Homestead CLEANUP & Earthbag Progress (Chicken Garden Day 87)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Earth Bag Chicken Garden. It's day 87. I'm your host Ashley Longnecker and this is Jonathan Smacklebottom. Okay guys, that's not his real name. It's not? Good job. Today we are focusing only on this west side, the west side in between the opening. So they're short bags. All short bags. We're gonna do, they're all the same size. Gonna see how far up we can go today. Yeah. But we have a problem. We do. We're only working for an hour and a half today because oh my gosh, when we work all the time out here, we don't have a lot of time to do other things around the homestead. So today you're going, you will be treated to some earth bag and some random chores around the homestead. We have so many things to pick up. There's like 40 little things we got to do and clean up and the wind has blown trash everywhere even though we tried to keep it tied down. Yeah. I found a cement bag like way over there the other day. Everywhere we look is a mess. And it's stressing us out. I'm a little bit stressed. I can't function when I'm in a cluttered area. It's true. So. Feng shui. You've never heard of feng shui? Yeah but that has no point in saying. Yeah it does. Because our space isn't shued funnily. I don't think that's how you say it. Guys we have some things to clean up. So let's just start blah blah blah blah blah. Let's get started on these little bags and see how many we can get done. West side only. West side. Little bags only. West side. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Back up. Let's let's try that again. Guys we're going to be working on the west side and that's it. Tiny bags west side. Let's do it. Guys we have to remember that we got to do cleats. So we're going to do one bag on each of these openings and then we need to do cleats so that everything's kind of locked in again. So that's how many cleats? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Because we're not working on the outside. At least eight right now. Yeah okay so now I did have a comment today asking how with all these openings what is going to keep this wall from you know like usually when you have an opening you have a buttress and that kind of keeps the wall from like moving this way. Right. But they didn't realize that we were putting cleats three per opening. Three per frame. So we have one at the bottom. We'll do one after the next level. Then one at the top. Then lentils will go over and then we're going to do at least two rows of bags on everything else and that will lock everything in and that will come to our buttress and so everything should be super solid. Also these this wall is like crazy heavy so I don't think it will blow up. No it's not going anywhere. So you guys are going to start bagging. Yeah so we're just talking about jobs. I think the girls and I will fill and tamp. The boys are mixing and I need you to make cleats. So I need to make eight cleats. Eight cleats. At least eight. Yeah. Okay. Ready, break. First bag of, no the first row, the first course of small bags is done. Time to add the cleats in. I'm gonna hit the tripod and we're gonna keep going. It's so tall. Look at it. It's about time to get that stool out. Yeah. I don't think we're gonna need scaffolding for this side at all but that stool, that two-foot stool would be nice. Yeah. Welcome back to Tiny Shiny Tuesday where we shine a light on cool stuff. Today's a little different. We're gonna give a shout out to ukuleles because see once upon a time I was in a band and I played guitar and I had instruments around me all the time and then we started traveling. We picked up a couple of ukuleles and our big fifth wheel and I played it and the kids played it. It was lots of fun but then we moved into the Airstream and we had to get rid of all of it because we just didn't have room. Recently it was our anniversary and we went into town, found a music shop and I picked up a couple of little ukuleles and the kids have already started playing them again and I just forgot how much fun they are to play. So shout out to ukuleles on Tiny Shiny Tuesday because they're a lot of fun to play. Time to do some fat bags babe. Fat bags! This feeling moves me every single day I'm captured by your charm Enchanted by your ways In the magic of your eyes I become lost in their spell So come closer my dear Because all is well Oh I hope this feeling lasts Till the oceans turn to glass And the world around us turns in face of black Together we'll hold back the sun In this monster stream of time So we were able to do three bags. Hold on, hold on. We're all business. We're all business. We got to be a little more fun. We were able to do three bags. Okay guys, three bags happened in between each opening which totals 12 bags. That's a lot of bags. Yeah and you know what's disappointing? The height from the top of the bag to the top of the opening is six inches. Our bags average four and a half to five inches which means we might have to put two more bags on. It