A farmer walks through daily chores with his daughter Lily, feeding pigs, chickens, cows, and tending the greenhouse. He argues that farming's real appeal isn't romance but routine, and that diversity across animals and projects keeps the work from feeling monotonous.
Come on, big daddy.
All right, come on, big guy. Come on. It's just me and Lily.
Papa, can you come help me with the seed?
And Mr. Brown doing the chores. Jonah and Josiah are a little under the weather, a little fever. You're gonna get to see what doing all our chores is like. First up, we ran out of clean jars. This is what skim milk looks like after it's set out for a day. I guess it cheeses, and it's great pig food, but we've had plenty of pig food lately. But these jars are just sitting here, so I'm having to— I said, why don't I transfer it to a bucket? Almenzo can't quite get comfortable getting that. Okay, let's take up these jars to Mom. Can you help, Mr. Brown?
No, I can't.
Okay, well, I'll be right back. You know, oftentimes farming is romanticized, but what are the chores really like? The day-to-day, the same old same old. There could be comfort in the routine. Lily, you let out Josiah's chickens and feed them? How'd you get that food bucket over there? That was heavy. Look, you guys are scavengers. You're now after the pig's food. But mostly it's a feeling of, let's get this done so we can get on with our project. Let's go check it out. Wow, you did, you did a good job, honey. She got any eggs under there? Nope. Every day 7 days a week, and this is our day off, but the chores still have to get done. Everybody's after the pig food. Lily, can you carry this? No, it doesn't need it. We're gonna feed it dry. Let me go pour the pig's food first. I think what, maybe Yes, we have not officially attached our official kickstand yet. That works until we install our official kickstand. Keeps that chickshaw from tipping. I think a trick to being able to endure these kinds of chores is the diversity of this farm. Oh wow, Lily, you beat me to it! Good girl. Let's put our buckets on the stairs to go up. Like the sea monsters, the little chicks. This is our last run. We won't do them again until next spring, so we'll get a break. Lily, watch the laurel real careful. Lily, can you go get my water replenished? Okay, here you go, chicks. The greenhouse plants. This is our last run in the greenhouse. We'll get a break. The Icelandic chicks. As soon as we get our Chickshaw Mini-Me, it's going to add some excitement by following the cows. So the diversity helps you endure. I mean, if chicks— if the chicken cycle is only 8 weeks, I mean, anybody can do a routine routine for 8 weeks, right? All right, I need to water these greenhouse plants. Lily, you want to water the greenhouse plants? They might not need it. I forgot to put the shelter on. They hardened off all day yesterday, so I'm thinking we're going to be good and as ready as we're going to be to transplant these plants. You two get off of there. Laura, you're bad as the kids sometimes. Lily, all we have left is the Icelandics. And the cows and the guineas. Let's let them out since most of them are getting out anyway. Here you go, free range, and have a little bit of grain. You got the water for the guineas? Let's turn on some lights. How are they, Lily?
All of them are there.
Everybody's here. Okay, they've eaten most of their food.
They don't need any water.
They don't? Clean it out. I don't think they do need any water. You're right, we've got plenty of green grass in here. Let's let them eat that. I don't think we need to give them any grain. Let's let them eat what's in here. One last thing, Mr. Brown, you guys gonna swing while I go to the cows? All right. Normally Saturday morning, the boys are totally capable of doing all this except for the cow move. Thank goodness for those boys. Why is that water not on? Lily, can you turn our water on at the barn? Did you turn it on yet? All the way up? She says it's turned all the way up. That is as high as it'll go. Huh, it's working here. Honestly, It's probably these frustrations that keep chores interesting. If they never had any challenges, would it really be any fun? Yes. Go swing with him, Lily. If there were no challenges, would it really be a victory when you were done? I'm not finding this problem. Okay, I see some movement in the tub now. There we go. I don't know what it was. Maybe just time. Took some time to get up there. Well, hey buddy. You come and see me? It's kind of weird to be putting a fence through my old mountain boarding course. I used to be a pro mountain boarder before I was this. You know, there are some similarities though. One thing I noted when I mountain boarded was that there was an underlying quality that's in everyone that mountain boards is So I think it actually might be the same with this grass-based sustainable homestead-type farming. Everybody's a little bit crazy, or at least you feel a little bit crazy. Makes sense to us. Mountain boarding made sense to me then. This way of farming makes perfect sense to me and it's totally worth it. But to the rest of the world, I'm nuts. But you know, that sport was hard and you fell down a lot. You're going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down. And we've fallen down quite a bit in these 100 days of growing food, especially with the sheep. We fell down hard, all 5 of our sheep, before their time. But you know what, you— that what I said then still counts today. And in life, it's like life. Question you got to ask is, are you going to get back up? Yeah, you just got to get back up. So here I am, back up. She gassed. She gassed. Come on, she gabbas. Come on. Okay, when the best part of your day is this, putting cows on new grass— you're crazy! And that's where you get your biggest laugh. You're flat out bats!
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
