Taming the Summer Garden BEAST

Today we are taming the summer garden wild beast because our aim is to live off the land. Time out to support Lily and her dreams. And finally, a surprise gift from this garden right here. We're gonna eat it for dinner. Beautiful one's gonna do a dance. Let's get into the vlog. What's this?

It's nice coffee for me and your son.

Hopefully it'll get him up. Will that get him up? Probably. Jonas made you some iced coffee. Will that get you up? What? Ice coffee?

You wanna get up and have some ice coffee?

Popcorn? Is this the last night? Huh?

I don't know. Mary is up early. I see her over there. She's lugging something up the mountain and She's got another full day of horse camp. Depending on the weather, I think they were saying that afternoon classes may get canceled if it's gonna storm again. I think it stormed yesterday. Um, and I think it might frighten the horses too much or something for them to keep doing it in the afternoon. Hey, buddy! Has nobody been out here yet to feed you?

All right, I'm here.

Gonna get some too, don't you worry. Is another gorgeous morning. I mean, I'm trying to think of when it's not a good morning at the, uh, in the morning, like in the summer, like Maybe if it's raining, I don't know. It's just so beautiful. Oh my gosh, this is like the cloud— the sky is nice and blue and a little bit of clouds in there. Anyways, I am headed back into my high tunnel. Uh, Justin, you know, we had the problem yesterday with, uh, the cows when they break out getting into the high tunnels. So Justin fixed that yesterday with gates, which is very exciting. We have— now I'm the owner of a new gate.

It's exciting.

I think Justin said he was going to come down here and help. He's going to weed in here while I— I guess I don't have to shut that. It's not like anything's coming in. Okay, so we're gonna work on this. Like, and this is another beautiful thing. I think being on the homestead, there's just so much beauty, and we need to stop and look at it sometimes, because if you don't, then what's the point of this lifestyle? Okay, anyways, let me show you what's so beautiful in here. The water droplets like the water droplets on the leaves. That is so beautiful. There's something so beautiful about that. I don't know, it's just like everywhere. Uh-oh, is that hornworm poop? It might be. Shoot. I know we do have hornworms. We're gonna have them. Um, I'm trying to just look. I'm gonna have to come out here. It's hard to deal with the hornworms because they, um, it doesn't get dark until so late and I like to go to bed. So, but yeah, I'll have to get like a black light and come and squish that bug. That's cucumber. It's a cucumber beetle. All right, smush him. All right, so I'm going to get to work on, on the tomatoes. Okay, I was gonna start. I got my clips in my front pocket, and yesterday I distinctly remember having Justin put my pruners on that box. And then Justin came and worked on the gate with the kids, and my pruners are gone, and I need those pruners. So now we're gonna go on a wild goose chase to try to find Justin to see, because said children are still asleep and I'm not waking them up, and there is a chance that they may remember where they dropped them but also not. So I'm gonna go over here because I do remember Henry had a pair of scissors, like kid scissors, those kid safety scissors. So this is the problem with putting things back on a homestead— the kids know where to look for them. Aha, look, I found them! I found them with the safety scissors. So it's funny because I saw them with the pink scissors and I thought, oh well, they're safety scissors, so it shouldn't be a big deal. And then I didn't even think about my pruners. Sorry, I gotta get through here. Okay, all is well. Yay! Going back in. To my tomatoes. So very excited. I've got my yellow bin already down there. And— Yeah, I think I might put you guys at the other end. So she can see me coming towards you. So I don't know that she'll be able to see me.

Y'all got up early. And he won't come. But— You didn't go? Go! It's 7:30 now. You ready for your another horse day? She's in heaven. I better go say goodbye to Rebecca before I take Lily. If you want to know where the beautiful one is 7:30 in the morning on a summer day, my guess is the high tunnel in the garden, getting it done before it gets hot. Is either a monster down there. Hey, I knew I could find you here.

That's right.

Oh yeah, see, you're kind of on a sand dial here. See the sun starting to come over the mountain on that? There's a reason we put the high tunnel more towards the creek, because the mountain's over there. Sun comes up, we want the sun to hit this as soon as possible. Beauty said to me, you're coming back to weed, right? Yes, dear. Because these cucumbers are gonna succumb if we— I mean, it's not too late now, but we gotta get on it. It's cucumbers and these beans. I probably will not be back before the sun hits it. You get a little distracted? You got enough to pick for a cobbler? Yeah, nice bite. He'll be mountain biking with us in no time. I gotta get back and weed before I roast. Shoot, sea monsters need moved.

Speaking of chores, I got the pig chores done.

Oh good, that helps, that helps. The sea monster's gonna have to wait. That's the price we pay for supporting the child and her dream. What is your dream?

Be a professional rider in the Olympics, and then I'm gonna be famous, and I'm gonna have— and I'm gonna— I'm never gonna have to worry about money.

I like it. What are you, Forrest Gump? That's good.

One less thing.

What's in the meals?

This?

Mm-hmm. Everything here.

Everything here.

My tea.

I have to have this every morning. It has a little bit of caffeine. It gets me going. Um, it does— This is my eggs.

All right.

I have bacon, eggs, um, pepper, um, cheese, eggs, all the good stuff in there. Garlic, cheese.

Okay.

More cheese. Anyway, in here I have some oranges.

Nice.