means that one more bag isn't going to get us quite high enough to be above. Yeah to put the lintel in. Now what we could do, this is an option, instead of doing another bag because then it makes it up even higher and then we have a big gap over our opening, we could just do like a small two by four because we're about an inch off. That gives us an inch and a half. We could put a two by four and then put our lintel on top. You know something we should think about when we build the house is we should try to plan the height of our openings roughly to the size of how many bag courses so that we don't end up in. It's hard to do that. I feel like we've done this a few times. I know but it's hard to do that because sometimes a bag is smaller. A lot of variables. I know, I know. But we know the average. Something to think about. All right so guys we have a lot more work to do around this homestead because it is a disaster. Sure is. We have neglected it for too long. We have lots of things to clean up. We're going to go make a quick list and then split up and execute. What are we going to drink? Oh I thought you were going to say we were going to take a drink and make a list. No we're going to make a list. Well can I drink while we make a list? What are you drinking? Raspberry lemonade with ice. I don't get what you drink. Okay let's go make a list. So we need to check our electric fence. If you remember back a long time ago we put in this high strand, high strand, nine strand high tensile electric fence. This really cool little finch charger down here. However during the haboob the solar panel got ripped off and the connection has been a little fiddly ever since. And sometimes it isn't charging the battery. And so we've noticed some of the baby goats are jumping through the fence and they don't seem like they're getting shocked. So we're going to open this up. We're going to test the battery see what the voltage is at and see if the solar panel has lost its connection again. So this thing just runs off of a deep cycle battery. I'm going to turn it off. And I can see what it reads. Okay this is a lead acid battery. I'm going to test it. It's 13.7 volts so that means it's pretty full. That means that the solar panel is still charging it like it should. So that means that's not our problem. So Ashley has gone to the store to get a nine volt battery for our fence tester to see. We want to make sure it's putting out the right amount of voltage down the line. So this part's good. We got to wait for the next part. Dad you know what time it is? What? Clean up time. At night. Hey! What? It's on your face. How did you manage to do that? Oh dad don't do it. There you go. Don't eat it. It's going to get even more bad. All right next phase is we need to check the fence for anything that might be touching it and drawing that voltage down. But while we're at it we've got trash bags. We're going to be checking all over the property for any sort of boxes or trash that may have blown around in our crazy wind last week. Because I know I've seen it on the ground everywhere. So we're going to break up into teams of two. Jack's going to come with me. Everybody else is going that way. This is our starting point. Somebody's going to go this way. And we will meet back. Actually we'll meet in the middle over there somewhere. Are we ready? A little more enthusiasm. Are we ready? Yeah! First trash spotted. I spotted that before you. Compostable? Compostable. Here let me take the tape off. Keep going. Just a giant feather. I found more trash. It's at the front gate. What is it? Oh! Holes in it. Why does it have holes in it? Is this one of yours? I didn't know we had one of these. That one's not big either. I didn't know we had them at all. Oh I got grass. That's not good. It's like where the wind blows it off. Yeah. We don't talk about this much but it's our compost bin. We built it a while ago. And we just throw all of our food scraps and old cardboard boxes with the tape off of them. More paper towels. Like the full ones. It came undone when I flew off. Maybe there was a cement bag. Maybe even two. Maybe it's the same one cut in half. I don't know. We have a new member apparently. We have a new member. It's supposed to be four point. All right so our problem was this wire was touching right there. And our voltage was down to a thousand instead of like four and a half. So we're going to tighten that connection up so they don't touch and see what happens. Turn it back on and see what happens. Four point. Oh! Four point nine kilovolts. Is that high? It's almost 5,000 volts. Doing it. Come on. You all are crazy. I'm not touching it. Except for you. Do it. No way. You need to know what it feels like. I know what it feels like. No you don't. Yeah I did. You haven't done it. I've hit it before. How many times? Not at this high. I've hit it like five times accidentally. Any children that want to. What if we what if we paid the kids? No. I'm not even getting shocked. Who wants five dollars? Four. That's a four quarter. They're like yeah right dad.