Summer Chores (real time) POV

Shabbat shalom, everybody. The name of the game today is we're going to try to get these chores done, sneak and get these chores done before the kids awake. Let them sleep in. We do that occasionally, from time to time. They surprise me, I'll surprise them. It's been a while. It's our rest day, so I put the GoPro on for two reasons. One, I didn't pre-upload a Saturday video, and two, I guess I have three reasons. I think they're pretty, pretty interesting for you guys to get a real-time. Putting 4 pounds in each of these guys, there was no scraps to speak of real-time chores. And this is just chores, nothing terribly exciting. So this is the reality of the homestead. We have some leftover— some chicken grain, it looks like, that the kids left out and it got wet. You can't put that in the chicken feeders because they're automatic feeders. It'll clog them up. But you know, the great garbage disposal of the farm is the pig. Uh, hopefully I can do all this before the kids wake. I normally do at least the little animals on Saturday. Ah, broke the bucket. Kind of been going like that today. Couldn't find the filter ring for filtering the milk. Headlamp wasn't together. That's skim milk on top of this. We're starting at zone zero, the house. Hopefully you don't feel the barn station somewhere. Hopefully your barn is in the house or off the house. We've been living across the street while we rebuild, and it's, it's been a, it's been a nightmare. It doesn't seem like much to, oh, walk 150 feet to start, but You don't just go to the barn once in a day, and it adds up and it becomes burdensome. So much easier just to have the barn off the house. Ideally, we have a spare pan here. Oh, if you have a spare pan, it's out here and it's already washed and sanitized by the sun. They keep breaking these plastic pans. They're nice to clean, but they break them. The rubber pans don't break. They're a pain in the butt to clean. Ideally, we would wash this yesterday and it set in the sun all day and sanitized, but you don't always have ideal. Animals have no sense of delayed gratification. I'm convinced that's why we dominate them. They won't even let me throw their pan in there without me knocking it down.

Okay.

We got him calm. That means we can go in here. She doesn't get fooled by a, by a, a, um, a rub. She's not as aggressive as he. There are two cans in there. So I'll wash them both, at least have one sanitizing for tomorrow. This is going to be largely uncut so y'all can experience it real time.

Sanitize these cut—

these, these slips in the bottom of them too are no good because when you have a lot of liquid in the scraps, it just runs out into the mulch and they don't get it. I just need to bite the bullet and buy more pans. Seems like there's always something you gotta buy.

It's a little annoying.

While we have the water running, we officially pulled out their old waterer. Fill up their no-hassle water. I don't have it hooked up yet because I need to have a dedicated line to it, but you can see they've been drinking. So right now it's a little bit of work because I have to fill it up like this every 4 days, twice a week.

Food, water.

Shelter security. Always fill up two hands. I was reading in Jim the Boy how the uncles didn't like to waste steps. They're good old-fashioned wisdom. No wasting steps.

Chicken feed.

This is a step I could probably, probably store some of this hay closer. I'm thinking about a, a movable chicken bin where you store Maybe a drum of feed, drum of hay, maybe some mineral and grit supply by the chickens, but it's movable. Whoa, grain. Thought that was alfalfa. That's turkey grain.

Piu!

Notice how much was by zone 0, by the house. How much was in zone 1? I'm venturing into Zone 2 with the crop gardens. Check the tomato trellis for bugs on my way to the pigs, smashing them. Not tomato trellis, pumpkin trellis. Rerouting it. These guys need two extra pans too.

I believe there's even some poop in there.

Remember, no delayed gratification.

Hero.

