The Problem with the Good Stuff | Feat. Hey It’s a Good Life

Are you gonna go?

Are you smiling? Yeah. I put the ducks and the geese in from the butchering the other day. We just cooled them in the cool room. That won't be so hard on the freezer. We've spaced them out so the air can get to them and they'll freeze even faster. What are you up to, Becky?

I'm I am making— prepping food for homesteaders this week. We're going to do tacos that night, so I'm making the black beans first, and then I'm going to freeze them so all we have to do is just bring them and then heat them there. And then I'm going to do rice and chicken. I'm making chicken soup cuz that's going to be our lunches. I'm going to do the lamb burgers for when we're there. I'm going to like patty them up and grill them and then freeze them for when we're there. So that just makes everything a little bit easier.

How's everybody doing? You gotta come out soon because 50 are making it tight. Let's do their chore this morning, but we got some help. Come on in. Who are you guys? Where are you from?

Hey, I'm Natalie.

I'm Tommy. This is Ruby.

We're from San Diego, California.

And hey, it's a good life.

Oh yeah, I know. Hey, it's a good life online.

And you just had to do that. So if you weren't tall enough, you stood on the, uh, thing. I'm like to get you guys in frame. Okay, come in here. Let's, um, they're wanting to help this morning. Let's pull the water out. Let's pull— everything's got to come out so that we can put down deep bedding. These guys are a little big for the brooder, but it's later in the year, it's colder. And then they were just getting a little bit bigger. I think we'll move them out tomorrow though. That is the 4 chicken— 4 chicks to 1 square foot in the brooder up to 3 to 4 weeks. He is about to go to sleep. He's doing I'm about to go to sleep song. Gideon, what are you doing? If you can't find a machete, it's a hammer, I reckon. You guys got a homestead in San Diego?

Well, I call it that, but it's really more like growing food in your backyard and being more sustainable. We have a somewhat closed-loop system with our worms. They eat our food scraps and other things. We have a seed starting station, a mobile greenhouse that I put on wheels, all from scrap wood. And then we have our garden. And so all, all together, that kind of works to grow our our food, and then we eat our food, and then we give it to the worms, and so on and so forth.

She's got two cameras going. I like it. We've been friends with Natalie since— when, Natalie? Two years ago we met you at Homesteaders.

Yeah, I've known Rebecca for a little while.

I think y'all followed each other before that. And now we got to meet Tommy. Hey, hey! What brings you guys all the way from San Diego to, to reach in to grab a pig pan? Out of that 500-pound pig.

It's a good opportunity to learn. Yeah, well, we want to see you guys, so it's a good opportunity to learn and see, uh, if this is really for us. The dream is nice, but if you can get some hands-on experience, that's always good.

Yeah, yeah. She's, uh, from what I understand, you're making a video about the plus and my— what you like and don't like. Yeah, well, about the bigger homestead.

Can we farm? Can we do it? And what are we taking away with us from this trip?

That's how you get in with a pig. We think like a pig. You put up a wall like this and that's a physical barrier for them and they respect it. It's their nature. It's good they're doing this because we tend to think about the results— the eggs, fresh eggs, the milk, the pork— and that's good. Go ahead, Tommy, it's off. Oh, he didn't trust me. He didn't. I don't blame you. I don't I don't even trust myself sometimes. He's gonna fill up our trough first. It's easier for them to eat out of that than the king feeder. I was telling Natalie yesterday, you know, and I think about it more for today, the results are great, but it's not enough. It's not enough to, to, for one to last in this movement. How far up are we going on this guy? Uh, it's the rest of it. Yeah, these eggs in here are great. We'll have a nice breakfast or dinner. But I moved this up. Stay with me, guys. Here, Mr. Brown, you want to collect the eggs? Okay, so did you see what's happening today? I've moved this coop. Yesterday this fence got moved. Tommy's filled up the feeders. We've dropped the kickstand. We gotta put the kickstand in. By the way, it was 6 months until these guys laid their first egg. So it was open and shut in this coop door, open it in the morning, shutting them up at night. There you go, buddy.

Put her back in.

I'll let her stay.

Yeah, just let her stay. Just get the eggs onto her and run to the coop.

Then we gotta collect these eggs. Ruby, you'll know nothing but this life, maybe. But the reality is the results— that's only a wee little bit. You know how it takes so much time to prepare a meal but so fast to eat it? Once you eat it, you get the comment of like, oh my goodness, it's like especially Thanksgiving, we worked all day and we ate this in 15 minutes. Well, guess what? It's the process you've got to fall in love with, because that's where you're going to be spending most of your time, solving problems. You have a garden, you do this worm farming, but do you actually like the process?

