We grew + Ate the New Food Pyramid

RFK just flipped the food pyramid upside down. I'm not just going to eat the pyramid. I'm going to see how much of that pyramid we can source from our own farm. You're going to be surprised. And it's January, y'all. For breakfast, a sweet potato hash from the land. Yeah. When you grow them yourself, you have to work through it. This is what I was able to get. See? Just rotten. This was a record-breaking harvest. As far as size of sweet potatoes. This is like a pumpkin. This is a pumpkin. Oh my gosh, is this real?

What?

This is a record-breaking year. We've got it peeled. Now let's dice it. Bacon grease on this thing. From the farm, we cook our bacon and the extra grease goes in this, goes in through this handy sifter. Gets the any flesh out, and we just save the grease and it can be stored over in temperature. Let's go. 8-10 minutes on this. While that's going, we'll do the onion. Not from our farm, we didn't plant enough onions this year. We're going to do weed fabric onions, and I believe we'd still have onions, wouldn't we? Or would they have gone bad by now too? And the onions that we did grow struggled. Halfway through, flip them. Oh yeah. While that's cooking I'll tell you one thing that stores amazing— better than sweet potatoes, better than onions— garlic. All right, time's up on the sweet potatoes. You don't want your pan to ever get dry. You can't have too much fat. Well, I guess you can, but— so there's our vegetable base. I mean, technically a sweet potato is a tuber, but Oh, I don't think anybody's counting. I think they're lumped in with the vegetables. Hey, you guys going on chores today? No. Well, that's where I want to be, right there, buddy. This cold going around has really gotten to the best of them. Some low-grade temps, and this is what it takes to get our milk, cream, yogurt, and other various whatnots. First, some alfalfa. That's copious amounts of alfalfa, bro. It's helping her give more milk. You don't tie her up? No, like everybody else.

Oh, you're stressing her out. Yes, sir.

Yeah, milk was fine. Do you see some of the cream lines from when we were gone? They're crazy. Yeah, they're half— ever since we separated the calves, they've— we're getting all the cream, right? First we harvest the milk straight up into a bucket, being sure that nothing cruddy gets in it. They've washed the teats. You know, a lot of people will say they want to come here and they'll say, well, I wanted my kids to see where their food comes from. This isn't where your food comes from. And when it comes to milking, it's all done by robots unless you're buying it from a regenerative small-scale farm. Otherwise, your milk comes from a factory. Now, this isn't just your everyday dairy farm. This is a colossal operation of 100,000 cows all producing milk. Oh, okay, look at this one with the—

see this little baby right there?

Yeah.

That one's name is Dookie.

Dookie.

That one right there, that's Coco. That's Coco.

Okay, the big one.

And then that one over there is S'mores.

Okay.

And the one right over there beside Ryder, his name is Buddy.

Okay, what about this one?

Bean. Bean's our favorite.

You ought to name that one Patch. Look at this Patch. Adorable. Do we know whose it is? Is it a he? It's floppy because if it's a— if it's a female, we could keep it.

Papa, they're all— wait, we can keep it?

That's a male.

Wait, girl?

Well, if you get a female, we can keep it to raise it as a mama. Beans is going to be supper. You can keep him for almost a year. Done already? He's given nothing. Hopefully it's winter. It's 20 degrees right now. They're on wood chips. We're capturing their manure in said wood chips. Smells fresh and clean out here. It absorbs their manure. They're on hay, so they are giving less milk. They're further along in their cycle. Their calves are 6, 7 months old now. She's huge. That's because she's gonna have a baby in 3 months. Yeah. You showing your friend?

I've never milked a cow before, but now I have.

Have you done it?

Yeah.

Let's see it. Show the viewers how easy or hard it is. Yeah, it takes 45 minutes to milk out the first time, and then you can learn to do it in 8. Real quick, how y'all gonna prepare for the snow? They say we could get as many as 18 inches. A major snow and ice event taking shape as you go throughout the next several days. That would be Blizzard of '93, y'all. That would be bad for us. The spring of '93 was canceled. In its place came a cyclone so massive, so violent, and so widespread that it wouldn't just be called a blizzard. That would be hurricane bad. Well, maybe not as bad as the hurricane, but it would be bad. We're talking about power outage. We're talking about road closures. Close. We'll probably just go and pick up a bunch of stuff and then get the side-by-side ready with the snowplow. Now let's put in some sausage. This is how we do it from the day to day. Sausage or any other animal protein you're growing yourself. There's a 4-part checklist: food, water, shelter, security. We got 2 little pigs. One's growing up for meat and one's growing up to replace our boar for breeding. Why is this not working? Defroster is not working. And it wouldn't be homesteading without problems. We have frozen water.

