Legacy for the Future -- Porch Time 2026

[00:00:00]Well, hello everybody. Danny back from Deep South Homestead.

[00:00:06]We are about to burn up. I'm not going to lie to you. It is I think this is the hottest I've ever been in my life. Wanda and I got up this morning. This is Sunday. Uh today's our anniversary. Uh we got up, of course, we get up way before daylight every morning. fix I fix breakfast and then we go out on the back porch out here and when we went out I told her I said Wanda I said what temperature is it out here and she looked she said come here and look at this so I went in it was 77° the heat index was already at 86 and it wasn't even daylight and I told her I said oh my goodness I said we have I said I've got to go to that corn field and get some more corn.

[00:00:56]I said, "We've got that tropical system that's supposed to be moving up in here Tuesday, and I am gonna be out of pocket. Me and her is gonna both be out of pocket Tuesday."

[00:01:06]Matter of fact, we're going to be where the storm's supposed to be at. And I told her, I said, "We've got to get as much of this corn in as we can and try to get it in the shop before any more wind and rain gets in here again." And so we went up there and we managed to get one big load out of there in the back of the ranger and come back down here and we fed the stalks to the cows.

[00:01:31]Me and her shucked shucked out, you know, some five gallon bucket fulls of corn and took them to the shop and we put them on the drying racks, get them on the drying racks. And of course she the heat had done got to her and I told her I said, "Well, she had a little bit of staining on some trim work in the shop there." We turned the fan on. I said, "You just stay in front of the fan here. I'm going back to the shop." And she said, "Well, I'm going to the house where I can cool off first." So, she came over here to the camp where she could be in the air condition for a while to cool off. So, I went back to the field and I harvested another big load of corn and came back down. And then by then, I had shut the gate. When I come out that time, I it was done got so hot and it wasn't even 7:20 and it was so hot. My clothes were just drenching wet. I mean, I was just like somebody prayed me with a water hose.

[00:02:23]And I told her, I said, "Whonda, I don't know what we're going to do." I said, "This kind of heat, we've just never had to endure this kind of heat down here."

[00:02:31]And so she had done made it back out to the uh shop and she done some staining and I told her I said, "Well, while you're doing this, I'm going to go to the high tunnel and sit on my little bench in there. I'm going to start picking the butter beans in the high tunnel cuz it was in the shade."

[00:02:49]And when she got through, she came out and she started watering the high tunnel behind me because we have to water that thing every day. Now, I'm talking about we flood it every day with water, but it's so intense. Even with that 40% shade cloth on the top of it and pine straw and everything else that's up there, it's so intense in there. You look at the temperature and the sides are rolled up, doors is up, everything, the temperature in there still gets up to 120 degrees.

[00:03:17]And I told her, I said, "I don't know if we need to change the shade cloth. need to put a high, you know, a higher density shade cloth or what. I said, but I'm afraid if I do, the plants will get tall and even more spently cuz they don't get no sun. I told her, I said, "While you're finishing this up, I'm going to head down and pick the Mr. Jerry butter beans and went down and I picked them. We came back and she had gotten so hot from watering in the high tone already, she she was almost sick of her stomach." And uh we came in I looked it wasn't even 9:00 and I told her I said here I said I I I said you go she like she she does most of her editing on Sundays you know. I told her I said you go in there and start editing videos. I said I'll shell all the butter beans and stuff. And and then she she did that and I she it got to be about 10:30 I guess. And she said you know I got to fix something to eat.

[00:04:13]And I told her, I says, "Oh, I forgot to get the okra when I was in the the garden." So, I went back up at 10:30 to get the okra. And I'm going to tell you what, I was beginning to wonder if I was going to even make it through picking that okra up there. I I got that sun was like somebody taking a magnifying glass holding it on you. And I I was like, man, no. I 10 minutes I was soaking wet and drenched again. It felt like my skin was burning from the sun on me. And I was like, I got to get out of here. So, I came brought that back to the house. Of course, she picked the fried okra and you know, uh, she took the butter beans I picked. She cooked them. We ate them with some good old cornbread and pot liquor on them. Man, that stuff was good. And I picked the peppers. I did go out and pick some of the banana peppers and stuff. And, uh, I walked around. I check most of our container gardens and our raised beds and stuff and most of it's okay right now. You know, I mean, of course, we have to water it every day. It's got to be watered cuz we're not we haven't had any rain now in probably a week, a week and a half. Of course, with this tropical system that's coming in here Tuesday, which is when this video you're seeing it, the tropical system will be coming in or coming just below us today. Uh when when you see this video, I won't be here. I will be where the storm's at.

