the Lunatic Homesteader

It happens from time to time.

It happens.

I lost the vlog. I lost the front end of it. But no worries, most of it's the kind that I can recap easily. Are you gonna come do your dog chores? Come on. But I still did capture Lily's horse lessons and the grand finale of biking the brand new access roads in the pasture. I guess he's not gonna do that. So here's the recap. I I am a lunatic homesteader.

I knew it!

We talked about all the different homesteaders: the dreamers, the contributors, you know, the people that, uh, you know, sell produce, give produce away, have people out to the farm. You can be a little bit of these all the time. And then we talked about the side hustler, person who's got the full-time job and homesteading on the side. That one is most of you, and a special place in my heart for all of you. But this one's For all you lunatics or lunatic wannabes. That's me, that, that, that's me. Lunatic homesteaders have gone all in. They've gone off the rails. They have the her homesteading life and everything else of their life then revolves around that. Take my friends the Holts. You might know them from the Growing Up Holt YouTube channel. Chucked it all, left California, moved to North Carolina, and full-time homestead. And then make it work. A side job doing electric work, creating content for YouTube, a food truck business, just whatever it takes. Meet them now. We went there in August as a follow-up of their elevated episode. We totally flipped their homestead. Go and, well, meet them if you haven't already. Meat chickens and a homemade tractor, a micro pole barn coming up. We got the opposite extreme— Seth and his little tiny Gator to the longest side-by-side I've ever seen. Oh look, I found some more cool glasses. I am racking up at the Holts. What?

Oh boy, this is one of the puppies.

This is your near future. It's one of the puppies from last time, and I guess that tomcat is fertile. Look at all these kittens. There's a kitten here, there's a kitten here, there's a couple of kittens here. Lily's getting a tomcat from him. You'll have kittens soon enough. She already asked me to keep one of those kittens that he has. And you want one of these? No, you're gonna be the crazy cat lady.

I already am.

No turning back. I was saying there's 4 still available. Are y'all getting a puppy?

Yeah, I think so. This one is picking me right here.

No, he says.

Obviously.

You're the one going for it. We still got our puppy. We need an outdoor puppy.

You need a cat?

I've got lots of cats.

And a cat.

I'm never gonna financially recover from this. Do you want this puppy? Oh, so cute. You got a baby to take care of first. He'll see, just let you have a baby, and then he's like, okay, we might as well get a dog. We're strapped down and we're stuck here. We might as well get all the things. Ben, show us what you've done with the barn. We cleaned this out for his episode. I'm kind of curious to see if you've put anything in here.

Now I know where all my tools are.

Heck yeah.

Garden section. This is future projects, so we have some bee stuff there. Lawnmower section, which I don't know if we need 3 lawnmowers, but we have 3 lawnmowers. We got all the wood and extra building material put up in the rafters, so it's kind of out of the way. Over here we're starting to do some food drying stuff. So all our potatoes are over here, our garlic and our onions that we harvested over here. And so it's just awesome to have like a full-on space.

Barn looks super good, they've kept it up really nice. Your garden though looks so nice. You got a little fall stuff coming in, you got a little cabbage.

We do, yeah, it's in its transition period.

So yeah, yeah, this is a hard time of the year. Are you guys burnt out?

No, never burnt out.

No, we're not burnt out.

Is that sarcastic? No, it wasn't sarcastic. This is a burnout time of the year. I was burnt out when my tomatoes all started going bad.

That was a bummer.

When was that?

About a week and a half ago.

Okay.

And the goats got into that tunnel and just destroyed it.

So you were burnt out a week and a half ago?

Yeah.

But now you're better?

I'm refreshed.

So how did you push through that? How did you get refreshed? You just went in and took a shower? Is that what this is?

Yeah, we took a shower.

Because you didn't do nothing to get through that. It just passed.

It just passed.

