Winter Garden Prep Started NOW

Winnie, she's been eating the cat's food. You're not even trying to hide it, Winnie. You're just waiting in line. Try this. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. You naughty girl. She knows. Squints those eyes. Look. You know. Dogs are a gamble. 1 in 3 are good ones. Winnie's one of those good ones, except she eats the cat's food. They're like, what's going on? You know what's going on? The dog ain't gonna get your food today because I put it up. What happened? I cleaned the shop. How do I get kids to clean this shop? How to get you to clean up the shop? I don't know. It's not messy. It's not messy. It's not that bad. What do you guys think? Is it messy? Hey, how's your furniture coming? I'm about to stain it. Nice. Jonah, can you pick up in there today? Day 3 doing chores with Josiah. Do you like doing cow chores with me? Yeah, you sure you like this arrangement then? Yeah. Okay. Happy day! Welcome to another day in the life of The Rooted Life. We are growing what we eat and eating what we grow. Yesterday we harvested all these acorn squash. That's what I should be kissing. We got up all the old plants and weeds, turned those into bacon and sausage. Boom! And today's project should we get to it. I think we'll get to it. I'll show you how we convert a bed, get it ready, rest it for a jammin' spring garden bed. Okay, he wouldn't get out. Yeah, we were, we were literally like 20 feet from it. This is why I'm taking turns with them. They're not having to do all the chores together every morning, give them a little respite. Constantly bicker. Have you seen Ocean's Eleven where those two driving brothers, their part in the heist was to drive? Taking the What I just saw. Anyway, those two brothers fight constantly in that movie and it's hilarious. Yeah, go ahead, I got one. Oh, you're gonna think of one? No, I've already thought of one. I'm not going to— All right, so you're thinking of one right now? No, I'm done thinking about it. I have it in my head. Are you a man? Yes. 19. Are you alive? Yes. 18. Evil Knievel. After I saw that, I swear I got less frustrated with this and I just pretend I'm in a movie. We're at Ocean Heights. Now, how come you and I don't fight Right, like that. Nice. You're not annoying. Should I appreciate that? Instead of milking outside the fence today, we're gonna try milking inside. We gotta go inside anyway to move the milk sled. It's about maximum efficiency. We're gonna let people over. Let's get the steer and He-Man over too, Josiah. Then he'll have fresh grass to puts around with. These two are like two boys together. One boy, one brain. Two boys, half a brain. We got a new bromance with E-Man and that steer over there. You're ready to go. I think we'll pull the trigger on him. The grass is slower growing now, and that's one way to relieve it and make it last longer. We like to graze at least until Christmas to harvest some animals. We're in position to move this. One thing I like about milking where they were is they spill any alfalfa, we leave it behind, and this is where the sheep go today. And when we were milking outside the fence, although it's easier because it's flatter, people want to get out because they want to go towards that alfalfa. Look at this guy, he usually beats me milking. He's not beating me today because we weaned her. Get a lot more milk? That's full. I filled that up. Where'd you put some into? I'll put some in. So how'd you like this arrangement? It's okay. All right, try to let them take charge. He decided we would do it this way today. We should be able to open this. They'll probably come back, so secure everything. Dad's using— I believe that's Grandpa's old milking stool. You know what, we'll just say it was. We'll just say it is because I think it is. That's a record. We did that in like an hour. What was the secret? Now I gotta ask you something. You and I didn't fight once. We just both just quietly did our work. What's going on? I don't know what's going on. You and Jonah can't do that? No, because he wants to boss me around. Hmm, you don't want to be bossed around. The independent guy. Jonah, what a surprise! Every 38 inches, correct? No, 30 inches. Shoot, but I'm going off the, the thing too. Hopefully you didn't go 38 inches. 42 inches is counting past. What'd you do? These two turned out fine, but that's why this one's a little off, and that's why you're going to run out of room. Put it at 42 and redo this one. Okay, these other two I think are okay. 30-inch beds. 1-foot pathway is 42 inches. It's a 42-inch. Never shaped beds. I've never shaped beds, so tell me what we're doing. Do what— don't we, uh, do we put compost first or no? We do that second, don't we? Let me explain how we're doing it. I'm also going to give you a free pamphlet, a little PDF I wrote, down in the description. Uh, we take this rebar post, put— I think that's small climbing rope. You can just use any old twine. That is not climbing rope. I don't know, what is it? What am I trying to— what, what word am I trying to think for it? Small paracord. Yeah, you know, he measures from this end over 42 inches, and then you go— you want to do it? You're about to do it. Let's show them how to do it. It's 42 inches. You got to remember to go to the left of your line. Just be consistent, always walking in the path. Annie, let's start loading compost. We strategically place our compost up. This garden knot is on a slight hill, so we load and we're wheelbarrowing the contents downhill. Wait, what? You can't do that yet. You have to move. Oh, that's the old one. So now we take our other end and move it over 42 inches, go to this side of it to make a