I bought it at the store myself because I love orange. I'm an orangey type of girl. And then here we have these barbecue chips. They're my favorite from Siete. An apple, a macro bar, and my homemade bread.

Nice. And sandwich. One thing that has been crucial and critical in our parenting is we give the kids time. to explore their own interests and creativity, and then when we find their interest in what they're teaching themselves and pursuing themselves, we support them. Couple examples, Lily with her horses, the boys with the airsoft, you know. Jonah with mountain bike jumping, you know. He likes to go to these downhill parks and jump.

'Cause the thing you said about like, learning in that thing, it's very true because I learn a lot in my thing and I teach myself a lot a lot of this stuff too.

Raised in a Barn premiere weekend on Abundance Plus this weekend. Join us there. I'll be hanging out in the chat.

You know, I actually was raised in a barn.

I don't know, that's the play on the title. How nervous are you today?

Not nervous at all.

Oh good. Meeting any new friends?

No, not really, because like we are like in a section of our own. This is his group.

The goal today is to talk to somebody you've never talked to before. Oh man, anybody got a quarter? I need to call my mom because she gets really mad if I have to call collect.

I am back inside. I, um, worked to the end of that row and I got the scraps to the pigs, so now I am ready for my breakfast. I'm a little late. Trying to do lots of protein in the morning. Breakfast has been had. Children have been settled into what they're doing. Justin came back. We talked. I am headed back out to the sauna. We will get going on more the next row over. On this one, on this particular plant, I allowed this to split and have two vines from one plant. Not all of these plants do that, but actually a good majority of them do, and that you have to pick. But I'm experimenting with leaving some and just seeing how it goes and seeing what happens. So hopefully Hopefully I will have learned something and I can tell you all about it. We'll see.

Just coming to see you guys. You having a good time? Good, you're doing great. This looks great. We put diverters on the road to keep water off of it. Basically, the kids do chores And basically it's like, for the most part, unless we have something really pressing, what project do you guys want to work on yourself? Just progress the farm, whatever you want to do inside of that, go. It's working out somehow. Don't mind weeding so much. One thing about it is you can see such a difference in such a short amount of time. You can make such a difference in such a short amount of time. Like, we're literally saving plants. We're literally saving our food from the bad guys. Thank you. In the sauna. All right, let's do a sauna session. Just gotta look at it different. How about this? B-roll of the cucumbers, because I don't know if I'll get to the beans. That would be a dream, but 4 shots of the cucumbers. 20 to 30 minutes later, it looks great. About time I get done. These beans are the last one. It's going to be time to do the potatoes again. Oh, I got to do the corn. It's gonna— it's gonna be time to start over again. That's June for you. We tamed about half the beans. We'll go through and fine weed them. I guess early in the morning tomorrow. I gotta start splitting it up. I'm gonna do some gardening early. Yeah, then some farm work. Yeah, split it up, not have to do it all.

Well, I worked in here for almost 2 hours. For 2 hours.

Okay, I'll get your bin. All right, it's too hot, it's too hot. We, we spent our 40 minutes in the daily allowance. Okay, we'll do the bike and then come get these hoes this Afternoon. More bagging broccoli.

More. Well, this is from the other day that I forgot to do. This is from Sunday.

Where's your broccoli being stored?

In that one freezer. If you walk into the freezer room, I'll go with you in just a second.

This is how it looks after you— yep, suck the air out of it. We're starting to get some broccoli, y'all. We divide and conquer for supper. Yeah, you're gonna go get the lettuce. I'm gonna go get your broccoli. If you guys want some rice, you better cook it. Mom and I, we got short ribs, broccoli, and salad. Low carbs. I love this time of year where supper is just out in the backyard. I mean, I love it when supper's in the freezer too, but— and you only got to walk downstairs. Mom has a surprise for us.

Yellow squash.

Isn't this funny? They're a little small. That's enough to do it, huh?

They're a little small.

Is that the squash dance?

Yeah.

Okay, we are learning that the grocery store stuff just doesn't have the nutrients that this stuff has, and our goal is to raise as much of our own food as we can. We think about it in years.

And we have a zucchini, it's like this big around.

Yeah, this big.

No, I'm not, I'm not looking.

Hey, how was the squash?

It's so good. Minnesota squash, the first time is like, where have you been all my life? By the end of the season, we're like ripping out the bushes. And cheese to it.

Oh yeah, it's harder to get sick of the squash casserole. That is neat.

I think I might— if I get enough squash, I might pre-make some squash casseroles.

Squash is a great low-carb fruit. It wants to be low carbs. It's so good. Clip of the day time. Roll it, Austin, from the new movie Raised in a Barn.

If I could thank my parents for one thing, it would be that they didn't put me in the school system, in homeschooling or public school or even private school, which I'm very thankful for. I don't really like to have to learn that type of stuff, and it would just be annoying to do homework and the farm and school all in the same time.

The culture was the kids go to school, we go to work, or whatever, and everybody's segregated, so there's only so much room for culture. Okay, we have dinners together, but it's through here. And that got even worse as we got through high school because then they wanted us to play sports and we got involved in sports and we're going this and that. And so then when is there room for a family culture to develop that a child would be attracted to? I want you guys to see that. It's this Friday, premiere weekend on Abundance Plus. Get in there now. I'll see you this weekend. Let's chat it up.

La la le, la la let me be free.