This could be tricky | Building a new Garden in the High Tunnel

Early morning waffles for you, bud. Yesterday was fantastic. It was all nice and warm. I could take the little kids with me. Today, I did not expect this. Hope it didn't freeze the hydrants. I didn't turn them off. Frost. I know. Very cold and windy. Febrero es loco. No, it's not. No, it's not. Febrero is loco. Was it normal? No. Just normal, steady temperature all the time? Mama! Whoa, that's vanilla? Well, she's a giver, isn't she? She's all we got. Oh, you gotta milk Honey out all the way, Jonah. I wonder if— Jonah, let's do it today because it's— it's— you're supposed to give her a break for 2 days not milking her and then milk her one more time and she's dried off. Empty this a little bit. Give me a— give me a, uh, a yogurt. We're gonna be very careful with our milk. And only a gallon a day. Gallon a day is tight for us. It's giving us our milk. And our yogurt needs. Hear that? The machine is coming. Happy day. It's Thursday, last vlog of the week. Thank you for joining us this week. We have a big, gigantic, uncertain day. We gotta prep this high tunnel. Afraid of that. I think we might have froze it. Uh, prep this high tunnel for a garden. First up, we gotta get the wood chips out of here. We are buying the walking tractor but it's rotary plow to do this, so we're a bit pressed for time. I want to get that back to him, my friend, at a reasonable rate. This coming Sunday would have been 1 week. He said I could borrow it for a week or 2. I'd like to err more on the side of a week. Step 1, get the bedding out of here that the chickens were on. Hey, that's good! Wow, that's not a bad idea. Instead of somebody having to be here and open this up every time so you can put it right in the pile and having to deal with chickens getting out He's just laying it over and then we'll put it— then we'll push it onto the pile. Yeah, you guys recognize that? It's perfect mixed compost. It's got a nice mix of chicken manure in it to wood chips ratio, and we'll add it to our pile. We'll get a critical mass and we'll get a compost building. Jonah's already putting this to work. He can't get to everything. Oh, Shovels too, probably. Jess, I can start raking it out so you can get it off. I'm gonna grab the shovel. This ain't a joke. This ain't a joke. Where'd this cold weather come from? Yesterday it felt like spring. I don't think this could have worked any better, huh? What? This works fantastic. It's hard. Yeah, it is. Do you think the rotary plow is gonna make Work of that or what? Yeah, thank you. I better get this hose out of the way for step number 2. Yeah, step number 2 is to get our old soil back in here. If you're just joining us, we used to have a high tunnel half this size, 50 feet long. Hurricane Helene, 100x waters, 1000x waters, I don't know, it was crazy, like 30-something inches of rain in 2 days. Took out our high tunnel. We're not in a floodplain. This is not a floodplain. Farmers Brands. Thank you to them. Not only donated but installed this for us out of this compassion. Before we level this, we've got our topsoil out. We're going to stretch it thin. This was our soil we'd build up over the year— years on our high tunnel that was just 50 feet long. Now it's basically 100 feet long. We're gonna do with what we have, putting our soil back, and, uh, we're just gonna mix it with this field dirt. Wow, this is going incredibly smooth. He's almost to the end of it. How does he know? Like, he's just putting these out in bucket loads and he's gonna do it just right. Like, he could have put too much down there or not enough, but it's just right. Josiah has smoothed this out. It's totally ready. This side, still a little clumpy, maybe 70%. Of it. He's taking a break for breakfast. I think he's got it. I should check on everybody eating breakfast. Be nice if everybody would skip it with me, but I get it, they're children, they're growing. But eating sure is inconvenient sometimes. You got to get 2 meals going because you're going to be gone. Horse crazy Lily's got 3 horse things today. Your regular horse training, we're going to look at that horse, and then you got pony club. So make yourself 2 meals, maybe in a soup container. Does that sound good?

Yeah.

