark, Mercari, those types of things. I bet you can find them that way. They do still have overalls at Patagonia, but they don't have this neat little clasp, and I can't— I cannot speak to the quality. These quality— this quality was great. These ones I'm gonna grow a lot of, and these ones I'm gonna grow less of. So I just am using popsicle sticks. They're cheap and plentiful. I like to write out what I'm doing before I do it so that I know what I'm doing. Whoops. Well, that's just— that's gonna be orange pick.

Look at you leaning back.

Stop.

Need some reading glasses, old woman. I like going old together.

We're going old together. We are. We are growing old together.

Get to see the first moments of the leaning back. Can't get too close.

You're funny. It's not that, it's just—

it's okay. Yep, first time, but now you're funny.

I'm, I'm just trying to— I'm gonna plant two in each hole.

I think people get the idea here. Yeah, and then, um, just gird up your loins and plant it one seed at a time.

Well, I'm doing two seeds per hole because you just never know with germination. Um, it's always best— you can always just pull one out. Yeah, and, um, or clip it off, you know, you don't have to do it.

Well, since we're up here, let's talk about gardens. We're putting it on our checklist: repair any raised beds. We were just talking about how to do that. We'll have to replace the 4x4 and maybe add an extra 2x4, 2x2, or whatnot to encompass this it's starting to rot. These have been— what, these are going on 8 years old. Doing pretty good, this cedar. See how it's rotting? We won't be able to screw into that there, so we'll have to add a 2x4 right here or something to mount it to this post. I told the boys, let's just replace this whole side, but they have a good point. That whole side is good, it's just kind of the end. So we just need to find a new way to support the ends. So put on your checklist for the gardens: fix or create raised beds. Homestead builds for raised beds. Homestead builds for the compost corner. Fix or repair your chicken run. The way we built these things is at the bottom we put in some rottenish logs. We actually bought the soil, we bought gardening soil to put in there. Even at that, guys, even, even with cedar, non-toxic natural wood, $1,000, you're going to get $3,000 worth of produce just the first year if you do the Square Foot Gardening method in here. But from then on, it's just— well, you can see it right here, just below the surface is mucho compost. That's what we add to this every year, probably 2 wheelbarrow loads. The chickens are just making it constantly. The rain is making it, the chickens are turning it, and we put a couple wheelbarrow loads of compost on it every year. For mulch in there, we just use grass clippings, one of my favorite mulches, high in nitrogen, dissolves easy, really suppresses the weeds. And everybody's got grass clippings, unlike wood chips. Shall we show you some critical garden tools? Kids left this out, it's lost its handle. This is the DeWitt, D-E-W-I-T-T, uh, hand hoe. That's probably the best thing for that raised bed. Yeah, here's one. Oh wow, yes, that's an old one. Wow. We have 3 if you count the one with the broken handle. Must-have hoeing tool in raised beds. Definitely a stirrup hoe. Definitely my favorite way of hoeing. This works good in the crop garden. We'll show you the crop garden in a second. This is nice. It's not a must, especially if you're just getting started, but a griddler— I mean, if you're at 8,400 square foot of gardening crop gardens, you might want this. You roll— you can change this roller out, but you roll it over your garden and it marks the bed where you plant. If you don't have that, you just get a couple of, um, posts and draw a string, pull a string between them. There we go. The broad fork. I like the Meadow Creatures. It's a beast. You go into your garden bed back and forth. Don't go sideways. The tongs are directionally frontwards and backwards. Just put some weight on it, it goes in. Look, you lift, you lift up on the ground. It doesn't till the ground, but it still aerates it. It'll aerate and hydrate it. You go back about 6 inches, do it again. This will help you in your garden bed and not cost you anything but some exercise. What is this? Bug netting? Yeah, Clutch bug netting. Clutch for brassicas. The bugs love the brassicas— the broccoli, the collards, the, the, the cabbages. Drip irrigation under our weed fabric. Austin, do play some. Last year we did a whole thing on, uh, no weed planting. It's raining a little bit, so I'm being hesitant about taking you all out here. Here's some of that weed fabric in action. Sure, you're going to get some weeds come up. These are onions. You got some coming up through the holes, but other than that, you don't. Compared to the garlic. There's much more weeds in there. Yes, it's more eco. And on farm, putting the hay down as mulch, it does not work as