What happened when I left the Farm for 4 Days

Well, I'm getting footage onto a little memory card so I can put the memory card onto my laptop and edit it on the way home. It's time to go. We're super excited and anxious to get home. We've gotten up early. We're gonna hit the road and get back to the farm and the kids as soon as possible. What do you need? Did you get everything? Okay, good.

This is it.

Hey, who knew? That's a mama who wants to get home to her babies. 7:10. So we could be home potentially by 1 o'clock. Wow. You guys wonder what a GAPs lunch looks like? Soft-boiled eggs before we left.

Well, it's not a lunch, it's a breakfast.

Raw cheese. It's our breakfast. Yeah, sorry, this is our brunch. 10:30. Everything's in jars. Sauerkraut, cultured cream. We put that, a bit of that in our yogurt. So we have blueberry, just basically crushed blueberries for syrup, a little bit of cultured cream in our yogurt from home. Yep, a bit of salt for the sea salt for the eggs.

Oh, and broth.

Oh yeah, and we got— that was our appetizer, right? You ready to get back to your babies? I'm ready to get back to my babies. 2 hours and 20 minutes. It's 10:30.

1 o'clock.

We're on schedule. Turn left onto the ramp to Bristol, then merge onto I-81 South.

I think we'll be there way before you.

Sooner than it says. What, you're gonna go speedy on this Barbie car?

I'm not gonna speed, but it just— I feel like this was our original time that we were supposed to leave anyways. Like that we were supposed to get back. That's what it said when we turned it on this morning.

Would you look at that? I'm done. 15 minutes till we get home. Thanks for being the chauffeur, Becky.

Oh, you are welcome. I don't mind it one bit.

So how excited are you to see the kids?

I'm very excited.

It was good to be away.

It's always good to get a little break. We were gonna go on an anniversary trip this year. I guess that's what this was. And, um, and so, because we used up our babysitting to go on this trip, but that's all right. It was like, it was very restful. I feel like we had a great time and you worked, but that's, that's all right.

I mean, yeah, I got a break from the farm.

Yeah, and I don't mind driving. It's not that bad. It's only, it's like 5 hours.

It's 5 hours.

From our house.

Is that all it was?

That's all it is. So it's not, I mean, for, and then we do a 30-minute stop because you got to get out halfway to walk around a little bit. So 5 and a half hours total. That's not bad.

Yeah. Look, they're out on the porch. Be careful, they're gonna be running out excited.

Hey!

Hey guys! We are back. That was fun. That was fun?

We got to watch So we got to watch Paw Patrol at evening.

You did? You got to watch Paw Patrol in the evening?

Hey, Birdies!

Did you miss me?

No.

You didn't?

You didn't miss us? Hey, Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown, did you miss us? No. Yeah, right. You don't ever leave my side. You didn't miss me? No.

I missed you.

Oh good. It's an honor to be missed by you people. Hey, hey, big farming man. The cabbages are gonna make it.

Yeah, I mean, they're not beautiful, but they're gonna make it.

That's a big one.

It is.

Is it big enough to kiss? It's big enough to kiss the cabbage.

But there's that. You're kissing a bug.

Kiss my own cabbage. Rebecca, your lettuce has shot up in just the 2 days. Okay, it's amazing how things can change in just— what has it been, 2, 3 days?

Uh, Tuesday.

Wow, and today's Friday.

Yep.

Look, Rebecca, she's come out.

Oh, she's getting her some lettuce.

Yeah, throw us some— throw some veggies, somebody. Piece of lettuce.

Well, look, we got some beans for her.

You almost have shade in your trellis. Hey, Grandma! I bet nobody's as glad as you are, huh? How's she doing? She's doing wonderful. Did her scar heal?

Yeah, looks good. Okay.

Finally!

Oh, she wants to show everybody.

Yes!

Did the staples get out?

No, they're there. They're just under hair.

Yeah, she's fine. All right guys, everybody on the couch. Here's your first gift.

Here's the first gift. Patrick's Great Grass Adventure, and it's about a pigeon named Patrick.

I think we have one of those.

This is— well, this one's a coloring— this is not— this is a picture book. This is a picture book, and it's from Pollyface Farm.

So Joel Salatin and Rachel Salatin, Joel's daughter.

Joe wrote it and Victor probably illustrated it. Roamstick. From Pollyface Pork.

I want to eat this thing.

I eat—

Delicious. All right.

Hold on.

Yeah, you can open it.

This is biodynamic apple juice.

This juice, biologically grown apples. Okay, listen. Joel had this for breakfast. And he served this to us and it was so good. I thought we had to have, we had to buy some for you guys.

You already drank yours. You want some more? Yeah!

I loved it!

He's not even stopping. Guys, look at this. All our veggies remain.

And the chicken.

Our chicken too. Because They ended up just blowing our expectations out of the water, bent over backwards to accommodate us.

