We're Back + Gonna Move Out

We are back! Home sweet home, holler house! Kiss the ground! And it's true, we're moving! We got the boxes, mucho boxes! Plus an update on Jonah's upcoming unexpected third surgery. We're moving pigs, we're selling pigs, and getting back down to business and saying hello to all the animals, of course. Enjoy the vlog. Is everybody having just as hard a time as me getting up? And Adam? Yeah, first day back. I'm afraid you can't go a little bit. Maybe you should bring him for a second just to show him, yeah, you don't want to be here, you don't want to do this. Come on, crazy hair, don't care. This is what we woke up to, some crazy wind and rain. The chickens are happy despite the freezing rain.

We need to roll down the sides.

How'd your rabbit hold up? Good. Whoa, the chickens have been doing good. What's this? Do we have a new layer?

He didn't collect eggs.

How you doing, Beefcake? Look at these guys, how well Oh, they've grown! You're looking good. Oh look, goose is starting to lay. Oh, don't break the egg. Oh boy, already broke the egg. Now we got to make it not look like an egg. Oh well, lost our first goose egg. Get your eggs, my man. You're in for a few surprises. You got some tucked way up in there too. There's a traffic jam.

Look at that little egg.

Hey, buddy. Hey beautiful one, what you got cooking?

I've got eggs and bacon and then made myself some tea. It's cold outside.

Yeah, it is. We did not even milk yet, so we're gonna have to take a break. Well, we're just getting back into things.

Rusted.

The bed conquered us this morning. Didn't want to get out. It's hard starting back up.

I think it's that wind conquered us.

Yeah, laying in this cozy bed, I'm seeing this window. Yeah, you know what that was saying? Sleep in, sleep in. I wanted to move pigs today. I don't know if that's gonna happen. What do you think, Beck? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we could.

Of course you can do anything you want. Yeah, do you want to do it?

Should we push through and move the pig? They, they're overdue. Yeah, then we have somebody wants to come pick up a couple.

The weather's not great, but it's not as bad as they said it was going to be.

Oh, do you hear that, kids? We're gonna try to move them. I didn't know if you wanted me to move them or skip out so we could do more cleaning out our house.

Do we need any bubble wrap?

I don't think so because we're just moving across the street. In other news, Jonah, unexpected surgery. The third one on his leg. What were you asking her?

What would— how would it work when I went into the hospital?

When he had the second surgery, even though we were in the hospital, they took him to a room. So we'll go to the hospital, but we'll enter from the outside this time, and then we'll check in with the people and then they'll call us back to a room. We'll stay there. Anesthesiologist will come, the nurse will ask us a bunch of questions like, when did you eat? We'll get into a gown, doctor will come in, and they'll take you away.

You nervous?

A little bit.

What are you afraid of?

I don't know, the screw's not coming out.

Mm-hmm. The first time the hip wouldn't pop in.

Right before vacation we went and saw the surgeon for our additional checkups. She said it's time to take the screws out because, um, his hip ball is flattening. Yeah, and that's happening because the blood vessels died going to the bone there. And so as the body regrows it, we just have to wait, but we don't want the screws obviously to poke through the bone. So that's why this is happening. And she thought it would be a very easy surgery, about an hour and a half long.

I don't even be awake.

An incision about this big, not a long incision, not, not long recovery. If he wants, he can use crutches because he might be a little sore after birth.

What's the plan, Mom? You're gonna watch the baby? Lily, you and I milk. Boys, you're gonna set up for the pigs? Hey, good call! Look how chill it is, just a little drizzle, a little cold drizzle. You know what they say in Minnesota, there's no bad weather Just bad clothing. And that's bad clothing. He's handing me his flip-flop. Spring is here!

I found these chickens.

You did?

Yes.

That's one chicken laying her green eggs. Yeah, chickens don't care. It's not spring, it's like, it's February, but they don't care. It's getting lighter, they don't— so they start laying eggs. They don't look at the calendar. Let's see what's inside. There's probably no yolk, that's my guess. Yep, no yolk, just the white.

Hey, you can make ice cream with that.

No, you can't.

The yolk is that the yellow stuff inside.

Yeah, pigs are there. It would be hard to get them down and into a trailer right there. Let's go see what it looks like for the next pack. Boy, this is so muddy. Okay, we could get in here with the trailer, put your next paddock right here with, with joints right here so that we can, we can open this up to a trailer.

There's like 20 buckets on the ground up there.

