We Garden ALL YEAR LONG | The start of WINTER Gardening

I got these— this goose split in half, got it ready for the smoker. Put some salt on it. I put it on these, I don't know, grates to get them up off. We'll catch this fat so it doesn't clog up the grill. I haven't had much goose, let alone smoked goose, so I'm kind of looking forward to that. All right boys, we're ready to milk.

Yep.

All right, this is gonna be a test of my wellness here. I am walking around a lot better. 2 gallons— 2 tubs full of skim. Week by week I'm kicking this reactive arthritis. Yeah, certainly couldn't have done this week and a half ago. So this afternoon, smoking, I'm gonna go with a hickory. Supposed to be good for beef. Chicken, pigs. Come on, take a break from playing and let's go. I'm being quiet because Mom just put Henry to sleep. Yeah, he didn't sleep good yesterday, so we want to make it count today. Come on, get in. Go ahead, Josiah. You gonna fill her up?

Yeah.

All right, is it going, Josiah?

Yeah.

Cool. Don't overfill it, just keep your nozzle down in there. Watch, it'll turn off. See? All right. Compress that. There you go. We just had everybody, everybody, and now everybody's gone. I literally dumped the cooler and everybody's gone. There's one. Gideon! There's another one. There he is. Come on. No, that'd be like your third rum stick, bro. Put it back. I just backed up and look. Look, she knows what to do. We don't even have the feed in there and she's getting in there. I like it too. They are creatures. In a little bit you can, you can help me, okay? You can be in the passenger seat. What am I holding out for? If he wants the chain tight, what am I doing? Who cares? I'll pull the chain tight for him. Did it work? I guess it worked. Okay, Mr. Brown, that's what you wanted. I mean, I guess it's the least I can do for him coming out here. We want him to have fun. Nice, man! That's some balance, guys. It's crazy. Can you do that, Arun? Yeah. Yes, he's confident. Look, watch Arun. Oh, look, look! Good job. Bill just don't care. She's a creature of habit, one. So, and two, it's what I liken it to. She ain't got nothing to do. We got lots to do. All she's got to do is eat grass, have a baby once a year, nurse that baby, get milk once a day. This is the excitement. Joel Salatin had something really interesting to say about this, and in his— in part 1 of his master class.

Here's the thing: an animal doesn't have a calendar. They don't have a datebook. They don't have a day planner. They're not going to soccer games, funerals, weddings. They don't have to pay taxes. The point is that an animal lives in the moment, in the now.

Apparently flies got nothing to do either but to bother Phyllis, give her some relief while we milk. Would you say this cow's cute and cuddly? She's good looking. Cute is a strong word, but we didn't get her for cuteness. Just— I mean, hold on, let me show you something. She's got one dead teat right there, another dead one right there. Yeah, that was definitely not cute down in this section. But homegirl gives us 2 and a quarter gallons of milk every morning, and she's got a calf on her during the day. So this is about production. That's why we're saving up old Maple. She'll be a replacement. Maple's cute, but that's not why we got her. I mean, we had— we got her to give a calf to Flossie. We got her because she's A2, A2, which means she's gonna have easier to digest milk. And now she's been growing up on our farm, thriving here. Why can't she be Pillis's replacement in her old age. Joe had another great point about homestead animals in regards to getting them for their cuteness.

Don't ever get animals on your homestead— and there are homesteads without animals, I, I get that, but my book is about animals on the homestead— and, and don't ever get animals because you think they're cute or because you think, oh, they're warm and fuzzy or they will add personality, or all of these, you know, pet-oriented kind of mentalities about animals. No, when you get livestock on your homestead, you are completely responsible for their health, their food, their water, their protection, their security, indeed their trust in you as their caretaker. This is not something to be entered into flippantly lightly or anything like that, you are placing yourself as a caretaker, as a steward of their needs. They're not potty trained. We got to deal with their manure. You know, they can't go find their own food because, you know, the cows aren't migrating like the bison. You know, they're confined. We're artificially confining them to our fences, you know, so they can't go find a salt lick. They can't go find a tree leaf that has minerals in it that they need. So we need to bring that to them, and, and that, that protective security for all of their needs is now our responsibility. We need to take it seriously. Yes, walk into it as a privilege to do, but also as a serious responsibility. This is not a walk in the park. This is a serious deal. I want you to take your animals seriously to understand, yeah, you know, on our place, we have always taken care of the animals before the cup of coffee, before breakfast. Animals' needs come first, then we take care of our needs. And if you do that with, you know, with real responsibility, your animals will respond in kind and there will be this mutual trust they will trust you, and you can trust them to be as happy and healthy and productive as you can imagine.

Yeah, so that's part 1 of Joel's masterclass surrounding the theme of his new book, Polyface Micro: A Book for Homesteaders by Joel Salatin. It's exciting. I'm giving away the first 3 chapters in a PDF, but also the first 3 classes in the master class. Link is in the description, or you can go to polyfacemicro.com. We're getting everybody over. We're going to keep the ewes with the cows because their offspring males are coming of age, so we don't want them to breed them. When I was looking at Maple, I noticed she has a rash or a cut, so we're going to get a closer look at that here in a second. We gotta get everybody over but her. Nope, nope, you can let the mama— my mama's— the mama's through. Do we only have 5 mamas? Here they go. We want them to go through this chute right here. There they go. There it is. Now we got to flirt again. Beautiful. Let's leash up Maple. Oh no, she doesn't have a collar on. Yeah, we're gonna put some cow cream on her. Careful, she might kick off. I know, right? How have you been in here, Mr. Man? How have you been?

He took a nice long nap.

You guys ready to go do this greenhouse?

Are you ready to go work outside?

