the Homestead Side Hustler

Happy day! Let's be honest, have you ever watched me while sitting on that? These little devices enable a lot of things. Are you watching me on this right now? Then you're most definitely, definitely a side hustler homesteader. That's a good thing. Bear with me. Where's our ride, Gideon? Oh, okay. Well, maybe you haven't ever scrolled me while sitting on the junk. Have you ever emailed, texted, phone called— that might be a little awkward— or otherwise has red flagged your phone. I'm sorry, we can't take this book back. Why not? It's been flagged.

Flagged?

It's been in the bathroom. Good morning, lovers. This means January, February babies. I like it. That means October harvest. That means we don't need this whole bay. I'm kind of thinking we get them back in this bay. Hey boys, does anybody want to get 8 inches of wood chips up here? And then maybe we can compost this material before the end of the season. We want to catch that while it's warm. Let's see what the boys are doing. I think they're doing something secretive. Bike's not good? No. You sure? Yeah, it's all hosed out. Okay, Lily's bike's bummed out. She's been using it on chores. I was gonna buy her a wheel, but you think you can fix it? Yeah. That's nice of you guys. What made you do that?

I don't know, I just saw it.

Does anybody want to get me 8 inches of wood chips up here to the sheep stall?

Sure.

You want to work on this access road? Yeah, in the pasture or something. Jody, do you think— has he seen how you do it? Can you show him? Sure. Can you guys take some turns today? Let's knock it out. That can be the project for you guys this morning. If you've ever red flagged your phone, you are probably a homestead side hustler. This means you work full-time— I imagine this is most of you— and you fit in homesteading in the nook and crannies of the early morning, after work, and the weekends. Look at me. We're off the toilet, right? Okay. You are a homestead hero. I mean, just be careful making eye contact while you're doing your business. You know, you are a homestead hero. Everything working out okay? Yeah. It's just got air in it. No, we have to blow it up. What about a seat? She's complaining about her seat too. Okay, nice. Okay, they're gonna be a minute. Hang tight. We'll present this to Lily. Let's get the milk stuff Ready? You are like my friend Seth McKenna. He's a side hustling homestead full-time construction worker. Every morning he enjoys his homestead view while taking coffee with his wife, and then with a couple of kids in tow, he goes and milks the cow. Then it's off to work, and after work, more chores. Who's with me?

I'm probably gonna get my horse next winter, and I learned that When it's cold, you have to warm up the horses and sit with your— okay, please.

She's always talking about horses. I was gonna go get Alfalfa, but that's where the boys are, so we kind of need to stay away from there for a minute. So let's hang on this with Seth here. We'll go surprise her in a second. And then on the weekend, Seth does more projects for the homestead. Why don't you guys meet him? We shot a whole television show called Elevated on him. He's episode 2. Him and his family, Ashley, and their beautiful kids. But we went and toured their place in August, and I captured some vlog footage. Why don't you guys enjoy that while we get the smoke stuff ready? Yeah, surreal being at my old home site. This is where I grew up, just 3 miles from Burl Holler. Dad had both properties. We grew up going to Burl Holler. I always loved it, and for for whatever reason, I always loved it even more than this. What's your duty this morning, Layton? Um, I woke up, we drank coffee, and then— oh, you drank some coffee too? And then we came down here and then we just milked. How young did he start drinking coffee?

He don't drink it much.

