The Reality of life on the Homestead

And look at this guy moving the turkeys on his own accord. Turkeys were here. Pasture will forever be more beautiful. What do you need from me, Gideon?

Um, hammering all the posts.

Okay. Nothing like animals on new pasture. Today's project, what, about 35 more feet building a bed? This project has been a little more than I anticipated. But we're building beds and they'll be here for life-ish. We've gotten 2 rows of pumpkins out. They're thriving out of their small containers. Shoot, birds in here. Okay, good, they left. Kids have got to start treating our barn like a barn. Our barn is our house. You cannot leave the doors open. What are you, raised in a barn? Well, this is the downstairs of our house and it was to be a horse ranch barn that never happened. So technically, our kids are being raised in a barn. Let me show you what we got to do. Trying to save as many of these pumpkins as we can. They're getting too big for their britches. They're starting to yellow. We got to get them out of these pots. One more row will get us 10 more of these. Get in! Where are the machines? Sally? This is a permaculture homestead, which means we have other things going on. We got to get some mineral to this cow. Hey, you using Sally?

Yeah.

How much longer?

Just a minute.

All right, come get me when you're done. Well, there's a mineral sled option. They don't need the milk sled because they don't really need shade where they are. But do we just want to give them the milk sled because it's kind of a pain to pull out there and that wooded pasture. But if we put that out there, we're gonna have to bring it back out when it's time for the milk sled. Let's go see where the milk sled is. Maybe it's better to haul it up there. And Henry wants us. I've got Lily's horse lesson today, so we're on a bit of a time crunch. Not as much as yesterday, but I'm bound and determined to get that— we gotta get that pumpkin bed done today. All right, come on, Henry. We want to hustle, Henry. Let's go. He doesn't know hustle. He only lives in the now. Try to move the mineral or the, the milk sled up the hill. May not get it to where the cows are today, but we can get it to where they're going to be tomorrow, and I'll be happy about that. Problem is it's wet. I mean, good problem to have, especially since we haven't had rain. Let's see if Sally will pull this thing. We got it up here. Now let's see about getting the sheep their minerals. They're happy. Looks like the sheep have escaped to the cows. That's, that's good though. I can get their, uh, sheep shaw in there without being bothered. All about the minerals. Sorry, haven't kept up with it the last few days. An important part of their program, so I'm happy, I'm happy we got it back. And there probably went about an hour working on remodel stuff, house build stuff. We dropped what we're doing for it. We're gonna do a little bit more and then hopefully we can get this done. I saw John came. We have Josiah. Jonah's on grading. We're gonna have about an hour-ish, hopefully. I was thinking we were gonna have 2 hours worth to go. Maybe I could give you guys— okay, for, you know, let's, let's show you some of this tile that's coming along. Look at this tile. So I think Rebecca goes to Google and asks for the most complicated tile there is and goes with the results, right, tile guy? That didn't take too long in there, babe.

No, it didn't.

It's like that rain last night There's something about a rain. Like, sprinklers don't do it. Something about a rain to explode a garden. What are you doing with that dirt? You want to put that energy to building a garden bed? Somehow that's not as fun. Oh, we got these two strapping young men. We'll get it done in no time. Let's build the rest of this bed, boys. Just look at this. It's like the sweet potatoes had doubled. Yeah, cantaloupe doubles. Oh, you know what I do? Let's walk through and squash those bugs that are eating them. Josiah, you and John start, start building those beds. Hey Gideon, will you go through and find these bugs right here? These are not ladybugs, they're not friendly. Walk through, especially at this young stage. If we get them to a certain age, it doesn't matter. Right now they're vulnerable, they've just been transferred, they're stressed out. I've got 1 hour, so I need to start loading Lily's horse. For horse lessons. Wow, we've only got half a row left, guys. Yeah, okay, let's do it. Thank you. Thankfully John came. 50/50 chance, lucky start. Uh-oh, somebody left the bat— the key on. Oh, okay, these boys are getting with it. Wow. We're almost done with a bucket. Is that gonna do it? Yeah. All right, we'll plant these pumpkins and we'll be done. I feel like the last couple of days this has been the goal for the video, you know, and there's great satisfaction and happy ending and completing the goal of the day. So part of me feels badly that that didn't happen for your viewers' satisfaction, but it's also the reality of life and on the homestead. These shows are daily You don't always— well, not every day necessarily has a happy ending. Certainly every project we set out to do doesn't necessarily get finished. So it's gonna happen today. Rebecca, you got a preference for these pumpkins? You get to pick like 10. We got our fertilizer water. Let's plant a variety of these, not like All the wine. So what you guys need to do is grab one from each, just go one, and then come back through, and that gets it really wet. Look how root-bound a lot of these were. We were saving these just in time. The younger that you transplant, the less shock they go through. Some of these, you know, those pumpkins, they're really taking a minute to get a foothold. I don't think they've grown any, but I do think that rain helped. And as long as we keep them bugs off of them early on— bonus garden this year back. Yeah, that was not in the plan.