They will step in their food pan with poop on their hoof. See, these rubber pans don't break, but they are hard to clean. Kids from getting parasites. Deep bedding and clean feeding pans. Wood chips are on the way. They're dangerously low. Had to buy them this time. We had the power company do some work, we were able to get those chips. That lasted about a year and a half, but $500 for 18 yards, big dump truck load. Don't hesitate to buy wood chips just because sometimes they can be had for free. A lot of times they can't, and they're still worth it because not only is it a diaper for your animals, you turn it turns into compost when it's mixed with their manure. So then I'll end up with 18 yards of compost. Are you kidding me? Which is over $1,000. So you actually double your money. You can't afford not to get wood— buy wood chips. Okay, food, water, shelter, security. Let's walk back through killing bugs. I noticed once these get big and established They're healthier and they don't get as many bugs. In the beginning when they're weak and establishing, they get the bugs. And now it doesn't even matter so much because a little bit of bug eating them ain't gonna hurt them that much. Try not to look around too much on Saturday because it's supposed to be restful. We're just doing the chores. We're not going to do any projects unless we have to. All right, these buckets are going out.

Trash, trash.

Don't stack buckets in each other. Rookie mistake. They're going to get stuck. I stacked these cuz they're broke. They're going in the dump. House supplies are all here. Big fan of any system like this coming up where it's all— you don't have to bring any supplies to it. I mean, save minerals. It's got its cage, doesn't need electricity. Oh boy, I think they pushed this into the brush pile. I need cables on the handle so I can actually pull this thing. Yeah, boy. We're gonna have to get around that brush pile. Okay, that wasn't so bad. New wheel coming. Oh. That is a flat freewheel. I wonder if that can be fixed. That might be able to be fixed. Not today. Let's just get moving. Let's get it moved. 1, 2, 3. They got their cage, their shade, their food, water, shelter, and security all in place. This design will come into book 2 of Homestead Builds, along with the milk sled, the pig shawl. The pig sled, an electric reel, a-framed greenhouse. We probably got a dozen more designs we couldn't fit into book 1 because book 1's already like 458 pages long. Not far from a creek, but you could run hoses out here. Heck, when I had my first steers, I just did this field down here. I'd buy them in the spring, kill them in the fall. I literally ran water hoses. To their daily paddocks from the well water at the house. We've blended this little sheep with Harriet. Harriet will be our family— another family milking cow. She's got to stay away from the bull till she's 20 months old. She's only like 8 months old. All right, but they gotta have buddies, so we gave it a little lamb with Harriet. Doesn't eat much. It's a little buddy for her. She likes to be moved. She really likes this brambly stuff, and Harriet really likes the grass. That's why the sheep and the cows are great partners. They largely don't compete on food. The sheep is going for all the briars and locusts. And Harriet's going for all the ice cream grass. I've been reminding myself that this is the— I'm living the dream I dreamed of. So long ago when we dreamed of having cows and sheep and pigs, chicken, turkey, and kids to help run it all and help enjoy it all. Cuz after you arrived to your dream for a while, it can become mundane, even a nightmare sometimes.

Drop the buckets. Let's go drop those.

Maybe while we're traversing here, we'll be as close as we're going to be to those turkeys. Notice I don't drive to them in the pasture. Joe Salatin taught me you You want to treat your pastures like cornfields. Duh, right? You don't— you wouldn't drive through your cornfield. That's why I like these pig nets for these turkeys. You just step right over. Concentration of turkey. Squat under the turkey shawl. Just move it. Probably move this paddock tomorrow. They need grit, but that can wait till tomorrow. Goose doing its job and fussing at me. Predator. Goose are dramatic, you know, and the predators don't like drama. They like to be nice and quiet. This was talking about like, let's put the feed out at the animals instead of at the barn. And hopefully the barn's at your house, just let me be real clear about that. Hopefully you don't have a barn. Unless it's a pole barn for deep bedding animals, um, because you could have your feed in storage bins like this out in place. It's mobile. Put it on a cart. Maybe I need to make a Shaw rickshaw cart. Because one of my shticks is making these homestead builds for people who don't have a side-by-side. I didn't have a side-by-side for 15 years. I was hauling hay on wheelbarrows out to pasture.

Through the buckets in that dumpster.

