We’re Building a GRAVEYARD (on our farm) WHY

Way to get them over. So they like these things.

Jonah's calling me to see the tomatoes. This is the first time I've seen him excited about a garden. What you so excited about?

All the tomatoes are growing up again. There's more green tomatoes.

These are never-ending tomato vines. Oh wow, yeah, look, you're gonna have a whole nother—

that's what I'm saying—

harvest up top. And like, when we should probably come in here because they're not gonna have time to put any more fruit up high. So if we cut off the tops, it'll concentrate their energy into the fruit that's here. I thought that was a butternut squash. It's a big old pumpkin. Looky here, look at what jammed. This thing works. I mean, we got pumpkins above our head right there. We got pumpkins all along the wall. I don't know why it's sort of dying though. We might have planted those too close together. Although these are dying. They won't eat those tomatoes leaves, but they'll compost in there. Happy day. Welcome to another life in the Rooted Life. No, welcome to another day in the Rooted Life. 7 more days until we move into our dream house. I've fallen and I can't get up. The kids get up out of this much easier. Oh, there we go. And we've got to get our bram board out of here. Our air purifiers, we should probably get them under shelter. We don't need to put them in yet. Some bedding in there too. 7 days till we move in. Let's make sure we're not gonna need that for a while. We'll check on that later. Make sure everything works. Henry, is this your new room? You gonna sleep in here? Oh, I heard Jonah used that urinal. Yeah, you want to start using that? Yeah, we're gonna have to get you a stool. All right.

Oh wait, I went on that.

Look at all that dirt in there. Look at all that. We don't want that going down our sink. I wonder, how would you do this? I don't know. I better let Mom do that. No, I don't know how to do that. Spend all this money on appliances and this freezer— oh, she needs to make sure this is off. Okay, are these self-closing?

Yeah.

You want to see if the shower works? Yeah, keep it running. Watch yourself. All right, that's good.

So that would be trouble for everybody to hop back. I'll take a shower.

She'll have her own bath. I tested this yesterday, although Randolph said he came by later and the sauna was hot.

Okay, it's looking beautiful in here.

All the water is working. What? I'm gonna sweep real quick. Is he helping? I heard you guys calling me, but my, my radio's dead. It wouldn't let me call you back. What's going on? You want to sharpen it? Not really. 80% of the work is sharpening, 20% is cutting. That's locked in, and then is it set to 25 degrees? 35? As long as you stay consistent. Is it ready? Where? No, he has to stay here. Okay, then you loosen that up. Come down a couple knots. Did you paint that, Josiah?

Yeah. Cool.

Hey, you want to try it? Let me talk to this guy. Heating and air guy. This is weird. I feel like this should be more— I don't know, let's just say this is off the cuff. Uh, I don't know how to tell you guys. Is there a better way to tell you this? We are We're in for a great night. Oh, oh, I had to see today, Chuck. Guys, I think I'm gonna get to the graveyard. I'm gonna explain the graveyard thing here, guys. But, uh, there's a lot of stresses going on right now finishing the remodel. I mean, it should be a very exciting thing, and it is. We just have mixed emotions because I'll be honest with you, and you probably— none of you are going to be surprised at this, but it's like, gosh, way more entailed time, money, and energy than we expected. Like double. We had no idea what we were going— getting into when we started this, which is probably good or we probably wouldn't have done it. And I think it's, it's going to be a wonderful thing. It's going to be a legacy. Thing. We can host a lot of people in there. We can host the family. We have this wonderful thing to pass on to our children. Rebecca and I are 45 years old, and this is like our— I feel like this is okay. This is it. This is our climax and our gifts to you all. We worked hard. We're acquiring the land from my family's estate, which was before that was my dad's, and then before that my grandpa's. So we've acquired the land, and now beautiful one and I have put into this, this legacy house. Jonah called me and he said machines broke down. What happened? Hydraulic lines. So how do we get up there? Pick them up. He said there's machines up there. That and Rebecca's mom, grandma, um, my mother-in-law of 23 years plus— I've been dating Rebecca for like 5, 6 years, so like 30 years. Uh, she's on the tail end of ALS, so Here. Are we— do we want to take boots? I would probably regret that for the rest of my life if I said do I want to take boots and then I did, and then I cut my toe off and add another stress to this. Okay, our time is limited. With Grandma. We've always wanted, thought about having a graveyard on the property. At first it's really just like, hey, it's, it's for us, like I want to be buried on the property. And then we have this impending situation and we're like, oh well, maybe we should get moving on that sooner than later. We've looked up what it, what it takes to do it legally. We need a major site plan. We need a major site plan, which was crazy because in 2019 I had thought about putting Maple, our school bus that we took on the Great American Farm Tour, as an Airbnb. And we had— in this county you have to have an RV park to legally sleep in an RV. Which took a major site plan. So we actually got, I feel like, more than halfway done with that, even paid for that. And then as an entrepreneur, we made a mistake and did not withhold any money for taxes on the money we made that year. And we're like, uh, we're going to have to sell Maple. So we, we paid the guy for what he'd done on the major site plan and said it's off. So I called this morning, left a message to get this ball rolling again on the site plan. That's not all the work we got to do. He didn't know. He was, he was waiting on me.

