Sudden + Unexpected Lamb Harvest | Grow 30, Day 6

No, no, no! I am so disappointed.

I'm so disappointed.

The cows— no, I won't be needing that. Now the question is, did we fortify well, or did our cows gorge on grain all night? He was trying. Okay, he got to there. They didn't get to the grain, but I don't know if this is Oh, he's moved that. He's pushed right through that, busted the alfalfa. Okay, maybe there's a chance it's just the big cows and not the calf. That could be, and we might still get milk. I think they could have busted right through this, get their head in there. There's not a T-post or anything right there. If something was there maybe keeping it in. We remembered to chain this shut. The calf's right there beside her. That means we get no milk today. We'll get milk from Vanilla since she just had her calf and the calf doesn't drink at all, but not from Honey. I felt like we were just getting on a good roll. Welcome to day 6 of Grow 30, where we're seeing how much We can live on the abundance all around us. It's an early call for them. We're living off the abundance all around us. The big struggle today is we have a normal day, so to speak. We've got an appointment in the morning, we've got an appointment in the afternoon. How are we going to fit in homegrown homemade meals in between that? It'll be busy. Well, that's misdirected. We don't need fertility here, honey. You're up and at 'em this morning, feeling better? Good. Our heifers got out. I wonder if she's in heat. We're trying to keep her from getting bred. I don't know if we're going to be successful at this rate. This means we've had two groups of cows get out. I'm really curious is what— how these big cows got out since I had a pulse on it. I hope it's something obvious that we can fix, or we're screwed. We're just screwed. No, they're patriarchs down there. Don't want them crossing the bridge. They might fall their hole through the glass. This is our heifer pasture. Keep stud muff— or keep He-Man from getting in. Diana said this wasn't even on last night.

We've had no stupid sun, so we can't get the thing to charge.

Well, we have batteries. I'm not getting a reading at all. The Energizer wasn't hooked up, and it doesn't appear to be working unless there's something wrong with my digital tester. They're really anxious being over here by themselves right now. No, there's no batteries. They're in the gray shell. Yeah, this is all that was there. Okay, I'll go get them. I swear we have two charged, ready-to-go batteries on the gray shelf. Did you check the gray shelf in the butchering shed?

Yes.

Okay, that's good. Okay, that's good. They're there. Papa, he thought— he probably thought he just couldn't find them. He probably thought that was the gray shelf.

Not on that shelf.

Remember that shelf? The other gray shelf. Oh, I hurt my arm. Oh, I knew I shouldn't get shocked. It's a shoulder dislocation. 2, 2.2. I'm leaving Jonah and Josiah at his house. They're gonna have to milk vanilla. I'm making sausage, or it is time to make breakfast. We've got a bit of an experiment today. Well, two experiments. We both— we, we made our breakfast spice in bulk. We're gonna try a 50/50 pork and beef. 1 pound of pork. Here, you get to push the buttons. Okay, Henry, you're waiting so patient. 1 pound of beef. I really hope this works because we're using a lot of pork. I was wrong, it's supposed to be 2.5, but I wasn't too far off that I think it'll be gross. Pork Beef. Hmm, it is too spicy. Too spicy to tell you. I think there's potential there though. Remember I told you I put too many spices in it? Probably could have gotten away with two. Let's talk about these cows. Last night I didn't get to go up there and see when you put them up. Last night I left them with a 4.0 fence. Was the water tipped over?

Uh-uh.

Was there a fence down? Was it on its side, or had it—

there was one that was knocked down. There was one that had gotten opened, so I rammed the joint and opened it.

Okay.

And there was one that was knocked down. There was another one that was knocked down and opened.

Okay, so how could that have been prevented? Could it It's gonna be prevented. What about this idea? A single strand of electric for the cows?

Yeah, but where'd the sheep go?