[00:05:38]And so we are fighting it here. I told her I said this is like the dog days of August in July.

[00:05:54]I told her I said if if when the normal dog days of August comes in August, I don't know what we're gonna do. I said, "Because this right here, if it's any hotter than it is right here now, I don't know what we're going to do." I told her, I said, "I'm I'm I've lived a long time." You know, I'm an old man now. I have never seen it as hot as it is right now.

[00:06:19]Now, I did, you know, I did find out that we're gonna this week, we're going to be having a lot more coronal mass ejections this week. The sun's going to be doing a lot of crazy stuff this week.

[00:06:31]So, you know, if you're having joint pains and ringing in the ears and erratic heartbeats and, you know, uh equilibrium issues and all that kind of stuff this week uh probably will be because of the solar flares. You know, that does cause all that to happen.

[00:06:53]And I told Wanda, I said, ' Wanda, I don't know. We We've got to make some changes somehow or other. We've got to make some changes, you know? I mean, I told her, I said, I I've got to I've got to get the electricity hooked up in this greenhouse so that I can turn some fans on out there or do something. I mean, we've got to I we're we've got another project that we're fixing to start on here in probably six or eight weeks over here on the other side of the camp house.

[00:07:23]It's a big project. It's a big big building project. And once we get it done, I'll be able to come out of it with electricity and go into that uh the citrus high tunnel with some electricity over there.

[00:07:36]So, that's kind of we're looking at probably the end of September before maybe the 1st of October before we can actually get that greenhouse taken care of. But the citrus trees are sucking.

[00:07:49]I'm talking about they are sucking up some water now.

[00:07:55]And all the banana trees I had planted and everything like that. I mean guys, this sun has just been brutal on this stuff. Thank the Lord.

[00:08:07]The water still pouring out a lot of the hills around here. Um so we're thankful for that. The grass has oh my goodness it has growed oh it's probably two foot deep now all the grass around here and what I'm trying to do and I think I might have mentioned this to you all before is the corn corn field up here where the Danny corn is planted. We've always had our garden in there and it's like almost a quarter of a mile from our camp here and it's just too far for us to go and garden all the time and you know we're making the new garden out here in front of the camp. I' I've got it cut down really close to the ground.

[00:08:47]I keep going out there with lawnmowers and keep cutting it cuz the heat the grass is just growing super fast and I haven't had time to lime it and take the big turn plow in there and turn all that green grass under. I just haven't had time to do all that. I've been out of pocket so much here lately.

[00:09:06]I told Wanda the grass in the cornfield up there now is about two foot deep in that corn field. And I told her, I said, "Uh, I know I go up there in the mornings and I get soaking wet because the grass is deep and it's wet." I said, "But I'm gonna just leave it." And of course they sweet potatoes coming up all out there everywhere. I told y'all last year that would happen this year and it and it's happening. I'm actually finding some jungle peanuts coming up in there.

[00:09:31]But I told her, I said, "We're not going to worry about all this." I said, "When we get all the corn out of here, what few sweet potatoes we planted, we're going to dig them." Cuz I can already see them sticking up out of the ground, like 3 to four inches of them out of the ground. I said, "They're big enough I think we can go ahead and dig them." Cuz we normally dig our sweet potatoes in August anyway.

[00:09:49]But this year, we got such a late start getting them planted that I told her, I says, "I don't know if they're going to be ready, but now that I see them sticking out of the ground, they're already big old potatoes." It's like I don't know if y'all are experiencing this, but it's like this year everything is growing faster than it normally does.

[00:10:09]My Danny corn usually takes about 90 days before it starts making ears and then by 120 to 130 days they've matured and then you know then they have to hang there till they dry.

[00:10:23]It it didn't do that this year. At 90 days this year, we already had full grown ears on our Danny corn. I have never ever ever in my life since I've grown this corn and created it. Never have I pulled my corn in July. It's always been mid August to late August and even into September before I actually take this corn out of the field. And here it is. Um, I've almost got it all out of the field except for one end up here. I like I don't know, maybe two or 30 hund stalks on one end. And it it's not even August yet. So, I don't know what happened this year. I don't know if it's this intense heat, if the heat is causing everything to grow faster than it normally would. I I don't know. You know, now a lot of people have been asking a lot of questions here lately about different things that's going on. Um, and some things I'm going to talk about right now and some things I'll wait to talk about.

