 Morning well it's been a while since we've had videos out so if you've seen our clips the last three clips We're gonna stitch them together into one regular size episode So if you've already seen those clips you might want to skip over this But I don't want you to miss the news that we are gonna be putting out more clips now It's winter as you can see and we have time to make videos So that's what we're gonna be doing every week. We should have new clips and new videos We're making the clips because sometimes I think people want to see just one thing that we're doing And we may get you know wider audience if we just break up the clips into the specific task That's being handled but if you like to watch a full episode who will stitch them all together into a You know a usual week weekly episode like we have been doing so Subscribe like do all that stuff. Please share us with your friends. We're making these videos We'd like people to see them. We think our project to grow our own food this year Is is what that would be interesting to a lot of people. So please if you can think of anybody who might be interested in Hearing about how we grew all our own food this year. Please. Please. Please share us with them. Thanks a lot. Thanks for watching and Stay tuned. I Want to build a chicken hutch or a chicken caravan So I can move them out to other fields and have them dig up the now cut down Vegetable matter so the plan is I'm going to build a chicken caravan, but I need to build it quickly So it's not going to be very fancy. I'm kind of challenging myself to build it out of parts I already have on hand and doing it fairly quickly. So Let's get to work both to record what I did about two hours Try to remember where we left off, but basically so I have these Rafters and then I put these Spurs on top. I'm going to put one more set And then down here I attached a foot of chicken wire On the bottom. I have a half-inch screen So they're dropping will fall through but I'll put some straw down there up here. This is the lay box and I've got a little door here So I can get the eggs once the roof is on In theory, there we go. So I can reach in and grab grab the eggs close that back up So that's up high and dry and dark and then there's roosts down here for them to sit on And I've got a door here that opens and that'll go down when there's nothing like in the way And the cool thing is it's got two feet back here and on the front looks like a wheelbarrow Let's see. It's a little bit turn around in this space, but It's six feet long. So it's not the easiest thing to manure in a packed garage, but For the most part I can just walk it like a wheelbarrow, which is kind of nice and that was the plan all along Ideally I would have two wheels one on either side it would make it more stable So I'm gonna have to add some extra legs here with a little unstable just on the wheel because it's the old rickety wheel But for transportation purposes, it'll be great Here's that door Eggs from Very nice So now it just needs a little more in the rafter department and it just needs to be skinned with a little bit of elect over Aluminum flashing will be good to go and mix up some chicken feet Never mind the noise in the background. It's being ground Into bits of peanut. So what I've got X sunflower seeds This is just ground up egg shells so that they get more calcium and I've got peanuts and this is going to make a Feed for my chickens. They eat about a quarter pound a day of earth But I'm feeding less than that right now because they're eating a lot of greens. So let's start mixing this up Who needs a betting zoo? He's feeding the chickens wood chips. They don't seem very excited about them. I Through the bad tomatoes and already stuff for them to eat The chickens are still in 20 enjoying their time out here in the back 40 clearing the field for me Fertilizing the lodge of nitrogen Getting it ready for next year So what's going on right now is the the mean girls click the the dominant chickens are cleaning up the feed the lower chickens are eating the apple scraps from what yesterday Occasionally one of the higher-ranking chickens will run over and scare them away from the apples Because even though they're not eating them. They don't want the lower ones to have them here she comes Unfortunately, I don't have a horse to pull a plow. So I have to be the horse It's September, but I already have to be putting in the wheat and the rye for next year So what I'm doing is there old potato patch. I am Scratching the surface. I'm not plowing. I'm just digging up the surface a little bit so that I can plant the wheat in in rows and then Pack it back down and cover it with mulch and hopefully next year. We'll have a really good bumper crop of Wheat and rye. This is about a quarter acre. It took me three hours to turn over by hand Obviously, it's not a full plowing. It's more of a just a light tilling So this will be my wheat field for next year I'm gonna plant in different densities to see what works best for the type of wheat. I'm growing which is a heritage breed of wheat It's not a modern wheat And now over here I Still have to