Walking On Water

What are you doing? Making hot chocolate. Are you gonna pick up after yourself?

Yeah.

Okay. Hopefully I remember to check up on that. Wait, didn't you make some tea?

Yeah, but we want hot chocolate and tea.

Okay, and you're gonna clean it all up?

Plus we're making a sample.

I'm gonna get it on tape here. You're gonna clean it all up?

Yeah.

You're gonna help him clean it up? Do you even know what I said? Do you like hard work in the noonday sun?

Uh-huh.

Yeah. You have no idea what I'm saying, do you? Do you? Do you like hard work in 1-degree weather? Uh-huh. Without any coat? Yeah, that's funny. That's working just fine. It wasn't working great this morning. It was low pressure this morning. I thought I was gonna have to fix something. It's working now. One less thing I've got to fix.

We're out of it, so—

okay, go get some. It's down in the root cellar. You gotta move that down?

No.

Okay.

Oh, the lock's frozen! Look at that.

Oh wait, why did that ice right there? Right there in that brown box, I think. There you go. Oh, that's who's messing up my hoses.

What?

Be easy on the maple syrup.

I'll throw it like—

I'm making a sample.

That's enough.

Okay.

I'm sorry. I don't know what kind of content we're gonna get today. This is a daily vlog. This is a vlogging day. It's 14 right now. I know, that's beach weather for you Minnesota knights, but that's cold down here. I do smell smoke. Hopefully that's not a project we have to deal with today. All right. I don't see anything. Oh, that's it. Oh, that can't be right. Okay, this is wrong. We put a light on the pump just to keep it thawed out. It's our wood boiler. It's not the wood boiler's problem with what's been going on. We turned it off when we left and then we had the coldest time of our year. Goes into these red pipes and comes through, but these walls are uninsulated. Even if they were insulated, it's not heated down here, so maybe they wouldn't have frozen, but they froze. Hey, do you know where my tripod is? No. Are you ready? Yeah. Well, the tumbler's over here by the wood boiler. You want to get it filled up with warm water?

Yeah.

What's this?

Soap.

You could break that though, right? Josiah's gonna help you milk today because you weren't here. I got even less content. I'm just not gonna do a project this morning. We're gonna do chores and get inside. Oh, somebody did give birth. It's got her placenta hanging out. Hopefully you can pass that just fine. It's one of the Seminoles, one of the sheep from Florida. The little baby lamb looks just fine, not shivering, dry. You guys are hardy little things. I think you guys were born in the single digits and you're just fine. This bedding at 100 degrees helps, doesn't it?

Did any more babies get born?

Yeah.

How many do we have now?

I guess 7.

Can I name them?

Sure.

This is a boy.

What one is it?

What is it?

Is it a girl or a boy?

I haven't checked. Hey girl.

Oh, she's still wet.

Oh, well then get a towel and dry her off.

So this is a third girl. We have 4 boys and 3 girls.

Do you not need a coat, Lily?

No, it's like 30 degrees.

It's like 14. Oh. I think it's finally gonna get above freezing this afternoon. It's been 4 or 5 days, I think.

I'm only gonna name one because I want to name this one because he's the cutest. It's a boy. I can tell by his face. That one's really cute too.

They're all so cute.

That one's Red and that one is Bull for Red Bull, and it's a bad name. I want to name something better, but I wanted to go together like Sammy and Peanut butter and jelly.

Oh yeah, ham and cheese.

Peanut butter, peanut butter, and then that's jelly.

Good.

Two boys.

Salt and pepper.

Oh, salty. I don't know, let me think. Abby and Gabby. Peter and Mosquito. This one can be Apple and that one can be Tree. Apple Tree. No, it's a bad name. Only one of them can have a good name with like, like, why don't this one be Peter and that one be Mosquito?

I love how they wiggle their tails when they are nursing.

I can't get any milk out.

Look at that.

Bye Peter, bye Peter.

Little bit of poop. Gosh guys, how you doing, Winnie? How you doing? You wanna go to the lake in a minute? The boys want to show us the frozen water. You want to go? You want to go to the lake?

No, I'm staying here.

Bella, you want to go to the lake or you want to stay and watch Henry?

I'm gonna go to the lake.

Get in, pick up your hot chocolate. Remember when you said you'd pick it up? I'm gonna get on tape here. You're gonna come follow up? Yeah, pick that up while I get Henry ready. Gideon! Uh-oh, I told him he's got to get that up before we go. Gideon! Gideon!

2, 1, go!

