What It Takes for This Large Family to Travel

It is a rainy day as we get ready for Homesteaders of America. I want to show you this something we ordered. Wasn't supposed to be here till March because of backups, but somehow he said they pitched a fit and they got it. Boom! That just takes the multitasking ability of the Suburban to the next level. You want to see inside of it? This is a— I guess it's a 4x8 box trailer, and this helps us— boom! Wooden, it's wooden. Get in there, buddy. Let's see, let's show how tall it is. This helps us when we travel. We take all our own food, so we take all our coolers and there's another door, all our cooking supplies. We're extra, y'all, we're extra. We got a little light. This is cool. We don't have to rent one, which for us, people who don't like— basically this came down to we don't want to drive 30 minutes to town. You go to town, you go back if you were gonna pick up a rental trailer, and then you go again to take it back.

Papa, can you shut it?

Yeah, no, after a while that's gonna get old. Yeah, I'm not gonna shut you in. I won't shut it, but I'll I won't shut shut it, but I'll shut it. There you go.

It's not very dark.

How's that? He's mobile now, guys. Just today he's made his first real crawl. He's been able to shuffle. He's getting close, roll around. But I was looking, he was, he, he was there about to get kind of halfway in the bathroom, and I saw his feet one minute, and the next he was gone. Oh look, guys, I gotta show you this. You recognize this? These are new switches. Oh, is he going?

Oh, he was about to.

There he goes, there he goes. Oh, Papa's proud of you. Are those Mama's labels there? Folks are still ordering just the book. And by the way, the book Polyface Micro is always available, uh, at our website, Abundance Plus. Yep, that's it. Says labels right on top. So if you go to Abundance Plus— Dan, my editor— guys, I'm talking to Dan right here. Uh, Dan, go ahead and do a screenshot of somebody going to Abundance Plus. Show them the— on the top right is a, um, store page. That's our store, Polyface Design. Other things— I'm just getting that word out there because I don't think I've ever announced that. Yes, there's t-shirts and stuff in there. Uh, sticker packages, all that stuff available forever-ish. Those are just stuff that's always available. What? You have so many stickers. I gave you so many stickers.

I need more stickers.

Why?

Because my water bottle's not all the way.

All right, well, I'll get you more stickers. All right, how can I hold the umbrella? Hold these switches. Remember these switches? Our Scaldor went out, it was these switches. Well, the kind people where we got the Skolder from. Coops and More.

What are they doing?

So I guess it means Coops and More, like the letter N, more.com. They sent us this. We didn't ask for it. This is not sponsored. I just thought I'd do the kind thing and shout them out here. Thanks, Coops and More, for sending us these switches. I don't know if Mark got a switch. Or what, but now we'll have some extras anyway. Let's go see. All right, now he got a switch. Mark put a switch on there, but now we have these extra switches. You know, I'm more inclined to shout these guys out also because, I don't know, I met them. I met them while we're on the Great American Furniture. Yeah, well, we're gonna just put it right here in our butcher cabinet. Uh, you could put it in one of those bags. That'd be more organized, wouldn't it? And we'll get a Sharpie, we'll label it switches. Teddy, you gotta go to the groomer, my man. No, how about no?

Hi, Dad.

Do you pick him up or should I put his harness on?

Um, probably his harness. He gets a little upset sometimes if I just—

Okay, all right, Lily, will you go get his harness? It's over there in the packed stuff. Thanks. Hey, we got him on his leash.

Yeah, you ready to come with me, bud?

He said no, I'm just gonna lay right here.

Well, you ended up carrying him anyway. Yeah, that's fine. All right, we have a bird out here, Lily. Oh, this bird's been out a while. There are eggs right there. Come on, Lily. Lily, come up that end. Lily, you're not even paying attention.

But I'm gonna have to just go over to the fence.

Oh, there we go. Lily! All right, Arun catch it by himself. Whoa, that's a lot of eggs!