This looks great. This is where we cleared— the trees survived, the trees we marked, this Fresh pasture. That was all woods. And this too, you guys have just got them in here to help you get this down. This was like 5 feet weeds. How are you getting water up here every day?

In the Cub Cadet.

Oh, okay. The mower?

No, the Cub Cadet side by side.

Oh, the Cub Cadet makes a side by side? How's your fly traps working around the stanchion?

Medium.

Does it actually— oh, medium. Why do you say that? Because they're full. You know what I'm afraid these fly traps do? Just attract flies. It kills a lot. But isn't it toxic? It's not like you can feed it to your chickens, can you?

No, I don't, but I feel bad for them.

The flies?

Yeah, no, the cows.

They'll be okay, I assure you. The cows. Your cows are not— don't have a lot of flies on them. I think they have less than mine, so maybe these fly traps are working. These catch flies like crazy.

I know, it's kind of gross how many get in there. Kind of smells like old fish.

Kind of smells like dead people. Dead things.

Dead things, not dead people.

I don't— I like— how do you know what dead people smell like? Briann's got a nice sitting spot up here.

That's her sitting rock.

Look at this view. Andrew's good about that kind of stuff. He's a sentimental fella. Your tomatoes made it.

The tomatoes made it. The trellises did do good.

It was inspiring how you just took branches off the farm, just cut them. You didn't cure them or nothing, just cut them, stuck them into the ground, and it worked. So who cares? Yeah, it cost you nothing in dollar bills.

Zero.

Yeah, let me help you hold it in there.

Nothing more adorable than a baby holding a baby. Little cornhole at the Harvest Party. Let's see it. Right when the ladies go by. I love it. Right on the board. Here we go, we're coming back. 6 to 17, right? Here we go. Gotta get one on the board at least. Oh, commentary here. Austin threw it. Now they're nervous. They're afraid of the camera. My trick's working. Both of them missed the board. You won't hurt it. Oh, oh, CB, we're bringing— we're coming back. So we got 1 point. Well, he still has 1. Oh, CB, we got 1 more.

I get 3 more.

Oh, look who's here. Hey, I know what you're doing. You're not dropping things off, you're showing off this truck. No, I am. I didn't want to carry them darn apples. I didn't want to carry them darn apples all the way up a hill. No way.

See, You can tell me.

No AC, got her shirt unbuttoned. Good party, bud. Thanks, man.

You too, man.

Did good. The spread. Gotta go to a homestead potluck because this is grown from the farm in Fruitland. This is grown from the farm over in Hooper's Creek. This is grown from a farm in Mars Hill. This is from a farm in Edneyville. I don't know the story of the rest.

All right, there you go.

Okay, there it is. There. Oh, okay, so we got 3 points, so that's tied. 11-11. What's your strategy? To win.

To beat him.

Because he— we're undefeated. Yeah, we've already beat them. That's not helping you. Yeah, just keep doing that. You'll be all right. Has she gotten one in the hole yet?

Oh, yeah.

There you go. All right, you got the one in the hole yet? Like that, right there. I made it. I canceled them out. Good job, Mom. Good job. Good job. Mommy said Mama Rhodes in the hole. Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There we are. They slaughtered you. Sorry.

We're coming back.

Lily, your cupcakes were a huge hit! How's it feel to make so many people so happy? Good.

Don't let them escape, Papa.

We got the cat. Actually put that box in there and open it because that cat is frisky. It's the luckiest male cat in the world because normally they don't let cats do this.

He's like, okay, you're the boss.

Yes, ma'am. Whoa, it's like rare. You overnight, Henry. We got a new cat. That's gonna be the papa cat. That's the mama cat. Aren't they cool? Lily, you ready to go? Get in. Come on, get your egg basket. I chose to give the Holts a boost in their homestead. I chose them for an Sort of elevated because they're the kind of people you love to help. They have these big dreams, bigger dreams than they have time, money, and energy, and you just want to come along and help them out because their passion is so large. Plus, they're the kind of people that help other people. They came to every single other elevated workday to help the others of the community. Looks like Henry might be following suit of you, Mr. Brown. And there's only one. And there's none of the shoes I found yesterday. Oh, there is one. One, one, one. Okay. Hey, Lily, wait! No matches for 3 shoes. Is Henry gonna fall in your suit? Come get us, Lily. You gotta check out the trailer for the Holtz Elevated episode. Roll that now.

