Free Compost, Happy Chickens, and the Best Pork & Beans I’ve Ever Made

Come on bud. Let's go. Let's go do it before it gets too light out. Come on. You got it. You got it. I got your sweaters. Come on. The first step in keeping your kids with you and having them do the work on the farm is want them. I want you to go. Good. And help them. Get ready. They're gonna help you. You're gonna help them. It's a happy day for our chickens. They're getting out I'm out of the high tunnel. And outside, we're going to put them on a wood chip job. We have a huge pile of wood chips. It's excess, why not put the chickens on it for them to manure on it, scratch it, let the sun and the rain help break it down, and we'll have compost. And it's in a strategic location. You ready? We're gonna fry this duck for the horse. What? What'd you say? Duck and then fry the duck for the horse. Okay, let's go move your chickens before it gets too light. It's getting light fast these days. Oh boy. We can't just roll them out, Henry. We've got to get through this. The boys put them up last night. I forgot about this. It's been a permanent barrier. It shouldn't be too hard to get down. Are these broody hens? The first thing we've done to a successful move today is last night we put these chickens up so they're confined. There were some surprises. In the nest box, I do wonder if they're broody. We're going to first grab that little coot. It's heavy. I'm going to carry it up to the front yard. Maybe all of them are crowded in there. I can't. Come on. Big place like this. See? They're free. Okay. Can we push that right up against this? Yeah. Let's do it. I'll let you open the door. You stay in there. All right. Stay right here. All right, boss. Third level of responsibility. No, fourth. Bossing me around. You're at the top bro. First level, they go with you. Second level, you assign them a job to do on their own. Third level, they pick a job to do on their own. Fourth level, they boss you around. Maybe if you don't stand there, they'll come out. That's good. Good job. Pin fight. Pretty sure a coop is pretty enough for the front yard. Yarn. Yeah. Take two buckets up here. Okay, how much do you think I gotta do? See that water? The cap gets put... I took it off yesterday. I want so badly to go look at those twins. I mean triplets. Our sheep had triplets. We've had twins before, but not triplets. And we needed that because two of our lambs died. You want to turn it on? Our pretty Shaw. Good for 24, 30 chickens. Beautiful enough for your front yard. Oh don't, don't, don't, don't do that. Don't do that. It's not ready for a hatchet on it. Chick Shaw mini me. The same footprint as the pretty shawl, but more practical. Easier to build, less expensive, not as pretty. I'm just going to hit it a little bit. It gets things done. Here, Henry, we'll come get it after we get the other chickens out. Please don't bang anything fragile with your ratchet. I just do one. I've got to tell the mom. Hey, Mom, Lily, the lamb had triplets. Yeah, I don't know who yet. I've still got to put the chickens out. We're just letting the geese wander. They won't wander too far. They're pretty easy to catch. There's no place to capture them yet. We've still got to move the chickens over, set up their net, get it electrified, secure it, well, get their feed and water. We can relax a little bit once we get them out. They want their freedom more than they want their food or water. You feel better? Yeah. Good. Don't get sick on us, buddy. I gotta go to Africa. I'm going to Africa in a little bit. Part of this is we're getting ready for a trip. It's spring. We got a lot to do. What? What? Oh. Yeah. Come here. Well then come here and help me. Are you really going to make me carry this? Come on. Let's go then. Let's go. We'll do it. Come on. Okay. He'll help if I truck it by hand. By the way, you hardcore vlog fans, we are filming this ahead of time. I'm actually filming these back to back, but we're going to publish them stacked, spread out so you have content when I'm gone. Oh, get in. Get in. I'm going to walk it. Yes, I am. I'm gonna walk it. He wants me to walk it. I don't know I don't know, keep me young. Get their bucket of soaked feed that's in the garden kitchen get an empty five gallon vacuum seal water when you get it over there fill it up with the pigs water you want to take the pool bar off That would have been really handy. I'm still fasting. I think I'm at 48 If I touch you, you can take it out. Okay, where's the pen? Okay, let's not lose the pen. Could take it out and prop up your roof before we go trucking them way over there You can't see. It's