STEEP PASTURE = TRACTOR TIME

I need a rubber mallet. Happy day, everyone! Big day today. We got to move the cow shed with the tractor. Pork Ryan is here as our guest. We're going to do a podcast with him, and we have our annual staff dinner over in the barn. I don't even know if you guys can see me. We're getting an early start, and that's gonna be a lot of fun. Japanese hibachi. Style grill. I can get it started with this mallet. Much better kindling. Our gas heat is not yet hooked up. What are we waiting for on that?

We have to do the root cellar first.

Uh, the root cellar has to get done first. It's, it's too warm in the day to do the wood boiler, which is what we heat our house on an outdoor wood furnace. That leaves the old trusty wood stove, but it's kind of tiring. You can't just crank it up, you got to do break-in fires. Just a little kindling fire at first, that's enough. You guys get it going, get it in there.

Should I save this little piece of paper for later?

Lighten it in several places. Light one to the right. Yep, there you go. Good deal. Tomorrow, bigger fire. A bigger fire after that, and then full on, all you want, all day if you needed it. Trick is, guys, though, not do too much because it gets hot during the day. This is a tricky time of the year. How'd your yogurt really turn out?

It turned out so good.

Look.

Like, it's thick.

If you run the blender on that, the immersion blender, it'll be smooth too.

I know, but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for thickness because raw milk yogurt is very thin and people add like potato starch or gelatin or all these things to it, but I— I just, I want just yogurt. Like, I don't need all these extra additives.

Yeah.

Although potato starch is interesting because it's also a prebiotic. So it's probiotic and a prebiotic. So I don't know, I might fool around with that, but that's like really good homemade yogurt. I know some people might be like, oh, that's gross, but to us it's a big hit.

2 reservoirs for 2 cows in milk, 3 buckets. Maybe we have the 4th one ready. It just ends up being a lot to carry.

Yeah, it is a lot to carry.

Hey, are y'all gonna be ready soon? Because I'm gonna have to go, I'm gonna have to go. I just got less than 2 hours. Oh shoot, I just realized we didn't turn the chicken nest boxes around. Ah, remember we turned them the wrong way? I mean, I guess it's only been light for just a little bit. I should have done that when I was out here this morning. I don't want them to start laying in the, uh, The coop, you busy bees. Oh gosh, they figured me out and they somehow got in there anyway and pooped. Yeah, I'm slacking, guys. I'm sorry. There's eggs all over the place. Yeah, I forced them to lay in the floor. Ah, now why are they still pooping that? How'd they get in that? This coop is taller, so they can easily jump on top of it. So that was useless. We're gonna have to put a cover over it. Maybe we can get to these other guys, and hopefully they can't jump over the nest because the roof is much, much smaller. Alrighty, we have a one out. I'm gonna get to that one of these days. See, they're finding anywhere to lay. Okay. Wow, wow. Either it's like Gideon didn't get this spot yesterday. No way they laid that many this morning. That might be this morning. If those were turned sideways, I'm not sure they could get in there, and they were. So, all right, look at their tail job. And they did leave the potatoes. I didn't think they would eat potato greens, and they haven't. This is perfect. This means chickens could work in a potato garden. They're getting all the weeds but the potatoes. Isn't that cool? It's very tricky. One of our most tricky moves on the farm. Now we're gonna break out the big guns. This will certainly be less problematic. Look at this, Randolph got all our bedding out. Oh, yards and yards and yards of compost just got put on our pastures. Oh, he's starting to fill it up, starting to bring back in wood chips. We'll be bringing the animals in here in no time, like January-ish. This view though. Wow. I am not liking the looks of this. Uh, I'm probably gonna have to get on this hill at an angle. I do want to show you guys a phenomenon. Okay, do you see that? Do you see that white stuff? Our first possible frost date is supposed to be October 10th. Well, we need to change that to September 29th, we can have frost. That's frost. Yeah, I forgot the whole point of us struggling with this shed up this side. We don't need it here. They have shade, they have rubs. We haven't been great about the minerals lately, so they need their minerals. That's why we're messing with this shed. So I need to get to that. Even the cows are eating some of this multiflora rose. They ate this, whatever the heck that was. And a lot of what they don't eat, they break. I don't need no stinking devil eyes to clear bramble. Cows will do a lot of it. Sheep, sheep will get all the rest of it. They'll even eat some of this ironweed. Let's go, let's go! No, not Flossie! Flossy, why are you getting out of rhythm here? What are you doing? Good job, Gideon. Look what he's going for— the smooth, tender grasses. That is what they go for first. That's why we let the cows go in first. They need more choice edibles. The sheep don't. The sheep don't need that. Sharpie gets worn out. It's hard to sketch in there. We have not figured out a good way to mark our minerals. What?