I imagine 4 meals.

Yeah, we were like not expecting breakfast with the Salatins, supper with the whole crew. Yeah, it was, it was amazing. It's like a lifelong dream. We didn't even think to dream that dream. No, but we got it. I'm getting chills thinking about it.

Like, pinch me. I know, it was really amazing.

It was a lot of fun.

Oh, okay, so Well, we got a bunch of our veggies washed and ready for dinner tonight. There you go. The kids didn't watch the vlogs while we were gone, so I'm gonna show them what happened via vlog. It's amazing. Afternoon. Let's go around and kind of do the chores. Ben, I know it's gonna be amazing. We're gonna go over things here. I know you did an excellent job. Probably the— It's all— Hey, it wouldn't be farming without problems, right? It survived, so we're good. Okay, so we have— this was— I'm excited about this. Was huge, Ben, and I'm sure you did a great job unloading this, and I had you guys document the unloading of this. This is 2,000 pounds of chick starter. Which one's which, Ben?

Uh, the one you got your hand on is the alfalfa.

Okay, this is 2,000 pounds of alfalfa. The cows eat 10 pounds of alfalfa a day, so that's gonna last quite a bit. And then we have, um, what's this? This is chick starter, and this is from Reedy Breedy Fork Farm Organics. And what's this? Is this the old feed? That's the pig feed. So this, this is cool. This is a local North Carolina company giving this organic feed a try. I also got you guys something special from Breedy Fork Farm. 10% off for you guys. 10% off. I'm gonna put info on that down in the description. They're now more nationwide, and I like it. So we're going with it. Check it out down in the description. What do we got, Ben? Should we—

oh, where to first?

Um, I know you were saying you were— Phyllis's udder or teat seemed a little funny to you.

Yeah, you want to walk up the hill?

We could do that. Or should we go check the sea monsters? Or what? Any issues with the sea monsters in the field?

No, sea monsters are great.

Were you just using—

lost one this morning. Looks like an owl.

Okay, they had cut— yeah, let's just go look at them real quick. So it did get— it got by now? Yeah. Did you notice if they're perching on the roof or not?

Uh, no, not really. They're all huddled up underneath it every night.

Okay, it seems like they're not crowding that feeder or anything.

No, they got plenty of room.

Okay. Oh, and here's the— here's some remains of that chicken. They're, they're in a good way. I mean, I'm happy to see that. I feel like we need to get another feeder out here. Rule of thumb is 70% of them should be able to get around that at all at one time, but there's plenty of room for people. I think we're still good on that for a while. They're still small enough, I guess. We're gonna go check the pig port. Hold on, Ben, let's get this plastic. You guys must have had some wind today.

That was today because that was on there.

That's crazy. Okay. Normally we do this, we do this at 6, but we want to take the evening, relax a little bit, maybe go up to the neighbor's lake. That's the only hang up on these tarps. You're gonna have to get— we're gonna have to get a lot of plastic, a lot of sandbags adequately hold these down proper. I don't even know how many times we've had to I just dropped— there's a major sinkhole right there. I should know better, Ben. Lucky you didn't break your leg. Let's see how the guineas are doing. I bet Jonah was in charge of this one too, huh, Ben? Yeah, look at those keets. They're all— they've all made it, Ben.

How many did you start with? 8. Nice.

Well, I mean, 8 hatched out healthily, and this mama hen has raised them. Yeah, they're doing good. Nice.

Look at the heat coming off of it.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, you can see like the fuel-like fumes coming off of that. It's like we're at a gas station or something. Okay, so now we're gonna check on the compost pile and the breakfast posse. I see our— harder now. It's got— oh, is it? Why is it hitting so hard? I—

2 days I came out here, the Energizer was pointed that way.

Oh, and now you pointed towards the sun.

Yeah, it's hitting real hard.

And now it's hitting full on. Well, sometimes grass— grass is clogged it up. This is like the easiest thing.

Oh yeah, I love this.

This is amazing.

All my water on our property is down at the bottom. I'm trying to figure out how to get it up to the top.

This is awesome. I see we, we still have our chickens out problem. We still have to get tent stakes. Did our tent stakes come?

I didn't—

I think we ordered some. So our tent sticks— okay, you watered it. Oh man, Ben, Ben, you're my hero, buddy! You filled this whole thing up.

You can feel the heat coming off that thing.

This is for Oh my gosh, this is 4.5 cubic yards of compost. And did you wet it down? Oh yeah, moisture coming out the bottom. It's probably going to get up to 130. Nice, that's, that's perfect. That would be Joel's ideal compost pile, 130. Um, you know what we could do just to maintain it, not help it not dry out, is— what you got there? Oh, you might not have been in the center. Oh my Lord, you're getting up to 140. So we're just going to leave it like this for a week, and then we're going to open up the fence bin, and the chickens will help us turn— we'll turn it We'll go ahead and turn it, and then the chickens will help keep turning it. And then in another week, we'll turn it again, and we'll only do that 3 times, and this will be compost. Nice. And we can either let the chickens spread it here in place or haul it somewhere else to the garden. What?