Well, you're gonna have plenty of cream for that coffee. Why aren't you tame? Is that because you're bottle fed? One thing that we've helped Seth do, he's got this Well, it's semi-mobile. I think he can— I don't know if he can move it with his little tractor, but he's moving away from that. And we gave him our old milk stanchion. It was too big for our farm. It's too big for Sally. It was hard for Sally to pull it. It's too beefy. But since— look, they're all jonesing for this alfalfa. Since he uses a Kubota, it's a tractor, not a side-by-side, he can easily pull this thing. They're gonna soon be bigger than you. Climbing tree. Played on that when I was a kid. And this rock— look at this rock, guys. Wouldn't you imagine you're a child again? This rock was a lot of fun. Should we do it again for old time's sake? Has this little built-in table right here, branch that comes along the top. Had a lot of fun on this rock. Let me tell you something too about this tree. It's probably older than the country. That is probably older than America. It's probably over 300 years old. Beautiful white oak. He's got a gigantic chicken tractor here. There's one thing that inspires me about this? Well, one, Seth works as a carpenter full-time. They're still managing to do this— run a milk cow, have a garden. Two, this is a total north-facing slope. So one, it's north-facing, that doesn't get optimal sun, and it's on a slope, but that doesn't stop them. And they've ended up having a beautiful garden. A gator? I don't know, I'm not sure. Is that gonna make it up the hill? It's with you in it, it pushes into its limits. How old is she?

She's 7.

She's already driving the Gator. We had some friends over, there was a kid maybe probably 13, 14, and I said, hey, go get the car and bring it over here, and they looked at me like I'm crazy. It's gonna make it up this hill, CD. I don't know. CD filming for Elevating. Step up your elevating.

Put your machines away.

Yeah, they could use this big side-by-side, couldn't they? This doesn't look steep on camera, but it's steep. Probably a 35-degree, 30-degree slope. For the show, this was all woods. You can see the pile of debris we piled up from— they have a vision for an orchard here. They've planted grass and it looks, it looks really good.

Pigs are getting close.

Yeah, they are. And what are you using the pigs for?

Pigs, we use them for all of our scraps. We use them to clear out the woods, underbrush, and we also turn woods into bacon.

That's the line of the day. Use pigs to turn woods into bacon and sausage. How often you got to fill this up?

This holds 50 pounds. They go through it about 3 or 4 days.

Excited to show you guys this.

So raising pastured pork in a mountain setting, a spring is— will be your best friend for raising any animal in a pasture setting.

How does this work from here to the spring? This is a food-grade barrel with a nipple water on it.

Yep.

And you've run a water hose into it to feed it.

The nipple water works really well. For pigs because they like to get nasty, you know, get in a water trough.

So before this, you had to pump water. We're probably elevated, uh, 150 feet elevation gain.

Yeah, it's pretty close to that.

So you're going to— you're going to stress out the pump.

It's been 90 degrees this week, up in the 90s, which is pretty hot. Yeah, so keeping— making sure all the animals are hydrated is critical.

Us mountain people really appreciate this. If you aren't in the mountains, you might not get it, but getting water up a hill is a big deal. And now you've turned that problem into a solution. By finding water above you.

Some of the trouble we've ran into with the spring, we've had a drought, a small drought lately.

So are they feeding us, filling this up? Austin, camera B, what have you learned from Seth? Makes me wish I had a stream on the top of my— See, your advantage is you're, you're flattish, so you can have all this pasture and flatland, but you won't have gravity-fed water.

So basically this is just a, uh, A box that keeps all the dirt pushed back for when I backfill. And then inside this box is the manifold or the cutoff system.

That's the reservoir. Now we're going to the spring box. It's a bit of a filter. Yes, you just got a trickle down here. Do you have a backup plan when this stops keeping up with the pigs if it doesn't rain for a week?

Yeah, well, we will end up using the well if we have to.

Okay, one more thing to show you. That's the spring head.

No overflow out of that one. It's taking it all in, isn't When it's the wet season, it flows out this side too. So what I might do is— of course it's dry now, but I could, I could tap this side of it as well.

You guys recognize that mini-me? We also gave him the mini-me. He needed to move the chickens around in the pasture, and they've been using it. We got eggs, so we're gonna pull the eggs like 3 times to make sure we get it on film.

Work gets in the way of farming. I wish I could just farm full-time.

Oh yeah, do you like it better than your work?

Oh yeah.

Where's the boys?

I don't know. Salma's right over there. Isn't Seth and his farm and his family so cool? Many of you guys are, uh, so much like Seth, and he's just a hard-working guy, side hustler, homesteader. That's why I wanted to help him. Hey, are you guys ready? Okay, come on, let's do it. Lily, here's you a fixed bike. I took all the parts from You want to give it a try? She's been using her bike on the homestead chores. Yep, that was nice to Jonah, wasn't it?

