WHAT'S NEXT? New Projects + Waterproofing Plaster (Chicken Garden Day 151)

Hey, guess what? We don't know what day it is anymore. Okay, so we're back at it again, but we're kind of stuck with the problem. Yeah, so yesterday we put, well, over the last few days, we've put three test plasters on the back wall here, but we don't know which one we need to do. Yeah, we have the eight to one, the six to one to one, and then we tried an eight to one to one yesterday. So far, you really like the eight to one best. I like working with it the best, and it cracked less. Yeah, which is surprising. I would have thought the lime ones would have done better on that front. I don't know if the lime ones are harder. I can't really tell. I can't really tell a difference. Also, we were really rushed on the eight to one to one because monsoon was coming in. Right, yeah. And I didn't get it as thick as I would like to have. So I do know it cracked more because of that. So many variables. There's a lot of variables, yes. And today would have been a great day to put plaster on because it doesn't look like it's gonna rain today. We don't wanna make that decision until we have stress test the plaster. Yeah, so we're gonna use our cement sealer that we have that's basically like a water glassing solution with lime, and it's specifically for concrete mixes. It says earthen plaster on it too, so. So we dilute it with some water, and you have a little pump sprayer, and we just spray it on. And so the plan today, at least for the first part of the day, is we're just gonna go ahead and put that in on all three mixes. I'm gonna do at least two coats too. Oh yeah, multiple coats, yeah. And that's gotta dry at least 24 hours before we can even do any tests. Right. So there's not gonna be a lot of earthbag chicken gardening today. No. Unfortunately. But, like we mentioned the other day, we do have a couple other projects we're starting soon, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to give you a little sneak peek of what's coming next. Just a little. Just a little bit. We'll be doing, of course, much more in-depth videos for all those other things eventually. I think it is good, because we've been talking about it, but it's been very like, you know, wishy-washy. Like we haven't said exactly what it is. So I think it'd be good to give people an idea of what's coming, because things are about to get crazy. Yeah. So let's go ahead and get this sealed, and then we can go look at other things. Yeah, it'll be fun. Let's do it. All right, so this is a four-part water, one-part sealer, right? Yep. All right. Nine-nine. You gotta move. Move, bud. You don't want to get sprayed. Okay, this is really interesting. Look at that. This is the one with the lime in it. It is... I don't know what it's doing. There, look at all those cracks. Well, it's not soaking in like it did here on the eight-to-one. Like, it's really strange. You think it's because it already has lime in it? I don't know. No idea. Let's see what it does here. It's not as much because it has more soil in it, I guess. Still like a lot of fine cracks there. Tiny, tiny cracks, yeah. Which, any plaster's probably gonna have cracks. Like that, you know? Looks better than that. Yeah, the six-to-one, I'm really shocked because I thought the six-to-one-to-one would be the magic. I'm just still worried about it. Holding up long-term? Holding up in the rain, yeah. Well, I mean, it rained the other day, and where it was dripping onto the eight-to-the-one without any sealer, it was fine. Sure, but drips aren't the problem. I know. 50-mile-an-hour rain is the problem. So this side is the eight-to-one, six-to-one-to-one. Yep. So let's see the difference. And I feel like it's sinking in. Like this, it just feels like it's running off. You can see it just running off. Well, that's, I mean, it makes sense because it has lime in it. Yeah, I wonder if just by putting this on the eight-to-one, we're adding the lime after the fact, almost like a lime wash. Yeah, exactly, yep. Are you sure that has lime in it? This? Yeah, the water glassing, so, okay. It's just like water glassing eggs. You can use this to water glass eggs, and you would use lime to water glass eggs. But you can just see it running off this. Well, that means it's already waterproof then, right? If the water's running off of it, I mean, isn't that like the idea? I don't like the way it looks like that. Like, that makes me nervous. No, I agree. I think it's weird looking. So it's all an experiment. We're learning as we go. Yeah, I think this will be good. I'm interested to see what happens tomorrow when we come back and we take some high pressure water and we spray this to see if we still see all these fine, tiny cracks, or if it ends up looking more like that, or if we don't see any of that and it just runs off because it's got a waterproof layer. I don't know, but I love the look of the eight-to-one better. Like, that looks so much better. Let's let this dry and then I'll come back with another coat. Okay, projects that are coming up. Project number one, the berm and the swale, the main berm and the swale. So we're gonna have multiples on the project. Now, if you don't know what that is, make sure you go back and you watch our permaculture video where we have Rudy on and we explain all the plans for our property, but also we actually explain the purpose of the berms and swales. They will catch flowing water, but they'll also will plant trees on them. They'll provide wind break, fire break, lots and lots of like good things. And we'll get into that more in a later video, but we actually already have the first one cut in, believe it or not. Ta-da. We found out that another one of our neighbors actually does this stuff like for a living. And so we hired him to come out and cut this first big berm. And it goes from this back corner of the property the chicken gardens right over there. And then it goes all the way to the other corner. So we worked really closely with Rudy, our permaculture specialist to, this is on contour, but we also made a lot of sort of in-place modifications to go around as many existing trees as we could. So we didn't tear them up. Also, you notice this is huge. Most people, when they do a berm and swale, it's not nearly this big, but