We’re Changing (self sustaining)

We did a third batch of bread in the freeze dryer to detox it. Buttermilk. Today we're going to look at a horse for Lily. She's outgrowing Blaze. It's a slow-growing process. It's an exciting new stage we're in, but Seeing that sword, you miss that. I mean, when they're little, you don't necessarily miss that in the moment, do you? Because it's so tiring and it seems like there's no end. But they'll soon grow up and have more expensive interests. Just— you don't worry. They're probably not letting you get good sleep now, but one day you'll be prying them out of bed but they'll have their driver's license, which means car insurance, probably cell phone. Happy day! Welcome to another day in the Rooted life. Off farm this afternoon, but on farm we've got lots to do. We've got wood chips and it was getting nasty. Feel nasty? See where his forefeet are?

Yeah, that's nasty.

I have a friend in Tennessee whose neighbors got pigs, and they're like, oh no, it's gonna, it's gonna smell, right? That's their— that's pigs' reputation, right? And that's how most people manage them. They're keeping their pigs right on the property line, so it's going to be even worse. Then they realized those folks watch our show. What's so funny about that? Well, then they were relieved and be like, well, if they do it like Justin, it's not gonna smell. I'll take that reputation. These pigs— my bedroom, y'all. There's the pigs. Okay, pigs don't have to smell. Bad smell on a farm means bad management. Feed these breeder pigs extra special today. Food scraps, uh, feed, and skim milk. I just don't want it to be liquid. I want it to mush up. Looks like I might have to put a little more in there. Wow, I'm gonna get real treatment today. He will eat you out of house and homestead. But they only need about 4 or 5, maybe 6 pounds a day. All right, so we're gonna manage our wood chips today, get our people bedding. Well, we're just gonna get these pigs bedding. Uh, the chickens need bedding too, but we need to move them soon. I was thinking about putting them in the high tunnel. Hold on, I'll finish that thought in a second. Jonah had an idea to put our wood chips in here. They're south-facing. Slope. I mean, south-facing. That means this is going to get a lot of sun. It's covered, it's a shed. You don't want to tarp your wood chips if you can help it. I mean, do it in a pinch, but it doesn't air out and breathe if it's under a tarp, and they do have some moisture in them, so we want them to dry out. Can your project today be moving all this to the bass shed orderly and then start putting in wood chips? I think we'd throw most of it away. It smells a little here.

We're gonna fix that.

That worked fantastic. Now they are well out of the way. Believe the pile in there, spread it all out. They're just gonna poop on top. The big pigs don't move material around like little pigs would. My pile is right there, ready to go, in place, out of the rain, under the COVID stays dry. You got to keep the wood chips dry or else if they get full of moisture they're not going to absorb that urine and poop. All right, this is nasty. This is how most people do a chicken run. Just because the way most people do it, it doesn't mean it's right. That's nasty. That's an ice scape of icing. They don't even— you can't even do that in industry, I don't think, can you? Like, some homesteads can be nastier than, uh, conventional farms. Because there's no regulations. That didn't work out, just piling up the bent hay there. The chickens won't turn it because it gets too compact, so you can't count on the chickens for that. You'd have to manually do it or do it with a machine, or just let it sit there and eventually it will compost on its own. It's a matter of how fast you want it to go. The more you turn it, the faster it'll break down in the compost. The chickens are loving their, the ramshaw, which is— I've got my dust bath underneath it so they can get under there and take a bath. That's working out good. I don't want to get them anything— front yard posse— either, because should I show you? I've got a job for these chickens and maybe a more comfortable place all at once. So we put all our garden material right there back in, but it only covers 50 feet of this tunnel. It won't do it all. I'm thinking out loud here and still trying to figure it out. So why don't we— this could be the chicken's house at night in here. Put a light layer of wood chips that will break down into soil over time, over winter. It'll be their carbonaceous diaper. Then it's their nighttime somehow. Maybe right here we have an opening, so we can't— we won't— oh, this could come down as tall as a chicken. We could put this high tunnel down, maybe here on cold days like it's coming up, because wintertime is a great time to till for a garden. And if we're gonna quit the grocery store 2025, we need to take our 50-foot crop gardens and make them 100 feet. So bring them out as far as this high tunnel. Had a landscaper drop off all these amazing leaves that could be our ground cover in here. As the chickens peel it and make it bare. Mother Nature is a modest lady. She don't want to be uncovered, and if you don't cover her, she'll cover herself. You're gonna be wild and crazy, so you've got to give her some clothing before she dresses herself. And cold time or rainy time, they can hang out in there. Daytime, put their feed and water out here. Good days for them to come out and work it. We need this wood chip pile Hopefully not all of it in that high tunnel. Whole nother garden plot right here. Our creek used to be way over there where those pink lines are. Yeah, that's another reason we're going to need to extend because we lost the whole plot right here. We made up for it by doubling this high tunnel length from the original one, so we're back to even. But we found out that we didn't have enough garden. I think it's 3,600 square feet. 1,200. 2,400, 3,600. That's 1,200 square foot garden plots. Uh, so 3,600 times 2 is 7,200. That better do it, or we need to eat more meat. Happy day, my man. This is going to be enough for cow bedding. I don't know, boy, it takes a lot of brush to make a little bit of wood chips. We're gonna hay bomb in there, okay? Because it's, it's where we graded that one year and it's, it's just shallow and pathetic. On top of all the mulch projects, let's get this started. It's gonna be cold. You guys ready to start the wood boiler?