through the barn. I think there's some undulation that would be difficult with an electric net. Why aren't we putting them right here? We could still do our everflow water. We could still hook up our everflow water right here, Gideon, Henry, whoever you are. Henry, you can't move pallets, can you? The only thing is, this is a hill, so these wood chips are going to travel downhill. But I think we can put the fence far enough against the creek. That it won't matter. By the time the wood chips get down there, we'll be back and we can pile this back up. You can do the Everflow water or you can help us here. We're going to have to do vacuum seal waterers. It's going to be further. It's on the way to the pigs, so it's not like they wouldn't go out there. Being right here in the front yard, though, don't have to worry about those aerial predators that might be in the forest. I made it so you can drain the overflow waterer and move it. So can you hit that? Yeah, buddy. Okay, once that drains. get a brush and brush it all out okay and clean it out real good what's the hold up you got something heavy okay let me remove that for you we gotta get the pallets out before we put the fence up if i move that can you get the plastic hey our rogue chickens have come inside here should we catch them while we can and then we got to get our net down i'm excited we're catching our what's the chances our rogue chickens would walk around and get back in here and let's be able to catch them You can't even catch that chicken when it's captured. Okay, we've got to get this net off. To put it up. Mom, if you start cutting the zip ties off of that net. Beautiful one's gonna help get the birds out. Then we're gonna go see the triplets, right? You haven't seen them yet, have ya? Wait on me. She's gonna get the net off. Actually, I need one of them. I'm gonna try to put, I think there's two. If there's two, that's all we need and we can use these. Papa's nice. I hate these chickens have to wait, but they have to wait. We couldn't have took that net down before they would have escaped. Could have took it out late last night, I guess. Let's move them down more so that we can put the net more here. This is going to be compact. Howdy you gentlemen. These brown tops, that means these are drivable posts from Premier One. All this is Premier One. We're putting this on here because, watch this, we're gonna have a gate here. We don't step over our fence. The only problem is I drove this in and I need to put it on there. All right, line me up down there when it's time. I'm feeling really good about this. We've about closed the gap enough where we can let these poor chickens out of the coop. Watering down the wood chips, that'll help it break down faster. Anytime you're feeling saucy, you can come out here and water the wood chips. It's still pretty much just wood chips. It needs a lot more nitrogen, water, turning. But my guess is the chickens will have it done. What by July? Certainly by the fall. And they need somewhere to go and you might as well put them to work because they are the hardest workers in the room working from dawn till dusk. They want to work. I feel like the garden jobs are her jobs. So I prioritized them. Got them done yesterday with the potatoes and I just barely eat the vegetables. Well I do like the onions. I do crush the onions and the garlic. Happy birds. It's already trying to get out. Look at that that chicken is obsessed with getting out it's in a new spot pull it away Josiah that's not working are you really scared of the chicken just grab it and put it out I forgot to tell you and this one and this one is the chick Shaw 5.0 It's five foot by five foot will hold thirty-six, forty-eight, sixty chickens. The handle... You've got fat birds, you can't put sixty chickens in there. The handle becomes the prop pole. Alright. Oh, he's getting it on already. This is for the crazy time that the beautiful one wants to clean the coop. Okay, go ahead. We have strategically placed the feed on top so they'll go after it and scratch the wood pile. One last thing, that should be good, oh yeah Becky, you can help with this because we need to brush it out. Okay, get it. There's a little one in Salma. Okay, last thing. Let's see how easy this Everflow water is to move. Okay, Josiah's going to run that through until we've got this blue barrel down there where Josiah is. Come on. Okay, go ahead. All right, we got the Everflow down there. Jill, we've got this blue barrel down there where Joe Ty is. Come on. Okay, go ahead. Alright, we got to Everflow down there. Hopefully our... We have a... garden right hose connected