We Made Compost with Pigs | Right Next to the Garden

And how's the ribs this morning? Good. Good? They're a little better. And you're gonna go? Oh, they're getting improved. They hurt when I walk. Okay, are you gonna rest a little bit? Little bike crash yesterday. Okay, you rest, but also movement is gonna be good too. Definitely no bike riding. Happy day, sleepyheads! Did y'all know that it's good for the What you call, I think what you call circadian rhythm. Am I saying that right? Austin, am I saying that right? Circadian rhythm. Light in the eyes within 1 hour of waking up. Happy day. 70-some-odd chickens. Chicks. 100 more coming this week if we don't have enough. Apparently, getting that light in your eyes Within the first hour already begins the rhythm of your ability to go to sleep. It's time these chicks get a diaper change. Totally honest and transparent with you all, great if this is about all you're doing on the homestead. For us, with so much more going on, we're gonna do one round of soaked feed and then we're just gonna do regular feed. Because it's too time-consuming. Somehow the water has gotten removed from this, so it's a little— it's actually a little more manageable. This could mold if you do this too long exposed to the air like this. Yeah, it just takes too much to sift it and to get it out, given we— all that we've got going on. Raise your hand if you've been homesteading pre-2020. So before 2020 you started homesteading. Actually, don't raise your hand, put a comment down in the description. Nobody can see your hand. What am I thinking? They're ready. We gave them a hay bomb yesterday with all this green grass about. No finagling them over today, is there? Let's put a little bit of a hay bomb right in there.

Too.

