They Bought a Homestead | This is Day Three

We are at Sow the Land, the Rooted Life tour. There they are. Look at this amazing mudroom. They are just buying a new homestead. How many acres? 14 acres. They've put in the grind on an acre and a half. Yes, you've graduated up to 14 acres. Look at this mudroom though. That's my first thought.

Yeah, it used to be a carport. Yeah, and somebody at some point enclosed it to make it look like a log cabin.

I feel like a mudroom is a must-have.

Yeah, this is a homestead feature. Yeah, every homesteader right now is super excited about this house.

It's huge.

Yeah, no, this is actually— it's perfect because you need a lot of space. Oh yeah, because of all the muddy things.

All the muddy things. Everybody's wanting to know, did that cooler come with it, or is that y'all's vintage cooler?

That's ours.

Okay, all right. How about give us a 1980s style Tour of the home. Remember guys, when we used to do that? When your parents used to do that?

Yeah.

Friends would come over and you'd give tours.

Oh yes.

That doesn't happen anymore. We like to do that.

Okay, let's do that. Let's see that.

We still do that. 1980, we still do that.

Okay, good.

Okay, and this is the kitchen.

This feels like Homestead Cribs.

Yeah.

Yes it is.

Except with the needle updating.

These are my chicken tractors.

Here comes the music and the slow-mo clips of the chicken tractors. Okay, so this is the—

yeah, '60s home. '60s, 1960s ranch-style home. It's just— I feel like it's fairly decent shape, it's just outdated. Yeah, you can tell it's never been updated at all.

Yeah, the bones are good.

They are.

But my favorite is this— the spoon in the fork. Spoon in the fork.

You're probably gonna hang on to that feature, or is that going?

That's going.

Oh, she's hanging on.

She's going, uh-oh, uh-oh. And then the pantry. You want to show them the pantry?

Okay, so this is our pantry.

I first thought this was way way too tiny, but a lot of stuff actually fits in here. It really does. Yeah, I'm impressed. Yeah, so we're taking it out anyway. Yeah, it's going.

I think the plan is, is we want to take out this wall.

Yeah, because it's so dark in here.

And then the other side's the living room, and so this will open up.

Yeah, that's not load-bearing either. It might be.

What was up with the '60s and '70s and putting walls up everywhere?

I don't know. And this is just like horrible.

And nowadays we just take it all down.

That's gonna be fun.

This is gonna be a fabulous project.

It should be throughout the whole—

Yeah, because somebody had the bright idea, let's cover up these fabulous wood floors with this really ugly carpet that's gonna hold all the dirt and stink.

Right, right.

Yeah, so we're gonna do a grand reveal one day. We're kind of afraid.

But you know, carpet, the wood paneling, it's very kind of dark in here. It is.

But you open this ball up.

Well, could be that though. Is that real wood?

No, that's laminate.

Yeah, we might be covering that up in here. Sounds like wood's underneath here. Talking to us. Hey, I like the book feature right here. Yeah, of course I'm partial.

I was reading that this morning.

I was gonna reveal that in a minute. I want to show the living room. Sorry, I'm going ahead.

I'm going ahead. Becky, slow down. Somebody's really excited about this tour.

I am. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. Living room, nothing in it really, just boxes.

So we just been— it's been exactly a week we've been moved in.

Wow.

Um, so we still have boxes Everywhere that we're going through. This is the living room. This is actually the entryway.

Moving makes me want to cry.

Yeah.

Like the amount of work that you guys have been through.

It's like a lot of hurry up and then like, we're here. So basically we just loaded up a big giant U-Haul, came in one shot and dropped it off.

Did you have any moments of breakdown?

At one point I was gonna look.

She looked to you. I was thinking maybe you.

No.

He's the breakdown.

I hardly ever break down. He's never the breakdown.

Really?

He's Mr. Strong.

So what does that look like for Mr. Strong? Well, no, I go up to her and I was like, It was the end of the day.

I was like, right before bed.

Yeah, I think I'm stressed out.

That's what all you people are talking about. That's what this feels like.

Yeah.

And what'd you think? Uh-oh.

I was like, he's stressed out.

And then I just walked out of the room. Yeah.

Oh my gosh, usually he's—

you dropped the bomb.

Yeah, yeah, that's totally— yeah, he's— for him to say that he's stressed out.

Yeah. Now this lamp though, is that y'all's lamp or is that here?

That is ours.

Oh, I recognize it from the old sofa. Where did Where does this come from?

So that's from 1949. I picked that up on the side of the road from a guy selling it in LA. That's a steal, dude. For like $5. We used to be huge in like mid-century modern in Los Angeles. And so we collected a lot of vintage furniture and we kind of still kept that theme. We sold a lot of it when we moved out this way, but some of it we also kept.

Nice.

You're gonna get rid of this, right?

The dishwasher.