Better not forget get the beautiful ones. Precious plants. I figured out it's not like she loves them like you love a dog, you know. You're never gonna eat a dog. Um, her thing is she just really likes to eat them. And then she puts a lot of work into something. If something happens to it, it breaks her heart. These are spent corn. I wonder if she'll let me transplant these onions. She said I transplanted the other ones too soon. I think these are already yellowing. My vote is you transplant sooner than later and it's less shock on them. She, she says you wait. So we go with the garden of peace ideally and wait whether, whether she's right or wrong. See all those trays? They need to come in. I'll just get a few. I'll leave that for a project. UV all day long. I can certainly put this away, guys. I used to not even have poultry crates. I just grabbed this wire crate to move birds around. I remember when we got a poultry crate, we thought we were Real professionals. Back to zone zero— one.

Oh, hmm.

See, they need grit too. Put on the list for Sunday. Been sharing my hose with the painters. Hey, at least we have the hose up here, right? For easy servicing. Pretty soon I'm gonna put the no work waterer up here. I don't— did I get the eggs? I think I got the eggs. I think I switched out food. Shelter, security, water, everything for cows. This up. Really, I don't need to go here yet. I'm just gonna get a battery for this GoPro just in case it doesn't make it. But since I'm coming here, I might as well drop off the goods. It's only been 1 hour. It's taken me 1 hour to do the little animal chores. Definitely in the height of summer. In the winter, everything's down in the backyard. Whole barns. Hear that? They're probably out of water or food. That's not a— uh, yep, they're out of food.

Got plenty of water. They're going to need more feeders.

Turkeys is officially gideon. Which has been great for him to have his own thing. I was even going to save this because he kind of has the easier lot of them all right now. But I figured y'all probably want to see it, and then I'll do all the chores for this video. I wouldn't call this a vlog. I would call this a POV video, real-time. There's no edits in this. Turn the camera off once because I wanted to go find a drill driver. I didn't want y'all to see my messy shop, and I didn't know if I'd find it right away. I did. That's it. So Austin only has to put these two clips together. No music. No song and dance. Just lets you get— this lets you get your taste of the drink. Just multiply this times 7, times 52, times however many years you want to do this. I think I'm ready to do the cow. Now that will be a surprise if I do the cows, because that's quite the chore by yourself. See if we can do it before they get up. So far they're still asleep. I'm gonna turn the vents off. I'm so—

hard to explain.

Now, so this sits it like I can roll it up. This goes twice as fast with two people, obviously, because one person can milk one cow and one person can milk the other. Brings back memories though, you know. I used to do all this. Chores take 2 or 3 hours because I had all the little kids. They went with me, they couldn't do it on their own. And then I'd have an hour or two for projects. Good old days in some ways, but I'm also happy they're over. You can divide and conquer and get so much more done. If you have little kids, just don't worry, you know, you'll get there. They'll be grown soon enough.

Just do what you can.

You all got to work, you got your job. What's important is you try and do the most important thing towards your goal. So don't get distracted. If your goal is to grow food, don't get something you're not going to eat, like goats. You know, if you're doing it for kicks and giggles, they're great. Get the bonus of the milk. We're all limited on time and resources. You don't know where to start, chances are you should start with meat chickens and garden. Those are some of the most high earners for the amount of input, and most everybody likes chicken, and most everybody likes something from from the garden. But don't, don't plant all the cool things. Don't worry about planting kale because it's cool. Just say, 'Kale, no,' if you don't like kale. Tomatoes either. Somebody was visiting us the other day. They grew tomatoes. They didn't even like tomatoes. So why are you growing tomatoes? Something else got in the milk there. Say, um, but what's cool about milking on the pasture is I just poured that on the pasture. That's gonna be a greener spot. If she were to poop right now, who cares? We're out on the pasture. I don't have to clean it up. I don't have to clean any of this up. But anyway, these people had gotten a tomato— grew tomatoes. I said, why are you growing tomatoes? You don't even— they grew them for their parents. Which I thought was very sweet. So there's that. You know, if you want to grow something, if that's part of your reason is to be a blessing and you don't like tomatoes— most people like tomatoes, so you might want to grow those because you can bless many. And tomatoes are pretty efficient, very efficient. Well, they take up 2 square feet, maybe a foot and a half square foot, whatever. And you get 20 to 30 pounds of fruit off of it. Now the cool thing is I don't have to milk this cow for all she's worth because she's got a calf. Calf will finish her off. I don't have to worry about getting mastitis. Now if we were dry, if we weaned the calf It'd be different. It's been a minute, hadn't it, out here? We didn't get much milk today because the boys put the calves up later on the account of our bike ride yesterday. Calf sharing gives you that flexibility. They wanted to skip. I mean, you could skip on a rest day, a Saturday, and we did for a long time. Um, it's just that the less you call upon the milking foal, the less you're going to get overtime. But I mean, if you're getting plenty and you're starting out For years we didn't milk on Saturday. We just let the calf keeper. And I remember how refreshing that was on Friday to just not have to go out in the afternoon and put that calf up. All right, come on, you're fat and happy now. Come on, don't act like you're not. Put this up here for the sheep in a bit. Come on, there's nothing more to see here. Come on. It used to be that I think I'd do projects in the morning early, and then I'd go milk the cows, and it was always kind of my sanctuary. Come on. Oh, did I not leave that gate open? I think I did. So it was usually kind of like a peaceful moment after the craziness. Come on, turn around, turn around. No, no, no, you know. Come on, they are not the brightest. Are you serious? Actually, they might be acting like they're dumb. Come on, you know what I want at this point. All right, that's what Josiah does, he grabs her by the collar. Come on. All right, let's get those calves over before they bust through this. Sure is a congregation over here. Come on, this is going to be tricky cuz the gate is also opening up to the— it's on this corner, so I have to Just want the little calves. I reckon you're okay, Blaze. No? Okay, go ahead.

