What would you do if you couldn’t Fail | I’d Get Sheep

Hey, look at you! You gonna help me this morning? Yes! Me and you, come on. We don't get a whole lot of alone time on the farm, do we?

Mm-mm.

But we're about to get a lot going to get these sheep. You ready for 4 days in the car? Mm-hmm. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we leave.

I know.

Today we go get the truck.

I know. So I have Dawn from The Minimal Mom and Darcy from Darcy Isabella, and as I said in a couple days' video ago, that they are minimalists. And I am not. And I would like to be more minimalist. I probably don't want to like get rid of everything, but I want to get rid of some stuff and just be more organized in general. So since I have them here, I'm like, can you guys give me some tips?

First thing I asked, because I noticed there's some produce over there, why is this by itself?

Yeah, and this is— so this over here, because this is my— this is my fruit.

Yeah. And I can't—

and Justin's. And I know it's like, it's a I just don't want them to eat because the kids will eat anything.

Oh yes, they will eat all the fruits.

So I was like kind of keeping it separate, but she had— go on.

I said that put it over there in the baskets where the other fruit is and maybe label it and say mom's fruit, don't touch.

Our bedroom. Our sheep's room. Look at that, nice. You guys want to see how much light that is? Look in the front too.

Why'd you put all those holes in there?

Those are for light to get through. Have you been in there yet? Go in there. Wow, isn't this nice? Look how much light it brought in.

Woo!

By the way, I feel like I should say this is just a really temporary situation for the sheep. Gonna train them for a number of days first, and then probably— that's the plan— lead them out to pasture with a net lane out there and then maybe bring them back for treats. And in here we can just kind of corner them and pet them and show them we're okay. So that's the plan right now. Plans are subject to change. I say we do the same thing right here, Josiah, for when we have calves and we keep them up in the afternoon, night.

What is this?

This would never happen in my house, right?

So I don't love this, but it's kind of like So this is like our hog butchering, so it has like recipes in it and then like a lot of just like recipes because we do a lot of like trial and error. Like this is kind of like Anna's stuff. Okay. But I would like to find a different place for it.

Can it go— isn't this your recipe books too? So now you have two spots for recipe books.

Are they too tall? Well, do you need to get rid of some of my stuff?

Do you need all these books?

Um, I—

every single one?

Maybe not everything.

Do you have another spot for books?

Well, my bookshelf.

Okay, so, so why would you— not get rid of them, just keep up there what you actually— the more you— most of what you use. That way you'd fit those.

So like if I just move this, would they fit?

Are they like up here? Yeah, exactly.

Will that look horrible though? No.

Okay. Unfortunately it's raining. Well, fortunately and unfortunately it's raining.

You're right on it.

I'll drive you.

We got new rigid pans for the beautiful one for feeding these guys when I'm gone. Although today we have so much, I'm thinking I need that red one back. Sort of wish I would have just bought big ones like that.

You could use them.

Well, these could be better when they're smaller and if you have less feed. You daring to grab that? Yeah, over here, over here. You guys ready? You're drooling, you're drooling. Drop it.

Whoa, stop it. Yeah, watch this. I can't make him put his tail straight.

Now his tail. Show you how to do it.

I'm about categorizing. Okay, like, so if you have all these glasses, that's fine, they're all together. I have that too in my house. I have the quart jars and everything.

So yeah, and then like my juicer's back here, and then this is like milking, but the milking— so that's on two different levels.

Yeah, you don't want that.

Put it on all the same level.

Exactly. Everything you use for the milk, the juicing, the, you know, the small engines, you would all have one.

Like you wouldn't put the small engines with the apples, right?

That doesn't go. So yeah, you would put them all together on one shelf.

Get rid of this stuff.

Yeah, let's get rid of it.

It's already bothering you.

I know it is.

It's already bothering me. I don't know, like it bothers me, but I don't know how to fix it. You don't know why it bothers you, right? Okay, but that makes so much sense. Okay, let's go put these over here, and then I need to put the milking stuff together. But where should I put the milking stuff? Should I put it on this, or does it matter which shelf I put it on?

Where it's easily grabbed by you, like where you can grab it easily.

Well, see, I guess it has to be on this shelf. Who's grabbing it? Well, Justin.

Is it?

Okay, so he can reach there.

But this won't— I don't know if this will fit up there, and this is part of the milking Okay, so it has to go on this shelf. That's why it goes on this shelf.

And then the juicer—

and then juicer could go up there. I want to put the juicer all in a crate so like I can grab the crate, yeah, take it over there, do my juicing, and then put it all back in it. Yeah, and do that. It's a good idea, but I need to get a crate big enough for that. Yeah, doesn't even have any tips on where to get one of those.

