Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
This is where we talk about real life on the homestead, real food and real natural medicine. We talk about homesteading, building community, prepping and survival from a homemaker's perspective. We do our best to provide real and practical, old-fashioned solutions to modern everyday problems with a positive outlook on the future.
Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
Ep. 18 Farm Automation So We Can Vacation
Ever wondered how to juggle homestead life and vacation plans without a hitch? We've got you covered! This episode of Keeping it Real at the Gorham Homestead is packed with our personal stories and practical tips on managing a busy homestead while gearing up for an exciting family trip to Colorado. Get an insider's update on the raw milk industry, learn about the minimal risk of bird flu from local dairy farms, and join us in the anticipation of attending our niece Charlotte's wedding in beautiful Steamboat Springs. Tee also shares his recent fishing adventure, and we discuss the installation of our brand-new sprinkler system and the ongoing progress of our pond project.
In a community effort that exemplifies self-reliance, we teamed up with friends from the Self Reliance Festival to relocate our smaller chicken coop and a heavy dog kennel, making our homestead more efficient than ever. Hear about the strategic moves we made, from using a tractor to optimizing livestock and compost management. We also delve into the wonders of automation with our new Wi-Fi-enabled sprinkler system and our amusing wish for an automated weed eater. As we embrace technology to ease our workload, we share our thoughts on balancing upfront costs with long-term benefits.
Efficiency and organization are the names of the game as we recount our adventures with a new battery-operated weed eater, including some unexpected mishaps. Learn how we've optimized our property layout, from moving chickens closer to water spigots to organizing feed supplies and setting up new coops for our turkeys. Beyond the homestead, we touch on the joys of canning workshops and the importance of medical training, sharing personal anecdotes and upcoming family celebrations. Don't miss out on our heartfelt reflections and invaluable advice—this episode is a blend of laughter, learning, and life on the homestead. Happy Fourth of July, and keep it real, y'all!
Today's Sponsors:
Rogina, LLC in Lakeland, FL - RoginaConsulting.com
Hermitage Embroidery Works - HermitageEmbroidery.com
Hamilton, Gorham & Duncan, PLLC HGDLegal.com
Here's the link to the new wifi enabled garden timer: (it's not an affiliate link as of right now)
https://a.co/d/0ihKzlmc
TheGorhamHomestead.com
Hey y'all, welcome to Keeping it Real, the Gorham Homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in our Tennessee homestead. I'm your host, Dawn Gorham, and today is Thursday, july the 4th, 2024. You're listening to episode number 15. Today's topic is going out of town, like what we're doing in preparation for getting the heck out of Dodge. First off, I want to say thank you to our awesome sponsors.
Speaker 2:Our first sponsor of the day is Regina LLC out of Florida, and they are your mold specialist. If you suspect that you might have mold in your home, in your basement, in your office, anything like that, they are the people who you want to call and they will come in and test and tell you exactly what you are dealing with and can recommend what you need to do from there. Our other sponsor is Hermitage Embroidery. They are located in Hermitage, tennessee, and they are our go-to for all of our embroidering needs, all of our merchandising things of that nature. They are veteran owned and operated. They are a wonderful family business, they are friends of the podcast, they are friends of our family and they are just good, freedom-oriented people and that's who we like to have as sponsors for our podcast. So that is our sponsors of the day.
Speaker 2:You missed one I missed one. Hamilton, gorham and Duncan, your full-service law firm located in Bellevue, tennessee, out in Nashville.
Speaker 1:Hamilton, gorham and Duncan has never said that they would sponsor me. Just for you listeners, I've been sponsoring her for 20 years.
Speaker 2:We're a sponsor. You've been sponsoring me for 20 years huh, probably 22. Oh shoot. So we have T on the show today. It's been quite some time since T has been able to join us. He has been busy making the money so I can spend it, and he's been busy sponsoring what we got going on. So just first off, just a quick little update on what's going on in the raw milk world. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in on a nationwide it was a Zoom meeting talking about what things are coming down the pike with raw milk, and it was several different people from different locations in the country, all being raw milk producers, and there was a lot of good information that came out of that meeting.
