Practice English Speaking&Listening with: HOMESTEAD UPDATE ~ HOW IS EVERYTHING HOLD UP AFTER THE BOMB CYCLONE

Good morning Modern Steaders! Let's get the fire going this morning.

We got a couple of inches of fresh snow last night. It looks so beautiful out there!

I'll be going outside in a minute.

But first let's go around inside and see what we've been up to this week.

We have...

We have our concrete drying from our concrete

countertop pour that we're making for our

built-in desk.

We have it all barricaded. We didn't want Figaro

(Yes, you Mister.) walking all over the concrete and getting stuck in it while it was curing.

It's not quite ready to come out of the forms yet, but we

signed our names in it. Olivia signed. Made sure she signed Pluto's and Figaro's names.

If you haven't seen the video of us making the concrete form and pouring the concrete I'll put a link to that playlist right here.

See! That's why we had to have it covered up, Figaro! We knew it you'd be all over it getting stuck!

One of the other things we've been up to is, we've been working on growing fodder with barley seeds.

We bought some barley a while ago and tried it. I never had luck with it. These are the original seeds.

I let them dry out.

Because they're garbage. I had him out here

for over 10 days

with seven of them trays going. Nothing! And this is what happened the first time I tried fodder, and that's why I never

did anything else with it. So, it was like a big failure, and I stopped trying to do it.

Which I should have never given up. I should have pushed through and kept trying and tried some different seeds.

That's what I did this time and let me show you. See how good it's coming?

And we just put these seeds out the other day. Bring him out in the light.

And they are starting to sprout! The

first time I tried growing the fodder

I went out online, I went to a company, that's what they do, they sell sprouting equipment and sprouting seeds.

I bought a one or a two gallon pail of organic non-gmo sprouts and followed the directions with no success!

So, I wrote it off as a failure.

This time I tried their seeds again, and it still didn't work, but I wasn't giving up. I went to our local feed store

and I ordered

organic non-gmo organic

barley feed seeds, which is the 50-pound bag

from the local grain mill. Put them in some water, and they're doing great!

So, I'm assuming that these have been sprayed with Roundup at some point in their life even though

they were said they were non-GMO and organic.

There's no way

that something didn't happen to him because not one ever sprouted for me.

We still have a lot of experimenting to do with growing fodder

but now we know it can it'll start sprouting for us! That excites me!

And I can't wait to get growing more of this to feed to the pigs and the chickens!

This is really gonna up our game with feeding our animals the best food possible

for them so in return they can feed us the best food possible, for us!

Let's go check on the cave and see how it's going.

Awesome!

We got our Coppa, a capicola and our prosciutto hanging.

Boy that just looks

beautiful!

We started curing the Coppa and the prosciutto here in October during our three-day

pig-harvesting class. This April, we're gonna be doing a three-day pasture to plate whole hog

culinary class here at Lumnah Acres with Andy and Doug

from Hand Hewn Farm. We're only gonna be selling eight tickets to the class,

so, we're gonna be having a lot of hands-on experience

and we're going to be learning a ton and just upping our culinary game by learning how to preserve

so much great food and making so much great food. I hope you join us there.

I'll put a link here and in the description down below to find out more about the class.

The vents in the cave have been working awesome. I opened them up a little bit the other day. It's been warming up a smidge

outside so we want to make sure we have good cool air flow.

It feels like just yesterday I was thanking all the modern stutters for reaching

17,000 subscribers. We just reached

18,000 subscribers! Thank you! And when we reach 20,000 subscribers,

we're gonna be doing our Yard Bird Chicken Plucker giveaway.

And this is the chicken plucker we'll be giving away. It's in the box ready to go.

We're just waiting to hit our goal of 20,000 subscribers.

If you'd like to learn how to enter for your chance to win the giveaway

I'll put a link here and in the description down below for the giveaway.

You ready to go outside? Come on.

We've been working on

finding a great bread recipe lately.

And we've been cooking it in our Dutch oven. We have an older Dutch oven without a lid. We were on Amazon the other day,

and they had these large cast iron dutch ovens on sale for 27 bucks with shipping!

I'll add the lodge Dutch oven to our Amazon store, and I'll put a link to that in the description down below.

But we can't wait to make sure we have a good bread so we can make some

amazing

BLTs this year. We're gonna be using heirloom tomatoes and

pasture-raised bacon that we cured and

smoked here at Lumnah Acres. You think that it's cat food, Figaro?

You ready, Pluto?

Look how beautiful it is! A little bit of fresh snow on all the trees!

The chickens are doing good. They're not laying very many eggs right now. Hopefully their egg production picks up soon.

Where's my handle? I put it on backwards! There we go.

Don't know why the chickens always think they need to get pedicures.

Not fun when you gotta go to the store

once or twice a year and buy

the best eggs you can buy from the store, but they're still not as good as your own.

You girls need to up your production!

I'm hoping the fodder will help with that.

Yesterday afternoon, while it was a little warmer out, I

fixed the broken pig fence. I let the pigs out, they ran around being boneheads.

They walked right over to this corner. You can see their tracks.

And stepped right over the fence. So before I let them back out

I need to add another strand of fence because the snow is so deep!

But they were having fun running around again. Good morning, girls.

How you doing? Better if you were out in pasture, huh? But you jump over the fence! We can't have that.

This feeder's been working great.

The pigs will dig out the snow and get their feed.

I'm so glad me and Olivia took the time and built this last spring. It's come in so handy and the pigs love having

a continuous amount of feed available for 'em.

Pluto just lovin' the snow. Huh, Pluto?You love the snow don't you?

Do you think Figaro's in the window keeping an eye on us? Look at your beard! You're all frosted up! Look at me.

There's Figaro sitting in the window. We're outside and you're inside, Mister.

The Outdoor Kitchen is waiting and ready for our next Pig class.

It's actually a lot warmer in here than it is outside. I can't wait to start using this again once the weather warms up a bit.

Maybe we can have a sledding party soon and have a bunch of friends over and

keep some coffee and hot chocolate warm on the wood stove.

That'd be fun!

Don't forget to sign up for your chance to win the automatic chicken plucker.

We're gonna be a 20,000 modern steaders before you know it. Thank you for that. The link is down in the description down below.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow at Lumnah Arcres, a guide to modern homesteading, self-sufficiency, and freedom. Bye.

Here the woodpecker Pluto?

You're crazy. You're crazy. Let's go.