we've sized it for 100 year event. So our neighbor was able to do a lot of this work for us. He went down almost 18 inches. And then this is about a seven foot swale. And then the rest of the dirt got put up in the berm. And he was actually able to put his tractor up on his side and pull the dirt because you want a certain slope on each side for the water to flow in and then to soak in, right? So he did a lot of that work for us, but we are gonna have to come back and do a little additional work by hand. And that is what hopefully we'll be doing with Rudy in the next couple of days. He's gonna come back and help us make sure we know exactly how to slope this to get the measurements right. After we get it sloped, then we can start looking at planting the trees and the berms here. We can look at seeding the berms as well. And we're gonna have to run irrigation. Like it's a whole massive, huge project that we're just getting started on. But we've already had a few rains and we've already seen this thing fill up, which is pretty exciting. So a couple of things that we'll get into more detail later, but just real quick for anything like this, you wanna have a spillway so that in the event that you do have like a 100 year rain and it's like three to four inches and it fills up this whole thing and it starts trying to overflow this massive berm, which could actually happen, you have to create a spillway. And so that's what this is right here. And we've planned all this so that the water will flow into here and will flow a certain way down the property based on the contour. This also will feed into something else, which we'll tell you about later. This whole area is gonna be really tricky. We didn't wanna destroy this beautiful tree. So we had to kind of cut around it. Also, we have an electrical line that runs from the shed over to near the water pump is over there. So, and he could only get so close with his massive tractor to the shed and the tree. So we're gonna have to do some of this by hand here. The last part of this puzzle was that we still needed to be able to drive up past the solar shed and this swale was gonna go right through there. So we got a culvert and had them fill it in so we can still drive over here. And that will segue us into the next big project because we have to have access to this area up by the solar shed. The next big project is one that we've been talking about for a while. We are finally gonna put a permanent cover over the airstream. And we're gonna move the airstream because where the airstream is now is actually where the house is going to be. Now, these things are all connected together because that big berm and swale that we put in is also going to help us determine exactly where the house will go based on where that cut in. So we can't move forward on the house until we do these two big projects, right? So what we're gonna do is we're actually not gonna build something ourselves. What? We're not building it out of earthbacks. No, we're working with a company. We're doing a metal truss, almost like a carport, right? It's gonna be a gabled roof. That way we can shade the sun coming from both directions early in the day, late in the day. So it'll just essentially be a roof. That way we can still see out the airstream. It still has nice views. That doesn't mean it'll be a simple project, of course, because we don't do anything simple. We are going to pour a cement pad to install this metal truss building into. We also have to run, rerun our electric from the shed up here. We've got to install a water catchment tank. So we're gonna do gutters on that roof, install a water tank, and then another solar water pump like we have down there, but it'll only be for the airstream. We've got to figure out a way to deal with the gray water that comes out of the airstream. It's gonna be a big project, guys, a big project. But we have officially ordered the materials for the metal building. We're getting on the schedule for the cement pad to be poured. This will be a little bit weird because up to this point, we've kind of done everything ourselves. And this one, we're getting the building delivered, and then we do have to put it together, but we're also getting the cement pad poured by somebody else. It's just weird. But we've got to get it up quick. It's too hot. The airstream's got to be under the cover of shade because it's too hot right now. Now, part of the Berm and Swell project is planting over 100 trees. I think we have 104 that you guys have bought. And so we'll be installing those once we get this Berm and Swell. All the handwork done for it. And then we'll get the rest of our trees. We did get half of them, and we have had a little bit of a loss. I think we've lost four. So we'll be replacing those. And yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be a fun project to plant that many trees, but that also means we gotta figure out irrigation for that many trees, so. Yeah, lots of drip irrigation. Also, I mean, I think realistically, not every tree's gonna make it. No, probably not, but we'll do our best. That's all we can do. We're following directions from people who have done this before us, so hopefully it'll all work out. Okay, bye-bye. Here, get my hand. Need some water? Tarantulas are back. Hey, wanna wrap up with me? Yes, you do. Okay, guys. Today has been a weird day. I feel like we're gonna say that a lot from here on. So maybe we should just say, guys, it's been a day. Yeah. Here on the homestead. Uh-huh. Oh, you know what? We didn't go back and do the second coat of spray. We gotta go do that real quick. Right now? Yeah. Okay. Aida, come on. So this has dried since we put it on, and it still looks like crap. Not happy with that at all. It could still be drying. I'm not happy with it. Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and do the second coat anyway, and then we'll see what it looks like tomorrow after it's had a full 24 hours to dry. Right? Yeah. Okay. Now we're gonna wrap up. Yeah. That's what's in tomorrow. Yeah, it was really good. Yeah. It's right to the point. Yeah. Right to the point. See, we don't even know what day it is, so we don't know if we'll see you tomorrow or what we'll be doing tomorrow. I'm so confused. But that's okay, because we'll see you soon.