The Hardest Part About Doing Chores by Myself

Back to my office. I'm back from Texas. Mother New Sphere speaking event. And the kids— sure, we hired a farmhand to come help the kids. Thank you, Ben. I'm gonna give the kids a break, so I guess you guys are gonna get to see what all the morning chores are like. We've got 10 minutes till we're supposed to milk. I needed the rest. I don't want to go more than an hour late on milking. You just don't want to do that with the milk cow. Uh, so let's see if we can do this real quick. I'm curious what's in that box. My knife is not on me. Good morning, Mr. Brad. Now you could still come with. I don't— I doubt you did any chores. We've been feeding the pigs twice a day. Let's start feeding them once a day because that's what we're gonna have to do in the forest. We hope to get them to the forest this week. Oh, oh, snap, guys. You want to earn points with the beautiful one? Wash out your food scrap bucket and certainly pick up any food scraps you dropped on the floor. Is this soaked feed? That might look like enough for those guys. Pouring the water off. So good morning. Up a bit. I doubt that got moved. There's some eggs in there. Oh wait, I don't gotta crawl in there. All I gotta do is this. Well, first of all, let's get the poop out of that. There you go. That needs more hay. Reach in and grab the eggs. All right, let's put it in here. 50 minutes, John. These are absolutely milky. These days, I'll be honest, rarely remembering. So we have to mix it with water in the morning because it's powdery, because we feed chick starter and it's powdery. You lose a lot of that powder if you don't get clumped up. A little bit of that in the pigs' feed. I'm wondering if any of our seed sprouted, our pasture seed. It did! We've got something. Okay, we've got some things. I don't know if that's it, but I think it is. It's a lot the same. Yeah, look, big patch. That's good, turning our gardens here into pasture. Hey, what are you guys doing? Stay with me. The chickens have pretty much leveled this 8 cubic meter cubic yard compost pile. The cage fighters are getting restless. Did I wait too long? So sorry for sleeping in. We get you fighters out of there.

All right, attack!

Love it. This looks like compost more and more every day. It's going from wood chip type material to this, guys. Chickens are helping us by scratching it and manuring on it. Oh my word, there's a tarp. You can barely see it, it's so full of manure. From their night droppings. We'll have to drop that. Maybe this afternoon we can start piling this up again. Holy chicken squat in that. It's not so holy when it gets in your nest box or sidewalk. It is holy when you put it on that compost pile. Overflow water is doing good. A little— got a little gunk in it. It's just some residue hay in here for when— gotta get a fresh food scrap bucket. I think I'll get two since there's so much feed and it needs to last them for the entire day. Is that habit, guys? Right here, bring it on.

Habit. All right, it's 8:16.

All right, we don't store buckets here. If we're ever wondering where our buckets are, just found them.

Find them!

10 minutes later, we got those buckets clean. Oh, you guys getting curious as I am? Just how you get your mouth. You have to look at the picture. Oh, this is exciting! We got a drag.

What's that?

You don't know what that's for? It's to dry. It's to get put on Sally. And drag behind it and it spreads the poop, or the mower. Since the chickens aren't doing that right now because there's no flies to interest them, we're gonna do that. Yeah, it can be used as a harrow, which would be after we plow, but we don't plow. Oh, I wonder if this is a gift. Traditional Mills for the Frugal Family. Low budget should never mean low quality. Preach! Preach, Shannon Stronger. Thank you. One more. I don't think I ordered this. It's another gift. Y'all boys will like that. A T-post puller. Just in time because we're about to have to pull a bunch of T-posts.

Where?

Reset our perimeter. Thank you, Sue. Look at this, just since we were gone, our cover crop jamming. And incidentally, our soil is coming today. Where am I gonna put that though? We need to fill these up. Look how they're sunken in. They're supposed to be up to the bottom. Look, sunken in a lot over there. Almost a full board length over here. Where am I going to put that soil though? We have a door there. I wonder if we need to move you guys out of the way. Penguin, you coming out? Come on out, come on out, honey. Are you okay? Penguin's not looking too good.

Nice.