Speaker 2:And I just want I don't want to go too far into the weeds with that, but I just want to remind you the bird flu. While it, you know it could be a scary thing. Who knows? Who knows if it's something that's been engineered somewhere and it's worse than any bird flu that we know of. I don't know, but what I do know is that the likelihood of you getting sick with the bird flu from drinking your raw milk from your farmer is really low. So don't freak out about that sort of thing, just continue doing what you're doing, and again, because you can get sick from stuff that you get from the grocery store and don't let the fear mongering, you know, drive you away from helping out and sponsoring and giving your money to your local people, your farmers, whoever that might happen to be. So no, no, no, it has not been. To my knowledge, there has not been any instances of bird flu and dairy cattle in tennessee so far at all. So there's that.
Speaker 2:So we're getting ready to go out of town. We are going to be um, going to Colorado for 10 days, picking our son up from wrestling camp and driving on from Missouri to steamboat Springs, colorado, staying there for a week just kind of checking the place out. There's a wedding on Saturday Our niece um. We love Charlotte. We're excited that Charlotte's getting married. We're excited to be part of that.
Speaker 2:I think it's cool that it's in Steamboat Springs. I've never been there, and so what we decided was to make it our family vacation and just kind of check out the area and then end it with the wedding, come back on or start leaving on Sunday, heading back to Tennessee. It's probably going to take us two days to drive back. So there is a lot that has to be done here to get ready. I mean, t's got to get things ready at his office to go out of town. I've got to get things ready here on the homestead. I've got to get things ready for my customers and my business and the podcast, and beyond that we have things that we have to keep alive. So what are we doing today?
Speaker 1:What are we doing today? I went fishing. I caught a bunch of smallmouth bass.
Speaker 2:You want to talk about your fishing. I know that you're just dying to work that in there, aren't you?
Speaker 1:I just caught a lot of bass this morning, and that makes it a great day. Happy birthday, america.
Speaker 2:Happy birthday, america. Stay defiant y'all. I don't know, but it was built on defiance. It was the original people who said, no, we will not comply. And all of those people had guns and we won. That's the end of that story 248 years old.
Speaker 2:Very good. Yes, 248 years old, so we are installing a sprinkler system today. Yeah, um, up until this point, um, of course, I'll give you a pond update. I hate to back up and I'm all kind of all over the place today, but pond update is that we had um several people come. Oops. Rules in the studio are do not have your phone turned on. I silenced mine.
Speaker 1:You think you have to turn it off in court all the time? I wouldn't know that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 2:So anyway, so we're trying to get ready to have our pond dug, and that consisted of having to move a lot of stuff and we didn't realize, like I had said in a previous podcast, like how much stuff was down there until we embarked on this big old project and so, but we, yesterday we were able to move the rest of the poultry netting and get that put around the garden and so hopefully that will keep the chickens out, because we had previously moved the chickens and it took them all of about 30 seconds, after they were moved and saw the garden, to figure out how to get into the garden and how to eat all the green beans, all of the squash, all of the watermelons and all of the pumpkins Gone Down to a nub.
Speaker 2:So we've hopefully got that little problem fixed for now, fixed for now. And this week T and some of our friends from Self Reliance Festival or Self Reliance Group, our homesteaders group, were able to finish moving the chicken coop, the smaller chicken coop that we call the junior high and the dog kennel, and that was a process, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Thank goodness we had that Is that all you got. Well, I will say this thank goodness we had that, all you got well, I will say this thank goodness we had a tractor too, to kind of pull that coop. But yeah, I thought the dog pit kennel which is very heavy, was going to be a major problem, and I mean eight of us picked it up and just walked it all the way across that was like the coolest thing to see.