Wait, what? How does that make any sense?

It's the tag team.

Just look, the dishwasher is over here, but you're pulling out web. Dishes and it's a two-man job. Wet dishes over carpet.

This is what I'm saying, like the brilliant idea, like let's put this—

that's like an afterthought, like that came later probably because they built this before the dishwasher.

Okay, so you're gonna get a desk and then you'll have an island. Maybe like you'll have a room for an island because that— because this is gonna be gone. Yeah.

Oh, I like it. Yeah, we kept the ham. Look, we kept the prosciutto. It's, uh, uh, 3 months old.

Nice.

3 months old.

The secret door. She has it locked. It's the basement. Are we allowed to go down? Yeah. Okay, so here's our basement, which makes our house—

that's random—

so much bigger.

Yeah, that's for, uh, change light bulb. Oh nice, you can't reach otherwise.

So coming down the stairs to the left, I want Jason to build me a room, and this is going to be my pantry slash meat storage slash canning room. Nice food room.

Nice.

It's gonna be enclosed.

We have a spot for our freezers now. They're not in our living room.

They're not in your kitchen.

It's so— washer and dryer down here. Um, there is a finished room, um, which also has a shower and bathroom.

It's kind of a mess right now because it's all right. It has a closet.

This is the finished room.

Yeah, yeah, it will look nicer without all our stuff.

Yeah, this is like basically all my tools. We just like—

this is pretty minimalist for a homesteader, y'all.

Oh my gosh, we have so much stuff.

It feels a lot when you're moving, but yeah, I guess the bathroom is—

I know, Mel, it's crazy. And a little closet right here. You have a second toilet, man.

I know.

It's important.

That's very important. It's very important.

It's very important.

And then laundry and dryer goes here.

The washer and dryer. The washer and dryer goes here. We're gonna move that over there.

Nice. Where to now? Let's go—

these are the rooms. This is like an office, probably will be an office or studio. Yeah.

It's a homeschool room slash craft room.

You need something to edit the videos.

Nice. I like the book collection.

The bathroom, I already used it. I like how they put the tile around the mirror.

Yeah. That looks amazing.

I saw that. I was like, wow. So are you guys, what are you guys gonna do with the tile? Are you gonna keep the tile? Get rid of it all?

I'm thinking we might keep it. If we do, then we would just paint it.

This room is not very minimal, by the way. This is Penelope's room.

She had half the stuff, huh?

She's had half the stuff. Stuff. Yeah, I like it.

How's she adjusting to the move?

She's so excited. She loves our property. She's, she runs up the hill and she's just been outside.

Nice.

Every day.

Let's go see the outside now. Okay, this is beautiful, Jason. You're owning this way?

Yep, straight up.

Just looked at this on, on OnX app and you, you, you have all mild grades. Doesn't look like you have a whole lot of forest to clear. No, you're gonna be grazing, dude. What are you gonna graze?

I love to do sheep.

Yes, sheep! Yes, yeah, for the new goats.

Yeah, no goats.

Yes.

So this is, this is an old horse property. Yeah. And when we first saw this property, there was 2 horses and 2 donkeys on here, and I think that's all he ever did. I mean, the guy who owned this place basically used it as a vacation home, uh, so he never actually lived here and he never did anything with it but except, you know, let other people have their horses here.

So I feel like it's definitely like overgrazed. Overgrazed.

Like, there's a lot of horse poop everywhere, um, and the grass just seems very low to me.

But that is not hard to heal.

Yeah, I mean, there's this, um, fencing. Ah, yes, it's all throughout the entire property, but it's not the property border. It's not the line. Okay, it's wherever they wanted the horses in. And it's electrified. Oh, or it was electrified. You can't electrify it, um, but it's that throughout the whole—

nice.

So that's something I have to figure out.

How soon are you going to get these sheep?

I don't know.

I'll tell you what, just letting this grow and go to seed is going to do wonders, and then mowing it after that, or putting sheep on it, is just going to be absolutely crazy for you. Yeah, it will revive in a year. Look, you got the corrals.

Yep, there's a horse corral.

You got the corrals though. Nice.

So at one point there was a mobile home here apparently, and so there's another septic tank and there's electric.

So did you have to go into debt for this, or did you sell out?

Well, yeah, we made—

pay for this.

We made some from our, our 1.5 acres for sure, but, but we definitely had to take out a mortgage on it.

Does that make you nervous?

No, not at all. I mean, we had a mortgage for our last house for 1.5 acres.

Okay.

I mean, that's just the reality of it.

Yeah. You feel like it's doable?

Yes.

Sweet. Okay. So when you had that moment of stress, it wasn't at all related to that?

No.

Taking a dip, your plunge of faith, so to speak, right?

