This is the Reality

Happy day and welcome to another day in the Rooted life. What's going on over here? Are y'all okay? Okay, did you bring any charcoal or any cardboard or nothing? We did diesel. Oh, okay. 2025 recovery includes burning the brush piles from Hurricane Helene. I mean, look at this, it never ceases to amaze me. This is a sheer 10-foot cliff carved out for us. Thank you, my man. We had a breakout last night. They don't want eggs, they just, uh, knocked the bucket of eggs over. Baby's got the mini axe. I didn't turn this yesterday. We need to turn this and wet this to get this compost really going, breaking down. Breakfast is ready. And are we gonna turn this this morning? When I come down there and scope that— he was pinching me yesterday. Okay, let's get the pig board down. I want to say these geese are a little more aggressive since they've been moved. I don't know if it's being moved or it's spring. All right, chicken. Chicken tip of the day. Cue some sort of theme music, Austin. No, no, no, that's not— no, no, try again. That's it, that's it, chicken tip of the day. Did you bring the egg basket? Huh? Okay, timeout. Let's feed them first, get in, and then we can use this bucket for scrap eggs. We're going over stage 1 of chicken tending, and that's preparation. Yesterday we talked about Step 1 in preparation, that's how many chickens do you get? Which I said you get 5 chickens for every dozen eggs a week. I posted a little short about that on X and somebody got on there and said, uh-oh, I only eat 6 eggs a week, half a dozen, what do I do? Well, no problem. In that case, you get 2 chickens plus a medio pollito. It's a half chicken, like what you see on the weather vanes. Remember, we've read that children Mediopito. He partnered with the wind, he partnered with the water and the fire. Well, that's what you got to do if you only want half a dozen chickens a week. You got to find a Mediopito. Although there was this chicken that lived without a head. Austin, roll that. Yeah, that's too good, Austin. Roll another one. You can't run around like a footless chicken. Headless chicken, Your Majesty. Uh, no. How's the chicken supposed to run around without the head? Step 2 in preparing is you— well, what kind of chicken do you get? Let's not make it complicated. I'm gonna give you 3 to choose from, especially if you're just starting out. Rhode Island Red, Black Australorp, Barred Plymouth Rock. They were seriously all just right there. A Buff Orpington isn't terrible. Uh, a Wyandotte. So beautiful. Our family used to have Wyandottes here on the farm. But if you just want one, you don't care, get the Rhode Island Red. It's gonna be hard— just get the pig board. He's scary. Come on, come on. Order them now. McMurray Hatchery. Order them for delivery. Not now, not now. Don't be crazy. Don't be the crazy chicken lady. Don't be that crazy chicken lady. Order them for spring delivery. You might need to order now. I'm hearing there's shortages, uh, for last possible frost date. That's the tip day. That's just step 2 of 5 in stage 1. I've got 12 stages. I'm giving it to you in a PDF plus a cheat sheet to just post up and just refer anytime throughout the year what you're supposed to do. It's free, it's free. Link in the description. You're getting on our wait list for March 23rd, kickstarting my new book, The Chicken Tender. You're okay up there. What are you playing, king of the hill with the goose? All right, of course you can go to the link in the description, but what about most of you are watching on TV? I got us a domain name, chickentenderbook.com. We'll have the free PDF chicken tender book. Okay, how did that chicken get out? We were doing so good. You put the chicken out? Let's get him back in. The reason I suggest, uh, suggest those breeds is they're just prolific egg layers. They're just hardy, they're easier to come by, and just when you're just starting out, you don't want to fool around. You want foolproofness. What are they waiting on? All right, let's go. That needs to— that needs to be soaked already. Might as well carry some things back. Uh, okay, let's have a goal. It's 20 till 10. I need a goal. I'm unmotivated this morning. Time change is kicking my butt. When we go back to Standard Time in November, let's just stay there. Who do I— who do I call? Do I call the senators? What do I do? We want to base on what time we stick with based on science, right? Standard Time, solar noon. Is that solar noon? Not one. I'm for it getting dark at 8:30 the latest in the summer. Can go to bed even if I have to put the chickens up, because forget putting the chickens up at 9:30, I'm already honking my shoes. Which I don't put the chickens up. Shot of this, uh, probably because of that. We just said, hey, let's make sure our electric fences are hot. We have the guard goose. It's fine. That's actually been a lot easier, not putting them up, not letting them out in the morning. Got a lot of freedom there. Now the day passes, we use those machines that I'm not so thankful for them. Thankful for them, I mean, we restored our bank here. I mean, it all looked like that, stoking the brush fires. He was just moving the logs. I'm being realistic with myself. I'm not hurrying. I just got 10 minutes left. I had to put the pig bucket back inside. Old me would have just left it out. You gotta put things away. I want to go in the woods, find this property line, but I'm gonna end it. I'm gonna dope up and put this fence up. Oh, did I not even tell you guys? Yeah, youth group got out the cows and they got into the garden. I want to carry 14 posts, a post pounder, and a camera, but I can't. No, Austin, this time don't speed that up. Don't, don't shorten it in any way. Let's show the people a taste of the real time. That's homesteading, homestead vlogging for you. When I came and threw these down, there were already 4 out here, so Can't be having them get out. I mean, they're gonna get out, but we need to have redundancy. We have a fence around the cows. Well, let's have a fence around the garden in case. That was step one, getting this garden protected. This is step 2. Maybe I don't need this whole box. It's kind of heavy. Put fence insulators on.

