This Could Have Been Bad

I see white sauce in my future. You going with— yep, he is right where he wants to be. Yep. Mom's plant's doing— her lettuce is just starting to come up. Looking good. It's that— it's that scalder we had a problem with last time. It barely started. I want to make sure it's going to start. For the big day tomorrow of butchering. John, is there a water line I can have? Yeah, behind the old barn right now. Well, let's get it out here. We need it all for tomorrow. We're butchering ducks and chickens tomorrow. Ducks are especially tricky because they take like a, I don't know, quadruple the time in the scalding. So it's very important that we get that going or they can be a real pain. You have to at least cover the burners before you turn it on. A little bit of a leak here. I think it gets Worse every time. Oh no, there it's off. It's dripping. Moment of truth. See, see what it does? It's not acting right. We might as well open it up, see what's inside, see if we can't figure something out. All right, we've got it on. Covered. The only thing I see maybe is there's some wire exposure that may be tripping on something else. See that? Some wire, but that's probably not it. All right, let's see if we can see anything, what's happening while we turn it on. Uh, the light comes on, so it's not the switch, which is what I thought we could tape up. Because the switch is coming on. It's the panel that's not coming on right here. See how it came on for a second? I was wiggling these wires and this came out kind of easy, so maybe that wasn't secure in there. All right, Arin, plug us in. Let's see if that did it. Yeah, did nothing. Nope. You think this water, uh, is still gonna get warm? No, I've tried it last time and you can see it's not bubbling. It starts heating up, starts bubbling, that would be good if it would go. I mean, we just wouldn't have our temperature, but it won't even go. Well, we do have a backup plan and that's this. Now this gets plugged in, a little pain in the butt because you can't— you got to make sure this doesn't fall in. And that's not temperature controlled, you can't set it to like 145 and They stay at it all day. Leave that panel off, Dorian. We'll see if we can't get some help. Hey, G, you washing away the rocks, my man? Let's not do that. Back to our regular game, trying to get Flossie back in routine. I've got the alfalfa. Come on down, Flossie. She's getting smarter though. She's not falling for it. She's still very attached to her baby. Gotta go closer with it. Come on, come on, come on. Here. It's been like 4 days, 5 days trying to milk her. I'm wondering if the calf is getting all that already. Usually that takes a couple of weeks, but that calf is extra vibrant, so I imagine that's possible. They might already have to calf separate, or her milk hadn't come in yet. She's still, you know, got colostrum, and it's not that much. Are you gonna crawl?

Come on, come on, Teddy. You're gonna knock him in the face. Are you thinking you're gonna do it?

Oh, let's go ship some orders. I'm sorry, but we can't keep a fort on top of the books. All right, so 4 more boxes. If we sold another 100, yeah, but could you get that just overnight? That would be 4 more boxes, guys. There's only 1 pallet and 7 boxes left. That's not much with it winding down, uh, closing this sale on Saturday with a live webinar with Joel. You want to get in? Uh, before then, shout us some names.

Okay, Laura E, Andrew G, Jacob S, John C, Rachel H, Nathan M. Nice.

Jamie S. Thank you very much, guys. You're really going to enjoy this. Hey, why don't we get them just, uh, play a game with me. Grab, grab polyface micro. Open it up to just some random page, random sentence, and let's see what it says. This is from the Developing Pastures chapter. Naturalist John Audubon recorded in his diary that in one of his wilderness wanderings, he couldn't see the sun for 3 days because it was blocked by a flock of passenger pigeons. Adding chickens to our homestead is about as basic ecological foundation block as we can find. Preach! That was good. That was a good line. It's hard not to find a good line in this book. This is— speaking of chickens as a foundational, I would say this book is foundational for homestead. Now it's got things in here on chickens, rabbits, pigs, dairy cows, lots of good stuff about it. It's not necessarily step by step, do this and do that, but what, what's happening is you're getting into inside Have a Brilliant Mind. So you're getting inside of Joel Salatin's mind, and because he's sharing his mind, he's sharing his heart. That's one cool thing about these books is he does go beyond mind and he goes into heart, and it goes into more lifestyle, and it's actually fun to read. And it's this really good foundation that you take this foundation, you take, you take these thought processes like looking at nature and seeing that birds are beneficial. And so, okay, okay, of course we're gonna have chickens on our homestead for what they do for the cows, an example. I would say this is a great foundation. You would then, you know, go get some step-by-step specifics, uh, but this is going to give you an amazing base, which is so important when you're, you know, talking to Mr. Google Pants and you're just You need, you need a foundation to approach your, your research and your, uh, strategies, and this is it. They've got a fun job. Their job is to bounce and make the walnuts come down. Wow, keep going! I want to show you guys something. Watch this. Come here, honey. Look, notice how he likes to— he loves this, okay? He loves being held out. You love it. Okay, don't do this. Watch this. Give me a hug, Henry. Give me a hug. Push it as hard as you can. Here, give me a hug. What are you—

this is the part for being silly.