Grain? Yeah, yeah, that's the trick to moving them. You want them to have emptied out the feed bin and eaten all the grain they spilled. Oh boy, they're just wallowing in it. I'm not sure they're ever gonna eat that though. So much waste, guys. Now that I got wet, I don't think they're gonna eat it. There's some dry. Yeah, it's time to move them. Well, we were gone, but next time we don't fill that thing up. We let them eat some automatic feed, then pick it up off the ground and eat it. Listen. The Everflow waterers are holding up nice. Not one issue the whole time we were gone. Two weeks. Farm sitter didn't have to do chores for two weeks. We got to empty this.

Let's just put it right here. Let's do that, and then it would be easy, and then tomorrow we just go to all the way there.

But we can't move it even now with the— we can't even move it that far, and then we'll move it. Okay. Yeah, look, we already have sprouts where we've cleared, guys. Now that's not grass though, I don't think. I think it's lilies, isn't it? But that's a start. That's something. Yeah, look at that. That's neat. That's encouraging.

How are you gonna get the trailer up here with all this mud?

The tractor. Hopefully the four-wheel drive will do it.

This is muddy.

Left Jonah and Josiah there to set up the net. We're gonna milk. You want to milk? He's confused, isn't he, Beck? He wants it to be warm like Florida. How y'all doing? Growing nice and juicy. Yeah, all right, good. How you doing, stud? How you doing? Come on, let's go, stud, let's go! Y'all know the drill. The highlight of us coming back has to be baby sheep. 6 baby sheep! They get it done, they give birth. We don't even have to be here. Rebecca, that was 3 ewes. They each gave 2. Let's go pet them.

Yeah.

The white one with brown spots is JJ because it named her after Hope.

Oh, Hope Jr. Keep up with Belle's babies because that's who you can tame and we'll keep. This is Floppy.

This is Belle. And then not Ryder but Dixie. Dixie over here.

Yeah, Dixie has brown marks, so I wonder which one's Dixie.

And then that one probably right there.

Very easy to tell. Look how adorable!

Hi! Is it a boy or a girl? It's a girl.

Her name's Hope.

Wait, we're not keeping Dixie's babies, are we?

Why not?

Has Dixie been a good stock?

She got depressed when we separated her babies. That was the only thing.

But she pushed through. You had to— Jeff's treaters— we haven't had to treat Belle for anything yet, and Belle's real calm, so I like Belle for saving offspring. And I reckon we can do Dixie because she's, she's tough. That must be Ryder's, right?

No, that one earlier when I came in Is this a boy?

It's a girl. Oh, well, there we have one keeper.

That's Belle's baby.

Okay, yeah, no, I think this little one must be Belle's baby too. That one's fluffy. Belle keeps only giving one every time, so my baby— this might not be— this might be the best choice. Dixie. Hasn't Dixie given two every time?

Floppy's given two.

We like that breeding stock. You already done? What about setting up now pig panels?

I think they'll just load because they're hungry.

You guys could be setting a nice pig panel chute system while we milk, because what else are you gonna do?

I'll warm my hands up.

Or we can go over there and try your idea, and then if it doesn't work, then we're setting up pig panels. Okay. I've done this before. I've go with their idea and then I lose my Christianity, and then—

but sometimes our ideas work.

I'm gonna have to say I've agreed to try your idea. I'm not going to get upset if it doesn't work, and we're not going to pound it into the ground either. If it doesn't work, we're just gonna— we're stopping, which is another tendency of ours. I just tend to push it. It's nice to be back at this. How's it to be back, Lily? Good. You like it? Although it's just 11 o'clock, we decided we better do lunch now because we have no idea how long this pig project will take. Let's get lunch over with, and then we kind of have We're still on a deadline. We got a webinar at 3. Uncle Pete gave Henry a tractor. Okay, is this your plan? That's right, but you're gonna have to do a panel there. Why don't you just wait? We are having second thoughts and we are thinking about a panel because I don't know if they're hungry. I mean, we can try it. We can try it. It won't hurt to try it. Maybe it will hurt to try it, but I don't think that's going to be able to turn at all.

Then I'll set a pig panel up here.

Really? Yeah. You think that'll hold you?

Yeah, both of us. Well, we go all out, don't we?

Leftover collards. What do you call this? Fried taters, as my granny would say. Taters. Fried taters. Reheated broccoli. Some reheated London broil with a little bit of flair, a little— some onions and peppers in there. Tenderloin. Oh, and fresh burgers.

Yummy.