See this?

Kind of did some grading here last year and it just hadn't quite recovered. So hay balm, especially right here. Here you can see the difference. Okay, ground needs ministering. Ground doesn't need ministry. I don't think we've ever done that— gotten, gotten them going and then realized we've forgotten the cloths. Will you guys stick around? It's coming. Don't go too far, okay? We're milking late. I milked early yesterday. So it's been a while since they've had alfalfa. They say you gotta milk on time every day. You don't want to be a butt head, lazy butt head, but you want to be kind to your cows. But I haven't seen if it varied 1, 2 hours. It doesn't, doesn't really seem to matter. Might be a little crazy because they're extra hungry. I meant to do this earlier. I want to show you everything we need and use to milk them in the field. Let's start now. You could use a machine, you could just use a gorilla cart or a wheelbarrow, get them out. Oh, here, let's show them while we're at it. You need a pan per cow. I fill it now, Gene. RC Gold, it's a probiotic. What am I putting it in? Well, that's New Country Organic alfalfa pellets. Then about a half a cup of apple cider vinegar. I'm into maintenance as opposed to treatment. Organic cloth, one for washing, one for drying. A Yeti tumbler, uh, warm water. A few squirts of soap in there. Our alfalfa pellets in this 5-gallon food-grade bucket with screw-on lid. We're getting near there, guys. Hey, we call this a reservoir. We pour both of the milks in there when we're done. 2 5-gallon stainless steel milking pails. That's it. That's all you need for milking in the field. It's not that crazy. This is the most attention they've gotten. Look, the smiley one's here getting a real education, everybody, this morning. One saw the other come out. Yep, buying for that Employee of the Month.

Done milking.

Go hay baling, guys. Only 6 days to Christmas. Does that mean Christmas is over by the time y'all are seeing this? It does. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. We film— what we filmed today goes out in 1 week. It's possible that we mow this strip And we may need to. What do you think, Josiah? Might call it. He says no. Did y'all hear that? That's the quickest I ever heard him answer anything. Y'all want another cow lesson? Has the blade recovered its sharpness? It has, you know. So when it first gets mowed, it's like that. So that's a sign of recovery. Now it only has— where's the stem? 1, 2, maybe you count that as a leaf. You want 3 or 4 leaves. And 20% of it have gone to seed. That's not going to happen in the fall though, so we negate that one. If we had to, we could graze it, but if we don't have to, it would be better off to let it recover for the spring.

Oh, let's go!

Excited! Those are little tidbits of my live workshop. About keeping a family cow. What an abundance a cow gives. And I've learned during the hurricane, abundance means preparedness. We had milk on tap all through the hurricane. I mean, of course through the hurricane, but I mean the 15 days without power after the hurricane. This is what that training is going to be about— how to keep milk on tap. Mastitis. Somebody might have mastitis. It clogged up too much. Chores behind us, it's project time. Let's get these wood chips under shelter before they get soaked with rain. Oh boy.

Your dad tells me the grapples won't come off.

And, uh, okay, get our air compressor.

Yeah, we don't have a thing to hook it up to anymore.

What does that mean?

To hook up to the actual tire to blow up air.

Why?

I don't know.

Why didn't anybody tell me this?

Uh, I have it. I couldn't find it.

And we could have it on hand. Go find the thing for that.

I told you it's gone.

I know, go find it. Go find our two chains too. Come move material. No. Why not?

Grapples won't come off.

Grapples? Okay. Golly, it wasn't so bad that Lucky's tire was low. Now I'm hearing the track loader's out of commission. That's bad because how are we going to get these wood chips out? When you push the button, this doesn't unlock. Yeah. Ah, dang it. See it?

The cord, they run through here. Here's the electric motor. They all hook up.

