Too Much of a Good Thing

Apron maintenance. What's in your pocket? Energizer tester, form-fitting work gloves, clamp I need to put on one of the solar Energizers, Premier 1 fence repair kit, carabiner I need to remember to put on the— shh, ramp in, GoPro. Apron-wearing permaculture chicken tendon master. All right, you got your hammer? You ready to go? Get the hammer ready to go. I let him get this at Lowe's once instead of a toy. Was that a good idea or a bad idea? Good idea. Good idea. Well, it's a tool, although you've kind of torn up a few things with it. Let's go see what the greatest good we can do at this moment. That seems to be coming back after the hailstorm. Look, see that? That is a small stream coming Where's the grate? I guess it's filled up with dirt and gotten clogged. I think the boys are on this today grading. You see it? Should we get a shovel and uncover it?

It's the last time I'll hold his hand.

I don't know. Maybe. I don't think so, but maybe. Hey, do you want a shovel too? Yeah, here's a Henry-sized shovel. No, it's little. Yeah, you get a little one. All right, come on. What are they up to? Oh, there's the cows. No, the cows are not out. The cows are where they're supposed to be.

No.

All right, you keep digging that out. They're in today's paddock. I wonder if somebody got out. You know what'd be really satisfying, Henry? What? Is if we unplug this and by the end of this little scene, this pond is draining. Henry, it's starting to rain. I'm gonna have to put this main camera up. Okay, I'll be back. Oh hey, let's set up a new paddock for them. The heifer and the steer both busted out of their fence up in the 2 acres. It is spring, that means animal separation season. We can't be having He-Man breed that little heifer. She's not ready yet. She'll be going through cycles, but you don't want to breed them until they're about 20 months old or you'll stunt their growth. All right, honestly, I thought the rain was over. Let's get the rest of this silt off of this grate. Let's go up the hill and see where this problem starts. We have a little creek coming down our parking lot. Nothing like a good rain event to show you your water vulnerabilities. I was thinking today we might men some cow fences. We're always trying to do the most important thing for our goal, which is growing the most healthiest food possible, living the most healthy lifestyle. What I'm seeing today is our homestead under attack from the— all this rain. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. We're washing away our access roads, we're washing away our parking lot. We're clogging drains, which means that water's got to go somewhere. It's going to go down our main driveway. Oh, we're overflowing the pond. Anyway, I gotta unclog the, the main drain. See, see, the main drain is blocked with stick already. Hear that? More water coming through there. Listen, when I clear this one, it's going to really start rip-roaring. And I'm wondering, is that too tall? Oh yeah, oh yeah, this is missing its— this has had a board on it. This isn't pushed down enough. If that were sitting lower, this pond wouldn't be going so high and overflowing right here. Also, there's supposed to be an overflow that doesn't appear to be working. Hey Henry, we're solving all the mysteries. Here's our board that was holding up. It's trying to go down the drain. There we go, now it's draining. We had the main drain, it failed. We have the overflow drain, it failed. We have the third plan. We have a lower— well, well, it is lower, not low enough, because what happened was it drained right here. This is a third safety net. And that's— if both those fail, we should be able to come through here on the land and go right down through here. So this ditch needs to be more defined here. We kept it smooth because we wanted to be able to drive over it with the milk sled, but I noticed we didn't drive the milk sled over here because we have trees. The milk sled is mainly for their shade. We don't need the milk sled, so we can make a more dramatic ditch right here. Okay, let's go. Things are quite a bit slower with him along, but I guess that's what we're out here doing, raising chidlers. What is this? Oh, that's an old hammer. First we're raising chidlers, then our own food. All right, let's get those sheep moved. Y'all are all confused. Home used to be right there. That's down there, way down there by the pigs. And they weren't up and their pussy got moved and they moved without them. Uh, we're about out of fuel. Let's go get fuel. So far we're finding really obvious but easy to fix problems. Let's put that on our checklist when we know a big rain event's coming. Hey, how did you learn how to drive?

Because I know how to do it.