What kind of T-post puller is this? Field Tough, TUFF. Man, that'll crank it right up. I'm feeling stressed out to hurry up and do this. I'll feel a lot better once I'm bringing the cows in. 15 more minutes. I think I got this. Which doors and Millie's crossing? You got one that you need to get out from our old playground. Oh boy, I think you probably go way down with it.

Watch here.

I think you go way down with it.

Oh, I'm in the wrong spot.

Oh, there you go. Go way down. There you go.

These are— these are—

I think you put it closer to the pole. Try to put it way up to it. That did it. All right, y'all need to be doing something. They kind of been wandering around besides that. Hey, y'all need to have a vision, even if it's playing. Do something or come help me. I am gonna have to recruit them to move this net. That's not chores. I'm giving them a break from their chores. Hey, I do have a non- chore project for you guys later, but it's got to be, you know, before lunch. We're gonna load the soil today for our raised beds, then we need to dump it right in here. So we have to move this net maybe down all the way to the end so we can open it up. I can do it, man! Joyful, come on! Good job, Joyful! I like the spirit. I bet I know what's going on. This is from FieldTuff too. T-U-F-F. I bet they're sending that as a bonus. Well, thank you, thank you, FieldTuff. All right, I need to be heading over there in 5 minutes. One more thing to do. This hasn't been too bad, has it? You guys are free for a little bit. That'll be fun. Thanks, guys.

I just heard them in real fast, right?

If you guys think you could herd them in, keep that open, Jonah, for her. That would be great. Free-range chickens are cute for a little while, and then that holy chicken squad becomes— what's the opposite of holy? Evil chicken poo. And that's what it is, evil chicken poo. Holy smokes, grass is like 6 inches tall here. Wow. Good morning, guys. The handle got under there. That means the kids must have pushed it without hanging the handle. Must have been weeks. Ben pretty much being in charge of the milking. Jonah been pretty much in charge of everything else. There is very little wrong. I want to say there's nothing more wrong than the daily wrongness. I forget to wash buckets sometimes. I forget to soak the feed. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. No grass to speak of in here. Sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep. Cows are way up there. I'm way down here at the luchadors. We gotta take our Henry back to the house, get our stuff ready, and go get them. I see it hadn't rained since I left. That's good. It's getting to be a real muddy mess. Made it over here. I think the hardest part about doing this by yourself is the by yourself part. It's lonely. It's not nearly as fun to have somebody to talk to. So yes, I appreciate the kids' hard work and them growing up, but even somebody like Gideon coming with is a companion and can help tremendously. So normally there's two, two on this job, right guys? Two. Somebody to herd the calves and then somebody to herd the mamas. There's only one, so the calves are gonna get a little bit of the milk, and I think that'll be okay.

Come on, come on, come on.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! I opened the door. I opened the net. Yeah, okay. Now see, they're running over there. That little calf will get all the milk. Let's go! Come on, come on, let's go!

Come on, come on!

Hey, hey, hey, hey! They're wearing me out. It's a long walk. Okay, with Stud Muffin coming down, who knows what's gonna happen. I didn't put the lanes up because I was hoping to just bring the ladies. He doesn't really know the drill, so who knows. Doing what we want him to do, crossing the road, going towards the stanchion. We did it! Oh, Stud's going in. All right, what do we do? What do we do? She's never seen studs in there. Hey, okay, we got one mama up.

We gotta get him out of here.

Let's get him out, her back in. Let's go, Flossie! Yes!

There we go.

We got the drill, don't we? We got it down. Oh my gosh, guys. Pre-kids. All those chores. The loneliness. Where— I think my kids are coming along. Just in time. Hamburger, you're chill. For a band from Flossie, it's so surprising that you're so chill. Yay! A gallon and a half. What have you been doing, Mr. Brown?

Uh, playing.

Besides, you pull or plunge when we were gone? No, I didn't either. I did find a public river but forgot our swimsuits. Might have had something to do with us waking up at the time we were supposed to leave. We kind of rushed. The, the water's looking nice and clear. It's still cold. Well, you aren't back until you've got into this creek. Don't talk to me, Maud. She's giving me the devil eyes.