Okay, is there anything obstructing this? There it goes. Okay, it did it, it did it! Get it down. I was about to text Mark, but then it's just like, I don't know, let's putz around it ourselves a little bit. I don't think It's even registering. We're so low on hydraulic fluid. We aren't operating this thing because it is completely out of hydraulic oil. Going into the wide world, be dangerous. Got the boys off. I feel like we're turning over a new leaf. We'd just be real quick to text Mark and have him come out here. He's great. I think there's a place for that, but I think there's also a place for let's just putz around on it for a little bit and see if we can't fix it ourselves. I feel like with our house build behind us and that debt upon us, just having that desire to get rid of it and making a goal and saying, how come— how soon can we pay off this legacy house? So we were in building mode, we'll build, build, and now we're in let's get out of debt mode. We'd rather not wait 30 years to pay that off. I will be 76. In 30 years. You can do it, huh?

I hope I can.

You want to look good splitting wood, split some poplar. Get this wood boiler, will save us some money big time. This is fuel we can harvest on farm. Why are we burning that propane? You're getting with that. Break myself out of these habits. I get these— I buy these little starter cubes. I'm just gonna rip up some cardboard.

You think that'll take?

I think there's an ignite button on this.

Oh, fan's going.

I bet it'll help shut this door. See what it looks like right there. I don't think it snuffs it out. Well, that's waiting. I think the boys just arrived. Let's go, let's go fix this stuff ourselves. I just pulled this up on Abundance Plus. It's how to milk a cow by hand on pasture. That's stainless steel. That's important. That stainless steel. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you guys that video when you join my email list. I'll give you this video and it will remind you as we get closer for our cow class. I just looked it up. January 5th. January 5th, our cow class. If you remember, don't worry about this. This is in there. Um, you can come to the class. I'll leave a link for this. You can watch this free class this free video, How to Milk Cow by Hand on Pasture, everything you need to know. You'll be invited to our live show when it comes out January 5th. I'm excited. This fire is keeping going. For those watching and don't have a link in the description, how about we do abundantpermaculture.com/milkcow? Milk cow, all one word. Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, where's the— where's the— where's the compression? Oh no, you better be joking me.

No, I'm not.

This is a funny joke.

No, it isn't.

Yes, it is.

Just now, remember?

That's what we forgot.

Yeah.

No, you didn't.

There were these guys that got mad at me.

Well, then you're gonna have to go back.

So I forgot.

You real? You really forgot? Yeah. I was gonna bust your tail.

He was gonna get you, Jonah.

Hey, let's see if it goes a little smoother now. It's already smoother. I don't think it's clicking. Okay, get it off. We'll clean it out. Okay, let's try this. Do you know where all those fuses are? Remember we had a whole box? We've messed up. Now we're way high on the hydraulic oil. Gotta take these off. Yeah. Did you, uh, fill up the tractor, Jonah?

Yeah.

Air?

Yeah.

Okay, where'd you put that new—

it's on there.

Fitting wheel.

It's on it still.

Okay, when it's down, it's like full. It's full. It's above full.

You literally not see this. This is a pressure regulator. The oil gets so high, it'll just go on and fly out this.

You got to pull them—

those three are not—

pull them out and check them. I'm gonna call Mark and ask him. I guess this is what I get when I try to do it myself. Hey, yes. Hey Mark, how do I drain that, or do I have to drain it? It ain't too much over, you probably all right. He thinks it'll be okay. Come out that tube. All right, did you say it's working now? No, it's not. No, we don't know that. Hopefully we didn't do more harm than good. All we would have done to get those fuses is right there. I realized one of those fuses for up and, well, the other one's for down. Should we clean out the other one too? Okay, blow it out.

Okay, try it. It's doing it.

Keep working it. Okay, turn it off, back on. And I didn't— I don't know if they're supposed to go one at a time. I think it's the fuses. We have a blown fuse.

What's his name might just be putting them in there just now.

Ah, holy smokes! It's those big specialty fuses. It might be just these. Nothing. Trying to see if the black fuses were put back in correctly. Hey, all you mechanics out there laughing at us, We're not mechanics, we're homesteaders. You got to be a jack-of-all-trades master or none. Same one, blue again, and it means there's something wrong in this area. Yeah, what are you trying to find in here?

The electric motor.

Tractor tire is much better. Oh wow, neat. Hey, can we just do it mechanically?

If we need to, we could just buy a new one of these and I could replace it. It's not the hell thing because it just disconnects right here.

That'd be cool. All you got to do is replace this, huh? Yeah, we're gonna blow another one.

Yep.

I don't know, just— I guess we'll see.

No, you have to put a third.

Connecting, connecting, it helps. Let's see if we see anything here. Did we fix it? Keep doing it.