Look.

Yeah, what about it? That's K. We don't have K up here. It's pretty stiff getting up there. It's amazing. You know, 3 days of fasting, I'm feeling great, not as stiff. I eat, I eat clean. I ate, uh, short ribs and chicken broth. How much time do we got to move this shed? 30 minutes. 30 minutes, and that's leaving no margin. My biggest concern is the grade of this slope. I don't want to flip. The mill is out right there. When you milk, you get to think about a lot. And remember, you want to enjoy your chore process. It's not enjoyable. Trying to find all those minerals. Makes minerals a terror. I thought the least we can do is make a laminate map, a laminated map that's out here. We can at least put notes in our phones, you know, maybe counterclockwise from the corner post. It's this, this, and this, but you'd have to reference that too much. You can't paint this because they rub it off. We've tried, we've tried, uh, Sharpies. We've tried even digging in. You can barely see that kelp. We tried sketching it in. I'm thinking, what if we hang tags? What if we hang tags on the bottom? We could get a big brander, but I think it's going to be cost prohibitive. I think they're very expensive. Could we get metal letters that screw in. Maybe they're made for houses or mailboxes or something. I can maybe, you know, pull it out and then back into there, and then we could come through here above these trees. Not really positioned with the fencing line to go above these trees. Could I bring it back in here? I'm afraid to go sideways right there. Enough thinking, let's start doing. I just thought of something. Okay, we don't have to move this shit. It's too much up in here. We'll go get the mineral sled. We have a mineral sled that Sally could pull. We won't even need the tractor. And it's such a pleasure just to milk the cows out by the side-by-side, under the— beside the trees. Although hurricane rains are coming. We have rain gear, but I might need to think through that one. How many days is it going to be raining? Like 3? 4, 3, 4, 3, 4.

Yeah, I think you need the shed.

I think we need the shed. Before I go to this podcast, you find anything out about the— yes, break-in fires.

Some people say on the internet that you don't need to do break-in fires once it's been broken in officially.

That's probably like the cast iron skill.

Yodel.

All right, which is—

yeah, what do they say?

Our brand, they say to do it at the beginning of the season, but a lot of people say they don't.

Well, if you just start another fire tonight, you only have one more break from fire and they get bigger.

I don't want to start a fire right now, I'm cold.

Look at you guys, good, good boys and girls. All right, let's go have an amazing conversation with Pork Rind, a pork specialist, pig specialist, which has traveled the world, has 20 speaking engagements this year. Single guy, did not grow up farming, homesteading, nothing like it. Parents thought he was nuts at first and has struggled with depression. I really want to dig into that, into mental health. That's something that we haven't touched on a lot anywhere on our platforms, but I think it affects a lot of people. So definitely want to dig into that for this Abundance Plus podcast.

Matt, good morning!

How you doing, my man?

Very well, how are you?

Good. Sound guy Matt What are you listening to? I don't know. Who am I listening to? Truth or dare.

I'm listening to Pray for Me by Lorde's Child.

What is that?

Um, it's a musical group, a Christian musical group, and, um, they got a lot of like lo-fi, uh, rap music.

Oh, nice. Yeah. And what's this? What's this cool looking journal?

This journal is—

is that a Bible?

That's a journal. This is the 15th installment of my life. Yeah, written on paper. So I got 15 journals. This is number 15, and that's in 4 years.

Dang. So when's the book coming out?

You know what, I've been thinking about that.

Yeah, why not?

I've been thinking about that. So that might be, um, a 2023 goal.

Yeah, that's what Matthew McConaughey's Book was Green Light.

Yeah, Green Light.

These journals. Do you sleep good in this haunted house? Yeah, uh, were you freaked out?

No, surprisingly no.

Okay.

Um, I even kept the door open, so that's how comfortable I was.

Yeah, okay.

Otherwise, if I wasn't uncomfortable—

that's good. This house is probably 100 years old. Oh wow, look at my relatives. Yeah, spooked out.

The eyes follow.

Yeah. Used to be rented out on Airbnb and we got some complaints. Oh, about the spooky— I should have put, I should have put, uh, maybe a story behind below it or something, give it some context.

I should be so lucky to spend time with that, that photograph.

Well, this is, uh, uh, great-grandfather. Wow, working at an orphanage in Black Mountain. Wow.

Who's here?

He's probably got American Milk and Devon right there.

Who's the kid in that photo? I was trying to figure that out.

That is— I have it on my phone. This is my dad's brother, I believe, at this house. Uh, you— yes. How old my dad was when he died? He was 86, so he was one of those older parents for sure. I'm 40. I was 42 when he died, so he was 44 when he had me. He was 52 when he had my youngest sister. He just had nothing. Okay, Porkrind, if you get nervous during the podcast, you can just hug that.