I'm learning.

Honesty. Okay, so you're learning to like the process. Yeah.

Part of that for me has looked like going slower. I like the results so much that sometimes I don't think about the process. And really just in the last couple months, I thought I'm wasting so much of my life waiting to get to the end result. Why don't I learn to enjoy going slower and being more intentional? And it's brought a lot of joy to my life.

So what are some tricks you found to help you enjoy the process?

Uh, slowing down.

So how do you force yourself to slow down? Uh, do you just say, hey, instead of 5 minutes, I'm gonna do this in 10?

Well, I just kind of say I'm not going to rush this. And, um, I'm a trained therapist, and so I think of tools like mindfulness, like, oh, I'm going to enjoy touching the flour as I'm baking this bread instead of thinking about slicing it and throwing it in the oven. But smelling, smelling the flour as you pour it, smelling the yeast as it blooms and rises, and like using your senses more is a great way to slow down. And sometimes life just forces you to slow down a little bit.

That did it, that did it.

Instead of wishing these moments away, I go, okay, you need a snack? That's okay, we'll slow down. And she's already 8 months and it's already flown by like everybody tells you it will. So I try to just enjoy those moments as long as it lasts.

Okay, I had to ask him to do this again. This is when tall comes in handy. Look at that! I'm about to trip over this thing. I about tripped over it earlier. Oh look, she's gonna show off too. She's pretty tall too. So the problem is they've drank their water, they've knocked down their water, they're also ready for a move. We didn't bring another net. Normally I like to set up another net. If we move them without another net, we're moving them over here and they're open for a minute. And they technically could go anywhere. Josiah, let's bring it over here. We're gonna move them. We're gonna do it. What we're gonna do is we'll feed them here. They'll be occupied feeding, and we'll hurry up and move this net. Okay, okay, no drama. That was nice, and that should last them Well, until we get back from Homesteaders. How do you find joy in the process of cleaning pig pans every, every single day?

Well, I think you just said it— the process of regeneration. That's something, um, that I've talked to Tommy a lot about, is that that's important to me to better the earth and better our health and better our families.

This pig move it went really well. But it, it's exciting because this is a process where we're not just growing pork, we're rejuvenating the land. This is where they were. There's just major disturbance here, but we'll be able to plant better seed and we'll get grass like this, like ice cream grass. Okay, you go down this line— I've showed you guys before, so don't really have to— look, there's baby ice cream grass coming up. See it all up right there from a month and a half ago, a month ago. Part of it for me enjoying this process is we're not just growing pork, we're rejuvenating the land. This will forever be greener because of us, because of what we did here today.

When I was starting my garden, that's kind of how I stumbled into the homesteading on YouTube. I wasn't a YouTube watcher before that, and there's a joke in our family now that if I came home and Tommy found me under the blanket with my laptop crying. He knew I was watching farming videos.

Why were you crying?

Because I thought— I was like, this is how we're supposed to live, this is how it's supposed to be. And I longed for a different life. So we've made the most of it. We've thrown some Hey, It's a Good Life on it and made the most of it where we are. There's something about it that is so beautiful, and I want that life. So we're figuring out if it's for us.

One thing we do is we planted a garden, an asparagus and strawberry garden by the water. We can clean our buckets and water the garden.

That's very California friendly.

California friendly stamp of approval right there. I don't even eat vegetables, so how do I enjoy that process? Well, I love to eat meat, and so when we put the sheep on the garden, for example, that was fun to me. And then it's not we're growing vegetables, it's we're growing vegetables, we're growing sheep, going. Chidlers, all the things. You can also enjoy the process by considering this a workout.

There you go.

Go ahead and cancel your gym membership and make chores a little harder. Don't make them easier. She's getting her curls in. It's a big sheep shuffle today. The lengths we go through this time to keep a couple of males intact. Like, not castrated. We don't want the little boogers to breed. We want Nacho to breed the ewes, nobody else. So we're going to try to let the big mamas through and not the little girls.

Well, then where are we going to keep the little girls?

I got 2 big mamas through. It's working so far. We got 3 through. That worked. Dixie and Bandy. But they're the most shy. I think we just have to have patience. These little ones are leading. I think we might have to feed them right here and then push somebody through. Yes! 4 of 5. I think patience is the game. We need to get Nacho over here because it's October, and if we want babies by 5-ish months March! We gotta get this breeding on. Yes, yes, we did it!