Speaker 2:It was almost reminiscent of an Amish barn moving. Like you know, they say many hands make light work. We had a bunch of well-abled, well-bodied men able-bodied men, you know, in some of these I mean, some of y'all are older but you're still in pretty darn good shape for your age. And so those guys out there 40 and up were moving stuff and they got the chicken coop up on the tractor and it had wheels on the back so they didn't have to lift it a whole, whole lot, they just kind of had to guide it. And we got that over there and got that in place. And then they came back and they got the dog kennel and they just picked the darn thing up and just carried it from the lower barnyard all the way to the front of the house, got the dog set up. And the goal behind that was that we want our farm sitter and us because we're trying to set things up for ease of use to be able to do everything in one place. So the cows are all behind the the um and the pasture and we milk on the porch and everything to do with cows is right here. Everything to do with chickens, poultry, all of that sort of stuff is in the front, and now our compost pile will go there, the chickens will, we'll be able to turn it for us and then we will be able to open all that up to the garden. Once the garden is done, we'll be able to, the compost will be right there, we'll be able to put it in the garden, and the goal is just to kind of keep everything a lot more compact, streamlined Streamlined, that's the word I was looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what we're doing today in preparation for leaving is we are installing a sprinkler system, and I know you're not supposed to water tomatoes from the top, but at this point I am desperate and I do not care. We're watering tomatoes. However, we can water tomatoes Right, yeah, god does it too. So and plus, we have hard, we have garden cloth down, so it doesn't get quite as much splash like from dirt like it would if it was just in dirt.
Speaker 2:Um, so we're doing that and we have this really cool automatic timer that is hooked to the Wi-Fi and I will be able to just tell A-L-E-X-A to water the garden, and I can set a timer and it has four different zones If I want to water one part of the garden for 20 minutes and another part of the garden for another 20 minutes if I want to do it at three in the morning, if I want to do it, however, I want to do it, I can do that. I can set those schedules on my phone and I can automate that. And while I love to know how to do things by hand and manually and the old fashioned way and blah, blah, blah blah, I've done that. And as we get older, t and I want to keep doing what we're doing, but as much as we can take off our plate by automation, we're definitely going to do that. Even if the upfront cost is a little bit higher to me, it's worth our time, don't you agree?
Speaker 1:we need an automated weed eater oh, the weed eater man.
Speaker 2:Oh, the weed eater man. So I tried weed eating with my new handy, dandy, battery operated weed eater that is lightweight for women, and it came with a saw blade, which I thought was so flippin' cool. So I got out and I was through the little trees and through the little shrubs and through the little bushes.
Speaker 1:The back story is my weed eater quit running.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to help. That's why I wanted a weed eater.
Speaker 1:It wasn't because yours was broke, but we went a couple weeks without weed eating before I finally just bought a new one.
Speaker 2:Now we both have weed eaters. Now I've got three weed eaters, right, but I'm not allowed to use mine anymore. I have been exiled from the weed eating process unless it is an open field of nothing that I can damage.
Speaker 1:She weed eats like she backs up a vehicle. It's dangerous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just sort of willy-nilly and so I was weed eating and I thought I was doing really good and I wanted to help and had the saw blade on and turned around with the weed eater in my hand. The saw blade I'd let off of it, but the saw blade was still spinning and happened to catch the tire on the Polaris. And let me just say a saw blade on a weed eater will slice right through a tire of a Polaris, yes, it will. So now we're going to have to order new tires. We needed new tires anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a way to find a way to drive. Exactly, it needed new tires. We needed new tires anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a way to find a way to jump. Exactly, it needed new tires. I was having to put air in one of the other tires every single day. They'd lost so much tread that it would spin out in the grass. So now we're getting new tires the hard way.
Speaker 1:That's right. Based on the negligent operation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I also sliced through a really perfectly good. Um, yeah, and it was one of those industrial water hoses, not one of the cheapos from walmart. It was like 50 feet long and the super made out of like good year tires or something. It was a really good, good one and I and I didn't even know it, like I was in the little holding pen just trying to take down some stuff in there and never even noticed it, didn't even realize it until I turned on the water the next day and it looked like Old Faithful was going off in that little holding pen.
