We're Back

Happy day! We're back, the vlog's back, and we gotta check on things. We got new baby lambs. It's something like 1 degrees according to Apple. It's 8. Rebecca says 1. The low today is 7, so it's warming up a little bit. Gonna get to 29. We got a lot of putting back to do. Good things it's cold. Good thing it's cold today. We don't want to be outside. She's still going outside. What is this? You're Cold exposure?

No, it's the sunlight in my eyes. It's cold. I know, I'm like, okay, it's enough.

Hey, now my phone says 8.

Yeah, but then did you look at the feels like?

No. Okay, here we go, 1 or 9. Not much of a difference. I got the wood boiler going last night. We're up to temp. Wood's still in there from last night. Remember the sheep that had tiny front legs? Legs, big back legs, and like an ear was off. Didn't that sheep die? Maybe. That was last year, bro. Yeah, I'm just wondering if it didn't die, we ate it. We might be eating it tonight. How do the sheep fare in the single digits? This one still has to have a look. My gosh, that one's about to— or that one did have a baby. Where? The one with the massive udder. Mom and I were worried about Ryder's babies last night. We even came out here to try to help to make sure they Hey, look at these guys. Don't worry about them. Nothing like having lamb babies the coldest day of your year. These guys, these were the ones I was worried about. Ryder's being a good mom. This one's particularly small. It must be eating because it's almost 24 hours old. I wish you could feel this. I wish you could feel the deep bedding. It's warm on my knees. Another reason for deep bedding, vibrant decomposition. It's composting. It's a heating— it's a warming process. You must be eating, right? You can't live 24 hours without eating. But they can also drink a tiny little bit and survive. Yeah. Hey, hey, water's staying thawed out. Hey, they're not gonna eat that though. They don't even drink that. There's sheep poop in it. We're gonna deal with that this afternoon because there's no hoses and I don't like to bring— there are hoses. Cow's water is clean, miraculously. I am afraid they're gonna slip on this. Then we're gonna have a real problem if we haven't injured a cow. Cows, like horses, break their leg, you got to put them down. I don't want to find out. Hear that bleating? That makes Mom nervous. She's like wanting to get a heat lamp on them. I think if you get a heat lamp though, everybody— no, no, no, stay. I just realized this is not gonna work. Because he's been pushing through our net when we let them out here when they're milking. He's learned it's not on and he just pushes right through it. We are gonna have to do— let's put it on thick. Donut, film it at least. I did film it. Oh good. Hey, hey, hey, hey, somebody's gonna slip on ice. We better catch it on camera, or if they knock on us— oh my gosh, why are you going that way? We gotta get— let's milk and get out of here, man. This is crazy. Hey Austin, you're making me look like a liar. I showed him the phone though. I mean, shorts? Oh, is it cold out here? I'm just making up stories. Make a more dramatic vlog. How'd it go on the weekend chores? Went good. Yeah, yeah, everything was a breeze. Yeah, a breeze, literally a very cold breeze. Yeah, I don't know what's so hard about this. All right, now let's make her go over the hay. You got to get honey out of the way. Thank you. Hey, hey, hey, hey! Apparently Heatman's been lifting this up with his horn. So now we have to caravan it together. We have a problem. I want to wait till the afternoon. Well, Jonah certainly does. I'd love to. The water heater has kept the water unthawed. 9 degrees, that's amazing. They have pooped in it. When you eat or drink poop of your own self, that's when you get parasites. And you get parasites at 9 degrees though. Are parasites going I guess they could. It'd be 100 degrees in their body. But are they alive? Wouldn't that cold water kill them? Still doesn't feel right making them drink their own poop water. The water stall, or the nipple stall. Wow, wow, that's as cold as it gets. I mean, 1 degree, it doesn't get much colder than that here. I think we've had a little, uh, Maybe minus 9 while I've been gone. And I'm told this little hot water trough heater is keeping the water unthawed and warm enough that the exterior nipples don't freeze. Chickens look fine. Everybody worries about their chickens in the winter. We're even in this high tunnel overnight, it's single digits. These puffy black Australorps, Buff Orpington Rhode Island Red, or yeah, Rhode Island Red, Barred Rocks. They do fine. Look, it's got one leg tucked up in to stay warm. They will be happy as soon as that sun comes up over and starts, you know, we get the greenhouse effect in here. How are y'all? Y'all got plenty of fat. You're good. We gave you a little hay nest while we were gone. You're good, you're good, especially with the wind block. On two sides of this thing. Tilling job, it's okay. Ground's frozen, they ain't tilling today. Okay, so that's frozen. I'm hoping it's just the extreme cold and the extreme night, but that's too— it's too sticking out too much, I guess, because it's metal, it's got frozen. Sun's about to come out, the heater is working, the water is unthawed, so I'm thinking Uh, they probably warm it up enough soon enough, or otherwise we're gonna have to bring a heat gun out here. I want to get them water, but I also don't want my hands to freeze off. Now my wood boiler isn't— the problem was it was too hot before and not disengaging, I think. And now it's not engaging. Our water level is fine. It's saying the temperature in there is 188. It never says it's 188. There's no fire going. How is it 188 and there's no fire? We're gonna have to figure that out in a bit. At least, uh, checking out the lambs. I'll get you guys water here directly.

