Risking it for the biscuit.

Hey there darlings, welcome back to Roots & Refuge. First order of business today, we are ripping out and turning over this high tunnel. This high tunnel was the spring and early summer high tunnel for 2026 and so now it is going to become the fall and early winter high tunnel of 2026 and will be torn out and it will be the summer one of next year. So that's kind of the way we alternate. And right now I'll show you kind of what's going on in here. We got a lot of odds and ends stuff. Like these are actually awesome carrots. They're going to be really huge. They'll still be usable. If nothing else, I'll juice them. These are volunteer peppers. These are actually probably habaneros, maybe habaneras. That'll probably be the guinea pig to figure out which one they are. Lots of weeds back here, volunteer peppers. These are gladiolas. So this is actually going to stay because this is a perennial bed. I've got a whole bunch of celery back here. More volunteer peppers that we can harvest as we pull out. Mostly what is in the rest of this is volunteers. We probably have a few odds and ends beets. There's some zinnias growing, basils growing, but I didn't plant any of this. This is all just coming back from last year. These are Tabasco peppers and of course I've got Tabasco peppers over there that I did plant this year. I don't really need them, but you know these plants can go to the chickens and a lot of these things will end up in the compost. I mean some of the stuff's usable, but I'm not necessarily concerned about trying to salvage every single bit. A lot of it can go to the animals or back to the soil in the compost. Hey guys, so Will's here. Hello Will. The boys just got down here. We're going to use many hands and make light work of this. This is a tote. I'm just going to put some water in this and as we harvest these carrots and then the beets that I've got in here, we're just going to cut the tops off and throw it in the water so they can start soaking. South Carolina summers are not a good time to grow carrots. These are just left over from the spring. Some of them have started to go to seed. If these were out from this 50% shade cloth, they would have all gone to seed at this point. Getting them in cold water immediately is going to help them stay a little more crisp and make them a little more usable. So yeah, we're going to get to work. I forgot I did have a little section of golden beets. Nice. The flavor on those beets is not going to be the best right now because it's been so hot, so I'll probably pickle them because then they'll be in a brine with like sugar and vinegar and you won't notice so much that the flavor is not super sweet. I'm pretty sure there's a gargantuan carrot right here. It may be multiple grown together, but let's see. Oh yeah, that wasn't as satisfying as I thought it was going to be. It's got a big split in it. Yeah, that's not good if it's split. But you know who would really like to have that? Who? The cows and the horses. Okie dokie. My camera's overheating and we are a little bit too, I think. Not really. Under the shade cloth. I mean it's hot and it's extremely humid out here, so we're all soaked, but it's not as bad as it would be if we were out in the sunshine. You got all the way in it, Maya. This is what you call getting into gardening. Well, I have to buy more clothes more often. I tear them out pretty good. It's nice having the help. Oh, look at that cute little one. I'm gonna name that one Toby Jr. Ben, you want to show me what you're doing? Here, I'll follow you. You're cutting the leaves and tops off with carrots and putting them in this water. Ben said, does anyone want to play bobbing for carrots? It's actually going to make them stay way crisper. But you have to, you can't cut right here because with a lot of stuff going on out here, it's like a brain and it could cause an infection if you cut right here, so you have to cut a little bit above it. Nice. Thank you. A wing of a butterfly. All right, this was an accidental experiment that I'm going to share with you guys because it's actually kind of interesting. Right here, this is celery that I sowed from seed and I sowed them pretty close together and there were quite a few little weeds coming up here and I was kind of having a hard time weeding this space because the celery seedlings are tiny, they're like minuscule tiny and anytime I was pulling one thing up, you know, the others were coming up with it and I ended up leaving it thinking I'll thin it later. And well, the weedy pathway of the garden is lined with good intentions. I never did come back and thin this out and so this celery grew really close together and so each bunch is very small, like let me show you one of the stalks like this. Now, they still taste good. I would even say they taste great, like not a flavor considering they're growing and yeah you can even smell them, like it's really strong. Now, I took some of the little celery, I freeze dried a whole load and then I took a lot of the greens and I ground them down with salt and dehydrated in my oven to make like a celery salt but one thing I noticed is I did have some celery that I did like space appropriately and the stalks got big, like more like what you would expect like what you get at a grocery store and the thing is is I harvested those but one of them I didn't get to, I was like I'll come get it later and it went to seed so much faster, also in a high tunnel. It was the high tunnel next to this but I'll be obviously very comparable because it's like 35 feet away from here. I'm wondering if how crowded this celery is helped it go later into the summer because it's so, it's shading the stalks and the roots so much. We're just pulling the clusters out and Ben is going to