Did we just—

oh my gosh, Jonah left them outside. That's a full basket. I wonder if it's one day or two days. They're now clean, so you don't have to wash them. You don't have to wash them. We need to catch the goose that's in there. Maybe I can film from right here and you guys can see it. I can't get the camera in the rain. The sea monsters in the field need a guard goose more than they do. All right, turn her this way, Gideon. Turn her this way, Gideon. There you go. Turn her this way. No, no, no, no. Come around this. Come around behind her. All right, got the goose. Get in. I'm gonna have you get a shot of me putting the goose in. All right, can you zoom in and hold it steady? Well, I don't know if you can see that through the rain shield, but it looks like Jonah has forgotten the calf separate last night, so we'll just go with it because it's raining and we got so much to do. They get to a new grass paddock And this is where they go. They love this stuff, the weedy, brambly stuff. Look at the ice cream grass. Cows love the ice cream grass, and the sheep just love this really fiberish milkshake grass. It's like a milkshake grass. I like it. And I call it, um, ice cream grass because that's not the type of grass it is. It's just, uh, it produces a lot of cream because it's so rich, and the cows really like it. That's why I call it ice cream grass. Look at Nacho, he's proud, he's proud, isn't he?

Yep.

All right, let's get room in here for that trailer. That's a problem because we're having to back up this hill. It jacks it way up. Oh my gosh, we're gonna have to put it on like vertical cinder block. We've got it undone. It's just— it's really hanging on to that. Yeah, it's lifting it up, man. How much further can we go back? We could go a good bit. We could even remove this table, move this table over and go back all the way. Direct me not to hit the, uh, the other— the sink over there. Okay, that's a lot better. I think it's because everything's brand new too, it's sticky. Oh, it's coming right up. Never mind, it was the angle, had nothing to do with sticky. I'm happy about that. Let's go move this over to load for our trip. What's going on in here?

We are cutting fresh veggies up.

We are prepping everything. Are we prepping every meal? Stop eating that.

No, we're not prepping Thursday night and Sunday because we don't have anything going on those days, but all the nights that we have something going on, we are prepping.

All right, you excited?

Like this.

Haroon to an Indian Wednesday on Tuesday. We gotta have our Indian. We gotta have our weekly dose of Indian.

Yeah.

So we're not gonna be here tomorrow, we're gonna have it tonight. You like that idea? We've been packing all afternoon. Look at this stuff we're packing. Everybody's got individual bags for their snacks tomorrow.

I got my water bottle.

Okay, what else is interesting? You got your, uh, suitcase, my backpack, my bag. We're taking DVDs to just give away to attendees. Look at all these stickers we're gonna give away. Homestead Mamas, Great American Farm Tour, maybe one Abundance Plus, pigs for everyone. Uh, we got the drone. Oh, our own water. We'll travel, but we have to take our own water. We're those people. My camera bag full of all kinds of goodies. More snacks. And Rebecca has packed up our kitchen. Yeah, that's all our kitchen supplies, cast iron. We won't need anything tomorrow though because we're going to Bojangles in the morning, Long John Silver's, and for lunch And Taco Bell for supper. He's really funny.

And the next day for breakfast, Waffle House?

Nope, we're going to the Rebecca Diner.

That's right.

No, didn't you want to have a diner or something, Beth?

Yeah, I was always—

what were you going to call it?

I was always going to move to the mountains and I was going to have a little diner with 4 seats in a row and I would cook on one side. People would come in, okay, sit down.

What was the name?

I don't know if I had a name.

Oh, what was the name of that? Okay. So we're gonna go to Rebecca's Diner, and that, that'll be tomorrow. Maybe you guys will see us there. Homes— whoa, no, you won't. It's sold out. Wow, it's sold out. Good job, Amy Fuel, selling that out. Uh, can't— that means probably a lot of you are going, so we'll just hope to see you guys there.