good. So we got to put more time into it. And if we're really serious and we really want to grow our own groceries and we're serious about what else is going on in our life, we use this weed fabric. Switch it out. It's rated for every 5 years before it it's going to start leaching. So our best friends in the garden are UV-treated silage tarp, a Farmer's Friend sandbag to hold it down. Oh, you guys might ask, what's, what's this white here? This is actually called Agribon. I don't know if Farmer's Friend sells that, or you got to get that at Johnny Seeds, but everything else Farmer's Friend. I'll leave a link. This is Agribon, so it's going to come a frost tomorrow night we'll come out here and cover these onions and garlic. We have to do that until May 10th, our last possible frost date. It's hard to beat Elliot Coleman's book for this style of farming, The New Organic Grower, and then the JM Fortier for the element of the silage tarps and your really intense planting. Kind of a bit of a modern take on it, on Elliot Coleman. Hey, can you go get Salma for me? You get Salma, I'll talk to them about the sheep, we'll go to the pigs, and then the final, probably the most surprising but most powerful thing to put on your checklist— it costs nothing. It's actually quite the opposite of cost. A lot of the deep bedding principles, all the deep bedding principles apply from the cows to the sheep. You're on deep bedding with them in the winter. Now's the time to go in and hoof them if you haven't, because they're captivated, it's easy to catch them. Now it's time to band them. We've done those, we're ahead, we're ahead of the game. That's one thing you can do as you have your goals and your wish list. You got to prioritize, and for us, we prioritize the animals because we value the meat, because it's It's hard, maybe I would say even impossible, certainly very expensive if we could, to say buy raw milk. A2, A2, grass-fed, always moved, never vaccinated, dewormed milk. I don't— it's not available, and it's hard for people to sell milk because of legal issues. So we prioritize our milk cows, we prioritize their babies and the beef that comes from it. We prioritize our meat, meat sheep, because we bought grass-fed lamb leg once, $135, and it came all the way from New Zealand. You might see us behind on the garden. That's okay. The garden takes more calories than it gives in working it, so it's opposite for the, the animals. We'll wean these babies and we'll run them in the— the pigs are now in the tractor. It'll become a sheep tractor and the sheep will get in it. Uh, we'll show that to you when we do the pigs here in a second. What could I tell them about Sheep, same thing. Don't overcomplicate things. 5-7 sheep is worth 1 cow in its size and grazing, so account for that. How many acres do you need east of the Mississippi? 2 acres per cow during the growing season, 5 if you want to make hay off of it per cow. So 5-7 sheep is worth 1 cow. To give you an idea. If you're arid climate, double that. So here we don't have enough acreage to make our own hay. We got to get hay off farm for the amount of animals we have, and it's still more reasonable to buy hay, even if it's expensive unsprayed hay, than to buy New Zealand lamb. They do eat a lot of hay. They like a salsa. They don't have Netflix. They're bored to death. All right, did you get me Salma? I'm gonna have to put you guys in the Salma while we do these pig chores. Getting— get our tools for the pigs. This might be pretty good right here for me to teach you about pigs. Get you 2 pigs, what you call feeder pigs. Search the web forum, get in Abundance Plus, ask the community. Many people have found them there. I sell our feeder pigs to people in Abundance Plus first. Same thing for calves. Uh, we always— if we get a female calf, we don't need female calves right now, we're going to sell you a heifer calf. If you don't know, a heifer calf, it's female calf that ends up being a milk cow. Can you hand that out? All right, thank you. All right, let's get this moved. It's actually stopped raining. Two of them, you probably— you want to get them castrated. It's better if you can get them raised how you are. We used to drive 6 hours to get them how, how we liked them, and, uh, and then we learned they're just vaccinating them and doing all this stuff. We just did not suspect this was, uh, we did not expect this from this gentleman. So we realized, you know what, we're having to go too far anyway, we're just gonna have to get our own breeder pigs. Watch out. But you just start out with feeder pigs, even if it's subpar, and you get them about 2 months old and you raise them till they're about 8 or 10 months old. This is the— right now this is the pig tractor. When we wean the little lambs from their mama in the spring, we're gonna have to put these guys in an electric net. Is that good, Henry? Gideon? And we'll put the sheep in here. That's this original purpose of this tractor. It's 6 inches off the ground. