Unattainable No More

It's a frosty one. Sun's coming up. We gotta get lettuce there today, just like that broccoli. Fared pretty well in here, but this is quickly outgrowing their blocks, so he's got to go out. You guys ready for the inspection? This is my ride to get around so I don't have to walk. Nice. This Agribond on this rigid frame does not work. It's too fragile. Where should we put this chicken tractor? I think we can put it there behind Lucky. I can remember starting out with my very first garden. Felt totally— well, did it feel unattainable? I know many people feel like all this is unattainable. Just a shallow till. We don't want to kill the soil life. Well, I get it. Many people see all this, they see the raised beds, the chicken run, The pretty shaw. And it just seems like it just appeared because maybe you haven't been watching us and maybe you didn't see us. We built these raised beds and vlogged about it. We had this fence built. We, we had the pretty shaw built. So maybe you weren't here for that and it just seems like it appeared. All right, let's pick out the, the greens. So I get it, if I put myself in the shoes of a beginner, or when I was beginning, I had no idea You want a garden, but what do you do? There's sod here. Do I put it there? How do I get up the sod? It's— and then what? Do I go get seeds? I've seen plants at Lowe's. Do I get those and put them in my— when? And is it okay that it's frosting? I know Justin's planting now in North Carolina, but I'm in Michigan. What do I do? There are these questions. And I had the same kind of question when we began. So what do you do? Well, I'll tell you what we did. We can do 4 lettuces per square foot, so that's like 16 in one little row. So if I know 4 lettuces in a square foot gardening method in 1 square foot, that's 16. 8 times 8, what's that? Don't do math in public, Morgan says. As a beginner, you don't even know that. You don't even know, like, well, how far do I put them apart? Now I've done— got it memorized. It's different if I put it out in the rows. 16 times 8 is 128. So I don't even know if we— you can plant 128 lettuce heads in a 4x8. That's way more than any one person could ever want or should ever want. This is 1,300 square foot. I mean, if you could put 128 lettuces in this one bed, just think of what you could do in these, uh, 7 beds. We have spots for 128. 7 times 12, how many plants we got? 84. So we'll just be more generous in our spacing. But yeah, we can put this whole tray in here. We could leave ourselves room for something else, but we're gonna have plenty of raised beds, and we have crop gardens way over there. So we, we're— we have the case of we have plenty of room for gardens. Jonah, always thinking of something. Laziness is sometimes the father of ingenuity. This is one cool thing that I realized after having grass grazed over the weekend is He always worked away from the house, and so his— when he started working on the homestead, he realized his kids, his, his wife can see the work that he's done. Josiah has been kind of having a slow start this morning, but once we got on this, he got into it. And he said to me, well, I can see the change. But now here we all are out here together, and we're going to see the result of our labor. So that's kind of cool. We thought to do this, just soak the starts to help them, the transplant, give them some— yeah, it just soaks it in like a sponge.

This is just water. You could have put like a—

that could have been the compost too. That'd help them. I want to commend you guys. You are here. That is a step. You are watching these vlogs. Whether you know it or not, well, you're what you call immersion learning. It's not a lecture, but you're learning. I as we go. Your little things. Mom decided that the broccoli— she remembered that we had this broccoli that we didn't use. We planted these one for every square foot, and it only took up like half the bed. So we're going to use the other half for these broccolis. Why not? They're just going to die.

I know, I was trying to give them away, but I keep forgetting.

I know, right? And broccoli, we can do one per square foot. It needs a lot more room. Have we ever been successful with broccoli, Rebecca? We were.

I unfortunately had planted the wrong—

the wrong variety.

The variety you've only yielded small to medium heads.

This is my face when she starts talking about broccoli. This is Rebecca's face when she starts talking about broccoli.

No, I love broccoli and I always have. And so then when we got married, remember, I only made broccoli and he requested very kindly Do you think we can have another vegetable? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, we eat broccoli all the time.

The things you learn and go through when you first get married. You know what I did to learn? I got some books. Go away! Read some books! Let me get me the most instrumental for my chicken and gardening journal journey. Pastured Poultry Profits. Oh, oh, Henry, don't knock that over. Don't knock— don't knock them over. The New Organic Grower, Elliot Coleman. Well, this was Joe Salatin, by the way. Uh, oh, uh, also The Four Seasons Harvest, Elliot Coleman. Intro to Permaculture by Bill Mollison. So good. Small-Scale Poultry Plock Flock by Harvey Ussery. I mean, all these books are just underlined and studied and read and highlighted and reread. Did you ever feel unattainable? Did you feel like— oh yeah, this farming thing was unattainable?

Yeah, I think it was never gonna happen. So when I look out and I see all that we have accomplished, it's kind of crazy.

You have the— a lot of ideas, and, and it feels like you aren't ever going to get there. Yeah, but I think what's happened is we're now— look around, all of a sudden we're like, pinch ourselves. Yeah, wait a minute, we're there. But I think it's just not letting the unattainable get to us and just going at something every day. We sought out— you are books of people, of the things we wanted to do, from people who already knew how to do it. A mentor gave me Joel Salatin, or told me about Joel Salatin's books. Yeah, and those were good and great, and the right ones. Turns out there's any number of ones, but how did you know to get Eliot Coleman, Harvey Usry?

I was looking for like people who didn't use pesticides.

Okay.

And stuff like that. That's how I figured it out.

Okay.

Honestly, There wasn't— like, there are so many books out there now. Yeah, there were no books.

Okay, limited choice. Yeah. Okay. He-woman. I guess she-woman.

She-ra.

She-ra. We're ready for tonight. If you guys didn't see it, we put a little wire across, zip tie it, bend the poles. We got a 1/2-inch metal conduit, 10-foot long pole, bended that. Those are for our crop gardens, but it works great here. This is what it'll look like, but it's time to get the COVID off, get some direct sunlight. Okay, we've got all these books that got me started in gardening and chickens. Nice pile, pretty minimalistic still. Good pile. What I have done is taking my years of experience— I think this might be thinner than This might be thinner than any of these. Sure, if you want to geek out, go and get these things, and they get— of course they can go deeper because it's specific. But I take my years of experience plus what I've learned from books and consolidated, precise, plus lifestyle. If you want to garden or do chickens, they're step by step, to the point, no nonsense. Do this, do that, do that. In this order, plus a lifestyle factor. So hopefully, to get somebody started with gardens and chickens and basic permaculture design, you just need this. These are not bad. I encourage you to get them if you really want to geek out, but this is a really good starting point. And like Rebecca said, there are a lot of books out there. So where do you start? Start somewhere. And I, I might be partial. I am partial. I'm partial. I can't think of a better place to start than the root of life. And you like those eggs? She's got a little hackish start. She's been eating sauerkraut with them every morning. That makes it a little different, doesn't it, Beck? Good job. What you studying? It's about lime. Ah yeah, I got bit by a tick. Found a tick right here at the end. It was the end of February. There's a little redness around it, so we're nervous for the tick. We might actually get that tick Lyme disease. No, we're nervous it might have another co-infection.

Yeah, that's what I'm nervous about.

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