Here we are in the sheep pen, and I have some alfalfa. Nope, sheep, sheep, sheep. And they're very hungry for it. 'Cause I wanted to see the baby, so I had to bring some apples. So they don't attack me. This one was born yesterday. So cute and tiny.

How's it holding up in the cold weather?

Good. It's all fuzzy and warm. And we set up this thing, well, I'm sort of set up this thing to protect it. Them from the wind. It's a girl. Wow, it's a girl. So far I know we have 2 girls, um, 1 girl and 2 boys. Another boy. How many boys are we gonna have? Another boy. Let's make sure. 4 boys, only 1 girl. We have 1 last chance.

Oh, it's a girl. Since we're eating them.

2 girls and 4 boys. Hopefully one of the babies' moms don't take care of them so I can take care of them again. 'Cause one year, like for the last few years, one of the moms didn't take care of the babies, so I have to take care of it. I luckily, Papa does it at night. He has to go out there at like midnight to take care of the sheep. But one, one like almost died and I milked milk into it. I milked one of the sheep into the baby's mouth and luckily it survived. Now that baby turned out to be a brat though. He was spoiled.

Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna power this off. We're running on our other heat system right now. We'll come back in a little bit and see if that reading has gone down. Maybe it is 188 in there, and maybe it's 188 because the pump isn't working properly instead of sending water through the lines, because that would definitely cool it down, you know, to be cycled through. Maybe it's not cycling through. Ah, this is one of those things I'd just rather have the pro come and do it. But that's the thing, I'm finding out with Central Boiler there's no pro. My dealer, I can't— I don't hear a word back from him. The next closest dealer doesn't do service calls. Hey, what's going on here?

We made the cake!

You got a customer? Oh yeah, it was very good. He's not so sure. You're acting towards me like Blaze acted towards me. Who are you? Well, that would be so nice.

That's like $40. Wait, so now we made $3.