They really did not go crazy for eating this hay. That's okay, it's still left here for organic matter. Look at all these droplets though. We got a poop bomb. Much happier now. Raise your hand if you've been homesteading since 2020. Don't raise your hand, put it in the comments. Pre-2020? Post-2020. This is mine and Rebecca's 19th garden. Comment if you've been homesteading over 19 years. Call them COVID gardens. Next time you're out and about, look around and notice any somewhat recently abandoned gardens. There's actually a lot of them because a lot of people got into homesteading in 2022, they got in out of insecurity and fear. That's not a problem per se, except the adrenaline of the fear wore out, especially when things got back to normal. What they found was homesteading, it can be incredibly difficult, and they didn't have the energy to sustain it. Their adrenaline had run out. Good to have you come help me. Those of you that are still with us, congratulations. Those that have dropped out have long stopped watching this and any other homestead content. Our views during 2020, people interested in homesteading, was like 3 times what it is right now. And that's normal with homesteading content across the board. Whoa, holy crap, why are so many chickens out? 4. Good morning, pig mama. How are you boys doing? I was kind kind of stacked. There's grain in there. Why is he not moving around? No, he's hard. We castrated them yesterday, put antiseptic on them after, but you never know, they could still get an infection. Pigs are the most dramatic of all farm animals and act like they're always hungry. 120, I think it's safe to turn it, get it going composting faster. Do you already fill their water up this day? No, actually looks like it might be all right. Why are they honking so Oh, uh, out yonder he's in a protest and the other boy is in a protest. He's wanting him to open the fence for him. Always a control battle. You gotta have more reasoning than fear if you're gonna last, because fear wears out, the adrenaline goes away, and you just collapse. Preferably you have hope and big vision, and that's what you're striving for. That's two. There's— I think there's two more out. Your hope has to go even bigger though than I think just delicious food on your table. Less expensive, delicious, more nutrient-dense food on your table. You gotta ask, why are you doing that? You know, for us, it's longevity, to be able to enjoy our kids in our older age, to be able to enjoy their kids in our older age. This is food we have to grow because this quality is found nowhere else. Years of doing this 365 days in a week times 19. Let's say that's 20. I don't know what that is. Let's say it's just 300 days in here. That's 300 times 20, Jonah. That's too much math. Anyway, Austin, what's 19 years, uh, what's 19 times 365? Something good, like going and get the eggs that many times, collecting that many eggs, putting them up, opening them up in the morning. It's enough to drive a person person crazy after a time. You're really excited in the beginning, but then eventually that wears off and you stay for deeper meaning. Okay, those are clean ones. Yep. Hot dog! How's the chick feeder doing? Can you turn that? Yeah. Today, this is what it's like to get my very first egg. First egg! Our first egg! I gotta go tell— I gotta go tell the beautiful one. Hey, we got an egg! This is what it's like after getting eggs for not every day for 19 years. Can I try it? Sure. I guess you find new ways to make it exciting. Yeah, there's plenty. Okay, how much did she give? Is that 1 gallon? 2 gallons? She gave 2.5 gallons, man. If her little calf— we need to test her. Is A2 A2? I think we keep Vanilla calf instead of Honey. Both are descendants of Stud Muffin. One has a more likely chance of producing more milk because her mom produces more milk. Vanilla produces more milk than Honey. After 19 years, we're going through a season of burnout, tiredness, digging deeper into our why. If you last this long, you're here to stay, I think. Oh really, Henry's still— Goodness, I'm pressing into those Ys. Still watching your step, nothing harder? Yes. Getting asked to watch Abundance Plus this morning melted my heart. Of course we got lots to accomplish today. I'm waiting, come on. So I have an idea to reverse burnout or to prevent it for both me, myself, myself, myself, and you all. Danielle, I'm not gonna ask you to lift anything. You can just stay in Salma. Just be good to get out out and get moving a little bit. We reached 120 on our compost pile. If we want it— the faster you want to make compost, it's 120, turn it. Coming this Friday, day 1 of 30 on Grow 30. 30 days we're gonna inspire each other, uh, help each other, cheer each other on in community. Inside Abundance Plus, day 1 starts Friday. You might get in there with Jonah. I don't like him standing that close to that pile. So the idea— be thinking about it— what would your Grow 30 challenge might be? It might be to get started with chicks. It might be to find a family cow. It might be to get started with a couple of steers. It might be, in our case, our goal is to set ourselves up for quitting the grocery store. Our Grow 30, we're going to keep doing what we're doing to be ready. See that white? That's burnt. Good we're doing this. It can get too hot and that can fire I mean, I don't think so because we've wet it down really good. Compost needs carbon, which has been our hay and wood chips, nitrogen, which has been our cow manure, water, and then air. Starts getting too hot, you just turn it. Once it gets back up to 120, we'll turn it again. Yeah, see? So you have a few days to think about what your Grow 30 might be. Let's be in this together. Let's keep each other accountable. I'll be posting in Abundance Plus every day and asking y'all to show your progress in every day. With pics, with texts. It's uncensored, no ads. It's good. That community is part of the key to longevity. You know your why, but you still need to have support and strength and know-how. And that's what we're gonna do this Friday. We're kicking it off with the premiere of Dawn Episode 2, which is a show about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, just like you guys. It's self-produced, it's amazing. You guys will like it. It's Kick that off May 10th. Well, you look so pretty today. You walking up, G-Mom? All right, you want to take him? He was gone for 3 days. Of course he likes Grandma's toys, which by the way, it's been amazing having an intergenerational, uh, community farm, uh, on the farm. Rebecca's parents up the hill, then us, and then our kids. 3 generations right now on this farm. That's good, my man. Let's go look at these burn piles. See the brush pile? Yeah, we need to burn that brush pile. It's, it's, it's from last year's clearing of pasture. It's also going to burn, bury those stumps. We don't have enough pasture, and this will help us make pasture. And we're going to get our breeding ram over here so he doesn't breed anybody out of time. Same thing with our heifer, our heifer cow. This helps us grow more of what we eat because we eat a lot of dairy and grazing amazing animals. I took a little break. I realized I needed to go farm shopping real quick. I needed to lay out some stud burgers for tonight, so why not get much of this week's meat? The turkey, some bacon. Sorry, box is breaking. I better go. Food put away, let's go burn some stuff. I tell you what, you want to get out a farm project this morning? Would you go and make us buns for tonight? Some, uh, burger buns? Do that? Sure. Okay, heck yeah. Relax, listen to your audiobook. The boys and I are burning brush pile and hopefully moving the pig port, starting another compost pile. Turns out this hay's got all kinds of— We got her lit. Now what I'd really like to do is get water coming down our water line. You know, we could hose the ground around it use it if it starts coming away from the brush fire. Hey, look who's here! Hey, pretty lady, come on up. Let's go turn the water on up top. We're cleaning off the 2 acres. That's good news, it's coming off the mountain. All right, let's go get some tools. All right, water line kit. Henry, come on, we gotta go check on the fire. Nice ride. I can't find the arrowroot or tapioca. I have a 5-pound bag of arrowroot. It's brown. Do you need both or just one or the other? Okay, got that one fixed. I got another one right here. It's like spring. That's what you do, you just tidy up water lines. This is nice. This is the Salatin suggestion— female to a hose faucet right there. Yeah, that's easy for the kids to turn on and off. You know, there's a road on this side. It's cooled down significantly, which I'm very happy about. There's a creek on the other side and it's downhill. Maybe we will lose that maple tree, but that's okay. There's lots of trees we need to clear a little more anyway. This is how I did it before, Joel Salton. I didn't know there was a tee that had a female, so I've only been getting these males. Have to connect this piece, so there's actually 2 more hose clamps that could go wrong. That's a much better system. Plus these shutoffs, these ball valves, are a little harder for the kids to do. All right, now just 'til we feel like we're being prudent. This is just a trickle off the mountain. I think we'll be better served letting it build up. I don't know how that's collecting anything. It's running in this pipe, but it could be doing better. I went back and got a drill driver plus a strapping young man. I'm in good luck. Body light. So sorry, guys. This is our water collection. And it's not just so much to get water down there by the fire, although that's nice. It's our water supply for that whole 2-acre pasture down there, and we want to get animals over soon. Tomorrow I think we need to castrate the lambs. Wow. Oh my gosh, this is plumb full. How's any water getting through that? Oh, don't, don't disconnect it there. Be very gentle. This screen is so full of— yeah, I know, it could have went down the pipe. It's not easy. I don't know how— that's shaking off pretty nice. Clean that off in the creek. Sorry, you can probably not see nothing down here. Hear that? That's water hitting our collection. Comes through this pipe, goes down in there to a tank. See that tank? And we have that as a reservoir. I'm so excited for this. We're gonna test the port in the pig port. This is my new invention. Gonna work. The idea here is we had pigs in there on deep bedding. The deep bedding increases. They manure, they urine. That mix, it's ripe for compost right next to our garden. So they get waste from our garden, and then the pigs with this compost feeds the garden. Instead of having to get the material out, can we remove the whole shed? If this works, This is revolutionary. Please, please work. The easiest way I can think of to make compost in place, minimal amount of work. All right, 2, 4 pigs in here. 2 pigs, $3,000 worth of pork. Get our lane 2 off. Oh my gosh, we interrupt this program. We got some tomato shriveling in there. We gotta vent this. Oh, I hope we can save these tomatoes. That one's flat on the ground and shriveled. That one too. Come on, little buddy. Come on. These are like animals to Rebecca, and those are— those are dollar seed tomato, and we got the last that they had. Successfully vented. It is a lot cooler in there already. Tile guys need me for a meeting probably 2 minutes ago, so let's try this side by side. Could pull it. Most of y'all could pull it, although you could borrow a tractor once or twice a year. It's not, uh, equal. There you go. Hey! Sally pulled it! Now you can access it, pile it up, and turn it into a compost pile. This is manageable by hand, but hey, we have a Mini X, so let's do that. Hey, now it's a parking shed. Move it to where we need it, and we have a compost pile. Plenty of bulk to get started, plenty of critical mass. I couldn't be more excited. I couldn't be more excited. Compost, compost that the pigs made! Right next to the garden. Are you kidding me? And we strategically placed up here so as we wheelbarrow down, it's sloped down slightly. So we thought about even slope as we plan to wheelbarrow that compost onto this garden. Cabinets have arrived this afternoon. Can't keep her back. You're gonna go in there with tomatoes and everything? Wow, Becky! Oh my gosh. Wow, are all those yours? Those are all mine. Wow.

