They Need This

Happy day and welcome to The Rooted Life. Happy day, Superman. Welcome to the vlog where we document the good, the bad, and of course the ugly. Speaking of ugly, we had to get the yogurt out last night. I think it'll be okay though. It is spoiled.

Fermented.

That's what it is. It'll just be a little more sour. You having a good time in the Ergo, Henry?

I want a day hold.

All 4 of the other wanted to go with me in the mornings. This one, not so much. But I do think he belongs here. I do think he's having a good time despite what he says. Just as I was about to say chores went fantastic, they did till the very end. We got no water. Beautiful. Foggy morning though. Unlike weight training or jogging or some other kind of voluntary exercise, having animals— well, if you miss those, you're really only hurting yourself. If you miss a training for yourself, you're really only hurting yourself. When you have animals, you got to get up and move no matter how you feel, no matter what day it is. Hey, the beautiful one! Ever so diligent getting the internationals out.

Bethany H going to Canada. Jason B to Australia. Cindy S to Canada. And then Bill D to Canada.

We're shipping Homestead Builds. You're still in time for Christmas and signed copies. How to build the foundational structures of your homestead. Step-by-step instructions. All those things and more. Brooders, coops. Raised beds. Hey, are you, are you helping with cells? Hey, are you hurting? I'm trying to pitch and he's just yapping.

See, I want out.

Okay, you want out? But Mom's so productive in the morning when you're not clinging to her. She always wants some.

This is quite the process.

You know I'm not staying here, right? And neither is Gideon. I decided to bring him. He gets very needy of Mom. And if you guys want your international workers, I'm gonna need to hold Henry. What's going on here?

I'm gonna show my chainsaw.

Ever chainsaw before? I have not. New skill today unlocked. It's on your bucket list? Sure. Not as high up as skydiving, but yeah. Or bull riding.

Yeah.

Josiah continuing to build our piles of rock and sand. King of the Hill. I think there's soil in this. Hey, hey, he's found some soil. Eat a little bit of that. Get some minerals. I'm so excited because I thought Hurricane Helena washed away all our soil here, but look, we're on some. We're on some even here.

To start it, you put it in choke, pump the gas in a little bit.

So it's going to want to pinch here, so you do the first one— you do the top one first. Do I go in like this? Yeah, yeah, don't do the tip ever. Good question.

Don't go like that, that's not gonna help.

And this is danger zone. You just cut an 18-inch tree in half. How does that make you feel?

It makes you feel like a man. You know, it feels like one of those things where it's like you should be able to use a chainsaw.

Yeah, the only other thing that makes you feel more like a man is one chop with the splitting saw. We have a problem. What is it?

The creek's too high.

What do you mean?

If I kept going at this level, which it needs to be, it's going to be lower than the creek. So we need to dig a new bank.

He's right, we can only take so much of this material before it's lower than the creek. So some of that creek bank needs to be built back up. Josiah clearing pasture. Jonah and Austin clearing some of the last trees. Just took an inventory. We've lost 20 panels. We have 20 maybe salvageable, like this one, uh, Probably not. The boys have the homestead rebuilding under control. We had to turn on the well to the water. The well is our redundancy for our water. We can't count on it full time. It's too much work for the well. Our water has stopped coming off the mountain. Found it. Hold on, it burst right here though. But why did it burst one of our new clamps?

Too much pressure.

Fixed it. Hopefully that'll hold up. This line has been holding up better. I think minerals got lost in the shuffle. Then I might need you. I could probably manage to get this off, maybe not, but the pull-in for this big heavy one is on this side. Wow, how do you stack that? Track loader? Yeah.

The skid steer broke.

No, that's what I need. What happened? What's wrong with the skid steer?

Same thing, the bolts.

We're gonna have to do this the old school way without a track loader. I'm gonna borrow the Chickshaw table, which— no, it's not the Chickshaw, chicken tractor— which, by the way, at Homestead Builds, go check out the book, you can actually get this for free, the plans for this one. It's a little bit of a free sample, chapter 1 of 12. We kind of pulled very far back. Static.

Yes, that hit it like a—

keep going, keep going. This is the one we need. It's even heavier and it doesn't have attachments on this side, only the other side. Do this, sit on— just wrap this chain around it. Salvaging some minerals from this old Shaw. The source where we got mats dried up So I'm trying to find new— this, this one sucks. Yeah, see, mats don't hold up. I think a conveyor belt will. I just need to get around to finding where I can buy one and where people can buy one. This will be in Homestead Builds Volume 2. Glad we can salvage this. These minerals are not expensive, 16 of them. The cows can get whatever mineral they like. That's the problem with the salt block. The salt block, there's a lot more than salt in that. They may be hunting one mineral and trying to get that one, they overdose on the others. Nice and easy. Slower. There you go, you got it. Important that we get these minerals to the animals because the better mineralized they are, the better mineralized we are. Time out for the minerals. We're about to make some cows really happy. But first, look at this young man, just had a birthday, and he's climbing on the Concrete. We're talking about cutting our concrete platform where it's hanging over right there. This was some storm. 1000x to be that tall all the way across, 6 feet higher than it is right now, 7 feet, and to wash out all the soil underneath. Hey, how'd our forms hold up? Okay, I think it looks all right. Ain't going nowhere, is it? We've since added this and encompassed this 6x6. Blaze has come checking it out. They needed that. This is good for them. Two more boxes, signed books. The goal is to deplete this pile by Christmas. One dozen. Let's put these in a thing marked not for sale. It's the best kind. It's a homegrown kind, which means it's not USDA inspected and there's less rules. So we can go to a custom butcher, we don't have to go to a USDA inspected butcher. Meanwhile, when is this going to be ready?

A couple hours.

How's this gonna work?

I will put water in here and then I will set it to 2 hours and let it go.

Because that's healthy, it's doing it for 3 days on the stovetop.

I'm not doing it for 3 days on the stovetop, it's too much.

Oh boy, that turned out nice. Thanks, that's your burger. How's the corn? That was from frozen. Our corn— she's got a process, folks. It ain't over. We had a wonderful dinner. Back in. You're gonna do 2 more rounds, same goes. That really pulls it all out. Happy day.