He drove us— uh-oh, uh-oh. All these gas cans and not any gas. Uh-oh, is that got one in it? I didn't check that one. No. All right, they're all empty. Ah, here's a little bit, just a tiny bit. Oh, here's some. Oh yeah, here we go. It's got the X on it. That's diesel. During the hurricane, you couldn't find any yellow. We got some red ones and put X's on them. That's gas. How about that? A big mistake. Okay, I guess we're out of gas. I guess we're walking. There's a little bit in this one. Well, hopefully that little bit of drop of gas will get us home. or ramp pen moved. All right, let's see you drive us there. Okay, watch this. This is crazy. The cows are still out. Or they got out again. Oh, the bull! Shoot. See, I think she's gonna eat— all the cows are out. It's not the heifers out this time, it's the main herd. This ain't funny when they start heading towards the garden. All right, here they are in the feed. Second My favorite spot. Good, peppers are that way, so they missed that. You guys remember them? Get in, get them going, get them going up! Nah, they get out, they'll eat the feed, they'll get in the garden, they'll eat the trees. Hey, that's the tool. That thing can turn on a dime. What? They're feeling good. I like this grass, almost as tall as they are. Look at that, it's tall as they are in some spots. They're gonna hit that little hole. They come out easy, it's hard to get them back in. There they go, they did it. So what happened is they put up these nets, they lacked 6 feet. 8 feet, 10 feet, and they— the cows beat them to it. The cows found it before they got the hole. All right, I'm gonna go get the sheep moved, y'all. Hey, listen, behave and come right back out. Gideon, she died and won't start, probably because we're low on fuel and the intake is probably up. We're gonna have to push this down, let Selma down the hill. Start her on flat ground. I don't want to push this up the hill. That's where we got to go to get to the grass. Beefcakes trying to breed Pound Cake. Okay, she didn't get bred that first time. Makes me wonder if we ought to separate them because I don't really want fall babies. Not sure how I would separate them on a day like today, and I don't have like this project necessarily in mind. I can get a little nervous, be like, what's the content going to be? Now go slow, go slow. You're right, start, start slow. Just so it gets tight. Well, that didn't work. I did remember the clip from my apron though. I just realized something. Gideon went off with Salma. She's about out of fuel. That's why we had to roll her to the flat to start her. Hope this turns out okay. Can that thing pull this? What, this? Yeah. Yeah, it's got attachment. Pull up to the top of the hill and then we'll move it over. Okay, up. All right, that's good, that's good. Now it's easy to push down the hill. That's gotten clogged up too, can't drain. Well, she gave out. No more fuel.

Um, Sally.

Let's go down to pig feed. Hey, I haven't forgotten about the water fixes. I just want to check in on them mating, make sure they're not tearing anything up. I'm not a pig. He is. What did you do, bite her?

Rub her raw?

What I was saying earlier too, I don't really ever have to worry about content. Like I told Joel one day when he asked me if I ever run out of content. I said, do I ever run out of problems? We're down to the four-wheeler. Hey, do you know if these were clogged before the storm or the storm clogged them? I think they were clogged before. Oh, okay. Well then it'd be good if we go before big rain events. I think y'all got in a boat to get the screws on. He looks over here to this boat. We can't reach it. I swear y'all screwed that on with a boat. Hey, hey, you want me to hand them to you when you're ready? This definitely works better with a camera. Okay, one more vulnerability, then we've got to get to the cabin. We're a little late. Sun has come up nice though. Jonah's building a cabin and we're only outsourcing the very minimum— the electric, the plumbing, the things you have to get a, uh, what do you call it, the permit inspection for. So Hurricane Helene gave us all these rocks. This is our silt pond. It's basically not even— it's not working as a silt pond. It's just a creek running down through. It's bringing some water, but I feel like it could be bringing more. I think it's right there. Reach under right there. I was doing right there. I just felt in there. No, reach down in through there. Yeah, that feels like an animal hole. I don't feel right. I guess we won't know until you guys dig this up. Once you dig this out and the water can come down— what's the plan here? This is a big job. Where are you gonna put all these rocks? Right over here and then eventually in there. Why don't you use it as gravel for our road here, especially up there where it gets so steep? Is that the best gravel in the world? But it's cheap, free. We got— we gotta do something with it. What I felt and thought to be the hole seems to be clear. What do we got here? Well, I almost take off my shoes, so clean in here. Um, I talked to Randolph about Liz. Okay. And he thought that we're gonna put a waterproof membrane. Okay. Waterproof. Waterproof membrane. Okay. He doesn't think it will be a problem. I was thinking, what should— what kind of deck should we do out here? That phase one now or phase two? Right now we could just put stairs going down, wide stairs going down, and put this thing back. And 9 and a half upstairs. Perfect job for you. Thank you, Lily. Perfect job for you. We had a bunch of Hardy board left over, so we're gonna do our siding with here. See the bees? Yeah, the bumblebees. That soft— that covering here will end that. They'll have nothing else to eat this afternoon. A very special day with Birdell. We are looking at a horse. We've been looking at horses for a long time. How many have we looked at?

5, I think.

She has outgrown Blaze and you need a show horse.

I need a horse that I can do a little bit of training on, take me to the next level of riding. I mean, I don't even know— I don't need to level up in the next year, but I do need to have that practice, consistent practice to level up.

So what I'm looking for for a horse that doesn't buck, doesn't rear, that's not going to kill you.

Those are for sure.

No, I'll take any other problems.

I don't—

killing you is not one of the problems I'm going to take. That horse didn't buck Lily, didn't buck Buck Lily, behaved itself. We're pulling the trigger on it. Lily's finally getting a horse. Yeehaw! And you guys make it this, one of you, signed edition Homestead Builds, plus $500 cash money, plus chances to win many other things. You want to check that out? Abundantpermaculture.com/design. Anybody who enters, if you don't win one of the mega prizes, you're going to win my Design Your Best Homestead Ever PDF. So happy day to everyone, which everyone wins.