Why isn't it—

Good job, ladies! Why isn't it stopping, she says. Good job, ladies! You feel like you're home now?

Yes, I love being—

You've had your water, you've now bathed in your water, I know, and you've now cold plunged in your water. We're home! All right, working time. I did get a new chair. This thing is much more comfortable for editing. Thank you very much, Rebecca. Jonas got set up for the day. You got a movie coming on your channel today? Then what's it about?

Uh, it's a skit.

What do you— what do you need from me here? Okay, let's just load out a Micro Pro. Okay, well, by the time you guys are seeing this, hopefully you're gonna get this done today. It'll be up on the Rhodes Bros channel. Knocking this out. Oh, we got a guest!

How's it going, little man?

Oh yeah, that sounds like a cow.

Come see me!

Come see Rebecca, we missed you!

Baby cow! Baby cow! Yeah, I like that.

Making moo noises.

The baby cow. You want to watch this with me?

Yeah. Rebecca's got to approve the edit. Jonah's movie.

Hey, you're on the left!

Oh, sirens and everything. Bike speeding!

His bike's speeding. He's enjoying the show.

The soil's here, guys. Boy, you guys don't miss a truck outing, do you?

No.

Smells scrumptious. You guys want to jump on it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's see.

Oh, I don't think it's soft. I don't think it's that soft. That's a big dirt pile. Rebecca, well, we got our workout for the next couple of days. Your soil's here. Oh, awesome.

Did he dump it?

She.

Did she dump it?

Yeah, listen to you. It's a she dump truck driver. Sorry. What makes you think it's a he?

I knew it was a she because they told me it was Angie.

Yeah.

But I just—

She's cool. What have you guys been working on? This is a paper doll set? Yeah. Tell me about it.

This is the dad. This is the mom. This is the grandma. This is the drink. This is the—

That's hilarious.

Oldest daughter, the second oldest.

Are these seat belts? Are they in a car? Yeah.

Oh, I like it.

And this is a vlogging camera? Camera.

Yeah, and we even have an office in the, um, house.

I like it for editing. Good job. Oh, oh, that's it, that's the last of our skim. Oh no, it just started raining, pouring. Gosh, if I would have known that, I would have gone and done the chores, came back after dinner. Done with the vlog, ready to go.

We're still playing.

You have been playing this all day.

What's up?

Light afternoon. We just gotta throw hay to the sheep and the cows. What are you gonna get, minerals? Yeah, we having a problem because let's fill up our buckets with water and there's milk residue. We need to have designated milk buckets. Thank you, king-size Sharpie. How about that? I'm gonna drive my sweetheart around.

You are? Hey, Steadley.

All right, we're back. I'll get you a couple of flakes to take to the sheep. Oh, we got to get the Calf's up.

That's fine.

We're gonna go herd the calves in though. I've opened the fence here, Beck, so don't let them escape. How cute, two little guys munching together. Sneak around here and get just them. We're gonna sneak around stud. See if we can get these guys out. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Okay, he ran right back into the mix. Just going to annoy him until he does it.

Come on, come on, come on.

Y'all know. Hey! Who's gonna get annoyed first, them or me? Come on, come on, come on, come on. There we go. Come on, come on. There we go. Come on. Hey, hey, hey, hey, come on. You might get it now. They got it. Good boys.

Come on, get off of it.

Right, what are you feeding us?

This is egg.

I'd be careful of him spilling that. Not much left. They're hungry for that, aren't they? She eating right out of the container with you. They eat that vitamin C? Yeah, every day. Yep. Look at these guys.

It's right here.

Now they eat a lot of it. What's wrong that they need vitamin C?

Well, some of them have diarrhea.

Oh, is that what it is?

So she kind of wastes a lot too.

Oh, look, she's coming in from the other side. It's amazing how they know what they need. Oh, they get in your feet or no problem.

Yeah, back up.

Come on. He's been turned quite the gentleman, hasn't he? He's very mild-tempered.

He's way better than Bear was.

Gosh, Bear was terrible.

Watch this.

Hey, bye Rebecca! See you at the house. You want some exercise, don't you?

I'll leave you to exercise, mister.