Yeah, thank you, Jonah.

Airing the tires and everything. He's looking out for you. That's good, that's good. Look at that, now we get more done on the homestead. You guys can watch their amazing story plus their homestead transformation that we did with them for our show Elevated. It will be episode 2. We're premiering the first episode this weekend, October 6th, and then, uh, the McKinneys will be the next weekend, and then we have 2 more after that, on during all the month of October, every Friday. Find yourself pulling for the McKinneys because you are them. You'll, you'll enjoy seeing us. We cleared their— and this all surprises them— cleared their forest so they— for their orchard, installed a gravity-fed water system, set up weekly paddocks. It doesn't have time to move cows every day, but once a week. Oh, and we surprised them with a built milk sled and Chickshaw Mini Me. You don't want to miss that. And well, here's a little tease. Here's a little trailer while we move and set up the animals.

The reason we wanted to grow our own food and have our own homestead is so that we could have the best quality food that we could have and the quantity to meet the demands of a large family and also the security of having your own food.

A big thing for me is knowing where my food comes from. While I can, yes, go to the store and pick up organic vegetables or even organic meat, but I don't always know where those vegetables or fruit or the meat is coming from. When I think of the word elevated, I think of making something better, beautifying something, making it more usable. Through all of this, we've made things definitely more usable for our family. Some things more so like the view is better, but then other things where it's like an orchard, you know, where we're going to be able to plant and grow things for years and years to come. You know, for even our kids and their kids.

Doesn't that look like a fun show? It's a fun show. I've seen it. It's so good. I hear a mom calling me. I forgot the radio. Whoops. Henry's probably long ready to come out here. If you're like the McKennys, you are short on time. But I can still help you inside Abundance Plus. Are you ready to go with me? Toddler does not belong in the house with Mama. In the morning when there's fun chores to do, right? Much better place for a toddler. Rebecca threw up. She thinks she might have took too much salt this morning though, so we don't think it's serious. There's your ice. Sit over here. What am I gonna do? Lily's out there waiting on me. Let's get Mom some tea. Lily was holding the cows up while I was setting up the supplies. She's gonna be waiting. You feel nauseous or anything, or you think it's just you ate too much salt? Well, there's your tea. He's He's yelling. I need to be out there, back there with Lily. I'm so sorry. You're not going to drink that? I was going to take him and his tea. Okay. Can I put your tea in this? How's that? Let's see, where was I in my notes? Oh, how we can help you with Abundance Plus. You might catch an ad-free vlog, half of one, maybe, maybe while you're on the toilet. Come on, Henry. You might search the learning library for straight-to-the-point do-it-yourself content like our pig water. You might want to build a pig water out of a barrel. I teach you in 2 minutes with links to all the stuff you need. What you need? Okay, because I feel like if I want somebody to help me milk— and it's probably pretty much over, she's got to be at lessons in 13 minutes. Third way you might use it as a homestead hustler is a weekly movie night with the fam. Take time, watch a great story with your family. You're going to enjoy the docu-serieses. You're going to enjoy Elevated, Rooted, Divergence, Discovering Home, all these serieses, documentaries and stuff like that inside Abundance Plus. The Great American Farm Tour, all inside there. Just take a movie night for the next— probably you could probably go half a year. Okay, Lily, you're gonna have to go to your lesson, so bring them down and let one over. I'll have to milk one at a time. This sweater is a little bit of overkill this morning. This is what you have to do if you have to milk two cows by yourself. Preferably we get the subordinate cow over first. You always want to milk the dominant cow. First, and we have some warming it down. So this is not in her routine though, so she's gonna be like, what's going on?

No, honey, stay here. I gotta go do my lesson.