We got a farm project for everybody. Come on, get in. Lily, let's go! That right there, we're not eating as much leafy greens anymore. That's going to be enough for our winter harvest garden. That's 8 foot by 4 foot, 4 lettuces planted per one. Okay, so that'd be, I don't know, 32, 64, so 108. That's a lot, but you plant right now, August, September And that you get, which, which you call winter harvest garden. That grows up and then just stays there underneath cover all winter long. It's pretty neat to have fresh greens all winter long. First thing we need to do is plant seeds in this thing, but the problem is it's like high 70s, low 80s, which means it's gonna be like 100 degrees in here. No big deal, no big deal. We got a shade cloth. How to get a shade cloth over that? Wait a minute, it's 10 o'clock, the sun is out, we gotta get us some vitamin D. I'm gonna be the shirtless farmer. That's better. But do we have soil?

We do.

Well, we have Happy Frog. We have this. Yeah, that's potting soil, that'll work. We might not be able to do—

we could do it. And even then, these—

we've gotten away from— we do these anyway. We've gotten away from— yeah, soil blocks. I forgot how I did this. I think I had to get a ladder, Rebecca. This is a nice setup. Well, Josiah says we don't have a ladder. We always borrow it from Big Daddy. What kind of homestead is this? We don't have a ladder?

We need to buy one apparently.

Goodness. Okay, that's about as bad as not having a measuring tape. I'm up at Grandma and Big Daddy's. Maybe it is, we're always borrowing their ladder. That is new. Shady Dog. Yep, I think that's the ladder we always use right there. We got it in the back. Okay, Mr. Brown, strap in. Let's go. Rebecca has gotten one tray ready. One tray and a half. Let's curl up the sides. Quick ventilation. Vented it nicely. We found last year that the water still does manage to run off, and it vents it nice enough. How's it going over here?

It's good.

Meticulous.

I'm trying.

Good.

See, this is wrong. This is not the right—

Victor?

No, it's okay. I bet it's in the garage.

All right, Rebecca wants to get the, uh, longer one or the wider one. It's good to do before we tied that down. I found it under the table. Uh, let's just hope it's not too much. It has to work better or it'll be too shady and they'll get leggy, but We don't know until we try. Hey, we got the shade cloth on! We tucked the corners in around the post. This will be interesting. Oh look, definitely darker in there. It's cooler.

Yes, this is awesome, right?

Let's put Mom's other seed tray in here.

Is this fall or winter?

Good job. Uh, this is winter. It'll be fall too. Let's get all this cleaned up, guys, before we go. We'll just do a watering can since it's only 2 things. I think that's the right setting. All right, let's see if it works. Nice. Okay, go give them a little water. Maybe we shouldn't because they're moist from the— just a tad. We don't want to flood them. That's enough, that's enough. All right, that'll work. What I'd really like to find is the wand and the fog nozzle. What are you doing now?

I'm just putting a little bit of dirt on top of the the seeds so that the water doesn't, um, wash the seeds away. I think that I struggled with that in the spring, or evaporate as quick with some of the—

for right now anyway. How do you know that's the tray you didn't plant?

Because I know.

All right, that's good, then it doesn't wash away your seed. Everybody's making something. Do 7 carrots. Gideon's peeling the carrots. Lily's cutting up the onion. Jonah's washing the potatoes. Rebecca saved some fat. I don't know if she rendered it. Chicken fat. The tray has some chicken pieces in it, so we put it in the fridge, so it needs to get used. So it's poultry. We're gonna smoke this bird. I only have two— I only have this piece of cheesecloth, so let's make it last. Let's cut it into two. I guess this is just keeping it moist. Started my Black Earth smoker slash grill. You can hear the pellets clanging down in the burner. That should do it. Okay, it's at 100. Let's go away and come back. Oh boy, here comes Heather. We were supposed to have a bunch of these packed before she got here. Whoops.

The binder first. It's not really that bad though.

So I got a sticker on it. Yeah, that's handy.

It's already like—

that ended up being nice. That's nice packaging. One down, 199 to go. Over 200 Abundance Plus members have already ordered this Polyface Micro. Got a discount for members, so if you're a member, check your email from Abundance Plus. We're gonna set up a shipping station there. It's gonna be a team effort. Well, and then we sold 200 of 4,200. So 4,000 books to go. You gonna play in the walker? Mom, are you stuffing? Yeah, the kids are sticking.

Okay, well, what do we stick?

I want you to watch this hustle. We'll get the books up there. Mom's stuffing. Lily just hustling. Look, they're waiting, they're waiting on you, Mom. Just side jump in and grab it. Comes up, just get in. Putting the packages up. Heather's putting the labels on there, and Jonah is stuffing them into boxes. What's the post office gonna say when you show up with 8 of these?

Uh, I mean, some have good attitudes, some have bad. Some realize that, hey, this is more work, which is more jobs.

And all right, do you have to warn them before you bring so many in?

Uh, yeah, once we get over a certain amount, I start warning them.

Meanwhile, I had set up my grill. It's on 225. That's good. It's working. That means the smoke is working. Yeah, look at all that fat coming off that. And we put these— put them on pans just to keep that out of the grill. Hey, what do you guys think? You think this turned out nice? Yeah, that's one half of it. Point it down, Jonas, so they can see it. I think it turned out very nice. Grilled it at 350 there towards the end and put it in the oven just to crisp it up. How's everybody like it?

Good.

No, seriously, it is good. Never had smoked goose.

I have, but That was good.

And Mama's got you a little bit of food.

You know those little, little dinosaurs?

Yay!

I like it! I like to eat!

I just can't get it in fast enough. Here's some more. Oh, I just want to play with the spoon.