do a similar thing here by trimming just that very bottom part off to get most of the soil and the roots off and then we're going to go ahead and cut the tops off because while you can totally use celery leaves to make seasonings and stuff, these are ridden with pests since we're so late in the season so we're just going to toss them and go ahead and put the whole thing in the water so that it can get good and hydrated before I take it inside and I'm thinking what I will do with all of these thin stalks. Once I take them inside I'll soak them again in like some salt water, make sure they're good and clean and then run them through the food processor, make a dice and I may freeze dry some more or I may just freeze them. Toby brought Gus out when I started to walk towards the house to go make lunch. He was like I'll go back to the air conditioning. He's like you're crazy it's hot out here. Gus go work man. Go get the work done. Hey y'all. It's been a couple days since the first part of this video. It is afternoon now. Just started to rain. Sky's still pretty blue so I'm hoping it's not gonna rain hard. Taking a gamble. Walking out here with my camera. We did get the high tunnel fully cleared but I wanted to show y'all what was going on. Of course I've got to go the fig tree way so there are snacks for my journey. Cheers. Oh no. I think I made a losing bet. Hold on. Oh yeah that's heavy rain coming. All right well Maya's truck is over here. I can put my camera in. Hello sheep. Hello cows. So this is Fraulein and she's going to her new home today. We're taking her down to our friends Jason and Robin. Maya and Ben are out here loading her up. Freya's overseeing. All right Ben. Get that bucket of feed around to the side of the trailer. What are you doing little lady? Come on. Grab it. Shake it. All right the rain's getting too hard. I gotta put the camera in the truck. There's Christmas Carol looking pretty. And nosy. All right she's loaded. Was that harder than you thought it would be or what you expected? That's what I expected. Yeah she hasn't ridden in the trailer a lot. So Fraulein was born here. She is Fern's first daughter she had here. So when we got Fern and Freya they had been artificially inseminated by a Jersey bull. So she's an A2 Jersey and she had Ozzie which is the bull calf we retained that's half Jersey half Dexter. And she is now re-bred to Beau and she is going to Jason and Robin our friends Big Bear Homestead. They were some of our first friends we made on YouTube back in 2018 when we started. So they live not too far from us less than two hours and we're gonna take her down there and thankfully this thunderstorm cooled it off considerably. She would have been fine but that is a black trailer and I'm always like poor little baby angels. I didn't feel fine until the rain came it was really hot. I was perfectly fine getting rained on. All right well let's go get a dry shirt and then we'll drive to Georgia. Losing my grip. All right I'm just gonna stand here and finish my peach before I walk down there because I'm gonna drop something trying to carry all this. My sister-in-law has been freeze-drying fruit for snacks because you know Harlow's four and she's just loves having little snackies and freeze-dried fruit is a really great one because it tastes like candy once you freeze dry it. And I have been wanting to freeze dry some figs but I didn't have I know I wasn't gonna have enough to do like a whole lot. So I just walked out into the kitchen she was cutting stuff up and I was like can I have one of those trays? I'm gonna run to the garden but I grabbed a peach on my way out so I wouldn't be tempted to eat all the figs I found. I got these peaches from my neighbor around the corner he stopped by here I don't know probably about a month ago when I was still like in the peak of having tomatoes when we were still just harvesting like you know 150 pounds a week or something like that and he asked if I'd be interested in selling any tomatoes and I don't typically sell stuff I love trading and Jeremiah told him no we'll give you some no worries you know and he said well I'll tell you what he said would you trade me for some peaches? I'll have a bunch of peaches here in a few weeks and I was like heck yeah so he brought me a whole like bushel box full of peaches and they're so good. Okay hands are free enough I'm not gonna drop my camera. Unfortunately if I were holding a big juicy peach in my camera and I lost my grip on it I wish it wasn't this way. I wish my logic would be to save the camera but I've tested it unintentionally. I'm holding my coffee I'm holding food and I go to drop them I always like catch the food. I can let the very expensive a nut that my my camera equipment could feed my family for at least a couple months and I mean on a roundabout way it kind of does but uh yeah I always catch the food so let me just pause and oh hey girls oh y'all haven't seen my other new little goatee girl that right there is Indy. Oh don't be rude. Muffin, Chloe and then Calypso back here. Muffin is a little bit she's probably the most dominant on the yard but my two little new girls are so cute adorable. So the fig trees get a lot of bees and buzzing things on them so I'm probably gonna be a little bit sissy about this. When they get even a little bit overripe the wasps and the bees start messing with them real bad and just like cluster on them and obviously I don't want to spray anything it's gonna hurt the bees uh but Maya was saying he needs to find my the bee suit from back when we kept bees but it's been in storage since we lived here and that's been five years so that's easier said than done. All right I got a handful the thing is I want them to be really ripe so my bee problem is because I have let some get