Go! We're gonna check out the neighbor's lake. You saw the ice. Yesterday, I think that's the thickest I've ever seen it. We normally don't get such severe cold streaks for so long. Wow. Gideon! You got to go to the house and pick up the hot chocolate. Mom's walking on it.

I've seen enough Disney movies to know that when you're walking on the ice and then it starts cracking, you go, oh! Is that a crack? That's not—

I don't think that's crack. I think the way it's forming, just the way it froze.

This is where they got that ice chunk. Wow, look, it's already frozen.

I had to put all the ice cubes back. How did you get it out? We had to reach in there and grab it. Yeah, but how'd you cut it? Oh, hammer. Hey, are we gonna walk across this? I don't think I've ever seen it so solid. Yeah, it's a rare opportunity.

Go with them, please.

I'm walking on water. Look at all these trees from the hurricane in the water. I'm on top of a log right now. There it is, there it surfaced. It's kind of trippy.

It is the ground.

There's the moving water. Even the creek freezes in this cold.

Dang, it's like so solid right here where I'm at.

You're gonna try standing over the running water. So how would animals get a drink right now?

I think you can touch it.

You can get— oh wow, there's a big one. Yeah, they can get to it, not sliding.

Slushing right here.

This, this used to be a huge culvert. One of those ones you could stand up in. There's the road. There's the other side of the road. Either the water got that high or—

well, I think it just busted this all out.

All right, we're going back. The orders are coming in. We got water jug caps, we got stainless steel plates. Everybody be wanting to know where you get your stainless steel.

I got these on Amazon. I— these are because I got them on Amazon because, um, we won't be actually like using these. If I was gonna have them in my home, I would get them from Life Without Plastic. I've gotten stuff from Life Without Plastic and I like their, their stuff. These are pretty cheapo plates, but I just wanted something.

These are for our— the people missed yesterday, this is for our travel kit. Starting to develop. Okay, and then when we have a— when we go speak in June at Homestead Fest or Homesteaders of America in October, or we go on vacation, we don't want to use the stuff usually, generally, that the Airbnb provides. It's like plastic plates.

So it comes back to like the homestead, like we're prepared.

Yeah, they might have good plates at the place.

Yeah, and then I won't get these out. We won't use them. But like, one of the places we were at had plastic plates. So gross. Put my water jug cap and still plates. I'm just waiting for this.

Getting fuller. All right, and look at Rebecca's lunch. You going carnivore on us?

Not carnivore, just I need to get a hold of high protein. Well, higher protein. Um, we ate a lot on a lot of stuff that we don't normally eat on vacation. I'm like, I got to get back into eating different things.

We don't do New Year's resolution, we do after-vacation resolutions.

More of a just a reset. Like this morning, I, I'm trying to hit protein, uh, grams, trying to get enough protein in my day.

That's good. It's not, uh, eliminating something, it's it's at making sure you get something, which is a more positive diet. It's almost February. It's extremely cold. If you've grown chickens, raised chickens, you know it can be hard to get eggs during the winter. I don't have that problem. I used to have that problem and did artificial light in the winter and all this stuff, and that did help them lay. But eventually my permaculture conscience got to me. Is that natural? Well, of course it's not natural. So I guess the question was, is this bad? And, um, it can't be good. Eventually I got disciplined enough to do one trick.

There's more eggs.

I'm going to fill this basket up. Okay, winter egg season is year-round with this one little trick, and it's not an artificial light. Look at these birds, how beautiful, how puffy. How slick coated they're not gonna let me get near them. How clean, even compared to that goose. Look how filthy the goose is. Okay, the trick is none of these chickens are even 2 years old yet. Half of them will be 2 in the spring. We will order replacement chicks for those old ladies in the spring, so we'll have new chicks. Those old ladies by the fall will be, what, 2 and a half years old, and the new chicks will be about 6 months old. And starting to lay eggs. Once they are 6 months old and starting to lay eggs in good amount, we cull the fattled lady hens. And that way we have always young and productive chickens. And those young chickens that started laying in the fall, they're going to lay stronger through the winter, especially more than an old fat lady hen. That's an important trick for keeping yourself in eggs all year round. When we had the hurricane and it was hard to get out, we didn't have to worry about eggs. We had eggs ever flowing. We had milk on tap. We got a workshop this Sunday, 2 PM. Everything you need to know in just 1 hour. Just give me 1 hour for raising chicks. I'll teach the material in 1 hour. If I missed anything, you can ask me questions. That's on Abundance Plus, 2 PM this Sunday. Join and enjoy the class with us. They're cuddled up, staying warm. They built a nest out of hay.