I mean, the sheep will have to still be in the net, but potatoes— the real one happens, the calves get out, probably they get super, super lost. Yeah, I know, the struggle balance is about to get real. We have a lame lamb in the field, which is interesting because we're gonna have to put it to— put it out of its misery. Can we eat it? I think we can eat that lamb. What?

Yeah, we eat it.

Does your gut tell you it's illness or it's broken injuries? It's broken its leg?

It's broken back or legs.

Oh, okay. Well, that's bad news for the lamb, good news for us.

The tracks are here.

Oh, we're gonna be here in 15 minutes. Okay, good. We'll be here to receive it finally. So we need to get the track loader down here to unload its tracks.

Can we use it to unload it? Yeah, just one last time.

I'm trying to get you guys to work on that tonight. It needs it so bad.

Well, they can work after, after they get things straightened up in here.

Is that if one of the idlers is broken?

We've got to harvest a lamb impromptu. Have to go to the chiropractor. The tracks of the track loader are coming. We need to make all of our meals from the farm and pick up after ourselves. We didn't quite get finished, but it is what it is. It's a crazy enough day just to go to 2 appointments. Now let's add a sheep butchering. The new tracks came. Yeah, you long time fans, you know I make up no lie. Mr. Brown, where are your shoes? No, don't give him that. I have to strap him in. Get in. Why do you not have shoes on? Come on, I told you 10 minutes ago to go get your shoes.

I don't.

Where are they?

They're in the Suburban. Uh-uh. We're back.

Chiropractor's helping my shoulder. Look, look, this is the mom one, okay? Come on, I want to be able to do a Turkish getup again. Come on, we got to go all the way to here. All right, there we are. It's a lot better than it— what it was. We just picked up some wood while we were in town too. When you go to town and you're a homesteader, make 3 trips out of it, okay? We didn't have quite enough flooring from the land, so we had to buy some more flooring in town. For Jonah's cabin build in our guest house. Bear insists, and it's a good idea, we really need to go kill this lamb. It's just suffering and we want to kill it before it dies. I asked some friends to weigh in on whether they thought this was safe to eat, and so far all of them did. One thing they thought I should do is take its temperature, and that'll tell us if it's an illness versus just an accident. If it's accidents, so totally safe to eat, but if it's some weird illness, we don't want to eat it. We can also look at the liver after we harvest it. We are running terribly low on ruminant meat, meaning non-grain-fed meat, so lamb and beef. I mean, that's our favorite. Are y'all going or you want to eat lunch right away? I'm going because we're going to be late to lunch. But this lamb is more important. Put it out of its misery. It's getting hot. It's probably laying in the sun. Is it still alive? Is it laying in the sun? Yeah. Dang. Good news, good news, she does not have a temperature. This is a good sign— poop pebbles. That's also a sign that she's not sick. So she must have gotten trampled by the cows or something. Okay, you remember how to do that? Yeah, you're circumcising it. Well, and then skinning the legs since we don't keep the hooves. I'm— and we're not gonna— don't take the hooves off because they're nice to hold on to. Just trust me. Okay, you take them off at the end. Yep, you'll want to grab— grip them later. Oh no, we're supposed to leave that on. Yes, Papa. Now this is gonna get all dirty. Oh boy. All right, we're rusty. Hey, when you only do this once a year, it's not like chickens and you only do a few, you kind of, you kind of forget the steps. The final day, we're making a documentary of our 100-mile bikepacking adventure in Pisgah. It's our final day to submit it to the Banff Film Festival, and I'm a little nervous that I haven't gone through the submission process. So do we have everything we need? Good news, The liver is fantastic. It's great. Maybe that's some parasite right there, or a little something. Those spots, I don't think— I think it would make it go lame. So we're just hoping it's some sort of— she's so young, we probably don't need to tenderize her with some You know, you let them— you let them sit a couple of days, lamb. I think we'll do that just till we get through the next couple of busy days. And plus, you want her cold when we go to start partner. I think all we're gonna do is get the legs off and then take what meat we can in between the ribs. For ease, we might could just cut these enough to put them in a crock pot. Something wrong there with her spinal cord. Yeah, it looks like it got severed. Wow. Yeah, it does look injured, doesn't it? Right there, it looks fractured. Severed her. Well, that's normal, it looks like, unless that's a bad one. Something could have gotten her spinal cord.