Speaker 1:Public service announcement. Those industrial hoses do not, they lose to a skill saw. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of how that played out. So some of the things that we've done we loaded up all the feed, went and got tons of feed this week and we will stage everything so that Honeybear does not have to, hopefully, go get any bags of feed and load any bags of feed. Everything should be staged at its location. We have moved the chickens over to where an actual water spigot is. That's big, that's huge. Yes, I mean we had to run like 300 feet of water hose at least to be able to water them down where they were, and that's the area that's about to become a pond.
Speaker 2:So now that they are in front of the house, the one of the previous owners of the like 30 of them that there were, um, had the chickens in front of the house and had the water spigot, and so it just kind of made sense to move everything over there. Um, the water spigot's right there and the garden is right there. Whoops, I keep hitting my microphone. I'm so there. The water spigot's right there and the garden is right there. Whoops, I keep hitting my microphone. I'm so sorry. The garden is right there and so we can water everything like in one fell swoop, and it has saved me 30 minutes. I would say in the mornings yeah, I mean you had to turn on the spigot up at the barn walk a half a mile.
Speaker 2:Right To the lower barnyard.
Speaker 1:Lower barnyard. Well, you'd have to do another connection and you know, then you'd have to fill it up and then you'd have to walk all the way back. I mean, it's not a pain in the winter, but it sure is in the summer.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely, and I think that will help when it comes to winter, because I also have my son-in-law is coming in the next couple of weeks to give us an estimate on running us some power down to the lower. We have no outlets anywhere on the outside of our house, so in the process of getting some outlets, he is also going to run us a little power outlet like you would have at a campground, just on a stub down to the lower barnyard, so that if we need to, um, and the chicken coop is actually wired for electricity, it already has all the wiring and stuff in it with. Yeah, which is possible. We may need to get that checked, but so anyway, hopefully we can get some power down there, and when winter hits, if we need to use heated you know, water tubs, the stock tank heaters, all of that kind of stuff, it'll be much easier and more manageable, and so I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:Anything else.
Speaker 1:No, I just think again. The key word is streamline. That's going to save a lot of time and energy with everything we do, and if we can get the electricity down there, that makes winter easier as well definitely the?
Speaker 2:um. Other thing we've done is we've bought a couple of cheap coops off of amazon. They're like metal runs and they have this really cheap, um, chicken wire kind of thing. It's even thinner than chicken wire, excuse me, but it's serving its purpose and the dogs are in there and we have. I got one that was even longer, that's 20 feet long, for the turkeys, so that they have their own kind of place to go and be, because they need to be fed separately from guineas and ducks and chickens and all that kind of stuff, just because they're on a grower.
Speaker 2:So hopefully, one of the other things that we hope to get done, um, before we go out of town, is to get that coop put together, because we have one that's is it 10 feet long? Maybe the smaller one we put together 12 feet, one's 12 feet and one's 20? Um, so it'll be, it'll be better and and all of that is looking much better. So I don't know, I don't know if we'll get that done or not. That's not a do or die to be out of town, but it would make honey bear's life much easier to have separate spaces. So and I will put in my show notes the link to those, just in case you ever want them.
Speaker 2:We are going to go back and fortify those with hardware, cloth, cloth just along the bottom, because if a raccoon I mean, it'll keep out aerial predators like hawks and owls, I guess, and things of that nature. But if a raccoon or a weasel or a fox or any of that stuff wants in there, they're going in, they'll just slice it and go right in. So we've got to fortify that. But I do still think, for what it cost, that it was worth the money. I mean, even if it's just temporary, even if it just gets us through for a year or two before we can build something more permanent. And again, I'm leery now of putting up permanent things. Just because I was 100% sure that that lower barnyard was where I wanted everything, I was ready to put up that permanent fence and then we were actually in the thought process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually had stepped it off with John Witherspoon. He was going to come bring his auger. We were going to start on the fencing and then I realized that that's, it didn't make sense, that it was the perfect place for a pond, so all of a sudden that became pond. So that's what we're going to do with that. I don't know. I think the pond update people coming to help move the coop. We did have our.