See ya. Vanilla's happy. We'll herd her back in a second. Hey, are you available? Heck yeah. Our road ribbons are right through the fence. Jonah was wondering, well, what do I do, uh, when I come here with the road and this is in the cow net? Well, we can just move the net up hill. See how crooked this side-by-side is sitting on this? We need water and utilities through our pastures anyway, so also why not a road then? Make the steeper area so much comfortably more accessible. Plus, I'm kind of excited about using these as walking trails, mountain biking trails, just being able to utilize our property more. Jonah thinks he'll make it this far. You think you can get 200 feet in a day? I think you can get 200 feet in a day. You could get all the way across in a week. Next feature could be well utilized. I can't think of anybody better than a Homestead Hustler for this next one, and that is the ability to text me at the premium level. Sure, it's a little bit more money, but you are short on time. You just need to get your direct answer. Listen, you text me now, and by your next bowel movement assuming it's 24 hours, you'll have an answer. And if I can't help you, which sometimes I can't, I'll find an aunt or uncle who can. That's only open till October 6th, so you're gonna want to get in on it. Yeah, milk this cow before she runs out of alfalfa. October 6th is the magic date. You get in on the first premiere weekend of Elevated, and then there's a premiere weekend for the next, uh, 4 weeks, plus the bonuses of being able to sign up for a mastermind group, being connected to a group, also a cheat sheet if you want to organize your own Elevated workday. Now I realize time is limited with you, so I'll shut up. Enough of this pitch. Get this: abundanceplus.com or link down in the description. Jonah just bossed me around. He's having me move this fence up so they can do this road right here. Morning, it's just part of their chores. In the afternoon, they can get paid. We'll see if they can, uh, endure today. Put in a long stretch. Their goal though is to Sally, and I think they're wanting to do that in the morning. Oh my word, it's almost 11 o'clock, only 11 o'clock, and they're pretty much at their goal for the day. So I think they're going to exceed it. Look at this, we drove up it, it was super nice, and I didn't have to drive through our pasture, which if you drive through your pasture, it's bad, it's bad, it compacts it. Grass doesn't grow as good. And we're nook and cranny farming, need our grass to be as productive as possible to accommodate all this food we're growing. Jonah, what do you think? More of this? Not right, folks. He's calling it. You calling it? You made it to your goal. Yeah. You think we can get— well, you got your lesson. Do you think we can get Josiah to work for another hour? Hey, you gonna go dig for a while?

Yeah.

Heck yeah. You know what to do. We gotta take out this tree. Yeah, one of our newly planted trees right in the way. Folks, don't be afraid to do something even if it's wrong, even if you end up with a little bit of rework. It's It's okay. Best thing to do is have the access road in the right place. The tree can be moved or replanted. They've gotten so skilled with this thing they can remove a T-post with it. Wow. Digging a new hole. Second step, digging from the high side, adding to the low side. Oh shoot, crashed it in the tree and way up there. I've thrown sticks.

Watch out, here it comes.

You think you can hit that tree that hard? It's shaking it. Josiah thinks maybe he can shake it down. You could duct tape that. You think? Oh wow, yeah, I doubted that. I really did. I think the excavator could shake it out, but you did good. And good job making your grading goals today. Good morning. We're lucky y'all are still in. They've had a riot. I'm gonna put this pan a lot further up this time. Acorns, acorns. I'm gonna finish you guys off with acorns. Homestead house remodel. The beautiful one's up to something. What you doing? I'm measuring for Jenna, the designer. Ask me. Yeah, she's doing my kitchen layout right now. By the way, the locust we worked so hard to harvest has been at the mill. It's coming back today. I think we'll want to stain it to keep that yellow color. I need the forks on the track loader because the decking's coming. Locust is here. Well, here it is. Absolutely stunning stuff. Love that yellow. Boys are up to something tomorrow. I'm gonna tease it here. You don't want to miss it. Let me give you a hint. I got them these lights. Can you see them? I'm making them wear these vests and I'm gonna follow them in the truck. They have this grand idea to bike to downtown Hendersonville for pizza, so we're gonna make a video for their channel. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Tune in tomorrow. But in the meantime, for all you side hustle homesteaders, I got you back. Abundance Plus, or link down in the description. Get in there now while you can during fall registration. Talk to you later.