Visting My Mom in Paris

The reason you don't see my mom a lot in these vlogs is because, well, she lives in Paris. Dad joke. She lives in Paris, Tennessee. They do have an Eiffel Tower though. Still, it's 7 hours away. We're gonna go see her before we go to the Homestead Fest, but I want you to look for 3 things that might motivate the homestead lifestyle because she's in downtown Paris and yet she's still homesteading. Let's see the spoils before you pack it in. Travel, bring your own food, not optional. We have to do it. We're taking our own raw milk. We got some homegrown bacon, we got some boughten bacon, we got some gifts of meat for our hosts, we got some breakfast links, we got some hamburger. What else we got? I think that's it in this one. That's the— oh, it's all that lamb stew, some lamb stew and, and beef stew I made the other day. In the day cooler, we got veggies and dip, raw veggies and dip. Deli meat for sandwiches and lunch, some jam for peanut butter and jelly, and that's our healthy lunch. Do not travel light. Of course, we're bringing all our Abundance Plus stuff too for our booth at the event. We still have lots of room. Our pillows, kitchenware if we need it, Abundance Plus stuff, Abundance Plus tent. You want a tour of this trailer? Bringing our own mats. We don't know what our sleeping arrangements are. We do, we know our host, but we don't know if Do they have bedding and sheets for everybody? We don't know. Lily's bag, books. This, I think this is— where are your shoes, Mr. Brown? Yep. Rooted Life. Where are your shoes, Mr. Brown? Hey, compost toilet. We don't have to use the convenience or the, the gas station. More Rooted Life, a Yeti, mats, the Airbnb stuff. We call it the Airbnb stuff. It's like, um, cookware. A lot of places don't have Uh, they do non-stick toxic, so we bring our stainless steel or cast iron. We got Jonah and Josiah's egg baskets to sell. We got a bag of bedding. Those are sheets and quilts. We've got— what do you call these— crowd control, so we'll have a nice little line. That's one of our favorite things about these events is we get to meet you guys in person, get pictures with you. We love it, we love it. This has been a pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It's a day to pack, it's a day to travel, and then you're there. But it's worth it for you guys. You guys remember that when you were kids? Thought you were ready, can't understand why the parents are not ready because I'm doing everything. You're ready, let's just get in the car. No, we gotta do the checklist. Let's go, just double check. Hey Henrietta, you ready to go? Oh Henry, I thought you was Henrietta. Want to bring a Squatty Potty?

No, I think we'll be all right.

All right, did have air purifier too, but that's extra, isn't it? Y'all have enough room back there? Okay, get Henry, get strapped in. Well, we're not in the '90s anymore. We got a secret weapon: an iPad with headphones.

This isn't gonna work. It is.

What'd you give it? Put it in your mouth. Uh, sour candy. You got giggles? Yep. I want to see. It got better. It got better pretty quick. Did this get washed during the hurricane?

Yeah, look, see, you can see there's the old road and it just drops off right there.

It took away the whole lane.

It took away two lanes.

I-40 at the Tennessee line has been closed and it will be for the foreseeable future. An almost 3-mile stretch of I-40 eastbound has been washed away in multiple areas.

Yeah, hey, so glad to see you. Come here, give me— you got your shirt on backwards. Always.

Are you getting around okay in your broken foot?

I am doing well.

Good.

I'll see the doctor tomorrow. Hey sweetheart, you guys have such broad shoulders.

Yeah, big strong guys. Welcome to Paris. We're in Paris. Tennessee. You like this? Look at this cool street. Cozy, quiet. The Lee Academy. History, history. It's turned into the Academy of Arts now, but it was the Lee Academy, a boarding school for boys during the Civil War. I used to wish that we kind of lived in a neighborhood. Yeah, why not?

Too bright.

Too what?

It's too, like, bright.

I couldn't sleep. Oh, all the street lights. Oh man, and all the Wi-Fi and the cellular reception. We take our place for granted. Nope, barely any cell phone reception, no other Wi-Fi, no street lights. It's nice to go to the city every once in a while. Speech prep. We have one notebook between us. One thing she's doing to homestead is just change her mindset and just noticing and adopting the wild animals. My mom jokes there's her livestock. Can you see there's a nest? Robin's got a nest. Another thing, she's using boughten fruit to make this. My mom's making jams. Obviously orange marmalade is your favorite, even in the city.

I was just showing her that I have blue ribbons too.

Oh nice, from what?

From the jams and—

what? So you made hot pepper jam. Do you like hot pepper jam?

Hot pepper.

What do you do with it?

Put it on cream cheese and crackers.

Oh, nice. And you have some strawberry jam, blueberry jam, and you're just buying this stuff at the grocery store?

And I make blueberry and peach and whatever's in season. You know, when I go visit somebody, I'll take them some jam, and I always take a bunch to Vicki.