And yeah, we're gonna eat We have to prep dinner, we have to move the pigs, we got a webinar. When we gonna pack?

We might not get to it today.

Yeah, no more sleeping in. What do you think?

Yeah, you're the one that sleeps in though.

I know, I know.

I woke up before you.

I know, you guys get up when I get you up. I'm trying to figure out where we're gonna buy time.

We need to go to bed earlier. Like last, last two nights you and I have been going to bed like 9:30, 10 instead of 8:30, 9.

Ooh, okay.

So I think that's our problem.

Early to bed, early to rise.

We need to be getting to bed earlier. You want some?

And we need to get in a groove where we're setting you guys up on farm projects and I'm kind of more checking in. I think we could do that. We go from prepping one meal to the next. Let's go ahead and get supper out of the way too. Look at this hair. Sweet potatoes, more sweet potatoes, but we need more potatoes. I've sent Josiah down. Uh-oh. We got no more? Oh, we've gone through all our potatoes. You want to text Grandma or me?

I'll text her.

Gonna have to do a grocery store run. Shona, you cut up onions. Josiah, peel carrots.

But I cry when I cut onions up.

Well then get some goggles.

It's just going in my mouth— oh, in my mouth and then out my nose and in my goggles.

And this looks like a scene from Dumb and Dumber, but it works.

This is not a good carrot.

Look, it's a little old. Okay, give that to the, uh, pigs.

All of them are like that.

Well, we're gonna cook them. I think it'll be okay. They're not rotten. We've really got to start dedicating ourselves to this moving out. It's going to be a gargantuan task going through all our stuff that we've never really gone through. We're gonna have so much stuff. Throwing stuff out, putting stuff to the Goodwill. We're gonna have to get storage containers on site for things that we do need but won't need for a while. We have to keep everything we need up until the very day we move. How'd your eyes hold up?

Terribly. It went—

the goggles didn't even work?

No, it went in my mouth and out my nose and into the goggles.

Ah, burn it up. Cooking show, high heat all the time, a little bit of smoke. We don't have a good haze in the area though. We were on a Cajun chicken kick for a while, and then we found this salt, pepper, thyme sautéed on a bed of veggies. That's soul food right there. We've been stuck on this one for a while now. I think it's sautéed. We're just gonna opt for, um, well, we'll do baked sweet potatoes on the side. Forget the potatoes. We'll have a bed of— they'll have a bed of carrots and onions. Jonah, you want to scrape this out? All we'll have to do is add chicken when it's time and we're good to go. Two pressing issues today. We've got the webinar at 3. I guess there's 3 pigs have to be moved. They've been in there over 12 days because of vacation. We've sold a couple of those pigs, so we really gotta have to make this happen in 2 hours and 15 minutes. And if we want some margin in our life, we ought to make it happen in 2 hours. And there go Thing 1 and Thing 2 down the road on the dirt bike, and I am hurting coming back. My feet are killing me. Symptoms of my Lyme disease. It kind of faded when I was in Florida. I mean, it's so bright there. I've been having a bit of a hard time coming back to this dark. The sun's higher in the sky, so it's literally brighter in Florida, and it's like a dry season too, so there's no clouds. Come on, guys. I actually thought I was having a breakthrough. I don't think so now that I'm back on it and back on my feet.

Which one is it going down around by?

Let's get some T-posts, T-post pounder, uh, zip ties, all that stuff. Y'all putting down the shavings? Yeah, cuz they're going to sit in here for a few hours. The guy's not coming till 30 minutes after the webinar. That's a pet peeve of mine, hauling livestock without bedding. That's like letting Henry walk around without a diaper. Water and then walk around in it. It's nasty. Well, I didn't expect a problem this early on, but with the logs here and this log here, we can't fit through. I started dragging it with the trailer, trying. The boys are getting the track loader. I'm up here where I'm going to turn around the tractor. We used to have a turnaround. I could have went Got these logs in the way, got brush piles in the way. Now we got this in the way. This is kind of turning into something. We can get those with the track loader. Maybe we can get that out of the way quickly. All you're gonna do is back this up. Just pick this log up and back it up. Pinch. Just back it up. Keep it low to the ground. There you go. There you go. That's good. Now put them on that pile. I can probably back the trailer up now, although this can still be very hard. You got to get both claws open. One claw's closed. Open them all. This is why you need spotting, Josiah. Well, those professional graders make it look easy. Push, push. Look at that root system.

That's good.