We're good.

Well, maybe this is too far apart. Oh, here's the problem. Their shelter looks good, screws attached. We want to make sure because we're going to get crazy snow and it's cold. We've got them some hay just to make a little nest, and they have, haven't they? And then lastly, security. Our door is looking good. There's no significant gaps in the bottom of this pig tractor. Turn these sweet potatoes into, uh, That sausage. Nature's greatest miracle, turning rotten produce into sausage. Next up, eggs. Austin, roll what it takes to maintain these eggs in the winter.

Eggs.

Food. That'll thaw in this greenhouse within a couple of hours, as soon as the sun hits. Shelter. We're good, we're good. I should have had Harvest make sure there's no poop in the nest box for the day. And security. A little bit of tea, not from my farm but from a North Carolina company, the Old North State. A little long, and look what it did to the bottom of that. It didn't quite cook off. I should have found a way to stir it in a little bit better. I think I ruined the eggs. I'm pretty sure I ruined the eggs. Oh well, we wouldn't call it Burn It Up Cooking Show for nothing. Here's our pyramid: eggs on the base, sausage, a little bit of vegetables, some spices, salt, pepper, a little tea. Oh, I forgot one. The top of the poop Top of the pyramid, a little bit of sugar. And we did not grow this honey. I'm gonna use honey. How much of the food pyramid do we ever grow from our farm? The only thing not is the honey, tea, onions. So I would say we're at probably 90%, would you say? Tell me in the comments, how much is— how much percentage from the farm is that? Oh, oh wait, homemade butter! Here's how we made this. We bent our pole at some point, so it doesn't really spin smoothly. So, so we have to put it in a pot with cloth, but it's turning it. Oh, that broke off nicely. Butter makes so well when it's at room temp too. This is where our buttermilk would come from as well. I think we need any right now. Buttermilk-fed eggs. We're gonna start rinsing the milk— butter. And I'm gonna do it like this. I'm gonna try to squeeze any remaining water out of it. There's the butter. For that butter, you take a jar of cream you just cream separated with, put a scoop of yogurt in there, and then I leave it out 12 to 24 hours, and we have cultured cream. That we can turn into cultured butter. Honestly, I don't care what the food pyramid says. It'll probably flip at the next administration. I just say, welcome to the club. We've been eating like this for 10 years, and if it does change, I'm still going to eat like this. But it is conducive for growing this kind of thing on the farm. It's hard to grow, uh, grains. Don't mind the kids, they're a little under the weather, so we're letting them boob tube it up. Yogurt. Isn't dairy a big part of that pyramid? Let me show you how that yogurt is made. You filter the milk, it's still warm from the cow, comes out at 100 degrees. Regular yogurt, some of our favorite Botten yogurt, and that will be— oops, it's moldy, it's moldy. Well, this one hadn't been opened yet. Scoop of our yogurt. Got it covered with a piece of cardboard just to keep it dark. We're just setting this dehydrator not to dehydrate it, but just to warm it to 100 degrees. So then still raw. Folks, you cannot buy this at the store. You cannot buy raw yogurt in the store. We're gonna set this to 24 hours. Every yogurt in the store I think has been up to 160, something crazy like that. And 24 hours. Just immersion blend it after it's been in the fridge, it's cool. And you guys won't believe this. We've got it. We've gotten good at this yogurt. Took a minute. I don't know if dairy is the best thing when you have the sniffles, but it's raw yogurt. Let's go for it. I mean, it's not water. I mean, it's not Greek yogurt either though. Put a little bit of honey in it. I'd still say this is 90% from the land, even with this next— here's the thing. Don't be crazy. You know, we grow our yogurt, but don't be afraid to put a little something-something in it. I mean, you want to enjoy life. And one of my philosophies is all the honey, all the maple syrup we need to buy for the kids because I want them to have a sweet life. I want them to remember their childhood with sweetness. Austin and I editing the fasting video coming out soon. Never-before-seen footage. Feature film. It's ridiculous. I'm getting emotional about this, but it's, it's, it's penetrating my flesh. Did you make the lunch? Yeah, got some chicken. Just went through the fridge and just what's old. Let's get rid of it. Let's go ahead and cook it. Ooh, a filet mignon. A sirloin steak. It's from several cows ago. I don't even know how many. Lily, how about some baked chicken, sautéed steak, set up some broccoli?