Frost, look at them. Beautiful one has made some seasoning. A little like stressed out. I wanted to put the things away from our vacation, but I also wanted the wood boiler to work. That wasn't the plan to do the wood boiler, but I'm trying to get to where I can go address it. I still have to do the lamb water. We just seasoned this. Um, that's cool that she pre-sea— got all her, so we don't have to mix every time. Put a little 2 cups of broth in there. It's 11:30, 275, I think. We eat at 5. Low and slow, they tenderize that thing. I'm not asking them to go today, it's so cold. High today is 29, which Actually seems pretty good compared to this morning. A little divide and conquer. Josiah's gonna do the dishes. Lily, you're gonna heat up lunch. You know that feeling of just knowing something so very important in your life, like a wood boiler, isn't working? It's a terrible feeling. We have redundancy, so we're running on our propane, but that's, that's expensive. See, I don't think that's too clogged unless you got something deep in there. Oh, I went deep. Oh, did you turn it back on? What's the temperature reading? 188. See, there's no way. That's not right. Okay, I haven't left it off probably long enough. Oh, the pump isn't plugged in. Yeah, I know the pump's— I unplugged the pump. The pump is why it has to pump the water through to make it— I know, I unplugged the pump. Maybe we'll just do a reset. That definitely turned on when you put the pump— pump knob in. It's 189. That's hard to believe. How did it go 1 degree with nothing? Okay, let's say I'll be happy to get the sheep some new water. I would be really happy to get that wood boiler going, but do I need to? Like, our thing is growing food. Do I really need to burn, you know, heat our house with wood just because it's a homesteading thing? Doesn't mean I need to do it. Why are these all jacked? You don't want these to get tangled. Okay, so we're gonna screw them together. My idea works. Putting the hoses in the root cellar, I don't know, it's more environmentally friendly. Really cool to get fuel off of our own farm. It's more self-sustaining. Double check to make sure this stayed thawed out. One of my things is now that we've pretty much established our food system is to become more self-reliant. I think it took me a minute to realize we had achieved our goal. We grow an overwhelming amount of our own food, most of our own food, easy, if not 75% or more. And that's about right. I mean, could we do more? Sure. Are we gonna? Sure. Pooped in yours too? Turn your back to a bull, at least not without— my goals are shifting because we're there. We're like, 4 lambs have given us 6 babies. Between 4 lambs, we've got 6 babies. 7 more lambs to go. Our goal is 12, 12 lambs a year to harvest, so we're already halfway there. And haven't had nearly half our ladies lay yet. Lay. We're arriving with the sheep to our goals. We got 2 milk cows at the lowest time, we're getting a gallon and a half each. We got a bull that's fertile, a ram that's fertile. We need to have a flip in our pigs here soon, but we know this and we'll do this. I guess I'm just saying I need to take a minute to— all right, realize we've made it to our chief goals: grow our own food. Now what? Guess we're gonna put some time into self-reliance. Okay, I wonder though too, that's the propane furnace going. That's what it sounds like. Let's go switch things over and seeing if maybe just resetting it helped. Turn the propane heater off, furnace off, electric— it's off. Okay, I heard something. Heard something. I'd be really happy if this got fixed 6. This is the one. I'll get the lamb their water. That'll be good. This is the one that's unserved. Let's hear if this engages when we turn it on. Okay, I heard it engage. This one says it's 68 in here, so let's put it up to 72. Did you fill the cows one up and start the sheep's?

Yeah, I'm working on it.

Okay, stay there and watch it. Here, let me help you flip that trough. It's heavy. You're gonna spend time with the lambs? Yeah, as for the wood boiler, pump's going. Supposed to pump that 200— 180-degree water through the line. So is this warm? No, not really. Okay, if that water is 188 degrees, that would be warm. The fan's working. That means if water was coming down through these red lines— no. This should be piping hot. Water would be coming down through these red lines, warm, through this radiator, and our fan would be pushing it up through. Makes me think, because we didn't run the wood boiler when we were gone and it got so crazy cold. Papa? Yeah? Gideon and Henry are watching Wild Kratts. Okay, what are you doing? I'm just gonna come fix it up. Okay. Mama told me to tell you. Okay. Hey Gideon, bring me that iPad please. Don't be watching that. Call Randolph. He's replaced that pump before, and I think we might have an extra pump. Hello, this is Randy. All right, I have to leave him a message. So good news, it could be the pump, or it could be that the unit isn't calling on the water, on the heat. I don't know. If it's not the pump, it's gonna be on me. I'm not going into electronics. We'll see if we can't switch out the pump. It's gonna have to be another day. I don't have a pump. Lily is sweet potato fries tonight. The boy's calling. That's how come we walked across it.