Speaker 2:We had our um homesteaders Alliance group meeting this past Sunday. Our comms conversation was about food freedom and the laws that are coming down the pike. There was a lot of great, great conversation and we did have some interesting people that had never been here before, um show up from the Libertarian Party. One of them is going to be running for a really big office in two years and we wish her well. But their interest in being part of the conversation really made me happy, like it made me happy that they care. And I don't know you know it's going to take all of us coming together to ever to make these laws more farm friendly, to make these law more more food freedom friendly. But just having more awareness I think is huge and the more people that talk about it. The more people who push it, the better chance that we have of being more like Maine, and that is our goal is to be completely open. Food freedom like Maine, trying to think, I guess that's it. Oh, and my workshop we had our canning workshop on Saturday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a good class.
Speaker 2:It was a really great class and I think every time we do one it gets better, don't? You think I do too. It gets easier, it's more refined, faster. Yeah, we got through it really fast on Saturday and there was some great questions and the main thing I guess about canning is just to start and to follow an approved recipe, whether it's in the ball canning book or, um. You know one of those.
Speaker 2:The national centers for home food preservation is a really great resource to go to. It's a great place if you have a question. You can put corn in the search and it'll tell you, um, how many pounds of pressure for how long and all that kind of stuff. So that's a great place to go if you don't have the book and you're just wanting to can something. We did green beans on Saturday and it was just so awesome to look around the building and in everywhere you look there are people talking and they're breaking beans over a bowl and they're just they're fellowshipping and, like I have said before, there's just an energy that happens. They're making a connection with each other, exactly.
Speaker 1:Some of these people exchange numbers.
Speaker 2:Right, did you feel that? Though? I felt it. You felt it. Yeah, it was like if you ever get a chance to go to a workshop, I don't care if it's mine or anybody else go to Nicole's, go to Self Reliance, festival workshops. Anytime you're learning something with other people, there's a bond that gets created.
Speaker 1:Remember when we were training, when we got our license 10 years ago or whatever?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, we're still friends with those people.
Speaker 1:You know shooting with people and learning everything that you had to learn back then, when you had to have a carry license. I think that's a great way to that's the best way to learn when you learn with others who have kind of the same goal in mind and it's sort of the same.
Speaker 2:You're like-minded people. I mean, if you're in a canning class, you're probably a food freedom type person, I would think you better be Right, right. Just always follow proper, safe canning methods. That's my.
Speaker 1:I need that on a t-shirt or stamped across my forehead or something I think the big thing you tell them and we've seen people do it in the past is go home and do this yes, put it in your back pocket, wait for a year, then you don't remember anything right a lot of people call. I remember a big mama called you know. Hey, I did my first pickles oh, I know I loved that.
Speaker 2:She sent me pictures too. Her and her little girlfriend were were making pickles in their kitchen and you know these are some highfalutin ladies. Now she's, she's, uh, tammy's a a good, um, kind of bougie girl, but she was so proud of herself and she, as far as I know, they've continued to make their. They don't do a whole lot of other stuff, but they like making their pickles, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean you know she's, they're well off. I mean her husband owns the scoreboard and a ton of other bars. He called me. Well, he's in the hooligans with is with me. But he didn't call me at one of our meetings. He was bragging about how much his wife learned and how excited he was. Yeah, she was making pickles the way he wants them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, home food preservation is my jam. See what I did there? Oh yeah, you didn't catch it, did you? Oh yeah, so anyway, that's pretty much all we got going on. I doubt very seriously that we will have a podcast next thursday, because we will be in the great state of colorado. We'll probably be stoned because I can't do that, but I might find something I can eat some ground, some brownies, some brownies or something I don't know, just to. I don't know. I have a fear of how that would make me I've seen, seen too many.
Speaker 1:You know people eat a whole cookie and then they're like they can't move. Yeah, they're like Jabba the Hutt it ain't like the stuff we had in high school yeah.
Speaker 2:So I feel like I would be like Jabba the Hutt Just a blob, have a panic attack. Yeah, that would be me.
Speaker 1:I will say I am looking forward.
Speaker 2:Sunday we go pick.