Calf.

Just the calves. That ain't the calf. Okay, that's the calf. Okay, Blaze, come on. You're good, you're good. Go, go. You don't herd, do you? You don't herd. Nope, nope. Ah, shoot. Come on, go in there. Go in there, Blaze. Come on. Oh, okay. That dang lamb. Running through the fence. I'd go get it. Okay, let's get this other calf. They get out and they immediately want back in. Come on, let's go.

Come on, come on, come on.

Come on, come on, come on, let's go! We'll take it. That damn lamb is way over there. And another gnat. Why'd you get out if you just want back in so bad? So dumb. Meh. Now stay in there with your people, okay?

Yeah.

All right, let's get this calf in. Funny, get a little funny feeling in my arm and think I'm getting shocked. How do they lead you, Blaze? Come on, we don't want to herd you because we don't— we want Lily to be able to walk up to you. Come on. What are we doing back over here? This is the old paddock. All right, we got all the cows out. Go!

All right, go ahead.

Really?

Really?

Wollen wir schon abhauen, ne? Ich wollte sheep shower. So scraggly. See how the sheep clean that up? It's amazing. They're making use of things the cows wouldn't eat, so not taking up that much more land. The night pants can be picked up. In fact, I wonder if I should do that for him. If I pick this, I got to go up there to check the water anyway. I wonder if I'll just pick up fences along the way. It's kind of indirect way, but something's got to be done. Kids barely put the posts in here. The ground is a little harder where we scrape for these pathways. The upper bank is not as rich in soil. I hear water. I hear a water leak. Check out this water leak. Thought I heard a water leak.

Huh.