Well, we could bake the chicken and cut it up and then sauté the meat and then cut it up and then have broccoli and rice and soy sauce.

Okay. And that would be it, kind of. Alright, I guess that's not terrible.

No, no.

Thank you, Lily. Good job. Steak from the land, rice from Azure, chicken from the land, broccoli from the land. Uh-oh, Lily, you're bringing me down, girl. That's 50/50. I'm still kind of stuffed from this morning. I'm not that hungry. I picked a heck of a day to eat the food pyramid. I'm gonna bring this average up. I'm gonna go 100. I'm gonna go 100 from the land. Well, if you don't count salt. Listen, if I learned anything from the fast, it's don't eat if you don't feel like it. Sometimes we eat just out of habit and obligation. Chicken definitely needs butter. We need the food pyramid with us, Austin. Yeah, that sounds good. I need a little bit of broccoli. That's the base right there, isn't it? That's the base— meat and veggies. Okay, maybe 99 cents. Are we gonna count salt? We're not gonna count salt. Give me 100 on this. And I should remind you, we're not grading on keeping with the pyramid. This is with the pyramid. We're grading on how much of the pyramid we grew. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but can you see it? The new food pyramid is more sustainable, more easily grown. It's hard to grow an Oreo or a Hot Pocket on the farm. I mean, it's hard to grow, don't get me wrong. It's not easy to grow beef and butter and broccoli. Let me show you. Let me show you the winter beef operation. Just go unconnect that. Hey, fed in different areas on cruddy pasture. This is washed out pasture by the hurricane. Her udder is going to be gigantic. That's gonna be nice. Oh, she's got good teeth. Let's check out these steers. This guy makes me hungry. He'll be ready in May. Here's some clips of us tending this broccoli.

I have got all my broccoli here. Is that not amazing? It looks so good. There is so much, and it is so exciting.

Look at all this broccoli. I know you're gonna have just this much tomorrow.

Just today.

The snow wasn't even easy, and even though we didn't have to pay for it with money. We paid for it with time, money, energy, risk. You got more of an appetite? How'd that slap together stir fry work?

I might have gotten a little too much.

Well, it looked good, didn't it? How'd Lily do?

Just fabulous.

That happened while we were working. We'll take it.

I know, right? It's just the way I like it.

Precipitation really get going. What'd you get us?

Hey, Azure!

We didn't grow it, but we didn't have to go to the grocery store either. The Azure Co-op. I'll leave a link down in the description for that. Potatoes! We're out of our potatoes, and we're about growing as much as we can and then supplementing with what we need to just have an enjoyable, pleasurable life. Walk me through what we got, baby. All right, people love an unboxing.

Okay, I got— these are the best tortillas on the face of the planet. You cannot— gluten-free? Yeah, they're corn. Um, you cannot buy these anywhere but in Oregon or on Azure.

And they're soft and supple.

They are, they're amazing.

And who wants to grow and make your own tortillas?

I got a bunch of those.

We have done that before. It's not easy. It's not fun.

I got cheese. This is cheddar. It's easier to buy in a block. I got powdered sugar. It's a 5-pound bag. It'll last us a very long time. Um, these are the wrong one. Oh no, I was supposed to get white and this is orange.

We got a bunch of orange American cheese. Does that mean it has coloring?

No, it does have coloring, um, but it's natto. Okay, so yeah, this isn't right, but that's okay. Um, I got kombuchas. These are the boys' favorites.

They're always organic.

Yeah, I have organic options. I got refried beans. I tried another brand and I was reported to that it was not good. So, um, I wanted to make my own pinto beans. Yeah, that I think I could do, but I'm getting everybody on board with what they taste like. Oh yeah, I need to look at what's in this.

What about this, girl? This is a big treat. Big treat.

Oranges. We got oranges from Azure.

We eat a lot of oranges, especially when it's cold.

Yeah, so kids can go to town, eat as many as they want. I also got— also got pears. For them to eat.

Those look organic.

Yeah, they're organic.

Those are beyond organic.

20 pounds of pears, and that's 38 pounds of each box.

Sometimes the uglier the fruit, the more natural and clean it is. Yeah.

Okay, so I got Monterey Jack cheese, I got Parmesan cheese, I got baking soda, 5 pounds of baking soda. All right, we're trying out the peanut butter. Oh, from Azure.

