Living the Dream in Ouachita Mountains

Welcome to Ouachita Mountain Living. Today I'm going to do a video I should have done a long time ago. Now everybody knows when you subscribe to a new channel sometimes you're lost. You don't know what they're about, what they're doing, what have they done in the past, why are they doing what they're doing. Well that's what I'm going to do here today because I've put on a lot of new subscribers. I appreciate you guys. So I want to show you what this channel is, what I do and first off you know we're going to just take a really quick tour of the property and I'll explain to you which ones are in videos which ones aren't and then what we're going to do here in the next couple of months. So well let's start off here in the office. This is fairly new. This used to be a bar. Pretty fancy bar I had built out of cedar. I had a big thick cedar top bar here and lights and it was raised floor and I tore all that out. This was open. I built a wall and I built a little office and this is where the magic happens guys. This is where my podcasts are done, where the videos are edited. On this wall we got my security cameras. I can see what these dogs are up to. I can see that they're outside doing something. You're going to meet them here in a minute. I can see most areas of my property and I also have some other cameras that I see in other ways. So I bought this place in 2012 for $10,500 and I gutted the entire inside of it. Plumbing, electrical and it's still a work in progress. I know some of you subscribers are like hey don't finish nothing. I live here with my five dogs. Well here's one of them right here Miss Rooster. You're going to say hi to the people? She's not she's not very talkative today. Excuse the air conditioner noise. And this is my very small living room. Can you picture an 86 inch TV there? Because it's getting one man. I know. My recliners. That's Rooster's recliner. She's got to have one. She's got her biscuit there. All right this I don't know what to do with this area yet. It's just it's a catch-all man. It is. I am NOT the world's best housekeeper. I've got a built-in shelf here that I made. In there is the bathroom. We ain't going in there. We're not going in there. There's a door I built. Heavy-duty door. This is obviously not finished. The under the stairs not finished. This is my dining room. This is my ceiling with the galvanized metal with the cedar. It currently will be finished when I finish the kitchen. Recently I started tearing into the kitchen. I got rid of the old traditional range top and oven. Boom! I bought an induction cooktop. I love it. I mostly cook with my air fryers and I was in the process of finishing the cupboards, the metal. I'm gonna put an arched doorway in here. This is why this is all tore up. I know everybody's waiting on the kitchen to get finished and it's going to. We're gonna get to that in a minute. I had a rusty old refrigerator and I took I ordered some of this stuff from Amazon and covered it. You know it's an oldie but goodie. They work. The new ones only last a few years. I've got my cupboards tore up right now. This isn't even finished. I got my drawers from the old cupboards out. I'm gonna be putting those in here. I put a nice butcher block top. I love that and I put a new countertop in and a sink. I don't go for fancy just for Micah. You know I've got my my sprayer and all that. That's fine for me. I don't need all the fancy stuff. All right let's go up to the loft. All right I am up in the loft. I cannot believe how cool it is up here. That new air conditioner rocks man. Unfinished yes. We're getting to this this winter. It has no electric up here yet. I just got a bunch of junk. Bunch of junk and I need to get rid of half of it. Out here I have a deck that looks out onto the property. It is finished but I do want to do something to I gotta watch for wasps. I haven't out there here. Oh goodness. That is the worst part of living in Arkansas right there. You're doomed boy. Well look through these dirty windows the deck goes all the way around. You don't go out there in the summer because of them guys and honestly I haven't you know went out there. But we're gonna get this done here very soon. In fact in October. Dogtober. That is the goal. That is the theme for Dogtober. Starting at the front of the cabin and finishing every single project and by the end of October all the projects that have been started and not yet finished will be finished. Sound like a plan? All right let's go to another room. And I did build all these railings and stuff. There are videos on that as well. I also built the stairs. I tore out the old ones that were very very narrow and steep. And I put these in. I built the railing. I built this out of very old used boards I tore off of an old porch. And then I built this up here. And that's going to be really nice up there when I'm done with it. I've got the board and batten cedar going across here. I have torn