to the uh to the source line we have a connection up there we could build one down here but hopefully our hose is long enough if this Rebecca go with go with Lily go with go go with Gideon Henry Josiah what does he not know his children's names we got that comment once when i was stumbling over their names and they said look he doesn't even know his children's names and i said look he doesn't even have multiple children i've even called them Teddy when we had a house dog. Hey, did it work? Hot dog! We got a mobile Everflow Waterer. We'll have to put the Everflow Waterer. You know, we want to make sure we perfect things before we put in something like Homestead Builds Volume 2. But Homestead Builds Volume 1, Chick Shawl 5.0, the Pretty Shaw, and the Chick Shaw Mini Me. Why don't you go to Amazon and type in Homestead Builds. If you've gotten it, would you do me a solid and just give us a high star? And if you haven't gotten it get it through Amazon. We need to boost our Amazon ranking. That would help us reach more people. I would really appreciate that. So search homestead builds on Amazon. Rate it or buy it. Let's see our first triplets I think ever in Burl Holler. Oh my word. They're smaller. Who is it? Is that Bandy? Show me sheep or is it Belle? So does that mean it's Belle? That's not Belle. Sheep don't know how to count, so she's sad. Oh, this. Two babies over there. We've got two females? Oh, dang it. I'm pretty sure this is a female. Isn't it? I don't see no balls. Yeah, there's your female. Is this a boy or a girl? Hi! Turn it over. All right. Turn it over. I want to see if it's a male or female. It's a ball. It's a boy, so. See, I nursed three babies. It's getting tricky. We need to mark that, mama. On today's Burn It Up cooking show, we've soaked some black beans. We're going to have a black bean and pork Argentine meal. So good. Lily's cutting up two onions for it. Let's rinse them. It's the next day. I forgot to get you an update, day of, but we have, Rebecca has given the broody hen her privacy maybe she'll hatch those eggs would you believe it what New Country Organic sent those totes we ordered yesterday i know the tote is here today we ordered a FedEx of a bag it's here today too that's good service it is it used to be you had to wait a little while on totes but they stopped doing that they're shipping them right away i just love New Country okay rebecca has removed the chick feed we're gonna put in the turkey turkey starter which is higher in protein they may have something else turkeys uh a little more fragile when they're young they'll have to stay in the brooder longer they uh they die more easily turkeys came from you know we have we've had a pretty good luck from the McMurray Hatchery turkeys we don't have a lot of dying try it come try it you did ask for unvaccinated right yeah they don't vaccinate so thank you McMurray Hatchery send us the turkeys we got 20 so that hopefully we'll have 12 in the end um so that we can have We can have one a day, or sorry, one a month. For a year. We also, well, we're going to have more than 12 because we like to give our employees a turkey, too. Employees. Well, that's Austin. Heather. And Heather. We used to give my parents. Okay. Crazy chicken lady has ordered more chicks every year. Look at this turkey. He put his head all the way in and went all the way to the other side. They're pretty rambunctious. Thank you. Thank you, New Country, for sending that so quickly. And thank you, McMurray Hatchery. for sending these chicks they happen to come and just that was one day delivered too boy everything's are going good for us right now that's crazy because they ship tuesday we got them on wednesday afternoon it was like literally 24 hours so that's good so that that will help You know, maybe this is... with keeping animals alive maybe this is shaping up to be a more what less dramatic disaster type of year. Last year was recovery. We don't want any more disasters. This year's regrowth. You're good on disasters. Hurricane. The hurricane. And mom dying. I gotta shut this. So maybe this is a sign. The chicks came in a day. They normally take two days. And the feed came in one day. It normally takes at least a few days. And the broody hen's happy. Oh four o'clock. I shredded it. Let it just soak into all the bits. This is gonna be the... oh Missed one. Missed one. It's going to be delicious. It's going to be my best Argentine yet. How is it? It's the best one yet. Do you need seasoning? I don't know if I put enough salt. That's it. Okay. That's good. Compost in the making and the best pork and beans I've ever made the family. Happy day.