Speaker 1:On our way to Colorado. We go to Moscow Mills, missouri, and pick up our 17-year-old from a four-week wrestling camp.
Speaker 2:They've heard about this camp. Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm just I'm excited about picking him up. I just I never thought I'd miss him as much as I do.
Speaker 2:Oh God, I know.
Speaker 1:Plus, I need him to cut the grass.
Speaker 2:Did you see that video that they put out? I saw one where they were going through the. No, there was a video and all the kids are lightened up in a row and all you see is the boys and all of them at the same time say that grass better be cut. When I get home You've had four weeks.
Speaker 1:I can assure you it'll be neat to be cut. Oh yeah, it's dry right now.
Speaker 2:Ten days. Yeah, I don't know if I told y'all or not, but my bees have absconded so we are down to one hive of bees. That's another kind of update that we have going on Commercial bees.
Speaker 2:The commercial bees that we got from the commercial beekeeper and I didn't realize until after I got them home that commercial means that they're trucked all over the country and rented out. I thought it meant you just produced a lot of honey and that's not what that turned out to be. So my bee mentor told me that probably what happened is that they were just going to leave. Period Wouldn't anything I could have done about it, because I had plenty of room for them. I was feeding them, I was doing all of the things and they just left. But now my ones that I got from a bee's closet they are rocking and they're very, very docile. Like I can be out there feeding them in shorts and flip flops and a bathing suit top. They don't bother me, they don't get upset. Um, I talk to them while I'm out there and let them know what I'm doing and I think that helps.
Speaker 1:but commercial bees are just a whole lot of pissed off. They just are mad they were mad.
Speaker 2:They were mad, mad bees. That's what, and I'm kind of. I know you are glad they're gone. Got stung 12 times in a period of about two weeks, yeah, but we may as well have taken $300 and set it on fire Because they didn't stay three weeks after we got them here. About a hundred bucks a week, yeah, that's what it cost me. So anyway, but that's okay. So anyway, but that's okay. I know it's a lesson learned and unfortunately that's how I learned. My lessons is the hard way.
Speaker 1:Failure as a professor.
Speaker 2:Yes, and God knows I've had plenty of professors. Yes, I have Suffer Lights Festival. We are still in planning and tickets are available on the website. They are $50 during early bird pricing and the family price is $150, I believe it's either $125 or $150. That's new for this year. So no matter how many little kids you have in tow, you can get in for $150. And I think that's been a hang-up for some people in the past, so hopefully we will have a great turnout.
Speaker 2:If you want to be a vendor at Self Reliance Festival, it's a great place to come and sell your products, sell your service, whatever it is that you have you network. It's just a great, great community to become a part of. So if you want to be a vendor, you can also fill out that form on the website and that will put you in touch with me, the vendor manager. Now I am also the volunteer coordinator, so if you'd like to volunteer at Self Reliance Festival for a free ticket and a t-shirt, reach out to me and let me know that I can get you hooked up with that and if you volunteer, I mean you're not going balls to the wall, working all the time you get a lot of time to, and it's four hours.
Speaker 2:It's eight hours total for the weekend, four hours per day, and so I can put you at the parking. I can put you at and you're just directing people where to park. We can put you in registration, we can put you in, you know help and set up for the vip dinner. There's tons of fun things that you can do, so just you know, let me know if that's something that you think you might be interested in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean a couple years ago. I was voluntold.
Speaker 2:You're always voluntold, but now I mean, I feel like I like it more every time I go.
Speaker 1:I look forward to it more every year, every twice a year. I think this one's going to be great. The ticket prices what are they after the early bird? 75?.
Speaker 2:I believe. So yeah, they go up to 75.
Speaker 1:And what were they last spring?
Speaker 2:95.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's cheaper. I think John Willis thinks it's going to be the best one ever.
Speaker 2:I hope so. I hope so. I think it's shaping up. To be for sure, we got some great speakers. Jack Spierko from the Survival Podcast is going to be back, of course. Nicole and John Bear Independent will be there. Just a lot of great self-reliance type people, freedom-oriented people, who just have a lot of good information to share. So if you've ever wanted to meet those folks or ever wanted to hear them in person, just to see if they are what they say they are, which I promise you they are.