If you want to keep them as well, I would just bring them over here.

You should have Darcy make a crate.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I know, I would—

I would—

those are fine. I like glass too. I would just bring that over here, maybe remove this shelf since you're not using it anyway, and put jar right up. So then you have all your glass in one spot.

Okay, so is it bad that I have my two small appliances down here? No, I mean, does it— I keep them down low because they're so heavy.

Right.

Yeah, it's too hard to stick them up high.

Yes.

And look at here.

Papa, that one was already eaten.

Okay. Oh, he has heads here. Okay, this one was weak. Yeah, it was weak. Okay.

No, it was gonna—

Okay, what we're looking for is a head gone. I'm relieved I do have 60 birds. It didn't seem like that. I lost count, sort of, but I think I have more than 60. We dumped this hay in here yesterday, cruddy hay. Spread it out, put one there. You guys will spread it for me, okay? So the spent hay is a good source of deep bedding in an open run like this. Some food for them, something to do, something to absorb all their manure. We're winning so far, 820. Gotta move the pigs though. This doesn't have to go to waste, we'll add it to our swill. Cooking chicken guts for the pigs.

I have a question about this in here. So like, I do use all this stuff, but like, I mean, I don't obviously use my beans every day, but I mean, is this okay? Like, is this—

I display things like that. I think that's beautiful. Okay, I might not want to have it here. Displayed on shelves in my kitchen because we buy in bulk.

Like, because we do eat— like, I buy nuts 5 pounds at a time and we go through that in like 6 weeks. So it's like, I feel like I just always have so much. Like, look over here. Like, I feel like I have so much, but I mean, we go through it. I need to go through this. This is—

but this doesn't actually— I mean, you don't feel that bad.

Okay, don't feel bad.

No.

All right, Jonah, think we can do this in 8 minutes, both of us? Let's go for it. 2 minutes to spare. Got the nets up. Just— Jonah's getting the Chickshaw. Jonah, yeah, just grab 2 nets. I think we're going to need 2 nets to set these pigs up. We're gonna move you guys from here— done a splendid job, by the way— to right here. We got it done, Jonah, with 4 minutes to spare. What should we do with our 4 minutes?

Go make some coffee.

I wish it only took that long. Okay, Jonah, though we are about out of fuel, hopefully we make it home. Oh boy, you're puttering. Oh boy, it's puttering, it's puttering. Oh boy, let's put you some fuel in it before I leave, okay? Well, that's what we did with our spare minutes— service the mower.

Where would I store my trash bags? Should I store them over there?

I have mine right next to my drawer at the bottom, right next to my sink, which is next to the garbage. Like, it's all right where the kids take the garbage out, and we have it right there. Does that make sense?

Yeah, because see, the trash can's over here now.

Okay, so I would have it in my kitchen. It's right here. It's in that drawer. I don't know what you have in there, but that's where I put the garbage.

So I have just junk in in here that I didn't know where to put. Like, it's like, like, because I mean, we use these really regularly because I don't— because I use all glass stuff.

So, yep, just make a space. There's not— they don't need a lot of room.

That's a good idea.

Put it in the drawer next to the garbage can.

See, I think that's just what I need, is just like convenience.

You need everything placed where you can conveniently grab it. Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you, guys.

Well, I would say this too, is that all of us need help with an outside perspective. So you don't have to have someone come in who's a professional organizer or a minimalist But just to have someone like a sister, a friend, family member come over and say, oh, what if we did this? Because it's hard for us to think outside of the box in our own kitchen, but we can go into someone else's. And don't be afraid to, you know, just like play around with it. Like, okay, we're gonna try putting the milking stuff here and see if it works. And if it doesn't, then we'll try a different spot. And if it does, awesome.

So thank you guys so much for coming and then like just hanging out.

Thank you.

Oh my goodness. But if you want more of these two ladies, Darcy Isabella's YouTube channel Minimal Mom YouTube channel and check them out.

Thank you.

