Super Smooth Pig Castration (in the field)

Here you go, darling. You can Instant Pot that. What you up to?

I'm gonna make chicken soup for the trip.

Homesteaders of America!

And I need to look at our list. What did we decide on for food?

Uh, things Grandma can eat: fish, lamb, pork. We're going to the Redmonds' dinner one night, and then I'll go set it out. I'm 3-day fasting again. 3-day fasted, felt great. Came off of it by 3 days, felt terrible. Resetting again.

Well, you didn't just eat carnivore, you ate a bunch of junk.

Oh no, I went crazy. Crazy junk food.

I don't want to say junk food.

No, we just didn't. Not most people's junk food. So naughty. White rice and fruit.

Terrible.

Cake. Cake.

The cake was grain-free.

Cake was grain-free. This is the key to a good trip— planning ahead with the food, making easy things, spaghetti, mixing it up. Just ordered some peat moss. It's in town. No, no coconut coir in town. Tell them why we need peat moss, Becky.

For our composting toilet.

We're a little extra. We got a compost toilet. We take it with us in the trailer. Extra or really good? This is extra or really good at traveling?

Well, it's nice because I don't have to take my kids into a nasty gas station bathroom.

Yeah, true.

So that's one thing I liked about the bus is we never had to go to any gas station bathroom. What's your matter with the boy?

Now to begin the new game we play every morning called Where Is Winnie's Bowl? It's not on the porch where it was yesterday. It's not anywhere around here. Winnie, where's your bowl? I'm gonna have to start picking it up after her breakfast. And hiding it. And days don't get any bigger than this. You're going to want to hang out. It's going to be a lot of fun. Fun? Well, it'll be exciting. Castrating pigs, moving lambs, basically. Oh, and moving pigs. All on top of normal chores. Okay, at some point I'm gonna call it. I don't have time to look for this boat. Should make sure we have our castration kit. Got it. Now the tricky part is going to be— well, we're gonna have to figure out how to catch these little guys. I'm up for the challenge. It's where they should be, the woods, not necessarily in the pole barn. If you've got woods, let's put them in the woods. Those eggs look nice. We're doing something right. But then somebody's pooping in this one. It's disgusting. Josiah, go get your pig stuff ready. You guys try keeping 5 kids off a dirt pile. Experiment number 1, success! The chickens left the silage tarp alone. I wondered if they would tear that up if they had access to it.

Papa?

Yeah. They lay nothing but chicken doodoo. Nothing but chicken doodoo. All you gotta do is turn these nest boxes around because I don't think they can get to them at night, and then turn around in the morning, train them. They're perching in this. Somebody's perching in this. Experiment number 2, a success. I cannot believe it. The potatoes— that's a potato plant from our second planting of potatoes. They didn't harm them. They've weeded around the potatoes. Oh wait, they might have harmed this one, but for the most part they haven't touched anything. That looks more like a human brushing by and breaking that on their way to collect eggs.

Wasn't me. I went— I went— I always go around. Okay, that way.

Whoa! Oh, these old sweet potatoes, we harvested them yesterday. Actually, they're coming up pretty dang easy. We need to pull all this up and cover it. The chickens are going to come in here and they would have all winter to work this down. So that's where that could go. Where did everybody go? Well, I see Winnie there too. Where— I still haven't found Winnie's thing, therefore I have not fed Winnie. Here's where everybody is. Has anybody seen Winnie's bowl?

No. Um, last time I saw it, it was out by the road. She takes it. She takes it.

I know, long distances. I'm gonna do a reset, 3 days water fast, and then 2 weeks, 2 weeks of basically gaps. So roast, boiled meat, and I'm only gonna do meat. Winnie, where's your dish, honey? Look here. Porch is on the whole other side. Look what I found. Goodness, Winnie, you naughty dog. What you up to, my man? There's a policeman here. Did you read your book this morning?

Yep.

There's your food, honey. Hopefully I remember to put your bowl away this afternoon. Look at this. Wow, good cow!

She gassed.

Come on, come on. Not the sheep, not the sheep. Anybody got any ideas for getting 16-foot pig panels out here? Dose?

Why do we have to get 16-foot pig panels?

We have to corral the piglets to wean them. I mean, not to wean them, to castrate them. She had to talk me into doing the sheep project first, which kind of makes sense since we only have 45 minutes. But Jacob gets here, I think the pigs are going to take more than that. We'll do that after. We won't feel rushed. You don't want to feel rushed castrating. You guys are just waiting, aren't you? Look what they did to the grass. Okay. Oh, somebody just got zapped. And then what you did to the underbrush. You're going into Grandma's.

I guess not.

You can try. She probably locked it. She's not here. We're gonna get them access to all this. They do to this— this— we can get in here and create a silvo pasture. I would say we could go through there. There's that tree. It's pretty steep right there. Come up here, Lily.

Well, they could still eat.