Oh, that's hilarious.

And I didn't know that, or I'd sent him. I'm sorry. Come here, let's show them this leak while we show them this spot for the graveyard. We're kind of thinking this corner piece in the corner of our property. It's a sacred place. We have this big rock up here we've always enjoyed. We have this fantastic view. You can't even see the mountain behind that, but there's another mountain in the white sky there that you guys just— I don't know. Here, let's see if we can't see. You see it? Yeah. Okay, real nice view, right? Imagine coming up here. We'll have a picnic spot right here. Wow, this is already starting to look real good cleared. The rules are 100 feet from water. Is that water? Oh, what happened here?

There's an O-ring that's popping out. I don't know if I can fix that.

I want you to watch him when he comes and let's learn how to fix it.

I mean, I could take that—

this happens.

I could take that off. Or is there a wrench in there? Just so— I'm gonna keep this big oak tree right here.

Okay, we can't have any water coming down through it, so you are gonna— you're gonna grade this level? Yeah. Okay, he's gonna save the oak tree. You got to get rid of these two poplars. Everything else, I would say all the way to here. There's the nearest water. Be 100— I think you have to be 100 feet from water. It'll be way over there. Let me go get the wheel measurer. I mean, you could clear there. There's no problem with you clearing there if you think that would be more beautiful.

Wait, but we can't put the grave next to water?

No.

Why not?

I guess they're afraid it's going to flood and wash your grave away. Oh, I know, but that bureaucracy don't care about that. The bureaucracy doesn't care either that that creek is like 15 feet down into a ravine. It would take a thousand-year flood for that to overflow. If you had that, that kind of— we'd have much, much, much, much, much bigger problems. We're also in the midst of digging a road to the top of the mountain, but I think this, this is going to need to take precedence just in case we need it sooner than later. You guys can Come, you should be working, right? It's 9:40. What time do you have to leave for your horse lesson? I mean, um, 10:45. Okay.

Isn't Grandma gonna be burned?

Yeah, she's— the plan is to get cremated, so we do have that, and we could put some of the ashes here if we don't get this done in time. Otherwise, we could do a proper burial here if we get done on time. Beyond the major site plan, got to be 100 feet off the creek and it's got to be covered in a rock or metal fence, so chain link fence. So we've got to call some fence people. Well, we'll need to get this up quickly. Standing in our road. All right, we're really going down there. 50 feet, we're where he started. Shoot. 96 feet. Look how much he's done.

That's no way 100 feet.

It's, uh, 96 right here. 100 feet is as long as a net. And the thing is, the creek kind of curves up the mountain. Shoot. So really, to be safe, 100 feet's right here, and that's from that spot, not counting up there. I can double-check to make sure it has to be 100 feet, otherwise it might make sense to kind of go on the other side of this. We wanted it in the corner so we could go around it with our grazing and it'd just be kind of off in it. But I mean, we're already in nook and cranny farm. Graveyard's right here. We'll have a paddock right here. I told Rebecca, I said, is this awful for me to ask, but are we going to graze the graveyard? Pop-up, because I totally would.

Literally already cleared enough spots. What if it's not 100 feet? I've already cleared enough spot for 20 people.

Yeah, that's all we would need right there. But, uh, it's right where your hook is.

Is—

wait, wait, wait, did you guys fix the machine?

Yeah.

Sweet. I'm thinking of my own grave too. 6 feet down. I would want y'all to graze me. You wouldn't want to graze me? Oh, it's Oh, they might poop on my tombstone.

That too.

Then you'd have to wash it. I guess that's why they make you put a fence around this. I'm not totally opposed. This is, this is good land right here. What you've done is not a waste because this would be a pasture.

I just like how it is. It's got overhanging trees.

It's—

yeah, but if it's truly 100 feet, like Jonah, by law you can't— you could only start right here.

How big is the creek that they're talking about?

We could, we could start right here because we're, we're deleting this road, right?

Yeah.

How big's the creek? Doesn't matter how big the creek is.

Literally in a canyon.