On.

I guess we're just taking that whole thing. I'm okay, I'm okay. I didn't fall. That ought to do it. Step 2, let's go. You got a buddy, Annie?

I do.

I gotta help her. Step number 3, put the line up. Garden used to be right here. Hey, that's why you do not make permanent fence until you've been in— until that fence has been there for 3 years. I could have thought that was going to be all the garden we'd ever need. Then we had a hurricane blow out a quarter of it. Then we tried to quit the grocery store last year and we realized we didn't have enough garden if we were going to do that. So here we are. But how long is this taking me? 20 minutes to put up this fence. And if it stays in this spot for 3 years Guys, one day you're gonna see a permanent fence around this garden, more than likely, but it's going to be at least in 3 years. We ran out of line. It's not a problem, I've got more at the house. Yeah, that's where our barn is, at the house, and a stall downstairs. Let's go get the other spool for the other line. See how far it goes to see how much more twine or line we're going to need. It's incredible, they both ended at the same time. We've got maybe 60, 70 feet left. Coolest knots there is. You ran out of fence line or your fence line broke and you need to mend it, put your two lines together, do a loop Come back through, pull it tight, and then the, the more this pulls apart, the tighter that knot actually gets. Fantastic fence mending knot. I made it! We're done. Mom's garden is protected. Notice it's Mom's garden when it's in danger, and they're certainly my cows when they're the ones who, uh, Treaded all over it.

And not my horse. My horse didn't do it.

Yeah, but your horse kicked them out.

How do you know? Blaze, every time a cow— but we've also seen the cows bust down the fence without Blaze doing anything, and Blaze just stands there watching.

You don't even have to turn this on. There's, there's not much pressure on it, you know. They're out. Animals don't try hard to get in. Of course, unless there's a lady in there and heat. But that's not the case. They try hard to get out. See what I'm talking about? They've walked over here, they've, they've put a hole in the tarp. A weed will grow up through that. They're hanging out in the strawberries. They look like they're gonna be okay. The strawberries. We might be having an interesting week. We've been trying to find Lily a horse. We've been putting on the gas on it since she's outgrown blaze, or one horse. Get the T-post and the pound driver. I thought you were hustling to get that.

I am.

Get the T-post and the, the T-post driver. Yeah, enjoy this. She's 13, gonna be grown and gone before I know it on horse events. Buddy, when she gets 16, I'm afraid we're never gonna see you. We always go into the horse event. Okay, you get a T-post and T-post driver. There's an extra down there by the pig port if you want, but the T-post driver is in the fence stall. I'm gonna teach you how to drive a post. You're gonna be a horse lady, you gotta know how to do this.