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 wheels. 8 non-flat 10-inch wheels. You need the water. You think it'll reach? DIY waterer. We just got a half-inch pig nipple waterer with a— what do you call this— union fitting. And a food-grade barrel. I show how to build one of those inside of Abundance Plus. DIY pig waterer. We get that going first. That'll be filling up while we go behind the pigs. Pigs root. That can be a problem or a solution. In this case, it's a solution because we wanted them to work in this hay balm. The cows went before us. We fed them hay. The hurricane washed out this land and we put down wood chips and they've stirred it in. They stir in that hay, those wood chips, and that helps this sandy, rocky soil retain what's organic matter and it helps it retain moisture. Then we plant cover crop. I'm so excited to announce— announce— you can see some of this cover crop coming up. I don't know, don't think too much about it, just ask your AI, um, cover crop for this season in, in my case, in sandy wood chip soil, pre-mixed from Johnny Seeds, and it'll get you that up. Johnny's has different mixes for different occasions. I like to use Johnny Seeds. I got a Johnny Seed mix for this, I'm pretty sure. It ended up being vetch and winter rye. I told it the season we were in, the soil we're what we're trying to do, what we're given. We've gotten wood chips on top of sand and give us a cover crop for that. And the pigs go ahead before us and prep it. That's good you brought the mattock. They dug a big old hole right here. Step 1, let's level this out. While we're at it, the pigs have a poop corner. We'll spread the manure love in other places. Josiah came down to help and he said, what are you doing? I said, we're leveling off the pigs. He said, let me go grab the track loader. I said, okay. I don't even think I need to move this hose. I try to act like I'm important. Should I talk about this last one while he does this work in the background? Last thing, but definitely should be the first, and that is rest. Put it on the to-do list. I know, I know you're excited. It's spring, you're gung-ho, you're raring to go, but it's as if you're gonna be in a running race. Remember when you were a kid? You would sprint at first, and then you would just die down with exhaust, and those who paced themselves would pass you up. We have to pace ourselves. We have to put up boundaries. We have to say, I'm gonna take a day of rest once a week. I'm gonna take evenings and rest once a day. I'm gonna get away from the farm somehow. Once a week, a week in a year. And then the biggest issue, and I've discovered it for myself, isn't that you're going to fall behind, it's that you trust. You do feel like you're going to fall behind. We take the Sabbath and just recently took over the Passovers, took the Passover Sabbaths. That's 3 rests in 1 week, some during the weekdays, and people are getting beyond us. But I'm realizing, as homesteaders, what's our rush? Isn't that our definition? To fall behind? We can fall behind society, and that's okay. We have opted for this slower life, hopefully peaceful life. Hopefully homesteading isn't adding to our stress. Sina McCullough, Joel Salatin have talked about this before on their podcast Beyond Labels. The homesteading can just add stress if you don't you take on the homesteading, you've got to take off something else. And rest can fit in well here. Every day, the beautiful one and I take a walk and we go down the road away from the farm, because if we just walk around the farm, we see all the problems and the to-do list just hypes up. So this year, I am gonna be in touch with the soil. This is one of the most important things I'm gonna do. This is what you got to do. You got to prioritize prioritize. And chances are, if you put the most important things at the top, you will get those done, and that'll get you the majority of your way towards your goal. And you just have to rest and not letting everything else get done. So just put rest on your to-do list. Do rest like it's work, and you come back in just rejuvenated and recharged. And then you have to trust. And for me, it's finding that higher purpose that bigger calling and trusting in something beyond myself. For me, it's a spiritual level. And resting in that, that I am not alone and that there is something that cares for me and wants something better for me, even if I can't even understand what that is, even if it feels like I'm running behind in society. Put rest on the to-do list. Put it on top. Everything else must fit in that and just trust yourself to fate and say, hey, if I couldn't do it, I wanted to rest, I went after the most important things, we're good, we're good. Okay, somehow that's not hitting it anymore. Good job, buddy, that was quick. Now let's see you get your track loader, seed this thing. Now seeding isn't hard. All right, happy day.