Come right here. Maybe just come right here. We'll come right through here.

Yeah, we could go right through here and then we could have all that place up there.

See, we might have gotten ourselves into a bigger project. Than we had hoped. We can come over this and it's like a line for this, for this paddock. He's waiting on us right there. We can cut across and then we could go up this path. It's already cleared. I'll come up that with the string trimmer. That I can do with a string trimmer. So there's our, there's our square.

Shake, shake, shake.

Getting serious about cleaning up the farm. That's a dumpster that they service every other week, so continual cleanup here we come. Jonah, it's here, dude! How long you been waiting for this?

Uh, 7 days.

Little something to do while you're sick— or not sick, crippled. You think that's it, dude?

Wow, so big!

Wait, where are you going to build that? Cuz they're not going to be on the kitchen table. I'm going to build it in bins cuz it's going to take a long time.

Well, I'm going to put it in a bin, then build it Okay, that is a mining truck, but the fun's in the build, right? Yeah, that's why.

That'll give you something to do besides TV, huh?

Yeah.

Uh-huh. All right, I'm gonna stash this away. Okay, all right, we could just encircle them right there, arch here, and then herd them down into here. There they go. We got 2 in. We got 2 in. There they all go. There they all go. Okay, just— I bring that shut.

Shut.

Bring it shut.

I bet Mom— this is as far as I can go.

Keep it, keep it. Go tighter. We're going to pick somebody up. If it's a female, we're going to set them out. Yeah. And if it's a male, we're going to castrate him, then set him out.

Look, it's a girl! It's a girl!

It's a boy!

You can't— you can see.

Oh yeah. They're back at it.

Justin is out castrating pigs. I'm in the kitchen. I made our family's favorite soup. It is chicken pot pie soup. It's basically like chicken pot pie filling, um, and then the recipe is from Deliciously Organic and it's called chicken pot pie soup. So if you want to go get that recipe, you can, and it's really good. Um, then I have his, um, chuck roasts in the oven in like um, cooking in broth, and they've— it's been going for a couple hours. I've got 1, 2 gallons of chicken broth here, and then I have a gallon of beef broth. The other gallon of beef broth is in the oven with his chuck roasts. I think it's about 8 pounds of chuck roast that I have. I am also using these, so these are, um, Super Cubes. Let me make them look right. So they're basically cubes. Pour the broth in into 2-cup increments, and then you can freeze it in these nice little blocks. And then here is a bag, a Ziploc bag full. You can see I've got 1 1-cup and then 3 2-cups in this. I have shredded all the beef and I put it in the Super Cube. I am ladling broth in here. So this will be like really brothy meat. It'll be— it's basically a beef stew. So this is what it looks like, and these are each 2 cups, so 4, 8, 12 cups of beef.

This is not going strong. I could have been filling this whole time. There's your kink. You hear it speed up from here. When I went to get the grain, I put the rope up. It's too efficient. I hope this, uh, vine holds it pulling these gates back. It's that point of day where I'm over it. Well, so far just basically a twig vine.

Leave them. Cut your shirt off.

I'm over it. I'm going home.

You could cut your shirt.

We'll do it tomorrow. Um, yep, we already lost—

or use my sweater.

We already lost one. What?

Oh, we already did.

All right, let's go home. Look at you, we got the pigs castrated.

That's so good. I'm glad there was only two.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of meat in there.

Yeah, you want me to pick that? I'll pick the beef out. I'm not gonna do it right now because it's steaming hot. That's a bone. It's too hot. I'll do it after.

Okay, beef Broth. Yes, look at the marrow in that.

We can get it out.

And you made a meal. It looks absolutely delicious.

Well, it's leftovers, but yes, I heated it up.

Look what came back. Look what came. Passive solar energy book, The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling. Which we hope to do with our dream house. I got a lot of reading to do. I didn't realize this one was so crazy.

It's like 3 inches or something. Well, it goes into everything. And some stuff won't apply to us. Wow.

Sizing the walls. This is more my speed, I think. And here's the rest of your letters for the minerals.

I think there's one that's gonna come in like a month or so.

Where'd we put those other ones? I put them in a box somewhere. To be organized. Meeting is upon us actually, and he's getting it done. Have you finished anything of it? Oh yeah, look, look at this dump truck he built. Dude, pro. Thanks for hanging with us today. We had a lot of fun, we got a lot of work done. We appreciate it. More to do tomorrow, but listen, it's a Friday. This is Friday's vlog. What are you gonna do on the weekend? What do you do when we don't post on Saturday and Sunday? We're a Monday through Friday show. Well, now I have a blog with a B. We brought the blog back, old articles plus new. We talked about the chickens on the garden earlier today. That's one of the articles we have on how to do that. I guys encourage you to check it out. It's under our business name, Abundant Permaculture. That's our blog. Do check it out. Enjoy. It's on me.