Do you—

washing out these buckets when you're not watering the garden and it's not part of another process, you can take pride in it and you can be diligent about doing a nice job. Enjoy reveling in yourself and what you've accomplished.

That's true. And I think about stewardship too, and that it's not just me out there. I mean, as a believer, it's there's always somebody with me. God's always with me. And I think, I think about my worms, and I joke about this on my channel, that my worms are my livestock. And it's not a really good example. No, it's great because they get neglected quite a bit. But I think, okay, if I can steward these worms well, what, what will God entrust me with next? Would he be proud of how I'm taking care of the worms?

What do you think it's going to be? What's he going to entrust with you next?

Absolutely chickens and a dog.

Absolutely. He's already spoken to me.

Yeah, he told me. He called me yesterday. He said yes, absolutely.

You're gonna get a dog. For a week now we've been working on getting Flossy in the stanchion with her new baby. It's been a process, and we've had to do, you know, herd her. We've had to leash her and pull her neck through. Watch this, watch this. You guys stay with me, stay with me. Come on. Are you tired this morning? Come on, look at this, look at this, look at this, look at this. Yes. Okay, lesson there is you've got to train the cow. You've got to think like the cow, and you've got to have first heard the cow. They ain't going to just walk right in there. Then you treat it, something good happens every time you get in there. And we're gonna have the little sheep eating their thing, aren't they? And then she What was it, less than a week? She's walking right in now. It gives you so much. People think, oh, they know it gives you milk. You get 2 gallons from a cow, that's 16 pounds of food every day. But then it gives you a calf every year that you can sell or use for beef. Okay, but then look at this. People think this is a problem. This is— this makes my heart sing. 40 pounds a day. Well, that's a problem unless you're moving them every day. And this is our milking station. It's a little messy right now, but we're moving it. Tomorrow we'll be milking over there and this will be forever greener. She was a therapist in background, and I asked, how do you bring your therapy into this?

And you said something about mindfulness, like you encouraged me when the camera was off, like feel free to connect with her. Let's rest your head on her, connect with that animal biome. And the minute I did that, I just felt everything in me slow down. Oh yeah. And I, I just— for me, that's a really special moment.

It might be hard to find joy in every single part of the process, like getting swatted in the head with the tail. Hard to find any poetry there. Just about took my hat off right there. When you actually sit down and I serve Tommy this raw milk yesterday, and it's his first time to ever experience that. And my kids are drinking it, I'm drinking it, and it's sustaining us. It just makes it that much more special because yes, it's nutrient-dense and a wonderful food for us, and that's satisfying, and we grew this, but we pushed through the tail swats. It's the blood, sweat, and tears that makes the meal so special. All right, you guys keep these sheep from coming up. We're gonna pull Willie through. How are we gonna not get those sheep through? Uh, Natalie, you're gonna have to be in charge of keeping those sheep downwind of this opening. Hey, hey, how's it going in here?

It's going really good. I am cooling the chicken, the whole chicken for the chicken soup. Tomato soup is cooking. The chicken breasts are in the Instant Pot. I already have mashed potatoes, the Spanish rice, and the black beans already in the fridge cooling before I can freeze them. And I was thinking, I'm looking at my chicken soup recipe for when that cools down. I'm gonna make chicken pot pie soup, and I was gonna pan the lamb.

That's what happens when we take Henry on chores and put him down for he goes down for a long nap.

I know, but he played so nice in here too.

Nice.

So sweetly.

Well, while we were processing the milk, there was a great mix. I guess the fence fell down and it was going— it was going too smooth this morning, wasn't it? We've got a male over here, a little guy, and we've got some females over here. Uh, we just want the little females here And the male's here, so let's, uh, let's get everybody over and then we'll separate them. Two girls are over, those are fine. We're gonna try to just get the girls over. I'll man the gate, you and Josiah herd. We have two females over there. A little ramlet jumped the fence in the excitement. Now I'm gonna try to keep the, the big ewes down here. This is why I was so excited about this morning because it would just be this much trouble. I just knew this. It was just too smooth the way we were doing it. Okay, we got him funneled here. Josiah's got the— yeah, that's a good funnel. Keep pressing him, Jonah. Push him down the line. Here we go, here we go, here we go. He doesn't see it yet. He doesn't see the opening. He saw that opening. This is what I was afraid of. Enjoy the process, Justin. How are we going to separate him from these girls?