Oh my gosh, it's working!

Okay, that's enough. Don't overdo it.

That's how it works.

It just needed to be unplugged and plugged in.

Yeah, maybe something was cooked in it. All right, okay, maybe we just needed to clean that out a little bit. Whoever's got the track loader, which I guess is Josiah, Put some wood chips on this side, on that side of the high tunnel. Okay, as much as I want to put the chickens in the high tunnel, it's a lot to get the wood chips in there and then to get them out again. Getting the track loader in there, the compaction of that. See if it works when it counts. I hear it. We fixing things, boys. Lucky started it. We're past out of time. Lunch is ready. Lunch will have to wait. I've been skipping lunch and breakfast for 2 weeks, except maybe on the weekend. OMADing, address inflammation. I've plateaued though, so I'm sort of discouraged today. And I just totally fell off the wagon, ate breakfast, pigged out on some Lily's banana bread. Why are they getting from there? That's, that's to go into the field. Those wood chips we're gonna put in the field. Wood chips from over there or what we're going to use over here.

Spread it out here.

Yeah, show Papaw. He said he's gonna pipe the vlogs to heaven. Here you go, Papaw. Here's your grandson on your tractor. Yeah, so the idea here would be we have all this sand. If we kept scraping the sand, we're actually going to take up topsoil. So we just want to build soil on top of it. To do that We're gonna spread these wood chips out and then we're gonna hay bomb all winter long. Oh, I like this. I don't like that we're having to run over our hose. Yeah, they're pretty dry. Yeah, be careful, take that barn down. This thing's just so nimble. Bedding for our pole barn this, this winter. It's covered, it's staying dry, it's south-facing, it's getting sun, it's drying out. Those wood chips are just getting drier and drier. We're expanding the gardens. We have our pig port here. We could just open this up right here because we don't need to till right here anyway. Put the chickens in here. They can be in chick shawls all winter. Coldest we get is 9. They're fine, they're fine in the chick shawl down to that degree. I think you only want to go worried if you get -25 Fahrenheit. Then, and, and that's the case, you put plastic over the openings of the chick shawl and maybe some hay bales around at the bottom. Prevent rain from coming up through. I could see if he could come in there. It's just if we're building back our beds down there, we got to get material out. How do we stay away from that? Can you get in here? It's going to fit through there no problem with the bucket. You're in. Should I do it? Should I put the chickens in here then? Maybe I should. All right, let's do it. Did you notice the track loader fit through there just fine? Those are stock doors on Farmer's Friends. We were thinking we might need something custom on this end. I don't think we will. Sure, you have to slow down a little bit to get through. Just keep the doors how they are. Goodness, Henry, how many shirts you got on? 1. Let's count.

And he's not carrying you.

That's 2 you just took off.

I'm doing the best that I can.

A lot. 4. This is the one he was wearing. 5, 6, 7. Why so many shirts? Okay, buddy boy, here it is. You hide my clothes, I'm wearing everything you own. We got peaches, we got a big experiment, we got broth. Did you buy these trays or did they come with it?

Um, they're separate. Yesterday's taco soup.

Okay, this is neat. Taco soup. When it dehydrates, all you got to do is add water and heat it up.

Also, Rebecca's idea was to put these silicone liners on because she said she saw some review that people had to like scrape off the— scrape food off of the thing. Whereas this mat, it should just come right off.

Lily's ready to go check out the horse. Be a way to preserve seasonal peaches. You want some driver's ed hours?

Yeah, call me horse dad.

Horse dad. Because I don't like horses, but she likes horses, so I like horses. Did you follow me? Shall we go see what Jonah's up to? Jonah's working on the cabin. The wood stove. Oh, forgot to fill it up before we left, turn it on. Hopefully there's still something reasonable in there.

Austin is editor.

But also picking up some extra work helping Jonah on rebuilding the cabin. Well, remodeling. He picked you out a house on the farm yet? You better, you better get claiming them. Billy's claimed Big Daddy's, and, and, uh, Jonah the cabin. You gonna do the holler house? Maybe host all the parties? Whoever does the holler house has to host everybody. Marry an extroverted person, isn't he? You the party man?

Sure.

Hey, you want to play? Sure. Oh, I got him, but just barely at the end. Uh, is it gonna be out? Oh, it's up to temp! Let's go! Oh cool, the thermostat must be working because it's not blazing. I've adjusted the thermostat. Beef breast. It's the farmer's fast food. You just put it in the oven, you leave, you come back, you cut it up.

Look who I have.

Hi. She's going, do you?

Oh, she likes me.

Sweet potatoes, cabbage, roast. That's a wrap. Happy day.