plow this all up or till this all up so that I can put my rye in here And I'm gonna till it up today so that my chickens who are on vacation back in this area we'll have time to dig in and Eat bugs kind of turn things over a little better. There'll be my assistance in this area. Hey, Sid. How you doing? I'm going to grow and plant wheat but a cedar traditionally or not traditionally but modern Wheat is sown by having a big Cedar that gets towed behind a tractor and it has you know dozens of rows that it drops seeds down at a regular interval And it'll do a wide swath out of time and you go back and forth I don't have that so I have two options available to me one I could broadcast and broadcast is literally just walking with a bucket or a Apron full of seed and throwing it as you step in each step you throw a handful that way it gets spread out evenly or Somewhat evenly the problem with broadcast is it doesn't get incorporated deeply and evenly into the ground So the seeds emerge at different times The birds get more of them. It's just a less efficient system than a direct seeding and so what I have is This cedar, but this cedar is built for garden vegetables like squash or Beats carrots things like that and what this does is as this turn and I use this in an earlier video Last spring planting up peas and flats This turns turns a little hopper turns little cups and it picks up seeds and drops them at regular intervals They drop down this shoot into the ground at an even depth And then are covered over so it's basically what is pulled behind a tractor But on a single scale rather than dozens and dozens of rows at a time The problem is they don't make these for wheat. They don't make these discs that spread out the seeds For wheat so I have to use the existing ones But I need to figure out how many seeds is it dropping per inch because or per foot because I want to have a uniform distribution of seeds that Is closely conforming to what is recommended and I'm going to try different planting Densities to see what works best and so to do that I'm using the one foot tiles on our floor in our kitchen to gauge seed distribution rates Planting wheat using my little cedar Like I said a tractor usually can do 12 rows at a time, but I can only do one and what I'm doing because I like to Experiment and there's not really a literature out there for small-scale growers is I'm planting at different densities So here I'm planting at about 20 seeds a square foot There I'm planting at 40 to 45 seeds per square foot and over there It's much less. It's a 10 and even four Seeds per square foot. So we'll see how the different densities stack up next year It's it said that when you plant 11 pounds per acre That's ideal for this type of wheat, but Seems really low with this weed load. I might need more To plant I might need some more to crush these weeds And just to be as friendly as we can to pollinators and other insects this strip here is Where I put all the wild milk weed and other seeds that I've had to pull to make this field this year We had them prop crop up around all the potatoes and it was really hard to avoid them When we're weeding the potatoes and things like that. So this year we're next year We're gonna try and have them in a nice to find strip. So fingers crossed that works and now after sowing I have to knock down all of these high points Because the seeds are in between them. So when I knock this down And get rid of this vegetable matter When I knock this down it covers the seeds other thing I've done recently is I built a chicken coop And now the chickens are living back in the what I call the back 40 This is where my corn my potatoes flax and other things were trying to grow I took them all down with a scythe last week, which I think I had on the video and And now I put the chickens in and what the chickens are doing is they're digging through all the soil They're flattening everything out. They're eating a lot of the seed heads from the weeds, which is good They're pooping on everything which adds nitrogen to the soil and generally just being chickens This also gives them fresh things to eat so I can feed them less because right now I'm into feed that I'm making myself and I don't have free access to as much feed as I need so It's good to supplement their food as much green stuff as I can and right now you can probably see some of the roosters The new roosters the white ones running around chasing the girls They've gotten old enough where I just saw one of them mounting one of the hens and that means they're mature enough to butcher So probably the next video or two At the end I'll put at the very end after the credits So those of you who don't want to watch you don't have to but I'm gonna butcher those roosters and Keep one rooster Sid our rooster from last year their father. We're gonna keep him around because he's a big nice boy But the others we raised to eat so we'll be I don't want to be feeding them all winter anyway, so we're gonna Butcher them. I'm speaking of feeding. I'm giving the mosquitoes a bite So I'm gonna get the rest of this rye in right now and then be done for the day