I've been on this home set for about 2 years. We come from a food background, so a lot of our drive for the homestead is to grow our own food and animals. So the food truck is kind of like a passion project, but the cool thing that we're doing with it is as much of the produce as possible is coming off our farm. The meat, we're using pork sausage for breakfast from our pigs, and our eggs from our chickens. We're taking them to the farmers market. We want to bring the food from our farm, from the other local farmers, bring everyone together, cook them a good meal.

Elevated in one is that, yeah, this property was elevated, you know, in so many great ways. Physically, we were elevated in a big way. I think that we were elevated in community too, and we were elevated in a way that we were brought up when we were kind of a little downtrodden and we were a little overwhelmed with all the things that we had to do and the things that were weighing on us.

Give me a ride, please. All right, just like I can help the dreamer, the side hustler, the contributor, I can help the lunatic homesteaders like me, like the Holts, and like you in my member area, Abundance Plus. Actually, the lunatic is going to be the most likely to consume most of the content, interact most in the community, because homesteading is 100% their life. These are empty glasses. We just came to replenish these, stuck them over here in the barn. Then we will end up grabbing our milk supplies, milk the cow, and then we will filter the milk and it ends up in that, which looks like it's time to cream separate. I've almost caught us up to where we left off for the missing vlog footage. The last thing I would say is this is fall registration for Abundance Plus. It's never a better time to get in there. We have bonuses. Certainly lunatics are going to enjoy it. We got a PDF to where you can organize your own elevated workday among your friends and family. It's not as hard as you think. People will appreciate it. You'll get something out of it. You can get plugged into masterminds. We're going to launch those again. And by the way, if you guys are already members, you're getting these bonuses. I can help the lunatic. And fall registration ends October 6th, so I encourage folks to get in there by then. You can sign up for that at abundanceplus.com, link in the description. Now we are to the point of the regular vlog, us about to take Lily to horse riding lessons. Enjoy that and the grand finale of mountain biking the new access roads. And now back to your regularly scheduled program. Henry, you want to go to the horses? Yeah. Okay. Hey man, what's up? Uh, nothing. You finished the stumps? Yeah. We got a surprise text from Andrew this morning. He wasn't going to be able to come back till Saturday, but he can come back today and finish this road. We're going to be downhill mountain biking our field over there. I'd have never imagined. Okay, you gonna do it with me? Yeah. Hopefully by the end of today. Horse riding lessons for the horse-crazed Lily. Are we ever gonna get Lily a horse? The word is yes, Carl. Yes! Yes, but not right now. It is inevitable though. It is inevitable, so it's probably coming. Hey Captain, who you riding today, Lily? Smokey.

It's easy, really easy.

Now see, when we got a kid like this, we got to get them out of the way, right? Yeah, it's easy.

Smokey want to run him over?

No, he wouldn't.

No, he'll stop.

Would he really?

Yeah. That's handy.

Hey, are you filming? Are you filming Lily? Watch Lily, she's coming home. Lily, how was the horse lesson?

I don't know, it was hot and I jumped a lot of jumps.

Better enjoy that heat, buddy, while we got it.

Yeah.

It's a few days later. Andrew has finished our lower road like I promised. We're biking down it. Was it a little anticlimactic for you? What'd you think it was going to be? I want it to be like that.

See your bikes on the road when it's grass? Yeah, it's hard to ride on grass.

Never in my wildest dream would I imagine such a meandering trail down there. Yeah, we gotta say, like, not that way. I think we have a hiking, biking, side-by-side, horse trail, don't we, Lily?