There's very little water going into the tank. I had to go check on that, ran out of a camera battery, and it's now 2 o'clock. I say we're gonna need pig panels, but Jonah says they'll follow him. Where's your bucket? You gotta at least have a bucket.

I forgot. I thought he was gonna grab it.

Surely you think we have to have a bucket. You think this will work?

I don't think so.

You don't think so? We're not gonna fool around too long. We need to make panels and funnel them in. Pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, pig, are you hungry? We can't sell them that one. That one's got some sort of hernia. But so if you get that one, you got to get 3, okay? And then we'll herd that one out. All right, take them to the trailer. See, John limps a little bit still. His leg that got injured is actually an inch shorter now. Why'd they say that didn't grow?

That's because it died. It flattened a little bit.

Do you think it'll come back? Yeah.

He's hungry.

Big, big, big, big.

Follow me.

So they still have this mental barrier of the fence.

They're always testing it, and then when it's time to go over, they don't.

There they go. Let them have a snack, Josiah.

Nope.

Oh, that one.

Let's get panels going, Josiah. Look who's getting them. See the, the pig panel and then the other pig panel? I could maybe get over there since that one's not attached and push them in further down. Yeah, I worry about this a little. Lily, could you come stand here so they couldn't get out? We gotta wait on the pig board. The pig board works great. We might have to go get the other one. Get in. You can pull feed. Okay.

Wait, wait, wait.

These feeds are scary.

Those don't have the hernia. They don't have. They don't have hernia.

Hold on. Cool. This is great.

Yep.

Just bring it in a little bit. That's enough That's good. Let them get smelling. Well, we did it, guys. Why do I do this to myself? It's 30 minutes till webinar. I'm gonna go back, get some margin in my life. I'm feeling that overwhelm right now, given that we're gonna need to move and remodel, and that really needs to be my full-time effort. When you get overwhelmed, you scale back. As much as I want to have these market pigs, maybe it's time to sell the rest of them. I don't know if I can because they're doing such a wonderful job on this. They're bringing up the grass, the land we just cleared. 25 minutes to kill. You want to see where we're moving? We're moving a really far away, aren't we, Gideon? Yeah, our house The cabin. That's where we're moving. Real far away. I don't ever think I've taken you guys into the cabin. We used that as Airbnb early on, pay the mortgage. We've used it, we've rented it out short term. We've used it as a guest house. Now it's going to be our house. Let's take a tour of the cabin tomorrow. Whoa, we got some moving boxes.

Why do we need so many?

Because we have so much junk.

Why do we need to move the junk over?

Yeah, hopefully we're going to eliminate a lot of our junk. This is our chance to become minimalists. You guarding the door, Winnie? Grandma is back at it too. She brought us a little surprise.

We're in her paper on the front page of Entrepreneurship— or Home, I guess.

Front, front page of Home section in Epic Times. Look at that, we've got the whole spread.

February 18th. Through the 14th. There's our pictures.

Nice. The Abundance Plus webinar went fantastic. It was great to hang out with folks again. The pig customer will come any moment and we're ready. Are you guys ready? Rebecca talked me off my ledge of selling all the pigs. She was like, we— that's why we gave ourselves lots of time. The work crew, the demo crew's not coming till April 1st. It's only mid-February. Thank you. The beautiful one grounds me and levels me. I appreciate her very much. That's a nice setup. You just had a flat trailer and you just rigged up some cattle panels? Yeah, that'll do it. Yeah, this comes down, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay, it's gonna be close, but I think we can straddle their gate. So what are you starting out with?

We have some meat birds.

Yeah.

And we have some layers, and now we're adding pigs.

Nice.

So if we do well with pigs, yes, we're gonna move on and get bigger, a bigger property.

How many acres you got?

Just a quarter of an acre.

Pigs for everyone. Yeah, even if you only got a quarter of an acre, right? Right. Yeah, look at this. Big.

We'll have to remember this too next time.

This is— what we're going to do, I noticed it's slippery and they're leery of it, so let's just put down some shavings. Yeah, that's a great idea. And it will not be slippery and it'll be a familiar surface. They're being real hesitant about going onto this wooden platform, so we're going to get some wood shavings. Plus it's a little slippery because of the rain. We'll get rid of the slip and it'll be familiar ground. There we go, look at that. That was easy. That was peaceful. Good little I can do it kind of setup right there. We murdered that chicken. This family eats 2 chickens now in one sitting. What do you got? You got the sweet potato or the chicken?

Yeah. Yeah.