Speaker 1:That's a great way to do that. Yeah, we learned at Homesteaders of America that some people aren't really what they say they are.
Speaker 2:I will say I hate to say that because I was so excited about going to Homesteaders of America, but there were a couple that I was really excited to meet that really let me down like in who they are in person. Of course, there's a lot of people there. Homesteaders of America has what was it? 10,000 people. When we were there, I think 10 was the max, I think they had 10. And so I understand there's a lot of people there, but you can still don't have to be a jerk and you still I mean Joel Salatin's, the godfather, and he's not a jerk.
Speaker 2:No, god, no, he's amazing. Yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:But there were some that you realize they're Hollywood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all fluff, it's all. They're not really. Some of them are living the life and some of them started out living the life, but now they have people doing the work for them and they're videoing and that's pretty much all it boils down to. Like today, like here, it's just us, it's me and T. We're doing it. I mean Monday through Friday, from 7 am to 8 am, whatever time I get down here to the time T gets home. It's just me. Like it's me by myself, and so you can do this. You don't have to have an army of people employees, which would be nice, wouldn't that be nice? We need a rip. Yeah, I thought you were my rip. Yeah, poor man's rip. Mm-hmm, that's what I. You wouldn't take anybody to the train station for me.
Speaker 1:No, sir, I'll take them to the Turkey.
Speaker 2:Creek. So anyway, yeah, so that's what we're doing and when we get back we have let's see. When we get back, we have a cpr class scheduled here on july the 20th. That class is 35 and it's taught by one of our local firemen, richard honeycutt. It's part of what we're posting on dixon county homesteaders alliance group. And on july 27th we have our next upcoming canning class. It's also a beginner's canning class and then on August the 10th we have Chuck Peebles from Homestead Medical coming. I am so excited I have wanted to do this training with Chuck. He always comes to Self Reliance Festival and people always do the training with him and his class is full and it's wonderful and I can never do it because I'm always working Right and we have all his meds, I mean we.
Speaker 2:We have all the gear.
Speaker 1:I want a medical bag, and then last year we bought the $300 deal. That was just that box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It's a box of goodies. We got the. We got the box of goodies. We don't know what the heck to do with them. Some of them I know how to do. I know how to put the band-aid on. But when Chuck comes in August he said he's doing something with our class that he has never done before.
Speaker 1:I don't know exactly what that is. My understanding is a lot of his classes are what you do when help is coming, Like when you know an ambulance is on the way tourniquets. This one is what you're doing when help isn't coming.
Speaker 2:Right, that's the theme for this one, for sure.
Speaker 1:You're not preserving, you're saving a life trying to keep someone alive.
Speaker 2:Right, it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1:I hope we never use any of it.
Speaker 2:I hope we don't either. But you know, you just never know, like, especially if you're out on a farm or a homestead, things can happen, like with tractor implements, or you know you're trying to shoot a rooster in the lower barnyard and you accidentally shoot your wife or your foot or your dog or whatever kind of need to know how to handle a gunshot wound or a you know a big laceration or open wound or a sucking chest wound. I mean there's lots of things that could happen. And when you're far out, like we are, I mean we have an emergency room that's fairly close, but some people don't. And if the world were to collapse and God forbid, please don't let that happen but if it were and you don't have any form of medical training and bad things happen, you don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:And this also continues on after just stabilizing the patient. It's also how to care for them afterwards, like if you're setting up a sick facility or you're setting up an infirmary, basically, and your compound or your farm or your homestead or whatever. But beyond that, though, he said there's something new, cause he he typically does teach them what to do if help is not coming, but he's teaching something new with us that he's never he's. He's incorporating some new material, so I'm excited about that. I don't know. And we have to be able to put on a tourniquet blindfolded, which, yeah, I can't. I have no sense of direction. If I close my eyes, I run off the road. So I can't imagine if I'm going to be able to put on a tourniquet blindfolded.