Justin, I'm Jared. Nice to meet you. Y'all still have a substantial amount.

Well, yeah, I have some ideas for that. So, okay. Poplar trim from the land. See what you got here. I know, this is so nice. You can't buy this in the store. Literally, you cannot. No. This is walnut. Yeah. How does it feel? It's so nice. Oh my gosh, this is walnut from the farm. Yes, this is our walnut. Wow. And this is— this is poplar, but painted what I wanted it painted. This is the kitchen. Wow, isn't it beautiful? So this is the outer kitchen, and then walnut is going to be— it hasn't taken that long to put this in our island. I don't know. Get off, get down. Uh-uh, no sir.

For each piece, you know, this panel grain is carrying all the way through.

How did you do that?

So we glued up the longer panels and then cut them, you know, sized them to cut them.

So this, you know, these lines just totally So that does, that's a consistent pattern going all the way, and it's the same, it's from the same tree.

Yeah, so we spent a lot of time just trying to, you know, just make sure that it was balanced. Yeah, with the grain, you know, you can see up at the top up here it's got kind of the loudest grain because that way, you know, when you put this countertop on it, yeah, your eyes aren't really noticing that as much, you know. So we had more similar grains around the whole piece.

Nice. We're trying to filter out Used oil. It's used. How was Peaches today? He was really good. He got what he needs. He listened to me. He didn't try to change directions. Well, maybe it's helping that he's been out on a pasture moving around. Ladies are cooking fries. What do you think? Is this appropriate, cooking beef right next to beef? I think so. Thanks. Burgers turned out good. Thank you very much, guys. They enjoyed the show. We ended up feeding the crew who's camping out. I guess if somebody's so dedicated to come and work on the job and they're gonna camp out. We're gonna feed them some stud muffins. Let me be free.