This always makes a rest more satisfying. Hard work. So when I finally get— do we have sheep out? So when I finally do So when I finally do sit down for the rest, I rest less guilt. I struggle with guilt because there's always something to do, so I struggle with rest. I just got to remember sometimes rest It's the most important thing you can do. You need to put it on the to-do list. Like, next week we're doing a staycation. I'm gonna— I shouldn't speak it, but I'm gonna struggle. I should say this to counterbalance that, you know, I'm gonna put it on the to-do list to rest and refresh so that I come back even stronger. I'm gonna focus on not working. We're doing a staycation so that we can be close to Rebecca's mom, who's struggling with ALS, and so we can be near the, the homestead rebuild the homestead house. I'm not calling it a remodel. It was basically a rebuild. I mean, when you take out to just the floor, there's no walls or ceilings. Now, that was just the top floor, it wasn't the bottom floor. It's a rebuild when it's cost what it has. Cost twice what we thought it would. It's a rebuild. It's probably a good thing we didn't know how much it would cost. Oh, we wouldn't have done it. And I say, you know, I'm 45. This is my legacy. This is the legacy house, my legacy contribution. I can now go to 60 recovering. Have the farm all set up for The children, they'll have a— they'll be stepping into a wonderful blessing, and they'll be in a really good position to take care of Rebecca and I in our old age because of all that we've— would have given them at that point. It's not like we're saying, oh yeah, here, you know, take care of us. We've given you nothing to take care of us with. No, we're like, here's a foundation of a— even more of a foundation. Here's, here's a, here's a phenomenal regenerative permaculture homestead that gives in abundance because of the work we put in in the past. Now build upon that, the return of surplus. And we'll contribute in other ways when we're 60. We'll watch the little kids. We'll do like Joel, the way he contributes to Polyface Farm. Speaks and writes. Gives tours. I cannot believe I'm picking this fence up. This was not the plan, but the boys will be— should be beyond tickled. There's not nothing— not— there's not much beats you having work ahead of you, and then somebody that you love come in and say, 'I did it. Relax. You deserve it.' They've done that for me, and a lot of times they did that for me out of necessity because I was injured, but they've also done it because, hey, let's, let's sneak and let Papa sleep in. I hear a vehicle. Is that— is that— I think that might be a worker at the house. I don't think that's our boys. They conned me into staying up late last night. You know, there's something sweet about it. When I was 16 and a half, I was every Friday night and Saturday night doing something, something else, not with my family. And Jonah, Josiah just wanted to hurry up on our bike ride so we'd have time to watch a movie and I would be together as a family. That's so sweet. We've done— we've done something right there. I just, you know, I'm just realizing this. Oh my God, that is so cool. Hell, and I think it just comes from not assuming any different. And just creating this family culture of us being together and doing together, having fun. You know, hey, we watch movies on Friday night. If we're a fun place to be, the kids are going to want to be there. So we haven't do chores in the morning to have a sense of purpose. Oh boy, I just rolled up that fence. And we really needed to keep it. This is not good. Okay, so the water's not filling up. Hopefully it's turned off. Good, it's just turned off. Okay, I'll fill that up before— oh, they turned it off because it's on a slant and it's overflowing. Okay, I picked up this entire fence and we need to keep it here because it's part of the next fence, this, this length anyway. So I told Rebecca, you know, because I kind of wanted to watch the Olympics last night. You know, they're only on every 4 years. May wanted to, you know, get home and Watch a movie. Okay, let's watch a movie because, daggum, they want to be with us on a Friday night. Let's roll with that. Screw the Olympics, watch that today. And I'm of the mind of why see the kids go off so much when they're just getting to be so enjoyable? You can actually have conversations with them, they actually contribute. To the farm. You know, when they're young, I mean, they're enjoyable, but they're exhausting. You know, Henry's very enjoyable, but he's taking more than he gives. Whoa, we blew that gasket. They've turned it off right there so they can fix it. Put it on the to-do list. All right, I think they're going to be really shocked I did the nets. I didn't set up the next day's net. I don't know if they've mowed, so all that— and it's been another hour, guys. This is This isn't— are you sure you want to get milk cows? This has been an hour doing the milk cows. We're not done. The time we went and got the mower, by the time we, you know, get in and process that milk set up the new fence. It's gonna be another hour. So now we've managed to also produce sheep in there. There's beef in there too. So there's a lot of chores in one.

Make sure it's balanced. I want to make sure that'll turn off.

Hey, what? Yep. Hey, we got a— we got a kid. Oh look, I hear a side-by-side. Yep, I've done a little animal chores. I've done the big animal chores except for putting up tomorrow's net. Technically that could be done tomorrow. Is everybody awake? Yeah, but Lily, I think she's like— Mom and Henry too?

Yeah, I have to come out of the house, dude. I was playing with Henry.

Not nice.

Yes, I was.

Okay, don't worry about it.

I'm in trouble.

You're in trouble?

Yes.

All right, I think that'll stop.

Fresh mountain water right there, honey.

Oh wow, paint that for me. Paint that for me. I did.

