Big homestead projects are happening!

You guys, this morning we have so much going on already, but first I need to tell you about the week that we've had. In the last couple weeks, we have made a major decision regarding our homestead that is going to change a lot. I'm going to share all the details on that later in this video, and then more to come as things progress, but it's a really big decision. I'm excited and nervous and all kinds of feelings about it, and I'm going to pick up, I guess, where we left off, but also update you guys on, you know, what's been happening along the way. First up is my garden. I'm going to take you out to the garden and show you the progress out there. I actually have a couple garden beds I need to put together today, and then a few more trellises, and then it will be completely done and ready to plant. Technically, it's probably ready to plant in, but I have been holding off because the weather forecast had a few nights in the mid to low 40s, and for some sensitive plants, that's just way too cold. So, when I say way too, it's not way too cold, but it's cold enough that I'm like, I want to take no chances. So I moved all of our seedlings. They were inside on the floor for a long time, and I realized I got this little greenhouse on Amazon for, what was it, like $15, maybe $20, and I used it last year during the winter to try to keep some plants alive. Turns out it wasn't quite enough to keep. I think it was like a tropical, like, mini banana plant and some other things. Actually, this mulberry was one, and it did, it kept it alive enough that I saw the danger on the other ones, and I was able to bring it inside and save it, and it's, it has rebounded, thankfully, but I bought it for that purpose. It's been sitting empty, and I realized why do I have a bunch of plants on the floor in my house at night and then outside during the day when I could just put them in this greenhouse and zip it up. The heat from the day keeps it really, really warm. Like, when I open this, it's like, you can feel the heat coming off. So yeah, they're kind of thriving, except for a couple cucumbers that are getting the most sun on that side. These two babies here. So I have all of these guys ready to get transplanted this week out the garden. Oh my gosh, mistakes are being made. John, help me. Oh my god, mistakes are being made. Okay, that's got water in it. So I'm going to take you guys out to the garden, show you the progress there. I've got a few more beds to put together, and then I need to move some mulch. My dad needs his trailer back, so we need to get everything off of that with the tractor, which, funny story, I learned how to drive the other day. I'm not the greatest, but I'm not the worst. So I will take you guys along while I try to move those things, and then John is going to knock out a project, I hope, that has been on my list, my little punch list for three and a half years now, and I've tried to do it, have never been able to do it. I'm hoping he can get it done. So we'll see about that, and then later on I'll take you guys down to a different part of our property to share some big news. Hello, Winslow. Hello, Everleigh. All right. I told you guys that I wanted to do two more of those beds so that we could do more arches, and VeggieGo was awesome and sent me the corner panels so I can finish those beds off and at least have half of my raised beds, my like long-term plan of raised beds, half of them will be complete. Okay, so that is everything I need between those panels and this box to do two more of these. One is going to go here, and then it'll have a trellis from here to there, and then one is going to go on this side. So you guys have not actually seen our trellises yet, which is very exciting. Ignore this cattle panel, it will not be living here. There'll be one, two, and then a big gap here for the entry, and then three to another bed here, and then four. And these are going to be used primarily for growing cucumbers, different varieties of cucumbers and pole beans. And you guys might notice these back beds look a little different. I think last time we had just had the topsoil in. I actually did go buy some Daddy Pete's raised bed mix to put and top off all of these beds with maybe an inch or so of that, just to give them something with a little bit more nutrients than just the topsoil. Although clay usually has, it's just very dry and it cakes together, but it's not devoid of nutrients for the most part. So we'll see. Next year we're going to pivot and improve things. Next year I plan to try to till this in and then just add more compost, add more quality raised bed soil. I'm really anxious to see it looking green and a lot less brown, but we're working with, you know, the weather, we're working with the time that we have with our family. We have eight kids, so, and a lot of other projects too. So we're kind of doing what we can do as we can do it. And that's the beauty of, I think, gardening is learning that that kind of patience and taking things one step at a time is completely abnormal for me. It is not the way I've operated my entire life. So it feels really refining and refreshing and peaceful and restful and challenging all at the same time. But so far I am loving it. So while she's working on that, I'm going to tackle a project of my own, something that she specifically has been just like wishing and begging that we could do something about, basically since we've been here. North Carolina is where we're at. And I know many surrounding states have