Mom's seeing if we can't move this toilet. They do have the pegs in. It's not to level it, it's to keep it from blowing over, probably. We just gotta move it. We can move it up there.

It just needs to be— because this is the problem.

It's unsightly.

It's unsightly. And when my kids are running out— yes, they don't—

that's why it's got to move, because they'll, they'll run right here and they won't look, and there'll be a car coming, and the car won't see them either. We have concrete here. We actually have concrete, but I don't know if we'll be able to drive this. We'll be able to drive if we put it in right here. We'll be able to drive the stake in. I'm just looking for excuse to drive Cubby. Uh, well, we got it moved without breaking breaking it, and it's going to be a safer place for the kids now. Just got to see about driving the stakes back in. And since we have a butchering workshop tomorrow for Abundance Plus, we've got to— we've got this metal container that we're going to start storing all our, our butchering stuff in. I'm thinking it goes right there. What do you think, Irene? Right there next to that outlet. So if I pull up, I'll pull right here with the tractor and we'll load it. That's what I was thinking. What do you think? Okay, I'm gonna come back down. Well, that's not going to quite work because it's hollow under there, and so we have to catch a board around the edge. So we need it to be a little bit longer. Those are just a hair too short. Let's go and put our grinder in. That stabilize it around? Yeah, I think so. Those shelves should be adjustable or takeoutable. All right, Mark, we're gonna try your electronic skills today. That is our mechanic Mark. We got him all the way back from when we had Maple, our converted school bus, to travel America. And that's 2017, we're going on 14 years. It was just one day, hey Mark, do you work on a string trimmer? Oh yeah, I'll do small engines. And then, oh, what about Suburbans? Yeah, I work on— okay, side-by-sides. He's worked on— he's worked on Lucky the tractor. And now it's like, oh well, do you do electronics? We turn on and the light comes on on the switch. Yeah, but this intelligent controller doesn't. I'll see if you've got any power coming off this transformer right here. Yeah, we got voltage. We got voltage. Flip your switch on right now. It lit up a little bit there for a second. It lit up for one second. This is— yeah, Mark's saying one of the tabs just broke off that switch. Yeah, I can see it. See that? It's gone. He's bypassing the switch. That's on. Yeah, yeah, it's on. You did it. You just bypassed the switch. I can straight wire it for now. Yeah, and you can just unplug and plug it back up. That's fine, till we can get a switch. Yeah, that's fine. All we gotta do is plug it in. Yep, look at you, Mark. Good job. Turn it on, make sure it's— yeah, you want me to set it? Yeah, that's it. All right. Yep. So that's going to heat that water? Just— it'll heat it to 149 and it'll keep it there is what's nice about it. Oh, that's what the temperature is now? Yes, 65. Okay. Yeah, we're back outside for our training. Normally we have shade over there.

Yeah, I know.

So we're gonna have to do it right here. What's the goal today, Jacob? You're gonna swing the 18. Uh-oh. All right, and get up to the 18. And get up to the 18. Yeah. Okay, ladies first. How was the workout, Beck?

Tired.

You tired? All right, we got onions from the farm, we got chicken and beef from the farm, lots of zucchini. You ready to do this? Steak and chicken. I got the meat cut up, she's got the zucchini cut up, onions are cut up, skillets are ready, rice has been cooled. Made and cooled. We got the white sauce coming to room temp.

Yeah, so what we do in this skillet— we use this skillet for everything. Okay, cook the meat, put it in a pan, put it in the oven to, to just stay warm. It's not on, like, it's on warm.

What's in that?

Can I guess? Butter.

Butter. Okay.

And then we'll cook the onions and zucchini in a hot pan.

Okay.

Then put— transfer them into something in that, and then we'll do the rice.

You think I'm the Burn It Up Cooking Show? She's scaring me here. She's got it on high heat. Oh yeah, it's on 8, barely any oil in that. Well, you're really pushing it. No, that's not brown from the burning, it's actually brown from coconut aminos.

I used a lot of oil once and it was weird, so then I was like, let's try not to use— I used a lot of butter once and it was just weird. And I also added salt and then it got really like juicy. Yeah, and it was just like—

so we had our salt after. Yeah, rice turned out nice. Frying up eggs.

Yep, mix it all together.

It's just perfection, Beck.

It's gonna be pretty delicious.

Pretty close. It's all done, Beck. That was quite the feat.

It was quite the feat.

Rice, steak and chicken, and zucchini. How is it, Beck?

It's pretty good, not gonna lie.