Separated.

Okay, he's separated. Good. If we can herd him along the fence up to Josiah— why does he stop right there? There, we did it. Still not quite there yet. We've got one little ramlet in with the ewlets. This is a lot of trouble. We could have just castrated them. Here he comes, Jonah. We don't want him to come through. If you think about it, we don't eat any— we're eating all castrated meat, and there's testosterone there. They grew a little bit better, a little faster. Oh boy. Okay, good job, Jonah. Maybe he's distracted with the alfalfa. Yep, yep, yep. Here we go, here we go, here we go. Good, good, we did it! Now let's secure the fences so they don't fall over. That must have been what happened. Natalie asked me if I— how do I come up with content? Well, I don't have to come up with content.

It comes to you.

It comes to me, he says. Joe Salton asked me Am I ever afraid of running out of content? The answer is, am I ever going to run out of problems? No. Well, I'm always going to have content because that's what a good story is— overcoming problems. We're going to bring that Luchador cage— Nacho, our breeding ram— right there, that corner, and we'll let him and Buddy out. Buddy can get out.

Yeah.

And then we'll put the ramlets in the Luchador ring. Best day ever for Nacho. He's not thrilled. Come on, buddy. What's the holdup? Oh, there he saw the ladies. There he saw the ladies. Oh yeah. Remember the king? Look at that, so happy for them. Look at him getting it, getting with it. He's the latest man. This next move could be the trickiest. Jenna, I have an idea. We're gonna push this cage all the way down here, and then we've got our extra net We'll put it up along this top of the bank. This will be just a nice chute. The bank's kind of a natural chute, and we'll get them in down there, and we'll just herd them down the chute. We got a chute going right into there. You gotta let Lily get out. Hold on, Jonah. You guys get out of the cage. Drone's in the air. Let's do it. Jonah's already got them down. If you get the cows in, that's okay. Okay, good. We got them down in the bank. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! Where are you going, Jonah? Where are you going? Where are you going? The cow's helping them. Okay, now that they're looking this way, hold still. We want them to turn the other way, and then we can spook them. There we go. Let the cow go. Not good. Just train them to get out of this thing. Try number 2, we're gonna get the calf in there too. Okay, Jonah, I think it'll be easier. Try number 3, we've tied it up, we've tightened up the chute, and we're gonna not worry about the calf. Well, that last shot filled up my memory card. While the kids were getting me another memory card We heard it, then the ram let down. He jumped over the fence from the pressure, and we said, you know what, let's just keep 3 fences up. Let's see how it works out. I don't think they'll jump it without pressure. We just— we got to make sure our fences are always on, not falling down. Let's see if it works. I mean, it's better anyway. They'd be in this big pasture as opposed to this cage, and we'll have 3 fences up. We really will set up a new one tomorrow, and you're really still only just moving one net a day. What are we having for dinner, Becky? I can tell you right now, meat and cheese.

That was gonna be like, that's what we always have tonight.

We are—

well, I'm just shredding up some chicken— some chicken— some cheese to go. I'm gonna bag it up and bring it with us.

I'm just saying, we eat lots of meat and cheese. How's it going in here? You about wrapped it up?

It is going really good. I am almost done. The only thing I have to do is just make chicken soup from that.

Good deal.

And I'll probably do that after the webinar and before dinner.

Nice.

Then I can freeze everything as well. The lamb burgers are already grilled and in the freezer, and then I just have to freeze all the things and then I'll be done.

Okay, nice. I'm gonna hop off of here, hopping on the Joel Salatin webinar. If you missed it, you can get the replay. It's in Abundance Plus. We're doing the free trial now and all the Joel Salatin, the webinar replay, the masterclass, the Rooted episode with him in it, and a Riding in Cars with Joel interview and a community interview. He just is just gonna blow our minds with enrichment inside of Abundance Plus. We just had a big sale for Abundance Plus, and I want to thank everyone who joined, who got the, the, the Micro Polyphase bonus. Thank you guys. We're closing— we've closed cart on that by the time you've seen this, but Abundance Plus is always available, free trial format right now. But thank you all, all you guys who have joined. We love and appreciate you. We want to welcome you to the family. Thank you so very much. Books, if you still want a Micro Polyface book, a Polyface Micro book, we have a store. It's in Abundance Plus. You don't even have to join Abundance Plus to get it. You go to abundanceplus.com and then there's a store tab and we have the book there and it will be available forever-ish there along with other books. So just letting you guys know that. Thank you, thank you, thank you.