I think it got hit.

Yeah, put them on ice and then put ice over them, and then make sure you strap those straps. We could bring it inside because it's cooler. I guess you and Josiah carry this cooler inside when you're done. This afternoon I got our film submitted to the VAMP Film Festival. Let's hope for the best. I've got the London broil in. I think it's the last of our roasts. We're actually gonna need to find some meat locally. We got plenty of chicken, plenty of turkey, running low on beef, running low on pork. Zero lamb, although we're gonna have more lamb, aren't we? Well, I gotta do— I got another lamb source. I got another lamb source. One second, let me show you. Let me show you this progress. Okay, right arm is good. Okay, itsy bitsy spider.

Wow, wow.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay, getting better. It would have just been this. Seriously, we're gonna be dealing with one lamb carcass. Get us some meat. That's gonna be a challenge on this 30 days is that we are running low on pork, we are running low on beef, we have zero lamb. We're good on chicken. We had this happen before. There's a lamb buried. See the two little legs? Yeah, how are we gonna get it out though? All right, another little carcass. I think this guy was even littler. Say, why was that hard to put back in? You just pulled out a, uh, sheep. Because they were all form-feeding when they got frozen. Now they're in various shapes. Thaw this out, we'll cut it up with the other one. First time parting our own lambs. We may just grind it all down into ground lamb. I feel like this 30 days is helping me. Well, I pulled that lamb out of the freezer. Okay, when was I ever gonna cook that lamb? It's, it's been 2 years probably, hasn't it? Yeah, so it's forced that. And this lamb today, I'd like to think I would have harvested it.

We probably would have.

Yeah, because you did that because of humanity, but I, I might have also been— because of the 30 days, I might have also been too nervous to eat it. And so I wouldn't have texted my friends. No, you know, I checked with my friends and they, they kind of helped me through it. Take its temperature. See if it's sick. Then I noticed solid poop, and then of course we can look at the liver. But anyway, I just kind of think that maybe that's some food we've got that maybe we wouldn't have, right?

Also, like, I went by the grocery— like, I drove by the grocery store.

How'd that make you feel?

And I was like, I probably would have gone in and bought some things.

What would you have bought?

Um, I don't know.

What do you miss?

I probably would have needed some— oh, bananas. I probably would have bought bananas.

Are we gonna go back to buying bananas after the 30 days? And Yummies? Why not? These are nighttime snacks.

Like, I'm not— I'm not opposed to like making better choices.

I think it's going to give us a mindset to make sure we go go to the farm options first.

Yeah, well, like for instance, we've been out of bananas for quite some time, so I would have bought some bananas today because I was driving by the grocery store.

But I mean, he can eat a banana in the van. I know, can't eat applesauce in the bed.

No.

So, but it is about, hey, after dinner when he, when he has his nighttime snack, hey, let's get him a smoothie, let's get him the applesauce, and maybe he doesn't want the banana.

Look at how good this is.

But if he does, we have the banana.

Look at this, it's so delicious.

I know, nobody's feeling sorry for us.

It's so good. This is like my absolute favorite. Oh, I do need balsamic vinegar.

I don't think I ordered any.

Rebecca, this is the last of our roasts.

I know, it's so sad.

We found a local guy, excellent guy, but it's not going to butcher next week. It's gonna be at least 2 weeks after that, so that's 3 weeks if not 4. We've bought a whole cow— or no, half a cow. But we might have to buy some parted at a local farm. How'd the meat turn out? Pink. Pink, that's good. Maybe a hair pink for London broil, but I kind of— I had to walk away. Mistake. Lining up meat. 3 fantastic meals from the land, 1 lamb harvested, lamb meat coming up. Happy day.