What, this? These three?

But we have three extra garden. How do you feel?

It's fabulous.

And now we've spent a couple of days and we built beds. We'll never have to do it again.

It's nice to—

now the question is, when we extend these 50-foot beds, uh-huh, 50 more feet, so we have 45,000 more square feet of gardening, about 10,000 square feet of gardening. Do we Do it with pigs over time, or do we get a BCS?

Uh, BCS would be either—

it'd be easier.

Would be easier.

I think once we have the 10,000 square feet of gardening, Rebecca, yeah, it might justify BCS. You shape the beds after you're done every time. We could actually do cover crop and mow in that cover crop, and we might get away from the plastic.

Are we gonna do a a walkway here? Are we just gonna—

I wasn't. I was gonna extend it because tarps—

no, it's totally fine.

Plastic all comes in, you know.

No, I'm not upset about greenhouse.

Like row covers and all that, they come in 100 feet.

So we're gonna extend this one too?

Yeah, and that one.

Oh, that one too?

I think so, because it's showing me, you know, we only had to have— we only had a room for 50 feet of beads, or 25 feet of beads. That's not enough.

No, I mean, I probably need to do like 4 rows.

You need to do 3 times the the, the green beans and the broccoli. And we could have done a lot more broccoli.

I mean, we'll see what happens with the sweet potatoes.

We could have done a lot more watermelon. We could have had one more squash.

Yeah, we could have had more winter squash.

Well, y'all made short work of this, huh? Yeah. Josiah's taking the pumpkins off. Oh boy, it's hard on Beauty. We saved 10 for her dad. He's got a 4-foot by 8-foot raised bed. He can probably plant 2 in there, but hard for her to get rid of the plants. Let's hold a vigil, moment of silence. For the pumpkins. They're gonna die. They're gonna become eggs and chicken meat today, which is good because I like that actually more than pumpkins. Where are we going, Beck? All the way back with a camera and a ladder. Wonder what Beauty's got me into. What happened?

This came off of the roller.

So heavy.

I guess it was.

Dragged it down. Good problem to have. Have you watered in here in a while?

I have. I think I watered 2 days ago. I probably will water today.

Tomato fell on the ground. Yeah, it's lost its thingamajig, its roller. So we're just replacing the roller, or—

yeah, we're just gonna replace the roller.

Okay, are you sure that can be had? No, I've got a whole new thing. Hey, thanks for y'all's help today. Thanks, John. We knocked it out. Where are y'all gonna play now? Uh, we're gonna go look for potlucks. So good to have finished that job finally. So good. Now we gotta get Lily to her horse lesson. And it's day 4 of Christmas in July Homestead Builds. My new book is available. Build the foundational structures of your homestead. 12 designs. I don't have 12 fingers. 12 designs. Is that high enough? Not quite. All right, and to all you 1,000+ Kickstarter backers, you're getting all these bonuses too, automatically. You got the Kickstarter bonuses, those went away, but you have them. Now you're getting these. And by the way, if you get in on this now and we do do any future bonuses, they'll be different, but if we do do any future bonuses, you get them. Hey, look at this! And I'm on time, aren't I, darling? Normally she's rushing me. You don't want to be late to this horse event, this horse outing, do you?

No, I'm never late. Well, I'm not late sometimes, but I try to be early.

This afternoon, the boys probably 90% done with their grading job. Proud of them. Can you see it? They've gotten a trail through here. One of the best things you can do for your property, get access road. So good job, Jonah. We did it! We got the pumpkin beds built. Jonah, you're near completing your first grading gig. How's it feel? You're 16 years old, you're grading. What's it like? I don't know, it's different.

It's definitely different to do a job for somebody else.

Yeah, good day or bad day, it's a happy day. Yeah.