We Got Behind

La la la la la, let me be free. Slept in this morning. Sleeping in? 8 o'clock. I went to bed at 9 o'clock, so I slept 11 hours. What's your excuse for sleeping in until 11 or 8? Stayed up late. How late did you stay up? 2. 2? Stayed up last night watching the fight with her. New neighbor Austin. Was it that exciting? Must have been. You better tell me it was a really good fight. No, it wasn't. Well, why'd you stay up so late? I don't know. I suppose it was going to be a really good fight.

It wasn't.

It wasn't good. That's lame. It was. Why was it so lame? Wrestling on the ground. Oh, really? Yeah. You just wanted to see him punch each other. I don't disagree with you. He looked flat. He didn't look sharp. He didn't look crisp. How long did it go? Just 5 rounds. That's pretty good. Can't get that one up. What'd you say? Why not? It is. Josiah's already trudged on out here. Can't get Jonah out of the bed. Jonah is right though, we can't do our project today. We were gonna finish the grading on the graveyard, but not only is it cloudy, it rained last night, so it's gonna be muddy. I'm gonna have mercy. I said, just do your chores, which is milk the cow. Can't do our project, I'll let you go back to sleep. Maybe we should rev our engine up by here, wake Austin up, make him do the chores with him. He's the one who coaxed him, saying it was going to be a good fight to stay up. Hey, was it a good fight? Was it worth it? Jonah wasn't going with him. I said, how you gonna milk two cows? And he said, one at a time. Happy day! Starting some yogurt. First time in our farm kitchen. I like it. It's not taking up space in our main kitchen. You got up early for a late night. Yeah, she's texting me. I just saw that he texted me at 7:40 AM. Hey, what's the problem? You run a tight ship around the house. How's your headache, girl? I have not had a headache. What's your project today? Put all this away? Trying to figure out what to do. Well, I'm gonna go do my regular chores. Maybe I should put a time lapse on this. Okay. Or not. Okay. You back from Waylon's? What do you got? You got a book? Yes.

Where'd you get it?

You wanna come with me to do chores? Come on, Flossie. Again, I've got to do my chores or Beefcake is going to eat me alive. I just went over the edit with Austin where Beefcake was chasing me in the pen last Sunday.

Hey, hey, hey!

You might be rightfully saying, why are you going to keep him? Well, he's probably going to be dog food soon. I'm going to have mercy on Beefcake because she's in heat, and I think he just may see me as competition. Her being in heat means she's in her cycle where she can be bred, and so he's just a little extra macho, a little extra protective. This could be a good thing, but kind of nerve-wracking for us, so only I'm allowed in there.

We'll do beefcake first.

All right, all right.

What's our project?

Let's harvest all the green beans in the high tunnel. We have been moving in our house, our new house, and we've neglected the garden, that's for sure. So we got some catching up to do. Lots of green beans to harvest. They're buying for me. Been a week since that happened. She's probably out of heat. He's currently out of heat, so let's see if he's still weird. Not coming after me. Wow, do you see what he just did to her? Moved her out of the way. That's probably all he's looking to do for me. Probably not trying to eat me, just wants to dominate. Clearly works. I get out of the way, clearly. Have they been right here, Gideon? We need to get them down and then over. We'll start moving that way. There's some weak part of the pasture I want to get to. See it over there? Maybe we should go up. Have we been up?

No, we have.

Yeah, let's go up and then over.

We have to get all the turkeys over there. All right, you have to move everything before you can get the turkeys by that. You're gonna be all the way up at the pond.

Oh, I hope not. Right now they're finding— I guess they were out of feed. What we've got to do is move these turkeys to a place in the pasture that actually needs it. We did some grading on it last year. It could use the fertility. Papa, yeah, tell me about it.

One's going to be at the pond, and one's gonna be at the barn. One's gonna be at the pretty place. One's gonna be at the pretty place. One's gonna be at the tree house. One going to be at the horse ring, and one's going to be at the house.

Look, I just scared him with the drone. We could hurt him with that if we had to. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey.

Turkey.

Turkey. Turkey. Turkey. Turkey.

