Strangers Go All In

My wife started researching the vaccine stuff and said no, we're not going to do that.

You just went down that rabbit hole, didn't you?

Mine was political. I'm afraid that the ruling class is going to lead us down a path where I have to depend on somebody else.

During COVID um, when grocery stores went empty—

and you're still trying to figure out your all-in?

I'm still trying to figure out our own.

That's our kind of people here today. Happy Abundance Plus members come to the farm day. We got a bunch of y'all coming to experience the farm, meet us, meet other people. I'm Stephanie. Yes, nice to meet you. Ryan. Hey Ryan. My plants get me. You're a crazy plant lady. Yeah. Good morning. Yes, what's your name? Lindsay. Lindsay. I'm Brad. We saw y'all last night. Yeah, Andy. Okay, nice to meet you too.

Hi, I'm Jocelyn.

Jocelyn.

Nora.

Nora.

She's my baby.

Say good morning. Y'all get the coolest ride award.

Oh, thanks.

We're gonna get the chores done in no time, aren't we? Brad, you want to do some, uh, let's try something New, you want to do a guest cam? All right. We ended up going year-round with pigs. We have breeder pigs. We used to just do what's called feeder pigs. We buy pigs in the spring and then kill them in the fall. We're going to maintain Beefcake and Poundcake 4, 5, 6 pounds a day. So you got to trick them. You got to act like you're going to feed them here and then kind of drop it in there real quick. Then you could go right there with it. You got to be quicker. Oh, they're going to be in one spot. You got to do deep bedding. We've got the tomatoes and the heat-loving crops growing in here. Over the winter, the chickens are in here. They love the getting out of the rain, getting the warmth during the day. You could raise 3 or 4 pigs in just 10, 12 square feet— I mean, 10 by 12, so 120 square feet. Josiah is getting our compost. Look at that beautiful compost the chickens have made. We're putting it in spots spot right above the garden where we're gonna need it. We've got a bunch of little jobs we want to do with these folks today. We need to get done. Beauty entertaining them now. Probably going to do a garden project. She just informed me— where am I? It's been raining. Our root cellar patch, we put some tar on top of that cement. Wait for it. Oh, it's dry! We solved our root cellar problems. Look at this club. Yeah, get this out and get composted before it gets too cold outside. The warmer it is outside, the easier it is to make compost. Josiah hosing it down, thank you. Spray any chickens if they try to get out. He's got you on shoveling duty, huh?

Yeah, I kind of volunteered.

Oh, you like that duty?

Yeah, I do it a lot where I work.

All right. Okay boss, what should we do? He's running the turkeys, so we're gonna go move your turkeys. Okay, we're gonna help you move them. Who wants to go with the beautiful one to the garden? Okay ladies, is this the ladies? None of the men want to go to the garden. Are you guys meat eaters? Yeah. Okay, getting— can you get everybody started on this? Recruit some help. Who wants to help? Mr. Brown.

So we have a little pasture that we have like sheep in right now, you know, and we, we do the rotational grazing. Yeah, with them we have two, two hotlines and it works pretty well. Yeah, but then they'll come through an area and they have, you know, all the, all the big stubby stuff, but the grass is eaten down, so we need to go through and mow all that. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, you can tell we've mowed behind the animals out here, right? And the animals were just here, we neglected to mow.

We see the squares.

I need to tell the boys to mow. See all that ironweed? The animals will not eat that ironweed, but if we mow that, there'll be less ironweed next time. He took charge, instructed a grown man. Power of his words. These turkeys have worn it out. Nook and Cranny homesteading here. Front yard homesteading. Didn't want to bring me the string trimmer. Any aspiring chicken Turkey tenders?

Yes, we have, uh, 9 turkeys.

Okay, you got everything. What don't you have?

We have chickens, turkeys, pigs, and sheep.

You're all in?

Yeah, all in.

I mean, you're living in a bus, so what was— what is your all-in?

We have a house too.

Uh, you just wanted to clarify you're not homeless?

We actually started, you know, we started having kids and, uh, my wife started researching the vaccine stuff and said no, we're not going to do that. And then we kind of went all in.

You just went down that rabbit hole, didn't you? She did.

I just followed along.

What was your all-in?

Mine was political. I'm afraid that the ruling class, whichever side it is, is going to lead us down a path where I have to depend on somebody else to provide me food, and I wasn't interested in that anymore.

What's your all-in?

Oh, I'll say, I think kind of during COVID um, when grocery stores went empty and we were like, hey, you know, like, this is, this is a real thing, it could be scary, um, we decided kind of try to move in the direction of doing stuff ourselves.

Yeah.

What was the first thing you did yourself that was terribly uncomfortable?

Chickens, I think. Uh, one of these nets. I, I hate these nets.

I haven't figured them out yet.

So, um, and you're still trying to figure out your all-in?