It doesn't, it doesn't matter. I mean, I guess we can make an appeal, but I don't think it's worth that. You gotta go get ready. It's almost an hour. Let me go see if it's indeed 100 feet. You know, this won't be so— this wouldn't be so bad. Might even have a better view. You're kind of out on snook. If this is the case, you could go from where your bucket is to what, that oak tree? To the bottom of that tree right there where you are. It's got to have room for Grandma, Grandpa, me, Mama. Do y'all want to be buried there? You're gonna have spouses, you know, that's a long way down the road. The, the graveyard could easily be expanded. So for now, yeah, let's just have a little dainty, quaint Graveyard. Gideon, why did you rip up this can?

Because it's fun.

Okay, but that's a big obstacle for us. Please pick it all up. I was actually able to text Mom. She said— hey, can somebody bring my tripod? 20 feet. Hey Jonah, 20 feet. We really kind of need to measure off this, this one because it's right here is where the corner of the chain link fence will go, Papa. Right here.

They'll go right here and up Okay, I would like to be a little bit further than 20 feet.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't hurt. We're at 23 damn feet right here.

No way.

Are you trying to avoid this? Yes.

Look at—

do you see this insanity right here, Papa? It gets steep.

Yeah, you know, that's just buildup from, uh, yeah, but It's full of rocks. You're gonna pull up all these trees. It doesn't need— I, I want you to go beyond where we're putting it, you know what I mean?

Sure.

So this whole knoll, you could see what that looks like.

That's not that much.

And then all the way down, we're riding a horse really fast.

Gallop, gallop, gallop!

Hannah doesn't like riding horse in real life, so this also means a fierce Commitment to this land. Fierce. I mean, you can move away. I mean, one of the rules is there has to be an easement. There has to be a way to this graveyard for that reason. Should we leave, we can come back to our graveyard. Certainly going to bring down the property value, but to me it's putting even deeper pretty much permanent roots into this land. Happy we made a nice dent and we're getting the road clear so we won't have to go around the road on the pasture. Ruining the pasture. Horse lessons.

It's a little dirty because the forelock looks deeper than the mane. I didn't wash his forelock.

This is new. Smells so good.

What does it smell like?

Fruit.

Oh yeah, it's like fruit.

He sees that donkey over there.

Where'd it go?

Back from horse lessons. Hey, let me see this handsome boy. Did Mom not tell you? Oh, it's 100 feet, not 220. She looked into it further, it's 100. So we basically got to go from beyond that road. Checking this out this evening. Jonah was so proud to come up here and do this, unbeknownst to me, and This is before he even knew that we have to go 100 feet, not 20 feet. Would this have been a good one? Yeah, ish. He'd have to smooth this out a little more. Yeah, and like maybe he's gonna have to clear more.

Maybe if we put some rocks right here and build this up, we could do—

or I noticed how—

and make a retaining wall. We could make a little picnic area right here. This is a really nice view.

Come look at this. Come stand down here a second. Maybe we could, uh, incorporate this rock because we could— maybe we might could lift this rock up and make it flat and then put soil here so you have a bigger flatter area. Incorporate this rock. I kind of like that. I don't know if our machine will lift that, but we could, uh, We could hire somebody with a bigger machine. And let me tell you where 100 feet is, babe. It's about right here, 100 feet off that stream. Probably to be safe because the stream kind of cuts up. We were thinking to go— oh, clear. We were going to clear all this anyway, right? So might as well go to that tree and up about as far as he's gone.

I feel like we should have a pretty big cemetery.

Well, one idea is to do the quaint cemetery at first to accommodate Grandma, Grandpa, me, you, even the kids. I mean, in the small one, but then people could— people could, yeah, expand. Imagine this though, all the way down this pathway. Yeah, it would be because we're going to clear this lower part that's not so steep for, for grazing. Hey, there's the grader now.

What do you think?

I think it's fine.

Did you come to talk to us about the cemetery or come tell them, Gideon?

Talk to you about the cemetery.

Okay, good. But the official cemetery from this old access road over, and then for the cemetery part it needs to be smoother. This is great, we'll just seed this, we'll put hay over it, and we're fine. But over there we're gonna have to really get fine in our grading. Nothing to say you can't just put stack boulders on each other. We got all those rocks up there.

I wanted to be nice. I don't want it to be a chain link.

I feel like it's just nice enough right here, Mama.

Okay, then we'll do a T-post and woven wire for temporary while we're building this rock fence. Yeah, because the rock is going to be what's beautiful, or this wooden slash hog panel one. Ask the lawyer.

No, I'm just gonna read it. It's very, it's very clear in the code.

Okay, we're gonna just sit up here and enjoy this sunset for a second.

Happy day, y'all.