too ripe so the trees get covered in buzzy bugs but I don't want to pick them under ripe because the difference between an underripe fig and a very ripe fig is huge. When they're under ripe they still have that like real vegetal planty taste and when they're really ripe they're just the lord's work they're so good and you can only experience it if you grow them because they're I mean they last like a day in the kitchen like you cannot take them you can't do much with them other than the day that you pick them. I understand why store-bought figs taste like disappointment but I don't really want to have to share my figs with the bees like this. This is what happens when you let one bust open from ripeness it becomes the buffet for the bees but then when you've got some that are like that and you go to pick another one and it jars the whole branch they all start buzzing out at you and I'm like I'm risking it for the biscuit here but I definitely do question myself every single time I come out here and do this. I think this is some of what's happening too like some little bird is pecking on that and once they're open and exposed this happens. It's not just bees either there's wasps all kinds of there are beetles that one's got a ladybug in the fray. I'm usually pretty lax about you know just plant enough to share feel a little stingy over the figs. I say that all I'm doing is complaining about it I mean I could come in here and like I am human hear me roar and annihilate all of them but I'm not gonna do that I'm just gonna pick them and be like skittish while I do and run away screaming and trying to find the bee suit and just complain that's that's really my approach right now. I'm getting plenty of figs it's fine. I've already gotten a lot of figs too. I mean I've eaten them fresh every single day. I don't even come down the driveway and get to the house without stopping. I'll be out and about and I'll just be thinking about wanting to eat figs so I come home and stop in the driveway. These have been my favorite this is the Italian honey. I don't maybe this one's ripe this one doesn't no that's not ripe yet. This one doesn't have a lot of bugs on it because it just doesn't have a lot of ripe ones. See like I could pick this and eat it but it would be such a waste because tomorrow it'll taste so much better. What's that Mya? Pepper chain. Love of my life you went and found it. Remember yours isn't the full suit. Oh yeah that's okay let's just wash that and then I can use it tomorrow. Thank you good find. You got to reclaim your fig character. Here will you carry those up for me? I'm gonna meander a bit. I'll be in there in a minute. I'll try not to. Oh poor garden. The heat is just frying stuff. This is my sweet potato green stock and I have been trying to give it enough water to offset the really rough conditions and my Biltmore ball gown's been pretty wilty too but it's just containers during this time of year you pretty much have to water them every day to keep them in peak health. Oh I just heard thunder and it looks like rain's headed this way which is good. I mean this time of year having thunderstorms every afternoon is pretty common for us and that's why it's so green here like in South Carolina in August everything is still really lush but that's because we get these regular thunderstorms when it's hot. This spring was really unusually dry. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about how this was the best tomato year I've ever had. They just did so well and I think what it was was that drought in the spring of course I was watering all the plants so they were being sustained by what I was giving them but there was no excess moisture to make them sick so like now in August the plants are pretty sick. The ones in the high tunnel are still fine but everything that's been out under the rain it all has just like terrible blight and a lot of them have been torn out. Some of them I was kind of hoping they might like squeak out a few more that's probably wishful thinking but I do think the drought was a bit of a benefit because my plants were so healthy when they peaked in making fruit because they had not developed blight whereas usually when I'm starting to harvest things are starting to like borderline get a little sickly and it usually cuts my my harvest off a little sooner than it did this year we harvested so many tomatoes several hundred pounds and now a bunch of them are in my deep freezer where I cored and scored them and we have a steer at the butcher that's coming home in a week and a half and I gotta get the freezer empty so I'm gonna be doing that. I'm gonna try to make some videos on the farmer's table of processing tomatoes. By the end of this week I might not want to think about tomatoes for a little while because I'm gonna have to do a lot of stuff. These butterfly peas have never done this before. This is absolutely crazy. All reseeded and looking lush and gorgeous. These just look like they belong in the secret garden to me. Rambling pea flowers so lovely. Sometimes I find beautiful little spots in my garden and set up the camera and I'm like look how nice this looks. I like it a lot. Thank you guys for hanging out with me today. All the days that went into filming this video I shared on my sub stack this last week about how August is kind of a play month for us but even in the midst of play there's a lot of hard work that gets done. We just do it as a family and I don't know I guess that makes it seem a little easier. Plus it's not nearly as much as it was two months ago so that makes it seem a lot easier. All right I'm hearing more thunder. I'm gonna head back to the house and freeze dry some figs. Thank you guys for hanging out with me all the days you do. I bless you. Until next time.