the same issues we have, and that is red clay. It's everywhere. It surrounds our home. And because we have eight children, it comes in our home and it is on our floors, but even more so it is all over our concrete, all over the walls of the outside of our house. It's something that we've really had a hard time controlling. We kind of just were like, you know what, at this point, it's just, everything's going to be orange. It's just the way it is. Our concrete patio and porches, orange, everything's orange. And we have a power washer that we actually bought at our last house. And it was one of my like first homeowner maintenance, big kind of purchases. And I loved it. I loved using it. It worked well at our last house, which also had, you know, clay around, but it wasn't as to the magnitude of what we're at, where we're at now, the amount of concrete we have, the amount of patio and porch spaces we have that are just covered with it. So when Giraffe Tools reached out and said, Hey, I want to send you a power washer. We both were like, yes, please. We need something a little more heavy duty than what we got to get the job done. Because also our power washer has just over the years, it's not, it's on its last leg. Let's be honest. It's got holes all through the hoses because we're just dragging them all around the property and they don't wind up easily. They kind of are just sagging around and getting drug into the dirt and across rocks and probably getting run over by cars and things. And so water is just like spraying everywhere. Like all the, all the connections are missing like O-rings and stuff. And so it's like, okay, it's time to do something different. So we're going to try out this new power washer from Giraffe Tools. And I'm going to see if I can get this place looking nice again. So first things first, this porch needs to be cleaned up, tidied up a little bit. It's looking a little crazy. Got the pizza oven back here. We did a pizza night a few nights ago and cooked it out here. And so stuff's just kind of like getting cluttered and it's kind of turning into, you know, the, the porches you see that just have stuff piled on top of them. That's becoming our porch and I don't want it to become our porch. So I'm taking care of it right now. Gotta get him out of here. Just kidding. Sorry. What the heck's going on? Are you playing? You can sleep, but you're probably not going to want to stay up here for too much longer. What does this even go to? Brad, what's this go to? What bend does this go to? Brad, you're in my shot, bro. Come here. Come. Go that way. Thank you. Now go. So Giraffe Tools sent us the Cross Falls Ultra. It's a retractable pressure washer, which I'm already loving. The biggest complaint I had with my old power washer and basically any other power washers, they have so much hoses and cords and things that are just getting in the way. They're not easy to store. Even when I roll them up and put them on the little storage thing on the back of the pressure washer, it would just fall off and be all over the place in my garage. The 50 foot hose is also really nice because I can get the places without having to move the pressure washer too much. Another really cool thing is that you can mount this in your garage. So if you're not really using this, except maybe on your driveway or sidewalk in front of your house, or to wash your car, you can mount this right in your garage and that way it's like completely out of the way, which is really, really nice. But you can also get the mobile kit, which is what we have. We like it that way. We want to be able to take this all around the house. We have the back patio. We have a lot of areas that can be, that we can use this. So I'm really excited about the potential we're going to have with this. I'm really liking it. It's doing a really good job out here. And I think it's a really, really nice pressure washer. So I changed into my clothes. I was wearing like this cute outfit and I was feeling good, but it's like a white cream colored shirt you saw. And once I started filling up the dirt, I realized that was a mistake. The shirt was brand new. So I changed into my comfy clothes, my sun tanning clothes. So once I started filling up the dirt, I realized I had better change out of the white shirt. I am almost done. This is the last like of the two beds that I added. We built them, filled them with logs, like decaying wood, just like the other ones. I added some of our not quite finished compost over there, which is like wood chips, chicken manure, cow manure, some greens, but to the very bottom. So it's going to be away from the roots of the plant. So even though it's not all the way broken down yet, it's not going to affect it. Now I'm adding wood mulch compost, a pretty good layer of that. And then what I've done is mixed up the last of our topsoil that we got, which is like really nice and loose, but it still has quite a bit of clay in it. It does have sand, which is really helpful. I've just been taking kind of what's left of that and flipping it over to make sure it's nice and loose because this has been sitting out here for the last couple of weeks and we did finally have rain for a couple days. So I'm just scooping up. You can see how it's really wet under there. I don't want to put that in my garden bed like that, so I'm adding it to this wood mulch and kind of using the wood compost to further break up and loosen up the soil. It also obviously adds organic material to that soil, just making it even healthier. Oh, it's heavier. It's