No, I think for me it was really just, um, you know, knowing that I still have to edit videos, you know, I still have to put out the content, I still have to— we still have to move, you know, all these things, and sell our last house, you know. There are some things there that we need to button up. So just like kind of all of it I feel like— I think it's my personality. I want to do everything now. Yeah. And no, it's not. Wow.

Holy crap. I see, I see workshop in your future. I see people barn in your future. I see lots of possible things in your future. What are you gonna do with this amazing barn? Look at this. I think at first it's just so beautiful.

Definitely going to be a workshop type thing, like a woodworking workshop. Um, yeah, I'm also thinking even like a butchering type workshop. Yeah. Um, like maybe there's 13 stalls in here.

Wow.

And so maybe one of the stalls, it could probably be like a walk-in cooler. Yeah, maybe this is where we hoist some pigs.

Dude, you could get a tractor in here, it's so tall. Yeah. Wow.

Um, there's electrical all throughout here and lighting.

Wow, this is nice.

Um, we kind of just put our stuff in here for now, just kind of threw it in here. Um, but yeah, it's a bit overwhelming to me just to even look at it because you're just not used to this. I'm not used to like something big like this, so I guess I just have to be patient with it. Yeah, and figure it out.

What's cool about this is this can be so versatile and there's— you can end up doing a number of things. And oh my goodness, just saying It's on concrete, makes it even more flexible. Let's solve this mystery. That really tall window, that really high window. I'm wondering, I don't know, is that for a tall horse?

No.

And what's this?

So here's a hay rack on the other side.

Uh, maybe we could buy some of these hay racks from them.

We needed the hay rack.

I guess they did PVC so the horse can't gnaw on it. I see a party here not too— I know, terribly far from that with the long farmhouse table. Yeah, she's seeing the vision, isn't she?

Like hang big chandeliers and then cross the— the—

yes, people barn, right?

Yeah, you're gonna have— you're gonna have at least some people barn in here.

I can see it.

This is your garden spot, Lorraine?

Hopefully. I'd like to have a garden here.

This is nice. You have these— you have these swells that were built like probably over 100 years ago.

Yeah, so this— this used to be another type barn type thing, but it used to be on a different property at some point, and they relocated it here. Initially I was thinking this was going to be a, um, maybe I could turn it into some kind of workshop instead of in the barn. Maybe have this to be like a woodworking shop. I don't know.

This is you too, this brambly stuff? Hey, sheep love this, buddy.

Really?

Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, they love this stuff.

What about the thorns? No.

Yeah, they'll eat the greens off of it and that thorn will die.

Really?

They'll eat the leaves off of it.

Okay.

Yes, dude, they will eat those leaves.

What about a beef cow?

Oh yeah. How many acres you got? 14, uh, on this. Looking at this, even in the shape right now, you can already graze this. You're going to be having grass over there very soon. One of the best things you can do for this is get a beef cow on it, as much as you want, up to 7. Really? If you're wanting to feed hay. If you don't want to feed hay, 2 or 3. And that's considering you raising them through the winter. Okay, but you could get a year-old steer in the spring and kill it now and kill it in October, November. Get you a one-year-old steer, get two of them. Wow. And get going on it. Okay, cows for everyone, cows and beef for everyone, and they will improve this land so fast. I bet your channel's exploding a little bit. Yeah, from the excitement of the move, huh? Yeah, yeah, people, this is exciting stuff. Yeah, you know, people love to see this because it's different.

This is this is so different than what we're used to.

Yeah.

And so it's gonna feel like we're starting over again. Um, but you know, we learned, we learned a lot of things too, so it's not like we're starting over. But yeah, physically I guess we are starting over as far as new land, new house.

And people like that because you have experience and you're starting over, and they're going to learn a lot from you seeing the way you set this up.

Plus we have cool friends that come and help us and like we hang out with now, so we have a community of people.

I know, right?

So like, that's super helpful also.

Yeah, you can figure out a way to get my Kubota over here. If you got somebody with a track— a trailer, come get it. Come get it with the bush hog and you'll, you'll knock these brambles out in, yeah, half a day. Wow, man, this is, this is beautiful. We're gonna hit a view up here, aren't we?

Yes, so it's like a gradual uphill.

Nice. It's perfect. Congratulations, guys. I'm so excited for you.

I know, it's amazing.

I know you say this is ugly, you want to buy ugly, and there's a hair of that with the overgrazing. Yeah, but it's so quickly remedied. I know, it could be so much worse.

Oh, I agree.

You guys are—

I mean, it's so usable. It's— I was telling them, like, next summer you guys are going to be like, what did it look like?

I don't even remember. I hope you— well, I know you're showcasing this Yes, on your vlog. This is going to be a fun journey. I encourage people to go check out Sow the Land on YouTube and follow this amazing journey because y'all are just going to blow up because this is so interesting and exciting.

Yeah, it's new. I've never been on this big of a land, so I know it's overwhelming, but you know, slowly we're going to get it going.