Gideon, you want to tromp through there and see if we can't get treats in? Chill. Then there's turkeys. Hey, keep your head up, keep your head up. What'd you do, stay up late last night and watch the fight? Boys are in there sleeping, by the way. Honking their shoes could mean 25% more growth for the turkeys. All this little gravel sediment on the bridge— rooster teeth, I call it. Turkeys or chickens don't have teeth. They put these little rocks in a muscle called a gizzard, and that gizzard works those rocks to break down food, making it easier to digest.

Chickens love it.

Turkeys love, love grit. They can eat some big grit. You think a chicken's chicken? No, turkey's chicken. Now they got nothing to do today but find that grit and eat it. Grab me that bucket. Anything else you want to clean? Come on, guys. I'm not gonna let you stay up and watch the fight again. Can't keep your head up. Uh-oh, look who got out. And this is bad because if Beefcake gets out, then we got problems. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Here, let me get you. Let me get you.

Hey, let me get you right here, right here. Right here.

That was lucky. We'll get this done in no time. Look at there, we got a whole 5-gallon bucket of green beans and tomatoes. Green tomatoes I actually cut when I was trimming back the tomatoes. Hey, sleepy. Did you take a nap? All right, come help shuck green beans. Outlast while we shuck these beans. I wonder what they're gonna do about this guy stealing their pot. Well, we got those shucked and the— what do you call them? String. The guy who stole from the other team got kicked off of his team, so he got, he got what's coming to him. It's apple season. What are you gonna do with all this caramel? We never have any left over if I just make one batch, so I made She got it from an epic, epic amount of maple syrup. Fried green tomatoes with some of my accidents. You can call these happy accidents. We don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents. The tomatoes are getting wild. The butternut plants seem done too, but the butternut squash is not quite ready, it doesn't seem. Do you even eat butternut squash? Well, then what are you talking about?

Well, for you. I mean, if we're gonna grow it, if we're gonna grow it, I would rather get a big fruit than a little fruit.

This has been super nice because she's making caramel, she's making fried green tomatoes. We're all over the place and we're not getting each other's way. I'm parting chickens this way. I like to do it, heats up faster, heats up more even. You're gonna have to break it apart anyway, might as well do it while it's not hot. Beautiful one. Thought I should show you guys how to part a chicken, or how I part a chicken. Let's do it, do it from a POV because this is the angle you guys are going to be doing it at yourself. We still have the head, the legs, from the butchering inside. We're gonna not worry about that because we're gonna make a broth. We're just gonna leave it in there. We start with a wing, lift up the wing, cut into the armpit, start pulling it away until you can start seeing the joint, and then you cut in between the joint. Shouldn't have to cut any bone on that one. To get your wings, I splay this out Cut down through there, kind of break it open to where you can see between those bones and cut through, and you got your little drum. Same thing here, splay this open. I kind of cut around, I kind of circumcise this a little bit, then pull it till you can see in between the joints.

Yeah, I did, uh, there's it right there.

This one can be tricky.

I don't know where it is, so we're gonna brute force. Leave this for our broth, have this for our wing.

On the other side.

Now let's get this leg and file, cut, pull it away from the body, cut down through there. As I pull away, I'm cutting the skin away until I can pull away and see my joint, my leg bone comes out, and I can cut right through there nice and easy. So finding the— hey boys— for finding the cut between the drumstick and the thigh, there's a line of fat. Usually it's more pronounced than that. You can generally cut right through there, cut right through there and not be between the bones. I got a little tip. Most time it is breast. I put it back breast up. There's a little keel bone right there in the middle. There's a keel bone in the middle. I go just to the other side of that. Bam! And the chicken tender naturally splits from the breast. There's the chicken tender. I go ahead and leave the— I go ahead and cut the breast off. Keeping the skin intact. People in my family like the breast, so I'm gonna cut the breast in half so more people can get it. Now to get that tender out, I just cut along the rib line there so I can get under it. And then we got us a chicken tender. Other side. All right, and then we put this whole carcass, feet, legs, head and all, in the— our go-to All-American easiest chicken recipe. I already put salt on it. This is pepper. Lily's getting meat It's from the land. Green beans, fried green tomatoes, chicken. That's a happy day. La la la la la, let me be free.