Okay, that means we need to have our night— our nice meal at lunch. What's going on? You need this off? He is so needy on this important garden day right now. Why are we taking this out of the bottom of this candle? Oh shoot, that's the wick, bro. That can't come out. Yeah, okay, well, we just ruined the candle. There you go, Lily. Let's get another 300. Let's get this lamb going. Did you get it done, my man? Good job. You know what's next? Telling us. Rodeo plow. Takes 3 of our little lamb legs to feed us twice. There's your hack. Every time we cook our main meal, we make enough for, uh, 2, and so we have leftovers. So we always have a leftover meal and then a fresh meal, and then breakfast is pretty much always bacon and eggs. Get the acorn squash going before you leave. Have it all prepped and ready to go. All right. Y'all ready? Are you ready to go try this thing? What's your hesitation? It's gonna take a long time. You think? How am I gonna turn around? Dang. Okay, well, you're gonna have to get— listen, you're gonna have to get as close as you can, and then at the end we're gonna have to do it by hand. Shoot. At the end, the beds are just gonna have to be on top and we'll, uh, we'll broadfork. We just won't be able to do that. We just won't. Let me do one loop around it and see what happens. You have to start in the middle. Okay, that's the pattern. Let's go level it first. We're gonna level this out with our hand tools, and next we're gonna try this, uh, walking tractor rotary plow. Let's work and talk. Basically, if you want to be friends with me, we're gonna work and talk because I like to work. Let me show you guys something. Posted a poll on X about when everybody gets started with chickens. When does every— when do y'all get started with chickens? Basically half the people— can you see that? Half the people, nearly 44% start in March, another 25-27% start in April. Big mistake getting your chickens in March. It's like, it's freezing out here right now, March 6th. Just simmer down. I know you're excited from the, uh, you know, you got spring fever. Well, by the way, just keep busy during the winter. Build your coop, get your brooder set up, do something. Get your chickens instead last possible frost date, around that date. For us, that's like May 10th, so as soon as we'll get them 3 weeks before that, raise them in the breeder, and then we'll flip them out. That's a quick tip, and that's one point in the timeline. I've created a game plan for you guys, giving it to you totally free when you sign up for the waitlist. We're launching my newest chicken book coming March 23rd. I'm going to give you that timeline for free right now, and it'll be basically all you need to do from getting your chickens as chicks all the way to harvest. Your back's killing you, you're just 15. All right, let's get it warmed up. We're going to set it on a deeper setting too, okay? It's really hard ground over there and we want to make sure— or should we just keep it on our normal setting? Something's not right, Jonah. It should start right up. Turn it to choke. Okay, the old man knows something. No, the throttle was up and I put it down. Oh, the old man, he can't— he can't know better than you, huh? Sometimes it's not It's not my favorite that these soils are going to get mixed, but we had to break that compact ground up or those roots, our veggie roots, aren't going to reach down in there. Permaculture, nature teaches us that with growing things, you add layers on top. You don't disturb to this extent. But this does boost it and we're growing food. We're needing to feed our family and we need to ensure success this year. We don't have a couple of years. We gotta adjust the depth. Is this supposed to be in the lowest gear? I like it in the low gear, but you might want to speed it up. I'm about to go deeper. Let's do to go deeper. Let's do go deeper. Let's cut all this twine off of our thing. That's barely getting in there because of all the soil we added on top. Okay, the rest of them are filled with dirt. There we go. Can we go even deeper? I don't want to go too deep and get too much of that soil up. I guess in the end it's probably going to be about a, I don't know, a foot of soil. That's even kind of, kind of softens up down there. It might have a foot and a half of pliable soil. All started good here, then you get down in here and we're slinging up a lot of rock. This is a North Carolina rocky soil down here. Look, is this even— is this like gravel? No, I don't think So we're starting over, man. We're basically starting over. What we had was nice. It is what it is. Won't help to complain about it. Look at this one, huge. Wow, it's working, it's working, it's working! Now he could only go so far over here. You know what, hold on, that might be a bed. I think we're 21 feet across. Yeah, so there's 6 pathways, not 5. We can go ahead and shape this one. I told the boys we're going to quit an hour early. This is crazy. This is just crazy, especially since it's going well. We sat and said we're going to quit an hour early now because I feel like we could work in this high tunnel. It's not as bad in here, but it's still pretty bad. The wind's coming in here. I love how smooth this is. Look, just different. Oh, it's so simple. We're gonna take a permaculture homestead timeout. We've got 3 beds pretty much built. It's going so good. It's just so supple, so deep. The raised beds are so tall. We've got somebody out of the group— group, uh, youth group got out. When you have 10-something-odd cows, you have a dozen or so sheep, maybe 20, maybe a couple dozen. 70, 80 chickens. Right now we have about 10 pigs. What's your chances something's gonna go wrong? They got it. They don't need us. This is so right. They just love it. They just love compost. How you holding up, Hercules? Or 3 more in 20 minutes? It's taking us about 20 minutes a row. We have like 10 minutes. 10 minutes? It's gonna be hard to do 3 beds in 10 minutes. Quick, Josiah, act like you're working. Here comes the inspector. You got to see this. This was concrete this morning. Oh my gosh.

