The day before Our Epic Adventure

Hey, you want to go with me? You want me to hold them? You can bring them. There you go. All right, here. Good job, buddy. You gonna help find your Crocs? Happy Sunday seed day. A unique day today. All right, the goal this morning is just to put a pulse on the farm. You want to go put a pulse on the farm?

Yeah.

Yeah? Okay. Are you gonna stay with me? You're going with Gideon? Oh, go with me. Okay, good. Very soon after farm pole, more bikepacking gear. Not backpacking, bikepacking. We're going on an epic 100-day bikepacking trip, hopefully starting tomorrow if the weather holds. So we're staging today. Somewhere in the middle of that, we're going to a friend's food truck at a local grass-fed-based farm. Somebody in here? The, uh, the bathroom. I was thinking this was just too convenient. All right, we're walking. Okay, is that all right, or do you want to ride the four-wheeler? You want to be carried? I love to carry you. Come on. All right, I'm gonna miss you on my trip. All right, I'll get the, uh, I'll get the Ergo and the food scraps. Okay, you wait on the steps. You and I join them. I get you to put you in the Ergo. He's leaning towards the Ergo lately. He was not an Ergo kid. All the rest of them were. I got you, I got you. Underlying all this I need to be in the moment and enjoy everyone, particularly those that we're going to be leaving behind, like Gideon and Henry's mama Lily. What'd you do wrong? It looks like you went too wide with that end. Is the fence off still? Yeah. Okay, well, let's leave it open. That's how we'll get them in, and I'll help you get it shut. Okay, is it off? See how this went. He's wanting to know why it didn't shut. I love it, seeking advice. That end piece just went kind of—

what?

See if that doesn't— yeah, let's move them over a bit. I mean, we're nook and cranny farming, honey. Let's get in that little nook between the horse corral and the pretty place. We've got our breeding ram And our heifer, we're thinking about growing up for a family cow, a third milk cow for us. That's Stud Muffin's descendant. We got to keep her away from He-Man. He can get bred as early as 6 months, but if you want a family cow, you want them to get nice and mature and not breed them till they're like 20 months. What if they breed and have a— what would it be called? They would have a shao. A shao. Harriet, get feisty and have a shao. Don't do it. Don't y'all have a shao. Sheep and cows can't breed. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I didn't want him to bite me. Actually, I didn't want him to knock the food pan over. One more thing, let's get some of these dominant weeds, then we're gonna go pack, kill, uh, Japanese What are these called? I don't know. Asian beetle. This is the beyond organic way. Just squash them every morning. He wants to go play with Gideon. I'm done. He sent me bring the toys over there. Here. Hey, why don't we play over there at that? Okay, you want to see what it's going to take to bike pack 5 days? And not just bike 5 days into the wilderness, make movies about it. It's a lot. Can you harvest cream for me please? All this milk, milk in abundance, and there's more in here. Hopefully not crushed. The glasses have been breaking. Oh yeah, they're bringing in more directly. Do at least 1 quart for our drinking, okay? And then the rest in half gallons. Okay, the cabin. First staging area. Hammocks for sleeping. Meat in cans. Meat sticks. Electrolytes. Water filter. Ponchos. It's gonna rain every day but Thursday and Friday. I guess this would be freeze-dried rice, right?

Freeze-dried rice.

Freeze-dried eggs.

These are eggs, but you have to— I thought that they were cooked eggs. Yeah, and then they would just put hot water on them to reconstitute them, but no, it's raw.

Yeah, this is not Teflon. This is, uh, Ceramic coated, it's a non-stick. Of course, stainless steel bowls, forks. Thank God for Rebecca getting our supplies over here, getting everything we need. I, I wouldn't have— wouldn't have been as good as you, Beck.

Let's just say it has been a labor of love.

You've never packed so much and not gone on a trip.

I've never packed so much or done so much to never actually do anything.

Of course, they're staging the bikes. We're putting all the gear over here now. It's supposed to rain today, it's supposed to rain tomorrow. Maybe we're gonna get lucky and can start tomorrow. Jonah's putting put the bike rack on. We got it all ready to stage and pack. That's gonna have to come this afternoon. It's gonna be chaos. Sam and John coming, Austin coming. Everybody ready first? Hey, we don't have to worry about making lunch or cleaning it up. Let's go over the mountain to the farm. That's custom. That's cool. You getting chunky, Waylon? That's who we're going to see. Our friend Ben, Root Down Farm. Hey, Farmer Chef. Are you the only food truck here? We're the only food truck here. You got the deal. Got the deal. How come he chose you of all the food trucks? It's, um, it's actually part of this market. This, um, I met these people that do this market thing and they say, hey, we're setting up here every Sunday, or not every Sunday, one Sunday a month. So we just landed it. It's not a breakfast burger, it's just breakfast hamburgers, or— but people make a breakfast burger, they throw an egg on it. Okay. You know, or bacon. Yeah. All right. But we don't have coffee, That sign's lying. It's post-hour time. Ready? All right, steer it. Stay on the platform. Stay on the platform. Watch out, Mr. Brown. Watch your foot. Here we go. Double cheeseburger. Best burger in town. Come on, what? Culvert slide. Andrew's going crazy. We are back, back to packing. Let's see how Austin is doing in his setup. How you doing, Austin? Good. I almost feel like I've got not enough stuff. Is this your backpack? Yeah. Okay, you have a backpack. Well, you got to fit all that in there. I thought that was the community food. Nope, this is Austin, and you have to have room for some community stuff. We have a bigger backpack if you need it. And where's all your camera gear going? Okay, look at this, Justin.