Oh wow, you've done everything.

Mhm.

Cake. Nope. Cake.

Okay, I'm kicking it. Let's see what they say. I was hoping to go wake them up, tell them they got to do chores. Oh, look! Hey boy, you got a mess. You got a mess. Are you gonna go start milking? I guess it's done though. Yeah, I even picked up the net. The only thing I haven't done is set up the net. You don't set up the nets? All right, well then I've done everything. I think he needs to stay with me until I can check in with Mama and see what trouble he's got.

Right here.

Get in. You get the, uh, you get these poles right here. You, you grab these poles, please. I have the alligator clips. Grab the poles in that pan. This, this reel, it's going into Homestead Builds too. This is great for like, uh, well, this too. To run electricity doing that. But also, if you just had cows, this is all you would need. Look how easy this is to roll up. It's just some bolts through a wire spool with some, um, hose, old hose on the handles. So that the— your hands stay steady and nothing's sliding in your hands. I love it. And for a small-scale homestead like this, those fancy reels, they're nice but they're too heavy and they're overkill for a homestead. I mean, you're not going to unroll much more than that. I just did. Oh, we are moving the electricity. Turn on our— turn back on our shut-ons. Hopefully this snapping wire Interesting how it's getting through that electrical tape.

All right.

All right, there you go. You hook to that, my man. All right, let's go with our post to the fence. Oh, should have— might as well. Right here, bud. Pretty soon.

Here.

Pretty soon. We're gonna have it to where we have our electric line along our pathway, our water too. You want to do this? Come here. I don't know, put it here at the bottom of this bank. Come here and put it to the bottom of this bank. Come on. Why did she get out? They got out. We have to put them back in. Come on, one right here. Put one right here. I should have went further down, then we wouldn't have to move this as much. Where's the pan? You were supposed to bring that.

Oh.

Red pan. You're gonna have to bring— get that. There's not— yeah, run get it. This, this reel sits in a pan and then doesn't ground out, or you can do a metal rebar here at the end. And you can actually set it on it. I've got the alligator clips. Oh, throw those to me. Those must have fell out of my pocket. Good job. Wow. Huh, those are different. I've also dropped some out of my pocket. I'm gonna get these sheep over. I'm just going to put him with the cows today. I'm getting in shape. Why do the cows get out? You have new grass. No, Blaze, you have new grass. It's just as new. All right, come on, come on, Blaze. Why is Blaze getting— I'm just gonna leave Blaze out. Please don't walk over the fence. This is where you start getting over it. 2.5-hour mark. I'm over it. All right, but doing things like this, you know, putting the line on the pathway will help. Smoothifying. All right, I cook— connected that on— connected that on there. All right, I think we're on. Blaze is out, but Lily will be out soon to feed him. He won't go far. I think he's bonded with these cows and sheep. He seems to be doing all right without another horse. So that means he won't go far by himself. Let's go surprise Jonah.

Oh, nice you showed up. What? How early were you up?

Uh, I was out by 6.

Is that because it was dark?

Yeah, it was dark. Shoot, there went the milk. Should have had you held on to that.

Shoot.

Here, is any in it left?

In it?

Get the lid. There's some left. Get the lid. I should have put that in the truck bed, not the seat. Come on, get the lid, let's go!

There it is.

Don't cry over spilt milk. Just did that. I just milked that just to fertilize the grass there. It's hard not to cry. Thankfully, the way we farm, we just— we weren't just milking. We were growing beef. We were improving this pasture. So we did a lot more tasks out here than just milk. I see we made a video. So not all— are you holding the milk this time? Good.

I have a quart. That's not— that's not nothing.

Okay, bring that in. Bring that milk in. Well, we're having a time. Oh, we're having a time. I did all these. The pigs are getting out. The chickens got out. You know how hard it is to get chickens back in. You're gonna have to come help me milk. Will you come help me milk? I already know you did it. Huh? I already know you did it. How do you know? Just know. This is what y'all do when you get to skip chores? Yeah, make a nice breakfast. All right, hope you enjoyed the show. Real-time farm action.

Happy day.