[00:11:37]But Wanda and I have been doing YouTube now for 10, 11 years, something like that. And We've been putting out a video almost every day for that length of time. And there was a there was a period of time we was putting out two and three videos a day for the other channels we had.

[00:11:58]and she and I have have pretty much decided that we're getting close to beginning to cut back on our videos some because one and I we we in this kind of heat.

[00:12:16]One thing is the cameras overheat and y'all will see this on a lot of different YouTube channels if you watch it. They talk about their cameras overheating and and they and that does happen and and we are it's taking us so much longer to do what we do because we're having to film everything and make sure that we get it all on camera and get it right. And with the heat like it is and our age like it is, lots of things is just not going to be videoed anymore.

[00:12:49]um where we we're just going to have to go out and just get it done, you know.

[00:12:55]So, in the future, I'm not saying it'll be anytime soon, but in the future, y'all might not get a video every day from us. We might get one or two a week, but you may not get one every day. And Porch Time will be Porch Time will be moving from Deep South Homestead over to Deep South Homestead at Pan Grove because um we feel like that as we've transitioned over here to Pan Grove, we need to transition all the videos over to Pan Grove. Also, our live streams and everything will will be gradually moved over to Deep South Homestead at Pan Grove.

[00:13:45]Uh that'll be one of the big changes that we have coming. Now, we will have some more construction uh videos coming up because when we get ready to do this big construction project out here, we'll be talking about that and we'll be showing, you know, some of that being built and some of it being done. Right now, I do have people working here at the place, uh, doing construction work here on the camp house because I'm not available to do it now in the amount of time we need to get it done in. I mean, the camp's two years old now. And it's not finished. And Wanda's wanting it finished. I'm wanting it finished. And I told her, I says, Wanda, I'm just not available to do it all now. I said, it's going to be a I have a little while longer. I said, "Before I can actually start putting a lot of time into something," I said, "Why don't you just let me?" I have a friend who runs a construction crew. He used to work for me years ago. He does a fantastic job with his work and very, very good Christian guy. Him and his crew. I said, 'W you just let me bring these in and why I just let them do all the construction work and get as much as camp knocked out as fast as we can get it knocked out, you know, so we can get this part of our journey behind us because you don't realize how timeconuming it is when you're out working in the morning. You're trying to get your fields and your vegetables and your crops and all taken care of and then I have to come in and Wanda has to come in. Wanda is staining boards and I'm cutting everything, trying to put it up after she gets it all stained and it dries. I'm coming in building this and building that and that takes a lot of time. On top of that, we got to cut and bail hay, you know, we have to do our gardens. We we just have tons of things we got to do around the property here. I still have lots of fences to put up.

[00:15:44]There's only there's just one of me and one of her. So, we have decided that we we are bringing in the crew and we're going to let them start doing a lot of the a lot of the carpentry work around here.

[00:15:58]And I have a huge surprise coming.

[00:16:02]Uh it depends on how long it takes it to get here. I'll probably order it in I'll probably order it in about two to three weeks and I don't know how long it takes for it shipping and manufacturing it and shipping it and get it here and all that kind of stuff. Haven't have something I've been wanting my whole life and it's been out of my reach financially.

[00:16:26]Well, I've actually located it now at a price that is very reasonable and I can afford it.

[00:16:35]So, that'll be a new project if y'all stay with us that you'll be seeing us unfolding and starting because I'll be able to spend a lot more time here uh doing what I like to do, you know, and it'll it'll allow me to have more time on a place here to do what I want to do here. So, I think that'll be a very interesting video and project coming up in the future.

[00:17:02]And uh let's see. I'm trying to think if there's anything else here.

[00:17:08]Uh I don't know this year if we're going to be making syrup or not. I still have a good bit of syrup from last year.

[00:17:18]And the reason behind that is is when I make the new garden spot out here, I would like to plant my sugar cane. I'd like to plant some more sugar cane out there so that when I'll have I'll make sure that I have enough sugar cane that I can make a really good cooking, you know, because like it is I was counting what we have out here in the wagon wheels where we normally grow it at. And I have some more wagon wheels up by the blueberry bushes up the other part of the other property up here.

[00:17:51]And if I if I use what I have, it would take every stalk I have to just do a three quarter cooking. And I told Wanda, I said, "Why don't we just forego doing it this year?" I know as much as we like to. I mean, we may do it for somebody else. If somebody, you know, a friend wants to do it, we'll still do it. But for our own personal self, I said, I think we'll just go over and replant all of our sugar cane and make us we'll leave that sugar cane plus replant more.