It's so cold.

It's gonna be your tomato heaven. It is so cold.

It is gonna be my tomato heaven. You just got one more row to do, I guess.

No, 3. Just gotta put 3 in here. The, the third one goes all the way against the wall. That one had a path.

So good.

He's doing it for you, babe. You should go give him a kiss on the cheek because—

where's the grass?

Where did it come from? He's— he said he doesn't even like onions.

Well, he doesn't have to eat— there's no—

he doesn't He doesn't like tomato sauce. Yes you do. Yes you do. You like spaghetti. No, really? Come on, you can step on the bed for a kiss.

Cucumbers and peppers.

Oh, wait a minute, Austin, roll the tape, roll the tape. The thing takes up more than your entire plate. You good? Well, green beans are coming in here. Well, I could do without it, but you like us, right? And we like it. That's why I do this, because plus I do like tomato sauce on some meat.

This is so amazing.

Wait, you— this weather was unexpected, is that what you said? You looking at the weather?

So when I looked at it yesterday, it was not going to be this cold today, and it had snow on my app, on my weather app. It did not show snow yesterday for today.

3 beds. So we got halfway done. Yeah, I think that's further than I thought. I didn't know if we'd even be able to get to beds today, so I'm happy about that. Let's pick up our tools and let's quit a little early because it's so miserable. Don't know if it's supposed to be this windy, but this wind will dry out the soil, so let's keep it covered. We got it covered. All right, well, Lily's first horse event got canceled. Your lesson because it's so windy. I hope we can still go see your horse. Okay, we're ending up cooking show today. We're gonna try these Brussels sprouts. We had them at a store called— restaurant called Picnic in Austin, Texas, when we were at the Great American Farm Tour in 2017. There was maple syrup involved. First time we had Brussels sprouts. I don't like many vegetables. Brussels sprouts is one of them. Prepared like this: wash them, peel them, cut them, trim them, and then cut this end off. Okay, and then cut it in half. You got it? I'm gonna make the vinaigrette. Thanks to Grok, I just asked for a copycat recipe from Picnic, the restaurant in Austin, Texas, and I got it. 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon maple syrup, salt and pepper to taste. I don't ever know what that means, so I just imagine I work I was putting salt and pepper over all that, and that's how much I put in there. Put the Brussels sprouts flat side down, face down in butter. Now that it's browned one side, now we're doing the drizzle, and we'll stir it in. Hey, I know they were so good, but I wanted a shot of you eating it.

Sorry, give me another one.

Were they as good as Pic-Nic's?

Oh, they were so good, took me right back.

If you don't think you can cook, if you can read, you can cook. Just read a recipe, follow the instructions, and you're a cooker. Amazing recipes, right? He's been making those waffles. They're so good.

They make batter and they have it in the fridge, and then they make fresh waffles. I'm gonna buy more. I've never had a sweet one.

Yeah, it's got a little sweet in it.

Good. Yeah, that's funny because I only bought a little bit of at the store, cuz I was like, are we not really going to eat—

are they going to eat—

are the kids going to eat them?

Jonah just said it's good.

Let me be free.