heavier when you add in the dirt than when it's just the mulch, but that's okay. So then this is my next layer. This is why I'm married. Just kidding. But it is nice. I could be a strong independent woman and still recognize when it's nice to have a man do things. That was so much easier. All bag? Most of it, not all of it. So I'm adding this Daddy Pete's Plant Pleaser. It's like a local soil and soil amendment company. Really good stuff, like organic. This is all organic raised bed mix. So I added like a solid, I don't know, two inches on top. So everything will go right into that, grow down into everything else. I already put that on here. It's so dry. I need to water everything, but, um, and then I'm adding some worm castings to everything. And yeah, so the last thing that we need to do today is get these last two trellises up and that'll be good. That'll be, that'll be everything I think that I want to do before I just start planning this week. Okay. So most people use T posts to secure the cattle panels. These are 16 foot cattle panels and they'll put T posts on the corners. That works and it's great and it adds a lot of support, but I knew we were going to put them between the beds and I just didn't like the look of the T posts. So I found these on Amazon and they are just like steel, like trampoline stakes, whatever yard stakes, J hooks, I don't know, whatever you want to call them. They call them all kinds of things, but they were pretty inexpensive and they're pretty solid. I went with shorter ones. They have really long ones. Um, but this is what I used to secure these. There's just one in each corner and I love it because I think the look, like it's still really secure. The thing's not going anywhere. So it's still really secure, but you don't have that look of like green and white T posts everywhere. So. All right. Check it out. Wow. Wow. Wow. It's funny because, because we didn't finish it all. Yeah, you can see this is what it was and still is. Baby steps, but that this is night and day difference. Good gracious. Like this looks new. This looks normal to me. Yeah. It's wild how. It's so red. Yeah. Honestly, that is, it is much nicer to look at, especially from a distance. I feel like up close you can see where there's still spots and stains, but like far away, it looks totally different. Yeah. Like it looks totally different. And I wonder if you guys have any tips on what we could use that might be natural. I really don't want to use bleach on everything, but I'm wondering if hydrogen peroxide might be an option, um, to kind of like brighten up some of that and get rid of some of those stains, you know, it'd be nice. Cool. How was using it? It's really nice. It felt very powerful. It felt powerful. You know what I like about it is this. I do. I do. Yeah, that's one of my favorites. I am excited too, because they actually sent us. All the kids must have thrown the hose back on. They sent us the retractable hose reel too, which I'm waiting for John to hook up on that side. That'll be my garden hose, like garden hose attachment only for the garden. That way I don't have to worry about them taking the garden hose over to fill up animal water troughs. It's just going to be something I can like pull out, go water everything, and then retract right away versus laying across our driveway. That actually is how, hold on buddy, that's actually how our other hose broke is it was like laying spread across the driveway. I guess we ran over the like part that screws in and bent it a little. Um, so it's just, you know, it gets old replacing hoses. So it's going to be really nice to have, like that retraction thing works really, really well. Oh yeah. So I'm actually really excited to have that same thing in a garden hose. We will put a link to Giraffe Tools and a discount code for you guys in the description of this video if you want to check out. They have power washer, retractable hose, they have a wall mounts retractable vacuum cleaner, which we plan to get so that we can clean out the car on a regular basis. Lots of things like that. Now I want to go show you guys what I got done over in the garden. Well that is going to be a wrap for the day. Um, it is like, I don't know, after 7 30, probably almost eight o'clock. I'm just now finishing. Didn't even get done everything I wanted to do out here. We still have this big pile of mulch compost on my dad's trailer that we need to get rid of and not get rid of, use, move off of the trailer so we can move the trailer. We did get the rest of our wood chips put down on the back. There were some areas where it was like thinned out. Yeah. So this is where I'm pinning it for today. We have gotten both of those additional beds, but I did get those beds assembled, filled, and then our trellises. She ain't perfect, but she's mine and she's been a lot of hard work, lots of sweat, tears, some blood, and I love her. And John does too. He's nodding. He doesn't actually, but he loves me and that's good enough. So here we go. That's it. And with that, I am going to call it a day. I am so exhausted, but stay tuned. I'm going to walk you guys around the property later this week and share our other major project that has been kind of sidetracking everything. That's why like I'm baby stepping this partly rain, partly supplies, partly time, but really our focus has been on something else entirely. And it's, it's more than I actually have the energy to share right now. So sorry about that, but stay tuned. We love you guys. We will see you next time. Good night.