[00:18:24]That way we'll have, you know, hundreds upon hundreds of stalks of sugar cane to squeeze and make syrup out of. So that's one thing that uh will be different, I think, this year on that. Now, we will still be, Lord willing, we will still be making our own cornmeal and grits and stuff like that. We'll be doing all that again. Uh we're trying to get it down to where we can do all the oldfashioned stuff and uh and keep keep the keep the traditions alive.

[00:19:01]Now, another reason behind W and I in the near future going to be backing out some of YouTube is when when I started doing our homesteading channel, homesteading wasn't a big issue. You know, I mean, there was there was some homesteading channels out there. We helped create a a uh a group of homesteading channels. As a matter of fact, there's lots of homesteading channels out there. Lots of YouTube channels out there. One that I helped launch. Of course, we get no recognition for it, but that's okay. I mean, God knows what we done and God knows how we helped these people and we helped them get off on a to a good start. We gave them their shout outs and stuff like that cuz that's what happened to us. People gave us shout outs and we just return the favor to others and now their YouTube channels are growing. I mean, Dirt Patch Heaven gave us our first shout out. Uh Eric from Life and Farmland, he gave us a shout out when we first got started and man, our channel just started climbing and we we were blown away. We didn't know how all this stuff works, but we we figured it out.

[00:20:08]And you know, the thing about doing YouTube when you're on our end of it is it doesn't take long because we do tons of videoing.

[00:20:21]Wanda and I can watch a YouTube channel and because we do a lot of camera work and a lot of editing and stuff like that, we can pick we can pick out who's telling the truth and who's not telling the truth. We we we know what to look for in the videos that people put out to know if they're actually doing what they say they're doing.

[00:20:48]Uh because we know what to look for.

[00:20:51]And and I'm sad to say that guys, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of YouTube channels out there that's not legitimate. I mean, and I hate to say that, but they're just not legitimate, you know, and I'll never call a name. I I won't do that. I'm not that kind of person, but I know who they are. And uh they still spend a lot of time at the pizza places and you know they're they're they 90 I mean not 90% but a lot of the percentages of the stuff that they do comes from the grocery stores and stuff like that and you know they're not 100% legitimate about what they're telling you because we know what to look for in the videos and Wanda and I are about as honest as I think anybody can be and as transparent as anybody can be. Now, do do we get things from Azure? Yes, we there are certain things we get from Azure. I mean, we can't we can't make our own olive oil, you know. Um and at this point in our life, we can't grow our own apples yet. I mean, we got the trees, but we not getting any apples off of them, you know. Uh Wanda ordered me some peaches from them here a while back cuz we don't have any peaches right now.

[00:22:08]Hopefully in the near future we'll have some peaches and she gets u our oatmeal.

[00:22:15]I I can't grow oatmeal here, you know, oats for oatmeal. Not enough to do any good because I don't have enough land.

[00:22:21]So, we do get oatmeal and we do get the Redmond sea salt cuz I can't do my salt and things like that. You know, I mean, we're not we're not going to sit here and tell you that we do everything cuz no, we can't. Now, do we butcher our own animals? Yes, we do. Do I smoke my own meat? Yes, I do. Do I cure my own bacon?

[00:22:39]Yes, I do. You know, uh, do I have a walk-in cooler where I hang my animals in to c to to age them? Yes, I do. Do we grow our own gardens? Yes, we do. You know, do we make our own cornmeal, grits, corn flour? Yes, we do. You know, do we catch our own fish and cook them and, you know, yes, we do. I mean, there's Do we raise our own cows for beef? Yes, we do. You know, there's just so much stuff. Do we can? Yes, we do.

[00:23:07]Have we uh dehydrated? Yes, we have. We don't care for it. We don't do it anymore. Have we freeze- dried? Yes, we have. We have crates on top of boxes on top of boxes of freeze-dried stuff, you know. Yeah. Do we we've we do all that stuff. And um do we do most of our own construction work up to this point? Yes, I have done most all my own construction work. Now, I may get some help from Chris occasionally or some Tim when he's around, but it's to a point now I'm bringing in crews, letting the crews do the construction building for me now because I don't I just don't have the time or the help anymore to do it. There comes that point in life where you have to realize you have to close certain chapters in your life and open new ones to be able to move forward. And and that's what one and I have done. But because of the way the homesteading network has began to go, I'm I'm not a 100% sure that I want to continue being part of people who call themselves homesteading channels when I know personally they're not. you know, I I don't want to be associated with uh something that's going to get a bad name in the near future. Now, in their defense, do they think they're homesteading? They in their in their wildest imagination, I believe they really think they're homesteading, you know, and and homesteading can mean a lot of different things for different people.