I'm still trying to figure out our own.

I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. They want to see the minerals, I'll say, hey, let's move the sheep jaw. We are about to go up the mountain, figure out why our water isn't coming down the hill. Are you oriented to the place? Now?

I am.

Was it all confusing at first? Where did you think everything was?

Back in this way.

Yeah, we can both have more at the time. Yeah, we're gonna walk these hills that don't look steep on camera. Andy, what's the benefit? You've been asking a lot of questions. What's the benefit of coming here in person, uh, besides getting oriented?

Yeah, well, I love asking questions to like a person, you know, where you can, where you can get the emotional, you know, the, the the personal response. Yeah, and it's more memorable, I think, that way.

It's good.

I think Rebecca's got a lot of insight for me on gardening.

And yeah, it makes it more like— you watch things on TV and it kind of glamorizes it.

Yeah.

And then you come, you're like, okay, like, they have stuff sitting around too. Like, you don't feel so bad about your homestead looking like that. And like, okay, it's all right.

Yeah, that's a good example.

Makes it real.

There's no music out here, is there, guys?

Yeah, there's kids underwear. Okay, that's in my house too.

Try it, Andy. All right, no water's down here. The problem with that is we need to move Harriet into this airsoft field. Harriet will go over here into this pasture, and we've got no water down here. So guys, we got to go figure out why not. How many people does it take to fix a gravity-fed water system? 15. Act normal. Deep breath.

Act like we're unhappy.

We want to check it. You want to see if it is?

That one flew.

We might as well. Oh, that might be why it's wrong. Well, dude, you solved our problem. Hey, he just saved y'all run for a little bit, but he just saved y'all hike up the mountain. So he found our problem. Our water's just shut off right here. Hey, yeah, I don't think it's slowing down. All right. The water's working. Do we want to go ahead and go and set up Harriet's paddock, or do we want to go and just do our regular maintenance on the water?

What benefits you more in the long run?

Well, the long run with the ladder, but I really need to get Harriet moved. There might be a little more work. That might be a little more exciting for everybody. You guys want to make an impossible goal? Can we in 35 minutes? Remember, if you aim for the impossible— Yay, somebody's paying attention! So in 35 minutes Can we set up a net, find an Energizer, load Harriet and that little lamb, and move them over here? We got them carrying nets. Hey, I found a good group project. Let's get it so that we can get the animal in right there. So let's move all these junk pallets. What can you do in the meantime? Let's see, split some wood, cover the mulch, go mulch up where the boys are, stack these totes. They're putting up net that way. They've got gone up through there. This is fast. They're going that way. We've got one more. You'll have to decide if we're gonna need this short one or I'm gonna go get us another long one. They're gonna go get one more net. Man, my dad, if he wasn't in heaven and he were still here, he would be in heaven on earth with all these people eager to help. He loved to put us to work and he loved to put our friends to work. Anybody, anybody that would come over, he'd have a little project for you. We're gonna do the impossible with 5 minutes left. We're gonna let them put up the net and we're gonna grab something to move the sheep and the cow with. We'll get 3 of these, 3 of these, and that's gonna be our, our chain, our movable corral. 2, 3, we got us 3 pig panels. We don't have time to try to herd her into a trailer, haul her over here. Does somebody want to stay and put up the net? Yeah, we'll continue and then we'll need at least 3 people to help us move this calf, so we need one more volunteer. I'm gonna go with you. Never moved one.

Would not have one either.

Only thing—

well, I've never moved one this way. We're gonna make a triangle cage from pig panel for Harriet. Somebody else is going to carry the lamb. We got any volunteers?

We'll do it.

Done this with pigs. I have not done it with a calf, so we'll see how that goes. She jumped right over that. Pigs don't do that. This officially ends at 11:30. We're gonna have to resort to the trailer and tractor. If Lucky starts, I think we can do this in 22 minutes. Tractor's over there. Is it still plugged in? No. Uh-oh. I was saying it's gonna be surefire if it's plugged in. Y'all really wearing goggles? Henry, that definitely works better with a camera. Henry said, where, Mama?

There's some right here.

All right, all right. That way. That's too easy. I better film this in case this happens. Oh yeah, I'm just, I'm just a pro. Thank you, Harry, you made me look really professional. We'll see y'all. Thanks for coming. We've said goodbye to everybody. Iowa, all the way from Iowa. We've had Iowa, Georgia, Alabama here today waving from the window. You going in? That was so much fun hosting everybody. They got a perspective on the farm, they learned from us, we learned from them, we hung out. The community is important. We're doing one more of those these— this year, October 6th. Members of Abundance Plus, get in there, become a member, you'll get the invitation. And anyone who's a member, come no charge. Absolutely. All you got to do is just join Abundance Plus. I'll leave the link for that in the description. AbundancePlus.com.