Haul it where you need it.

Yeah, I know, we try to keep it clean for them, Ben. They don't care as much as we do. Feeding the second batch. Water. I'll get this treble. Hey Ben, how have you liked working with these pigport pigs?

I've liked it. It's clean, it doesn't stink, there's hardly any flies.

I like it. Yeah, I'm coming back. And guys, it's just as dry as it ever was, smells good as it ever was. I was so happy that I showed Joel this system and he, he see no problem with it. Covered deep bedding, carbonaceous diapers he would call this. Ben's putting on the diaper right now. You came from, you came from suburbia? Yeah. So would you have totally done this?

I would have totally done this if you would have known about it. I came out here and saw it in person the other day and it was like, where was this while we were in suburbia? I could have, I could have done some gorilla pig raising.

For sure. Time to check up on these cows. Oh, I meant to tell him to bring Phyllis. He got the two calves. Have you guys been able to just get the calves lately?

Yeah, occasionally I have been.

We've been having to herd mothers to get the calf.

What we do is we herd the mothers, but we have to end of lane, and then we separate them in the lane, and then we just heard the cows the rest of the way.

Good idea, good idea.

Sure.

Well, the calf looks good, Jonah. Okay, yeah, let's go look at Phyllis and see if we need to bring her in. Hey, how you bear? He's a sweetie.

Don't lick me.

So Ben had said that maybe her udder— teat— has udder or teat seemed a little bigger?

Udder. Okay, teat seems fine.

Okay. You watching him? I don't have a staff. Okay, so she's, she's eating. He was worried maybe it was mastitis. Usually they lose their appetite or just kind of lethargic. Like, she would— I would probably be able to walk up to her if she was not feeling well.

Yeah.

Oh, is it the upper left?

This right here?

Okay, real hard Okay, so that, that I've had that happen before. Yeah. And when that happens, I just rub some of that udder cream on there. Okay. I don't know what it is, but usually just some of that other cream works it out in a day. Okay. So I imagine even without the other cream, it's probably going to be okay. I forget what you call those things.

Well, it just popped up today. Today I noticed it, it was real hard, and even I milked her and milked her, seeing if it would go down.

No, that's good, that's good. That you did that. Yeah, that's happened. Okay, I'm not too concerned about it. Looking— it looks like it's not— it's saggy right now. Yeah, so I'm not too worried about it. Okay, we'll check it in the morning. But thank you, thank you for observing that. Here they— they hear us coming. Oh wow, they've done a lot of work. Wow, it's good to have Probably doesn't look much different to you, Ben, but they've, they've been hanging out. Yeah, they've been hanging out under there, Ben. I can actually see underneath this tree. I can actually see under there and I couldn't before. Nice. So they're going in there. Did you feed them in there at any time, per chance? Everywhere I can reach, I throw feed on. Yeah. Ben, that's perfect. I wish they'd eat that poison ivy. They'll eat it.

I've seen them eat it.

You have? Yep. One thing I learned at Salatin's is these pigs have too big of a paddock. I'm going to tighten up this paddock for the amount of time they're going to be in here, a week, no longer than 12 days. Okay, so I'll let them have this bigger paddock for 12 days, and then the next one I'll do a smaller paddock. Tightened up for 7 days and they'll be a little more efficient. So see, now Ben, we can get in there now. Yeah, and get those trees out after they're done. So you see the vision here, Ben? Yeah, we're gonna— we can come in and bring this— these, these logs down. This is where they were. And what do you think about these spotted trees here, the silvopasture here?

I really like it compared to being down there in the pasture. Once you get up here, the the spotted sunlight that you have. Yeah, it's, it's a lot cooler up here than it is down there.

Yeah, like you're standing right here. I am too. We're in the shade right now, but once you get right here, I'm baking. But look, look at the dappled sun like he's talking about. This is going to be cooler just right here, just half shade, half—

well, you can, you can watch them being up here. They'll come out, they'll forage around in the sun, and then you can tell when they've had enough, they just go lay down in the shade.

Well, Ben, you've passed the test. You did a fabulous job. Hope you had a great time. Hope it was a pleasure for you to work here and have something to do.

We are ready to get back to our own.

I know, I can't wait till you get to your place and see what you guys do with that. We're ready. With your skills and, and working. Amazing work ethic. Your place is going to be a premier homestead in no time, buddy.

Not big enough.

How's it feel to be back in your kitchen, babe? Feels so good. Don't look at this, guys. It's gonna be so good. Look, especially because 3 of our chickens, y'all.

That's how much they like us.

A chicken for us.

And then my parents are coming. So that one's mine, right? Okay, cool.