She raised me 3 miles from Burrow Holler where we are. We've always had Burrow Holler. It's been in the family since Grandpa, but my dad acquired another piece of land where he grew us up, 3 miles away. She, like Rebecca, was just city girl. Mom from LA. She learned this while she was in Hooper's Creek, no doubt. And yet another thing— gardening her front porch. Let me show you our other garden. What are you growing right here?

That's parsley and dill.

Okay, so you're growing some of your own herbs. Oh, and there's something right here. And there's some rosemary.

And this is citronella.

Okay.

And it's for mosquitoes, and so is the rosemary.

Mosquitoes are pretty bad here, huh? Yes.

This is my spaceship.

The Apkins. Okay, on the hunt for memories. Anybody know how to dial on this phone? That's 1. Mom gave you a lesson last night. 5. Here we go. Running up the field. That's a child. There I am. I Tell No Lies. Just gave my mom this book. Where are your shoes, Mr. Brown? And we're looking for them. He seriously lost his shoe. He's 11. He cannot go to this event without his shoe. Plus, we're gonna go see the Eiffel Tower. He can't do that without his shoe. Where are you going, Mom?

Oh, it's all concrete.

Okay. She recently broke her foot. We are 2 hours from our event here in Tennessee. She was gonna go, but it's gonna be too much trouble, so we decided to come see her. Find them, bro. Whoever finds his shoes, I'll get you an ice cream at urban. Found some Pink Kings that were lilies. You'll probably fit. Hey, you found it? Where'd you find it, Jonah? In the red— in the toy bag. Okay, going to share her tomato story before you tell it to us.

Is that what Granny really wanted to be, a farmer?

This LA city girl, this model from LA.

We moved from Los Angeles, and after we built our house, we moved into this farm, and Papa wanted to have a garden. We were gentleman farmers. And so he planted a garden, and he planted like 3 acres of a garden, and the kids— Your father might have been 4.

Wow.

And so Jason was 6, and Shelby wasn't even in the picture yet. And so he planted, and there were like 100 pounds of potatoes. And I said, "Well, what are we going to do with 100 pounds of potatoes?" And he said, "We're going to have potatoes every night." And I said, "You're not here 5 nights out of the week." And I said, "What if I want rice? Or what if we want mac and cheese?" He didn't know what to say to that, so we ended up giving them to the mission. We kept enough so that we could— I thought it was interesting that you cut them up and you plant the eye and So I kept enough for all of that. Well, anyway, I wanted to can, and I asked all the sisters how to can, and everybody had a different opinion on how you did it. We didn't have internet at that time. I couldn't Google it. So I took all of our tomatoes, which were in abundance, and everything comes in in August, and we didn't have air conditioning, and we had a farm next door that had cows would come in our direction in the late afternoon. So there were flies up on the ceiling. Oh my God. Yeah. Yuka, our exchange student, was like 6'8" and he would pick them off. But anyway, it was hot. And so I decided I was going to freeze the tomatoes, can them and freeze them. And so I did, and they were real pretty, and I put them in the freezer down in the basement. Well, we had a furnace that was oil and wood, and when the wood ran out, it converted to oil. And so at night I would go and put the wood in the furnace because it was warmer and it was nicer than the oil. And so I went down the basement to put the wood in the furnace, and I heard a pop, just a real loud pop. And our basement was a little bit scary. It was big. And so, you know, I kind of looked around to see what might have made that popping noise. So I put the wood in the furnace and went back upstairs, slept the night. The next morning it was time to put wood in the furnace again, and I went down and I heard pop, pop. It sounded like someone was shooting at me. And then when I was getting ready to go up the stairs, the furnace was on the right, and I heard a pop. Pop and a thud, and I said, oh my gosh. I opened— the freezer was a long chest, and it looked like I had slaughtered somebody. There were tomatoes and tomato seeds everywhere.

Your tomato jars were exploding? Yeah, jars were exploding in the freezer. This wasn't just the lid popping? I thought it was the lid sealing. Oh no.

And when I asked somebody what had happened, they said, well, you You probably didn't have enough headroom in your jars.

Yeah, the tomatoes were freezing and taking up more space and blowing up the jars.

Blowing the jars up. I've had it happen. So I never did that again. Could never do corn right. I creamed it. I like that process of scraping it off the cob and getting the cream, and then I would freeze that, but it never tasted right frozen.

Now why would you freeze it if you canned it?

I didn't can. Oh, you just put it in jars? Yeah, yeah. No, I put it in baggies. The— no, the, the tomatoes you had just— I had big jars for those. You had just put them in the jars and put them in the freezer?

You didn't can them? Okay. Yeah, because there were too many different opinions.

Yeah, there were too many different opinions on how to get them out of the freezer. You either— you don't have to worry about—

yeah, that would work. Just give them enough headroom. So August This is when we have to quit the grocery store.

Yeah, that's when we're gonna quit.

Everything will be in.