Can you do a little bit at first?

So what you do, if you were without me, you just— you get a stool or a bucket. If you're doing a lot of these, you're going to want to have earmuffs. You gotta first take them off. Well, that one's broke. Take this one off, open it, and get it on there, and then screw it back on. All right, we even got a second strand on this guy. Garden is protected. Yes. Um, the whole—

that whole field is hay bales. We could keep them in there and keep them even more thick. Yeah, we can move them because we can't move them tomorrow. Maybe possibly.

Oh, Huge. Yes, we've got a call in. I think I forgot to finish that thought. We might be going out of town to look at you a horse.

Yeah, like out of town.

We've looked at 3 locally over the last several months and none of them have worked out, but we might have found one. But we're gonna have to travel, and the only reason we're gonna be willing to travel there is because we actually have friends there we can stay with, and we would want to visit, and they would know a vet for recommending a PPE. You got to be able to trust the vet. As the buyer, because if you're trusting the seller for the vet, I mean, things can happen. I'm curious. I've got 30 minutes. That's not nearly enough time to hike the mountain, but it's maybe enough time to hike some of it. So I think this is the secret of homestead success, one of them. I only got 30 minutes. I'm gonna go do what I can. It's not enough to finish it. Even if that's all you got, 30 minutes a day for anything, just pick the most important thing and go at it. Henry, you wanna go hike with me? Henry, you want to go on a hike with me? You want to go in the woods? Spray paint? Is this smoke? Our neighbors are burning too. They have a bigger, much bigger pile. There's a corner. Let's go. Y'all see how steep this is? It's crazy. All right, an old tent's over here somewhere. See, this looks clear. Okay, yep, there's the ribbon. All right, see? Okay, 15 minutes in. You can kind of see the trail there in the winter. The ribbons have actually been holding up nicely. They've got this on old grandpa's fence. Can you believe he fenced this and ran cows up in here? Trail down through the woods. What I want to do is get the ribbons. I'm going to continue to paint, but I want to put ribbons, just fresh ribbons, because they're so much easier to see. Hey, we've had a big change of plans. It's evening. Well, I think we have. Okay, it's pretty much like we're going out of town, uh, to look at Lily, a horse. We've lined up the PPE, the vet check, and everything. We're pending one last phone call, our trainer talking to the seller. It looks like— well, we're packing. It looks like we may be going. That's like 3 days, so I don't think I'm I don't think I'm gonna vlog all 3 days. I think I'll combine it into one, so there'll just be 3 videos this week. She's obviously very excited. I'm trying to think when I'm gonna get you these chicken tips. I don't know, just download the PDF and you don't need them.

But I cleaned the trailer and I got all my horse stuff packed. Yeah, and I cleaned out the trailer and I cleaned out the hay net and everything.

How excited are you?

I'm really excited.

Excited enough that she's been packing for an hour and a half. She's got snacks. Our meat is going with us. The only reason we feel like we can do this— we have friends down there, they know a vet down there, and we have a place to stay. And it's been really hard to find a horse.

Like, really hard. Like, really, Dad.

Like, when we were looking at Ernie, that was in December. So we've been looking for—

no, we've been looking ever since 3, 4 months. We've been looking like a month after the hernia came. We stopped. So we started looking in October.

Okay, so this, this may be it. I mean, our trainer has to get on the phone with this lady and they've been playing phone tag. We want to vet it as much as we can before we go because it's 8 hours one way a day and then a day back driving. I don't want to come back with an empty trailer. So hopefully the next book— the next video is us getting Lily a horse. Okay, in the meantime, chicken chickentenderbook.com. What, you want to post on your channel before mine?

Sure, you always post like, you know, if you want, you post it in your video.

Okay, well, you got one week. You got— I'm just gonna be out in a week, or your video will be out. I'll link your video too, huh?

Mine's gonna be out next Wednesday.

Okay.