[00:24:52]But you need to look up the true definition of homesteading and and see am I really homesteading? I mean because you got to stop and think about it when the homesteading act was in existence. I mean yeah the government would give you 160 acres but for the next 5 years you had to make improvements on that land.

[00:25:11]You had to grow food on that land. You had to I mean there was certain stipulations that just had to be met or you weren't going to get to keep that land. And nowadays, of course, the Homesteading Act was done away with. I think the last one was in the 1980s. Maybe Ronald Reagan or might have been one of them. Nixon, Reagan, one of them uh actually stopped the last uh places you could homestead, which is way up in the far north up there.

[00:25:38]And now there is no such thing. When we talk about homesteading now, we are basically fantasizing. Most people are fantasizing about the lifestyle that they're living, you know, and and that's okay. If that's what they want to do, that's okay. I don't have a problem with it.

[00:26:03]But Wanda and I, we we think it may be time for us to start slowing down and maybe not be so associated with uh the quote unquote the modern, let's just I'm going to call it the modern homesteading movement because it's definitely nothing like what Wanda and I live. You know, I matter of fact, I I can't even count on one hand how many channels I know of that's really doing what we do. You know, that that really gets up before daylight, eats their breakfast, and and goes out and gets their work done. And, you know, one and I we sit and talk. We we we we get we get very hilarious when it's just me and her sitting around talking sometimes.

[00:26:59]Matter of fact, today being it's our anniversary, we were spending a little bit of time after we got out of gardens and come in, we spend a little bit of time sitting in there talking about the difference, how different things are now than what they were when we were children.

[00:27:14]And I told her, I said, "Yeah." I said, "When I was a little kid, when summertime come and you was in school, when you finally got out for summer break, you didn't get to, you know, where I where I lived at, we had to get up at 6:00 in the morning and get our breakfast and get dressed, get our stuff together to get on the bus before 7:00 cuz we had I mean, we're a bus route to pick up everybody going to be to school by 8.

[00:27:49]And I told her, I said, "When we got out for summer break, that didn't mean nothing to to to my family. It didn't mean anything to my family." Cuz then you went from getting up going to school. You still got up at 5:00 in the morning. During the summertime, you got up at 5:00 in the morning. You ate breakfast. And by the time the sun started getting where you could see, you had to go to the garden.

[00:28:13]And daddy wouldn't let us have a hoe cuz we were too young. He's afraid we'd cut the plants down. We had to pull the weeds out of the garden. And he would have so much of the garden he wanted weeded. And if anything needed picked, it had to be picked. And as young kids, you know, anywhere between uh 10, 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, uh you knew how to pick a garden. You knew how to weed a garden. I mean, there was no questions about that. You knew how to do it.

[00:28:43]and daddy would leave us certain things that needed to be done and mama would take us out there and make sure we did it and we could not go play with any other neighbors until our garden work was done.

[00:28:56]Well, I was telling Wanda this morning that when I was 12 years old, as a matter of fact, it's kind of funny how things work out where we do our Azure pickup at now. There used to be a little convenience store there where the 18 weather parks at. And when I was a little kid, that's my mama would go up there all the time and we'd get a a drink and uh after we got through working in the garden, she'd take us up there cuz it was like a two miles from where we used to live. She'd take us up there and we'd get a drink and little cookies or something like that and and she'd sit there and talk to the owner of the store for a little while and then we'd leave and go back home. Well, I remember one time we were in there and this gentleman come in. I knew who he was because my daddy bought uh a tractor from his daddy cuz his daddy owned a tractor company and my daddy had bought a whole uh cub farm all from him. And I knew the man and he came in and was telling the owner of the store. He says, "Yeah, I've got cucumber fields." He said, "I'm trying to find some younger people to go out there and pick those cucumbers, you know." And and I stuck my hand. I said, "Sir, sir." And he turned around. He said, "Yeah, what you doing there, boy?"

[00:30:09]I told him, I said, "I work for you." He said, "How old are you?" I said, "I'm 12 years old." He said, "You think you can handle it?" I said, "Yes, sir." I said, "You can ask my mama. She gets me up at 5:00 in the morning. I work in that garden till till the work is done." And mama said, "He does do it, and I don't have to I don't have no problems out of him." He said, "Well, I tell you what."