Okay, so you can put his phone back.

That is nice. What are you packing right now?

I'm just—

oh, really?

So what I've done is I've taken like— this is their 2 days of food minus the meat.

Nice.

And I'm just kind of putting that all in here, double protection, so that it— because that's gonna fall to the bottom of the backpack. So I figured this is going to be better.

It's a bikepacking explosion in here. Are you well equipped or ill equipped? I think I'm well equipped. I've been trying to define our situation here. Yeah, we're— we are prepared. We are maybe inexperienced. We were very prepared. I think that's right. And we're undertrained. Inexperienced and undertrained. What do you think? We got a lot of heart. Yep, we got heart. That's all we need. We got heart. Hey boys! You know what you're getting into? His pack's already stuffed. What do you got in there? Uh, all my stuff out. Clothes. You can take extra stuff. You have to fit in. Show them all the stuff he's got to fit.

You each have this much stuff.

You have to carry this plus some community stuff when you spread out among people. Okay, this will be my third headlamp. Don't take it. Okay. Is it gonna work? I'm just working on that. Heck yeah. You gotta put some community stuff in your bag though. Testing the stove. What are you gonna do for coffee? Some energy packets. Little energy packets I got. Have you tried them before? Yeah, they don't taste good. They satisfy you though? They satisfy that need for speed? Yeah.

Don't let me forget, I need to give you cups and 2/3 cup.

Well, why don't you get it now? Why don't you send Gideon or— because I don't know where it's at.

I'll have to find it.

We've got us all packed, and then Josiah came to me and he said There's no water. We were about to go to town and get last-minute supplies. We're gonna have to go up the mountain and figure out why the heck we don't have any water. This is how it happens. Happens like this, isn't it? The day before vacation. It's not vacation. If you call it a vacation. No water is coming off the gravity feed water, Jonah. And I just thought with Josiah, you know, we're gonna be gone, it's gonna be Annie. Why don't we just hook it up to the well, the hose? Yeah, totally. What do you think? You're kind of the brain. We weren't sure. Now all we got to do is get an adapter, right? We need a hose then. We use this for filling up our wood-fired hot tub, gravity-fed down into our tub. So we'll need a splitter. What we're doing is we're going to push well water into our gravity-fed water system. Sure, we're pushing it up, but it's so much more reliable. There's, there's a lot of work we need to do on that gravity-fed to be reliable. We'll need a female to female. Here's the thing, We were gonna go to town, last minute shopping. We're gonna get 8 hours sleep tonight, so we wanted to leave first thing in the morning, but it's gonna be— hey, when we go to bed, we're not getting up till 8 hours later. So if we're gonna get up at 5:30, that means we need to be in bed at 8:30. If that doesn't happen, then that just— that means we're gonna have to delay start in the morning. Sleep has to be priority. 8 hours. Slept 10 hours last night. 8 hours minimum. I didn't see any female-to-female connectors, which we need to get water going right now. We can hold off on a splitter. Those cows need water now. Very hot. Who knows how long they've been without. They've knocked over their auto shut-off, and that means it's drained, and that means it's drained the tank up on top of the mountain. It's not refilling fast. Hopefully there's a female-to-female there. That's a male-to-male. This is This is, this is not garden hose thread though. Please work, that's all we got. Hold on, let me look at it. Yeah, it looks like the same. Why do you need that? I need something like that or this, uh, because the hose does not have one. It came out or something. You must have to take that. Yeah, but I can't get it out. Yeah, why is this your Leatherman and where's mine? Yeah, I must have Where is— well, not in my pocket. This is a quick fix, but I also feel more sure about this fix. For the farm sitter, you want it to be as easy as possible for them. Lily and Annie will be running the farm. We're gonna go check, make sure it works, and make sure you turn it off at the top to cut it off, you know what I mean? Turned it on, it's flowing nicely. Make sure it's shut off down here. She came running. That's not good. It's good now. It's working real good now though, isn't it? It may be slow because it's filling up the water lines. Let's go make sure it's off up there so it doesn't go any higher. How do you— why did you do that? Make sure it doesn't go any higher. Oh, okay. You already been up there and did that? Yeah. Okay. Oh boy, is this our future?

Yeah, it is for 24 hours.

Let me tell you, if it's raining like this, we're not setting out because I don't want the bikes to be wet. It's supposed to rain like this in the morning.

Um, I'm gonna check the weather again tonight.

I don't know. The local weather. Ready? You go and I'm gonna follow you. Ah! Replacement tubes. Is this for you?

Oh my goodness, it's so cute!

What is that? It's for cup.

So you want to sleep with Josiah tonight? Who do you want to sleep with?

Are you pointing at me?

La la la, let me be free.