Speaker 1:Most people run off the road when you close your eyes.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just, I'm like serious, but if I look to my left my body goes to the. You know, it's just anyway. I'm just saying it'll be fun. I'm really excited about it. So if you are interested in signing up for Homestead Medical and want to come to the class, we still have two spots, I think, available. We pretty much booked up fast, but I think we still have one or two spots that we could slide somebody into if they really really wanted to come. So that's what we got going on there. And then in September we will have my home apothecary class. I'm not sure of the date right off the top of my head, but we will have that in September, and then that will be the end of our season. We have a wedding. Our son Blake and Erica are getting married. That's September the 14th.
Speaker 1:And we're having a shower here on the 3rd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, feel free, they want money. Yeah, so they did not register anywhere. They just want cash. So I've never heard of that before. But yeah, honesty is the best policy is the way I look at it. I mean, they're, they want a house, that is all they. They have stuff. They've both been through college, they've both lived on their own for quite some time, so they don't need dishes, they don't need cookware, they just need money for a house. So that's what, what that's. We're going to get together and put money in a bowl. I don't think we're going to get a down payment, but you know, every little bit helps, all right. Well, with that, I have gone over Self Reliance Festival. I think I've pretty much hit on all of our topics. Is there any other topics that you that are on your mind? Anything going on in the world? That's making you crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean the political. Oh, there's nothing we can do about that. I don't want to talk about that. That's in the political show. I'd like to tell you all about the first bass. I caught About three pounds.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give him his minute, y'all.
Speaker 1:First cast. It was five pounds when I caught it, but I'm going to be honest now.
Speaker 2:It was about two and a half to three.
Speaker 1:But just a great way to start the birthday of America.
Speaker 2:Murph, come back to us. I'm listening. Sorry, go ahead. That's all I got. Oh, sorry, I was looking at the calendar. It's all about the bass. I thought somebody broke in here and put their wedding date on our calendar Because I saw Kayla wedding and I was like who's Kayla? I know I forgot I should. I know, I know, I don't know what I was thinking. Oh, congratulations to Uncle Tommy Ducklow.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, uncle Tommy retired after he Retired after he's an optometrist, but he had a big retirement party.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was so much fun I did not get to attend, but Dawn did. Yeah, that's all right, I represented.
Speaker 1:I was in an 11 and a half hour mediation. So when I got out at 830, I called Dawn and she was like I've already left, yeah, and it ended at nine. It was from five to nine, but congratulations, uncle Tommy.
Speaker 2:Yep, at any rate, happy, happy retirement. Uncle Tommy Ducklow, we love you and you have been a fabulous eye doctor and thank you for keeping me where I can see for the last 22 years.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm shocked he's retiring because Kayla's their only daughter and they are. I'm assuming this will be a throw down blow out.
Speaker 2:It's a big Jewish wedding man.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know I think we're putting them up in the chair and busting the glass. It's going to be fun. I'm excited. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'll be wearing a.
Speaker 2:Yamaha, a Yamaha. Well, when in Rome you do what the Romans do and we, you know it's their thing, so we're gonna do what, what they want us to do, all right. Well, with that we're gonna close this out and we will be back with you in two weeks. And I do have miss joy hennercoff scheduled for our um essential oils on the homestead talk here in a couple of weeks. She and I just had some scheduling trouble trying to get that handled, so she will be my first official interview. So thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 2:I hope that you have enjoyed today's podcast and it would be really great if you would subscribe and leave me a review, because it helps other people to find my podcast and it helps me to grow. And so you can find us at the Gorm Homestead dot com and on all the socials at just the Gorm Homestead. Whatever you're doing today, y'all, just remember to keep it real. Happy 4th, happy 4th, see y'all. My daddy was a guitar picker playing all the local clubs and my mama was a waitress where they parked M18 wheeler trucks. We didn't have much money. Times were kind of hard, living in a trailer on the edge of grandpa's farm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I may not come from much, but I've got just enough. As long as my baby's in my arms and the good Lord knows what's in my heart, I refuse to be ashamed.
Speaker 2:It's just a southern thing.