All right, it's like 6 inches.

Yes, more.

That's enough.

Okay, it's been cold, so we're just proving that us being on the lake is safe. Okay, 29 feels toasty compared to 9 from this morning. Was it toasty enough to let our nipple water on our pigs drip? You see that? It's dripping. That makes me happy. You know what else makes me happy is I think I figured out what's wrong with that wood boiler. I think that the pump froze when it was off and had a little bit of water in it. And burst. We've ordered another one. It's gonna be a minute though. I was gonna check on the lambs, saw Randolph was here. Hey, the pipes froze! The pipes froze? Yeah, well, that's why the pump's working then. The pipes froze. Oh, the pipes froze because we weren't running it? Yeah, let's have to lay the heat to it and hope it thaws out. It's the only thought. It can't be only frozen in here. Probably, probably the next room too, I guess. That makes sense. Although I think there's antifreeze in all of it. But it's been cold. You saw that ice on the lake. I've never seen ice that thick on the lake. Let's go cancel that order before it's too late. Randolph figured out the problem.

What?

Calm down, it's all right. No, no, I was just wondering.

I'm just very passionate.

The wood boiler froze because it was full of water and it wasn't running. Whoa, that was $377. I put back on the card. That pump was going to be $377. I canceled it. Randolph didn't think there'd be any reason the pump would ever go bad. I said, what about antifreeze? I thought there was antifreeze in this system. There's not. That's $500. And Randolph said most don't do it because it's $500. But I wonder, I would worry, would some of those chemicals somehow radiate through and into the house? I don't know. We're health freaks, so I think we'll just keep the wood boiler going next time, or insulate the outside walls. You think I got the goodies? Do we got any new lambs? Waters are full. I'm gonna fill up the cow straw. I'm glad I came out here because I totally forgot that it's our hose that I need to wind up and put back in the root cellar. Or we won't be getting water into these guys tomorrow. How are the fries?

They're good.

I'm taking them out now.

Sweet potato fries from the land. Lamb from the land. Rebecca's on a mission. Tell me about your mission.

I'm on a mission to make life better on vacation.

And, and right after— yeah, well, she's packing for the next one right now.

Yeah, so this is my home goods, like my home household supplies.

Yeah.

And dishwasher and dish— dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent, hand soap.

This is because you should probably make a video about this when you're done. Yeah, because people are going to want to see your work.

That's a good idea. I'll do that for my channel.

You should— they're going to want to see the way you travel and you don't just use their detergent.

Well, no, what happened was I normally do, but what happened with this one was we stayed in a home that only supplied us with—

no, you don't want to use their detergent. What are you talking about?

But it's better.

It's all over.

I do appreciate it. And so I have some things coming from Amazon that are going to go in this, and then I have our own hand washing cleaning spray.

We're ready, we're prepared.

Well, the cleaning spray comes from when we got the stomach bug. Yeah, on vacation, and that was rough. There's scrubber was a lot of our own trash bags because the one place we went, then they didn't have enough trash bags, so we ended up buying trash bags. So I'm like, we have trash bags at home.

We're basically glamping in a house, in an Airbnb.

And over here, we, we had purchased a pot set, but then when we moved to the farmhouse, it got all messed up. It got all mixed up, so I'm just redoing this. And I've got some— I have a pot lid for that. I thought I need to find it. I still have some stuff that's got to go in here. And then I have like a container over here, this container. And you know what, we're gonna be more efficient because like look at those two brood totes. I don't know if I need them. Yeah, well, we could use those for food.

Yeah, yeah.

And then this will be like— I'm gonna— I've ordered stainless steel plates and bowls and cups. And then we have our coffee cups and this, and then hopefully we'll have room to put like your coffee and my coffee stuff in here.

All right, let's go tour on your video when you have all your stuff in.

Yeah, when I do this I'll do a how we travel video.

Yeah. La la let, la la let me be free.