Good morning, Bear. You're getting huge. It's not really raining anymore, but these cows are scared to death. Yeah, bro, it's easy to herd with them. Look, there you go, Jonah. There you go. Good. Let, let Stud go through. Let's see if I can squeeze in here because he's blocking the way for her. I can get her to go. Come on, let's check Phyllis while we're right here. Yeah, you had that baby. It would be— she'd probably have that baby tomorrow at noon when I leave. I'm driving to get sheep. Tomorrow. I won't say it's terrifying. Terrifying is a really strong word, but it is, but it is scary. Really scary. And for those you don't know, I realize some of you guys might be new, like within the last year-ish, and might not even know about our sheep incident. We tried sheep last year for the first time. Epic failure. 4 out of 5 died of heavy parasite loads. We harvested the 5th one because we didn't want him to be alone. They say you learn more from your failures than your successes. We learned a ton. One of the things we learned is that we want hardy stock, stock that has been naturally selected, not babies. We don't want vaccinated, we don't want grain-fed, We don't want a sheep that has even had to have natural or conventional worming medicine. I should also say that we're getting a humid hardy breed. A lot of sheep are hardy but in arid climates. So we're getting a sheep that had been developed, I think, in Bermuda. Super humid. The St. Croix. And they're coming from Missouri, which is humid and hotter and colder than we are here. So hopefully it's going to be an easy transition for them. We got on a year and a half waiting list for these guys, y'all, and we're paying 4x, 5x what we paid last year. So this farmer, Greg Judy, has done the hard work. He selected and bred just the strong ones, the natural hardy ones. He's done the hard work. So we're— yeah, we're paying the price, but hopefully it's going to be worth it. You can go ahead and feed her her alfalfa. A little word on the fear that I'm going through, especially putting this out there, because we could totally get these sheep and it totally be another epic failure. And for all of YouTube, whoever wants to see it, can come and see it. That's hard. That's scary. That's an additional scary to— it's already scary enough that these guys could die, and then I got to show the world. So I'm going to read a little excerpt from Daring Greatly, Brené Brown, on vulnerability. Guys, We haven't— this, this is extremely vulnerable. We'll just open ourselves up. Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. It's scary to let yourself be seen. And by the way, we love to see vulnerability in others, and it inspires us and encourages and entertains us and educates us, but we have a hard time being vulnerable for others. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? It's kind of like the question the beautiful one asked before we went on the Great American Farm Tour. What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would you attempt to do if you could not fail? Get sheep? For some of you guys, grow a garden, get some chickens, get a family cow, go on a trip. I don't know. The willingness to show up changes us. Vulnerability is life's great dare. Man, that just gives me chill bumps because we were in Hawaii once and one guy was praising me that we were staying with and I was just like, we're just an ordinary guy. We're just an ordinary person. We're just normal people. And he said, you know, that's true. You're an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. And that's true. And all we had to do to do the extraordinary is put one foot in front of the other, hit publish, share with the world, open ourselves up for vulnerability, do things even if we are afraid. And I will say this, anybody can do it. It's not just— there's nothing special about us. The difference between us and many people is we hit publish. We put ourselves out there. We show our ups and downs and our wins and losses. And I'll leave you with a Zig Ziglar quote. Here. He said, you don't have to be great to start, you just have to start to be great. All right, we're gonna remember this this weekend, just as we go get those sheep.

What?

Hey, you don't have to be great to start, you just have to start to be great. You agree? Look at you milking that cow. Thank you, buddy. Oh, gallon and a half. Thank you, Flossie. I will see you again one more time. We're not leaving till midday or so tomorrow.

I can take the milk up and you can get Flossy out.

That would be awesome. Thank you, buddy. Man, I like that kid. It's been— naturally spent a lot of time with Jonah. He's more interested, vested in the farm, but a little older. But it's so fun when Josiah comes out. We get to spend some alone time doing chores together. About to get a long time on our trip. Come on, Miss Thing. Oh, I'll pet you. That'll get you out. We're gonna pet you and get you out. Look, look, she backs up when I start petting her. I don't need a staff. I just gotta start petting you. I just gotta start petting you. It's gonna work until you're, you're a little more, uh, you should go start enjoying it, and it's gonna backfire on me. But right now we'll use it. I take it back what I said about Henry.

What?

This four-wheeled cart is amazing. I think there's a time for a wheelbarrow and there's time for a cart, and there's time for a mower. Go ahead. We got something like 16 minerals here, y'all. Keep these cows mineralized. They didn't know what they needed on various pastures. And at the same time, we're mineralizing our pastures. They eat the minerals that are not there naturally, but then it goes through their system and back out into the field. So we'll have to use less and less minerals. Josiah. Hey Josiah, we're done. We got a few minutes. You know, when I was little, my brother and I used to have radio flyers and we would race down our gravel driveway like cars. Radio flyers are like— well, this is kind of like a monster truck version of a radio flyer, so a smaller wagon. Uh, who won? I don't remember. I just remember we had a lot of fun. Let's see where we can do this.