And this electric fence over here that I've put up with netting to get the chickens out of the rye field is live So if you watch closely, maybe you'll see me get shocked Let's hope not notice that I'm dragging one of my feet Always the foot on this side. I'm knocking the furrow From knocking the dirt into the furrow, so that I don't have to walk by with the with the rake one more time It's a little slower, but then I only have to go through once There's something about plowing and planting a field and then crossing your fingers that in Almost a year you'll have enough Wheat that you can grind it into flour and make enough bread to last you another year Without the availability of fossil fuels We're kind of making use of a lot of resources that otherwise would just go to waste, right? So I'm out here today gathering wild grapes These wild grapes are growing on apple trees in our orchard that we're taking care of This orchard and these grapes have largely been abandoned and not taken care of and that's why they've been allowed to grow Over these apple trees and in some cases kill them So this year my goal is to harvest as much of the wild grapes as I can make wine and Jelly and then I have to take out these wild grape Vines because again, they're killing the apple trees, which are you know more valuable in terms of Of what we need to survive here, and they'll become more and more valuable as the years goes on as as you know The things that are available to us now Are no longer as easy to get Wild grapes are not your table grapes. They are they have a lot of tannins So they have a lot of Tartness to them is a nice way of saying it and they have really big seeds. They're perfectly good and edible but They're not just something you'd put on the table and eat and so making sugar or excuse me making jam and Wine out of them takes a little bit of a different tactic. I have to take these grapes From the bucket Pop the stems off weigh them out. I need 20 pounds of grapes making wild grape wine Never tried it before but I happen to have the stuff laying around because I bought a winemaking kit So I could use all the equipment to make cider and mead turns out it also works for wine imagine that all right, so Oh Okay, so after I Strip all the grapes and crack and mush them all I put them in a sack and added sugar and water Also, I'll post the link to the instructions I'm following online And then I had to add Camden tablets and those kill the wild yeasts in a perfect world I would just let the yeast or I'd let the natural yeast do their thing But I want to not experiment my first time making wild grape wine So I'm following the instructions exactly so I added the Camden tablets that kills the yeast 24 hours later Then I pitched the yeast Unfortunately, I had filled it up too high and it would have bubbled over so I have a little extra in here and today It is really bubbling And you can see over the night where it must have really bubbled up an inch or two and it's left Residue on the side and this one it's less bubbly because the sack is still in there with all that with all of the grapes So I'm turning it around But the sack is really buoyant because all the yeast is adding CO2 to it So it's been two days. It's going to be another three to five days and then this will be done And now I'm pretty much taking on the same thing again But this time I'm making wild grape jam and the neat thing about wild grape jam is these wild grapes have so much pectin on them That I don't need to add pectin usually when adds pectin, which is kind of a naturally occurring fruit Yes a free a fruit binder and that's what actually makes it into jelly. It makes that jelly Cohesion What do you have to add with these wild grapes just have to pick the stems off Unfortunately, I can't shortcut them like I did with the wine Okay, and now I'll mash up these grapes that I've collected never mind the complete mess down there the young boy has found our Tea hutch and every day he likes to take all the tea out and inventory it because you know gives him something to do And I'm mashing it right now instead of sending it, you know using a blender or Immersion blender because I don't want to bust open the The seeds because the seeds are much more bitter. I just want to get these things Mashed down release a lot of the water so that when I start to simmer these They'll just cook themselves. I'm gonna add a little bit of water probably a couple cups So we've got three and a half Pints of grape jelly with the what was left over so out of ten gallons of grapes I've made five gallons of wine and three and a half Pines of grape now it's time to transfer the fermented Apple juice the early wine young wine into a car boy And that way I can finish fermenting in the basement. It's so purple. It looks fake So that was the extra and now I have the rest the main bulk of my one in this one here But I have to pull the pulp bag out and let it drip out. Yeah Well, that's what this week's episode stay tuned on our channel. We will have new videos out I hope every week now coming up with episodes. Hopefully to cap off the week Depending on how busy we get