out a lot of cedar. This all used to be cedar and it was just too much. And I kind of like where I put the drywall in painted it the color you know. I know it ain't finished. Now we're in the screen patio area. Now two years ago I built the screen patio. That upper deck that you just saw. And the dog apartment which we will be going into momentarily. Currently I know a lot of you new subscribers came over from my weight loss videos. This is the gym. And just just getting started with this. I had a workout this morning on this. I love this machine. And these are very popular. They're all over Facebook marketplace. They're called the Macy or the Marcy. Very popular brand but it does the trick for me. But it's got a screen. All these screen windows which I think I'm going to convert to regular windows. Or at least windows I can pull out for the you know in the spring. But for the winter I want to be able to use that space. And yeah it's a bit of a mess right now. I've got my saw in here and a few other things. Because I'm working on that building. We're going to get out there in a second. Let's go see the dogs. Well turn the light on. These new people want to meet you. This is my Lily. Yeah she's 10 years old. This is Waldo. He's 13 years old. He's been with me since the very first day I came to Arkansas. Haven't you boy? Let me get back here so the folks can see you. And they live in this dog apartment I built. I know it looks like a Faraday cage. But hey we have an EMP attack. I'm coming in here. Right Lily? They got their own air conditioner. And then in winter they got heat. They have their own washer and dryer. Lily doesn't like it. They got their fan. You want to say hi before we duck out of here boy? Yeah? Okay. None of them are very talkative today. I don't get it. Alright. Let's go see something else. Alright. Stepping out of the screen patio. This is my carport. Recently added. I believe I got this put here in February. I love it. It's got my grill in there and I've currently got my saw and one of my trucks. Just the front end you know to keep the sun out of it. Let me step back here and show you all the addition. Now it needs guttering. I need to do a little bit of finish work. Trim. As you can see there's the screen patio. I use the screen tight system. Worked out well. There is the upper deck full of wasps. I got to get some wasp spray man. And the dog apartment. I have a water spigot on this side. One on the other side. I took their water away from outside. Because they don't need it. They got a bucket inside. And I am going to actually be cutting their yard in half. They don't use it. They don't need all this room. There was originally six, seven dogs in here. And they've all, most of them have passed away. And they're, they're the two originals that are left. Over here we have the dog cemetery. Which is starting to get overgrown. Show you this real quick. This last one. And I do have a headstone for her. Got to get it out. That's Libby. And there's Wally. And there's a few dogs in here that were my brother's dogs. That's Lucy. That's Waldo's sister. She's got a tree growing out of her. And that's one of my brother's dogs puppy. And then back in here is Lulu. Another beagle I had. So we're going to get this looking nice. And here's a shot of the front of the property. Let me include a picture to show you what this used to look like when I bought it. Right here. And now the project I am currently working on is this portable building which I purchased in November. And I am turning this into a small, I guess you could call it a craft shop. Because I'm going to have laser, laser engravers in here. I know some of you older, longtime subscribers have seen this place a million times. But you know, not everybody. I am building work benches. I was going to originally build one here, here, here, here, here. I'm just going to build the ones across the back. And then laser engraver benches here. I just finished the ceiling. I used pegboard, painted it black on my ceiling fan. And it's got a lot of stuff needs cleared out of here. But I did pick up my plywood for the top. So this is in a very good location. It's right now it's probably 90 degrees and it's just really cool in here. So this is going to be pretty much off-grid by that. I mean there's no electric wired anywhere. I've got solar battery banks that are going to power everything. The only electric I have is right here for the AC. Because currently I don't have a solar power bank that will power that. And I did make it to where I can plug this in to a solar bank. And that'd be, you know, in the winter obviously I won't need that. And I'm going to run propane heat. So I'll probably put a heater there with a tank outside. So this is what's going on right now amongst everything. And over here we have my chickens. That is Mr. Waddles. Why is he called Waddles? Well, Waddles walks like a duck. He was born with a birth defect. And I took him home. The boss wanted me to