In the world, what kind of narcissism?

Yeah, I know. Ask Rebecca. Ask Rebecca. She's the one did that.

She made this?

Yeah. You didn't know that was in here? That was hidden. You better not stay another night because that, that's really creepy. Hey, Porkrind, you're looking good over there, buddy. What about those pork rinds last night?

Excellent.

I'll never forget that. Well, we just recorded it and you went there, my man. You went there all over the place. Do you feel sick now being so vulnerable?

No.

Grenade Brown says if you have— if you don't feel sick, you haven't been vulnerable enough.

I, I've been sick all my life, and so, you know, when I'm vulnerable, I feel more free.

Yeah. Yeah, what do you get out of it, Matt? What'd you get out of it?

I've learned to bite my tongue because I want to, I want to talk while I talk to you guys too. I relate to everything.

That's fine, you should type in, that'd be all right.

I, uh, I relate to it, you know, uh, it's, it's, uh, if you're trying to better yourself, you're going to come through, you know, these, these dilemmas, you know.

Yeah. Oh my, we might be doing something exciting here. We might be digging this root cellar right now. We found the water line. Yeah, do you know how to turn it off? Oh yeah, he went to go do it. Did you figure out how to turn it off? Yeah. Okay, yeah, I had to kill the well pump. Who knew the water line was over here? So it looks like it runs right here. Okay, there was water coming out right behind you too. I don't— yeah, this is probably where it's going to run under the dirt. Yeah, look. Something's coming out here too. Yeah, this is where it's coming up out of it. Yeah.

Okay, I'm making lunch, and we had short ribs last night that we braised, and so I kept the leftover drippings from it, um, and we had a little bit of meat which I cut up in here. Um, but I follow Three Rivers Homestead on Instagram, and this is something that she often does. With her leftovers. And so last night when I was laying in bed like, what are we gonna have for lunch tomorrow? Um, she had recommended buying these mixed vegetables at Azure Standard, so I picked up a small box, um, so that I could try this. And so I am making basically like a stew or a soup with mixed vegetables. I have in here potatoes and onions, but butter and tallow in there. And so those are kind of cooking, and then I'll add the mixed vegetables, and I will add the meat and the drippings, and we're gonna see how it turns out. I did have Lily mix up— hey, hon, how you doing? Stop, stop it.

You know we're out of water.

I know, I hit a water line. Okay, is that what you're here for?

No, I'm done.

Okay, so, um, what was I saying? What was I saying? I was saying something and he interrupted me so rudely. Oh, I had Lily make biscuits, so she— we're gonna get those in the oven. I am super pleasantly surprised with this, so I'm gonna turn it up and let it kind of all cook together.

Gideon, you want to go help move the sled? Okay. I am going to keep that optional because I'm in a mega hurry, so we keep the mandatory helping We limit it. We limit it. See that? Pork Ryan said, "I'm missing a shoe." Oh, there it is. Where are your shoes, Pork Ryan? So maybe Gideon's not always losing his shoes. Maybe Winnie is hauling them off.

Where'd you find them at?

Down there in our parking lot behind one of the cars.

Man, I appreciate that.

You got choices.

What's up?

Chill out with Rebecca. Of course, you can stay over here. She's cooking lunch, should be ready at 12:30. I'm going to move this, the cow sled.

Yeah, I'll help you.

And sheep. All right, let's go. Have looped around. Now we can easily back it in tomorrow's paddock, through tomorrow's paddock, into today's. Now I'm picking up the fence and he's closing tomorrow's paddock off so if they go into it they won't leave. We'll just have to herd them back in because he's probably gonna have to move. I want you to meet some of the staff here. This just— there would be no Justin Rhodes like you see him today without Heather. My goodness. And when your assistant gets an assistant, she's no longer— I think— how many assistants do you have? Kim, Sherry? You become the COO.

You're the chief operating officer.

Chief operating officer Heather. What's your background? Uh, finance. That's right. You started out with me in bookkeeper. You gave us mercy because we were in a bad way. Yeah, what was it, ridiculous? This was in 2016, it was like $8 an hour or something.

Well, we actually did tell you I would do it for free.

Oh, okay. We were like, okay, we gotta get minimum wage. And then you moved up really fast.

We did. We were like, I think once we like—

we bumped her up.

We're like, we can't have anyone working for us for $8 an hour.

Business doing good, bumped her up. Naomi, what do you do besides count how many How many times do we get Gvoda in the video?

Uh, do all the shipping of the books and database maintenance. Oh, and the monthly taxes.

Oh, yeah, all the behind-the-scenes. See, so what if I had to do that? You would have less videos. True. So, because that's not very interesting, is it, for like content?

But I can fill it in when I need to.

Yeah. All right, good. Thank you, guys.