Okra is very sticky, and I didn't know that. The slime? Yes, plus it's got prickles all over it, and you know, you'd go and pick it and snakes were everywhere.

A little too much for LA.

The first time I did okra at Boots's house, he was— I said fry up this okra, and so I like got it out and I washed Yeah, and then there was slime everywhere, and I was like, is this right? But I love fried okra. And, and yeah, well, we're growing— I think we have some okra growing, so hopefully we would go visiting on Sunday and the people would have something, and they'd always offer you food, and you'd look at it and you weren't quite sure what it was, but I liked fried food and it was It was always fried, and we had possum. And they brought me a turtle, a great big turtle, and they said, can you do— can you cook this? And I said, well, we could try it. So I put it in the pressure cooker.

As is? The whole turtle?

Had you— someone took the shell off for me.

Oh, okay.

But did he taste it? No. Oh, it was like—

Smell it?

It was white.

Look at Anderson.

Okay, I'll have some.

You don't want to eat the turtle?

It was awful looking.

You want the turtle? You eat a turtle.

She said no. Then I started teaching in the city.

She said, that's it, going to the private school in the city.

That's funny.

See y'all later.

You got a granny kiss. All my grandchildren wanted a granny kiss.

Oh look, you got a mark.

You got a kiss. I love you so much.

Don't be afraid of a kiss.

Yes, follow that. Love you, beautiful, beautiful first granddaughter. You heard that?

Bye-bye.

I love you so much.

Love you too.

Thank you. Thank you for doing my abundance on the TV.

Oh yeah, sure.

For the books.

Now you'll have to be our biggest fan now. Now that if you put that on, she's gone and her mom's gone, you're going to have to be the—

they're going to— your viewers are going to say, how in the world did you ever turn out?

No. Like I said, that's, that's how you got where you got all these good looks. Eiffel Tower, here we come! Rebecca!

Roses!

It's Roses Express. Roses! That's like predating Kmart. Wow, how historic! It's open, wasn't it? Roses Theater.

The movie theater is called the Parisian.

Wasn't it Roses, Kmart, and then Walmart, and then Amazon, and Target?

I don't know where it all falls in there, but that's how I experienced— yeah, this.

Where's Sears and Robux? I guess there's Sears.

I don't know that I ever even knew a Roses until we moved to Hendersonville.

Wow, we had one.

Yeah, it's gone though now. It closed pretty soon after we moved there.

Bingo if you see the Eiffel Tower.

Oh, there it is!

I'm so disappointed. We've seen it. She and I have seen the real— don't you wish we were vlogging back then?

I know, we went in the real Eiffel Tower.

Oh, it's so much I thought this was gonna be taller. Me too. Well, we need to go out and get a picture for this thumbnail.

I'm gonna park over here.

We gotta get it really far away from the street. We're tricking you guys. You already know by now we're not in Paris, Italy.

No, that's Paris, France.

France.

Yes!

We're not in Paris, France. Now I know why the people around here aren't proud of this thing.

Let's go! Stop it.

Okay. How do you know they're not proud of this thing? They're just like, yeah. Everybody here is proud to be from Paris, Tennessee. I've never seen so much city pride. Sort of glad it's raining, then we don't have to let the kids play on the playground. Is that mean? Is that mean? Mean. I'll hold you. You're my friend. You're my friend. We go to Paris together.

Okay, let's go.

You thought we'd be able to go in it?

If you want to take them out there, you can.

I don't want to. No, there's nothing to go— you can't go in it. I want to go under it. No, you can't. They block it off with a fence, honey. Just looked at the real Eiffel Tower. 1,000 feet tall. This one's probably 63 feet tall. How tall is the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee?

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee is 60 feet, 18 meters tall.

Good guess, John. At Urban Market, one of our favorites. I guess we're cheating some this week. We haven't eaten out since vacation in January, so we go out when we can. It's organic, gluten-free, meat lovers.

There was so much meat in these tacos too. I feel like I hit my protein goal.

You got the tacos, everybody else got the pizza. Lily, you're looking so nice today. What's that? That's the little powder bomb. Try it. No. Try the powder bomb. It'll actually make your mouth numb. No, don't give it to Henry. No, don't give it to Henry.

Do not give it to Henry.

It'll actually make your mouth numb. No, I don't want one.

You need one, sister. I had it. Taste it.

You just put your tongue on it.

No, just— ah!

Come on, just put your tongue on it.

Put your tongue on it, Jesse.

I'm not doing that again. I bit into one of those. Do it for the show. No, no, I already did that. I was inspired by my mom. Although she's farming, she's homesteading for kicks and giggles. I mean, it's a legit reason. It's still homesteading, and it proves you can even as you age, even in downtown. So if my mom can do it, a city slicker model from LA, moved to North Carolina and learned the ropes with my dad, and although she's not in the country anymore, she's brought the country to her. You can do it. Just plant every day.