handle him, if you know what I mean. And I took him home, man. He took a liking to me at the ranch. Followed me everywhere. See how he walks. And so he's got a home. These hens, they were 10 years old. When the hens at that ranch got to be 10 years old, he would discard them. And I also took them home. There's five of them. There's four left. These hens are currently 14 years old. That's right, 14 years old. This breed lives a long time. He could probably live to be 16, 17 years old. He's currently four years old. Tell them, Waddles, you just walk funny. But other than that, you're healthy. Yeah, that's Waddles. He's a cool little rooster. Oh, I see something over here. This is the back of my property. It's currently gone crazy. It'll look nice in the winter. You'll see. This is Miss Millie. There's several videos on Miss Millie. Miss Millie showed up here terrified, starving. You couldn't get near her. And here she is now. And under here, we have a Miss Tilly. Tilly, two paws. You're gonna say hi, Tilly. These are my two outside dogs. They don't leave the property. Very good girls. Come here. She's camera shy. She don't like this camera. Come here. She's real skittish when I got this camera in Well, you know this camera is not going to hurt you. Yeah. So if you haven't noticed, my dogs are my life. They are my friends. I do a lot for dogs. The whole month of Dogtober, everything I earn on YouTube, every single cent, I will donate to the local rescue. You're gonna have plenty of links on them. I probably might even meet up with them going out there like I did last year. I did this last year, and I'm a lot bigger channel this year than I was last year. So I'm hoping that we raise them a whole lot of money. I don't ever want anything for myself. I don't have PayPal links. I don't have a mail address anymore. I don't want gifts. That's how I operate. You may see those in older videos that I have, but they're not any good anymore. So I don't expect anything from my subscribers other than that you watch, like, and subscribe if you want. Well, did you come out? This is Miss Tilly. She's been with me about, well, you've been with me about three years now. Yeah, because you showed up right when I was building that addition, didn't you? Yeah, I know. They like to sleep under that building. Good girls. And there you have it. A little mini tour. As I said, a lot of videos on my channel that will show, for instance, building the stairs, the stair railings, when the building was delivered, when I started on the building. I think I got almost 1,200 videos. So the whole history is there. Not the whole history. The last three years. Now I've been here going on 11 years. It'll be 11 years in April. So we are going to try to knock all these out. Don't hold me to it. You know, we're gonna try to knock all these projects out in October. Because I got to have content. Because I got to put a video on both channels in October. So the other channel is the Dog Man. That is my podcast channel. But in the month of October, some of them may be videos instead of podcasts. Because the idea is to make the best videos I can to earn the most revenue for the dog rescue. That's important. There will be videos also on my weight, my weight loss. You think by October, I'm gonna be pretty close to my goal. I got 40 pounds to go. I'm not even sure that at 200 pounds is where I want to be. That may be too skinny for me. We'll get to about 220. And as I'm working out, see what I look like. You know, as long as I don't have a belly, I should be good. I know I always looked my best at about 220. Because I got a bigger build. You know, I was muscular when I was younger. And hopefully I can get that back at my age now, which is 58. So that is a wrap up guys. If you got any questions, let me know. I do thank all the new subscribers for coming in. Oh man, probably 7-800 new subscribers in the last two weeks. That's awesome. I am NOT a Homestead channel. I don't... I used to have a garden. There's plenty of garden videos when I had my garden. But now that I'm eating carnivore, I don't have a use for a garden. Not to say I won't grow one again. But I am NOT your local Homestead channel. Okay, I just do what I do. It's just recording my life with my dogs. And a lot of people have been influenced by this change that I've done. And that's a good thing. And if one person, one person changes their life and loses weight and regains their health, I'm happy. But more than one have done it. More than one. One lady was telling me, she was in bed since November. And she started the carnivore after watching my video. And she was able to walk into church for the first time. Not with her walker, but with a cane and play the organ. Man, hearing stories like that, that's what I want to hear. And you know, if I can influence you guys, great. That's why we're called influencers. I don't know why anybody would ever want to follow anything I do. But they do. Thanks for watching. Happy Trails.