So I'm going to show you guys what I did. If you remember, here we had like a notebook stuff for like cooking and things that I didn't fit on here. I went ahead and I kind of went through these books and I kept what was used the most out of those things, which was just this green notebook. The clipboard was also used for like organization and stuff like that, so we put that in the junk drawer over there. So then that got away, and then I put the extra books that I took off of, off of here and the extra stuff that was with this green notebook, and I put it on the bookshelf down there. Then I got crates, like I found some crates. So this is like our coffee making stuff, which is just a coffee grinder and a French press And then this is my juicer, and I got a crate for that. And then I moved— actually moved this shelf down because we didn't need so much space here. And the milking stuff all fits here. And then this is just kind of like our to-go stuff, like when we go travel and go out for the day and stuff. That's like all of our like soup and broth things. And then this was up over here up there. There you can see it. And so I just moved it over there. So their suggestion here was to just do like all— as much glass as like do all the glass here. So I moved the— I think I just moved the top shelf way up there, and I moved it up so there was more space and we could put more jars in this, um, cabinet or that shelf. And then I just kind of went through and made the jars look nice. I got rid of the apples and I put them up here like they suggested. I've, I've yet to put my do not touch on it for the kids. Uh-oh, this got all jumbled up again, or maybe I didn't finish. So why don't I finish that now and then we'll go over this. And I even organized and decluttered in there.

One of my favorite breakfasts, smoothie, cabbage, bacon, egg, I'm gonna miss these breakfasts with you guys. Am I leaving today? I'm not leaving today, tomorrow.

There was a watermelon in the garden and it fell off its vine. And so we're gonna cut it up and eat it. I hope it is, it smells so good. Oh my, that is ripe. Oh my goodness. It's ripe? Let's take Mom and Papa a piece. It's ripe.

Oh my.

That's right.

That's beautiful.

Let's take Mom and Papa and let them eat it first. Okay. We want you guys to taste this first watermelon we ever even tasted. Take it, taste it. Is it good?

Mm, so good.

Mm, mm, mm.

I just kind of like clean this up. I ended up— these are our like, um, regular mouth jar size lids. These are the large, um, most everything we use is the wide mouth, so it's the wide mouth rings. Then I put in— these are kind of the— I don't know, what do you call those? Um, they're these things. I went through them and I kind of got rid of all the gross ones, um, because, you know, they rust so easily. And then this is kind of like for our really big gallon jars. Um, so I did that and then I kind of just cleaned up in this area, just kind of made it not so cluttered.

Oh, I'm a good bit in today's edit. 12:30. Grandma's coming. We're gonna go get the truck. All right, Grandma, you ready?

I'm ready to go.

Grandma, you know where we're going?

Yes, I do. It's right up here on the left.

Here it is, boys. What do you think, Grandma?

I think it's gonna be fun.

This is your new rig.

That's it. I gotta get a cushion though because it's pretty low down there. Okay.

Oh yeah, this is a tough truck.

You know, I had asked them what should I do about this, and this needs to really stay low for the kids because this is like snacks for them. I mean, I do have like my honey here, um, like bigger, bigger item, bulk items. But this is like trail mixes and like dried fruits. I have some snacks for like Justin to go, um, Justin and Josiah to go on their trip. And then like for me when I take the kids out, it's just easy to grab a box of those. Um, and then we have kind of like some bulk stuff here. And then more snacky stuff. So I actually— I went through this and I got out like 10 jars, y'all. Like, we had like 3 jars of raisins and they were all half eaten, so I could combine them into one. And, you know, just stuff like that. So, um, that was good to go through. And I think that that just needs to be like something that needs to be regularly done.

Okay, guys, you guys want to unload the, uh The shavings? Yeah, you got to put some in the, the ram's crate too, okay? Okay, you guys get some pig board too, all right? We'll use a pig board to help manage them.

Um, up here I had, um, like my trash bags there. I still haven't figured out where I'm gonna put my trash bags because I don't really have a place over near the trash can, which makes the most sense. So yeah, I mean, it's all a work in progress. I hope that I can do a better job at not having so much junk. It's hard, it's hard with 4 kids. It's really hard.

Been editing. Look at here, no, it's not 610 hay bales, it's 2 dozen. What's the problem here?

Yeah, you can't get out.

See, how did you get in that bucket?

We're skinny.

Can you really not get out?

Yeah, Papa, Papa, Papa, do it this way. It's a lot harder.

See? Walk around like that.

It is like a big turtle.

I wanted to see you walk.

A dragon.

So you have to go Missouri like this. That was too far.

At least it's a comfy chair.