Should I try that right now?

You can try it right now. I'll do it. It's, it's less expensive and it had really good reviews. It's less expensive than what I was buying.

Somebody's gonna do it.

I know, right?

Where's fat on the food pyramid? Is it pretty—

it's in there—

pretty substantial?

It's in the middle. Um, this is mine. Hey, this is just a little—

what, you're getting it cold too?

She's lost her voice.

What do you need?

Milk. Josiah, can you get some milk? These are my little treat that when I, when I want just a little something something, but they're, they're not bad. They don't have bad stuff in them.

Simple.

Yeah, this is the best cream cheese ever. I mean, sure Wow, I didn't even make it. Maybe we could have another cow.

We got a third one on the way.

I'm so tired.

She's got great teats.

Good.

Yeah, maybe you can milk this one. You get your whole hand on it.

I'll get it. Okay, I am gonna try this. I got this lip balm.

I'm gonna pull you a little forward.

I'm excited to try. I'm trying. I'm excited to try this lip balm.

Yay!

From them. Um, I really like this. Stain and odor eliminator. It's really, it's really good for our kids. We need it on the farm. Um, we're trying out salmon in a can to do salmon patties. This is another really good find. What's this? What did I get here? I got dish soap. They have really good dish soap. It's very cheap. It's like $15 for this whole thing, right? And I was spending like $4 on one of those Ecos things. Anyways, this is the best thing right here. This is, um, Henry calls it the bee honey because it has a bee on it, but this is, um, it's so good. It's like, it's thick.

Nice.

Thick honey. Should I eat some of that tonight?

Sounds like you need it.

I do.

And some oranges.

It's spreadable. And some tea. Did you take the garlic?

No rice.

Did you take the garlic?

I have zero appetite. I was hungry for breakfast-ish, so I've kind of tailed off here at the end. What's up? So we're just gonna heat up some chicken leftover from lunch. Uh-oh, Lily, chicken is not forming the base of this new pyramid.

Oh, we have cheese dip.

Oh, the cheese dip brings it up.

We have sour cream and cheese.

Okay, we got sour cream and cheese.

I know some people, um, like to say, oh, you have a milk cow and then you buy dairy products at Azure or the grocery store. There's no shame in mine. I have 5 kids.

We need a third one.

By the way, we're getting more cows and there's only 24 hours in a day. I like to sleep. I like to sleep.

Doesn't everybody?

So anyways, I say that to say that if you have a milk cow and you still buy dairy products at, um, Azure or wherever, yeah, um, because it's fine. Don't let anyone tell you different. Don't let anyone tell you different.

She's getting up on her stool here. I like it.

Well, it makes me mad. Listen, Everyone's doing the best that they can.

Speak up for the people, Peggy. Speak up for the people. Get her rolling.

We're all doing the best that we can. Okay, we're all doing the best that we can.

Well, by the time you get milk and then make yogurt and then harvest cream for drinking and then, uh, make butter from that and then make sour cream What else am I missing before you even make cheese?

Maybe I'm a cop-out. Maybe I'm a cop-out, and I'm okay with that.

You're crazy. You're not a cop.

I'm tired. I'm tired. That's what it is.

Well, no, the internet's a mean place. You're waiting for the third cow to come in, honey. It's a journey.

I'm just saying that people say mean things on the internet, and that's one of the things. Don't look in our fridge.

Hey, mean people on the internet, roast our fridge. I'm not hungry. I've got to think of something for my meal. I'm gonna go to— I want a cup or 2 cups. I got 2 cups of broth from the farm real quick. Something, something. Always hungry. Oh, Henry's hungry. He's eating an apple. You hungry? Well, you must have really got something. What do you think about the new food pyramid?

I think it's great. It's how we eat. It's what we think people should eat. I think that everybody should do what is right for their bodies, what makes them feel good. I don't think we need the government to tell us what to do. I am happy that schools and the military will be eating better. Yeah, but other than that, I mean, people got to make their decisions.

I want to make broth feel like a meal. When it's boiling, make it egg drop soup. A little bit of salt, call it 99%. Oh, I just— I opened the wrong end. I just doused that with salt. Thankfully I did the 2 cups. Soup is 99% of the land. I probably ate the food— new food pyramid— 95+ percent of the day today. Hooray! And the family didn't do that bad. Salsa, chicken, sour cream. You know there's our sour cream in there. Sure. I'm gonna call it right there. Happy day.