footpath, and we just use a flat shovel for that. And that's about a foot. Now we have all this compost that animals helped us make on the farm. This is my foolproof garden method. I don't— I haven't worried about amendments in years. I just make sure every time I add some compost. We're doing 2 to 3 wheelbarrow loads. Oh, Jonah insists on 2 this time. That's fine. I think we just did this before the fall crops. I'm thinking it's gonna work. And he's shaping it with a bow rake. Hard rake, putting the compost on top. No reason to till. About 1 hour left till I need to take Lily to her horse and lessons. We've gotten done 3 rows. I don't think that's taken us an hour, so we've got to get these other 3 done within an hour. I think it's doable. Well, we're hoping we have enough time left over to put our acorn squash that we dried into the root cellar, or as they say up north, the rut cellar. Did I get it right? One more row. We did find a cool praying mantis. Whoa, I don't know, it's That's mean. Wow, that is illegal to kill those in North Carolina. Whoa, it does have a stinger! See it come out right there? Whoa, Papa! I heard if you get bit by those, you gotta go to the hospital. Really? I don't think so. I think you're right. I heard some guy died. Do you want to silage it first? Not the worst idea in the world. We're running out of growing weather. Thanks to dry, spray cover this for a couple weeks, then plant. You could also silage tarp it, which we're gonna do, and then just leave the silage tarp. Good row there, Annie. You've gotten good at the sixth one. This soil's wet. So we're not going to wet it down. Could plant seed, but because we've moved it around, we've got air into it, shoveling up from the pathways into the beds. It's aerated the seed heads. And so Andy's right, best practice, we cover it up. I think we have time. Let's just cover it up for maybe 11 days and plant October 1st. Basically have till Thanksgiving for growth. It slows the further we get because the days are getting shorter. And then— and days are getting cooler. There's some satisfaction in the silage tarp though. Silage tarp from Farmer's Friend. Silage tarps will last longer. We just use this for 2 weeks as opposed to all winter. That is a satisfying sight. Our future selves, our spring selves, will thank us profusely. Nipped weeds in the bud. We have our garden prepped and ready. If we just kept the silage tarp, all we would do is peel it back in the spring when we're ready to transplant. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we remember, we pull this up, plant a cover crop. That adds extra goodness to the soil, and we'll see how that goes. Get in! Come down, please. Mom and Jonah continuing work on the phone charging station. He's turned into quite the woodworker, huh? It's just bad smelling. Y'all brought it out here because it's— you want me to put it over there on the Flat? You guys want to put it out on the concrete? No. Jonah, man, I know he's taking more than a day to do it. Wait, you got— you got to get it off the bags. Future self will thank you. It's all about giving to our future self, isn't it? Making a sacrifice now for our life to be somewhat easier in the future. What are you doing right now, Beck, to make your life better in the future? It's gonna have a pretty place. It's gonna make me smile every time I see it. That's what it's about for you, huh? Boy. Made me a nice chair. I'm thinking we just have— we have a place to charge our phones. That's what I was thinking. Out of sight. Men are very practical, women are very emotional. Did you pick up on that? Did you know you were coming out here barefoot? I did. I— well, it's because I'm in my house and then I just come to the shop. Probably never got her feet dirty when she was a little kid. Went from grass to swimming pool. Did you ever think you were gonna live a country life? No. Weren't you gonna marry a banker and live on the Intracoastal? A little short of that. Looking for someone in finance, I guess. I somehow had heard that. That's— yeah, yeah. Instead you got somebody in, uh, farming. This farming was all my idea anyways. Well, you met a country boy who wanted to live in the country on the family land. It was her idea to, to do the farm. Behind every woman's vision, a dream. For an amazing homestead. He's a very tired family. She didn't hear me. I hear you. Probably good. She's ignoring me. I am ignoring you. This afternoon, life is looking good for me. I'm kind of glad I forgot to set out the, uh, brisket. When you're on a homestead, it's weird that like Brisket isn't like the top of the game, but when you're on a homestead, it's like turkey. You can have it every month. So for us, something special is pizza, which is probably normal for most people. It's normal. Everybody, they have it every Friday, honey. How many times you eat pizza last week, Annie? Uh, I didn't. Well, you're kind of like us. You're not really normal. Flash freeze these stuffed peppers. All we're gonna do is put them in a bag, then you can just pick out as many as you want. They don't stick together because we didn't freeze them together because we they flash froze them, they froze as individuals. We tried reheating those the other day from frozen and they were just fine. I mean, they weren't quite as good as fresh, but not more than 10% off. Bacon and cream cheese, it's hard to have it badly. Yeah, killed the pizza. After this, a bike workshop. Have more chances of success with our 100-mile attempt next year and better biking experiences. What do you think, boys? Yeah, I will, I will. We've got a trailside workshop for mountain bikes this evening in town. La la let, la la let me be free.