[00:30:32]He said, "I know where you live at." He said, "You meet me out by the main highway at 6:00 in the morning when I come by with a truck." He said, "Now, if I see you standing, I'll stop and pick you up, but if you ain't standing there, I'm just going to keep on driving."

[00:30:45]And I said, "Yes, sir." You know, and mama told me, she said, "Son, do you think you can handle it?" I told her, I says, I said, "I have to get up and work in our garden, and I don't want to work in our garden anymore and not get paid for it. If I work for this man, I'm going to get paid, you know." And so, she said, "Okay." So, she got up got me up next morning and made my little bag lunch. I had to walk like a quarter of a mile to that road up there. And she told me, she says, "Now, when you get out by the black top," she said, "Don't stand out by the road." She said, "Somebody ought to stop and pick you up, you know, cuz you young boy like that."

[00:31:18]And she said, "Stand back in the edge of the woods and when you keep your eye on the road, you see this old truck coming." She said, "You just walk out by the side of the road." And that's what I did. And I'd walk out there and he'd pull over and he'd say, "Jump in the back." you know, and and the whole everybody he was hauling was in the back of a pickup truck bed, driving it down the highway, which is illegal to do now.

[00:31:39]But then nobody thought nothing about it. And he drove us off down the road.

[00:31:43]We went way back off in these woods back in there by an old creek back in there.

[00:31:46]He had I don't know, must been 10 acres of cucumbers back there. And he got us out and he he he said, "Now, here's your color yarn, Mr. King." And here they gave everybody their different color yarn.

[00:32:00]He said the back of the truck's full of croker sacks. He says when you pick a croker sack full, tie your string around it. He says, "And when we take them to the pickle factory this evening, um I will mark down which strings is on which bags and you'll be paid according to what you pick." I was like, "Yes, sir."

[00:32:18]So I stuck my yarn in my pocket and I went to picking. And it was kind of like picking cotton, but you had to you had to drag your old sack along with you uh until you got it full. And when you got it full, I'd take my twine out and tie it around it. Well, he had guys who went around through the field and they picked up those bags and towed them and put them on the backs of the truck. And people was honest then. They didn't take your twine off and put somebody else's on of a different color. I mean, everybody was honest. And I'd pick from daylight and the pickle factory. We had to be at the pickle factory by about about 2:30 to unload the pickles so we could get paid for them. So I picked from before daylight till 2:30 and we'd load the truck would already be loaded because the guys would already have the pickles out of the fields in the bags and he'd tell us he said, "Y'all boys come on now. Get on the back of this truck." So we would the back of the truck would be rounded up with pickles in croker sacks and we'd sit up on top of all them pickles and croker sacks and ride all the way back into the pickle factory.

[00:33:21]And then he'd back up to them big ramps and we'd we'd drag the bags off and he'd put everybody's color in one group and then they'd run one color through at a time and he would keep up with the weights because the weights determined how much money he made. If you picked the old big pickles, they didn't bring very much, but if you picked the number TW's, that was that was the best money making. And I learned that right quick.

[00:33:46]So, I did that. Oh my goodness. I did that for several years until one day I told my daddy, I said, "Daddy, I said, "You got that acre of land on that hill." We moved from there is what happened. We moved. My daddy looked out in the yard and there was 17 kids in the yard playing. And he looked at my mama and he said, "Uh, we got to get out of here." He said, 'We can't live for there's this many kids in the neighborhood.' He said, "Our kids will be uh be led into bad influences by these children out here. I don't want them that many kids around them." And so we moved off to a r very rural place and no neighbors, not not anywhere close.

[00:34:25]They were half a mile from us.

[00:34:28]And daddy bought a big piece of property there and he brought equipment in and cleared it for us to have a garden. And he cleared another hillside off. You different hillsides. He cleared all that stuff off and I asked him, I said, "Daddy," I said, "I I'm used to picking cucumbers every summer." I said, "Can I have that hillside over to plant my cucumbers?"

[00:34:46]He said, "You going to plant them and pick them yourself?" I said, "Yes, sir."

[00:34:50]I said, "You help me get the fertilizer to plant them with. I'll pay you back when I get my money in." So, mama took me to the pickle factory and I got my contract and they gave me my can of seeds and stuff like that and and I planted an acre right by myself. I would pick half of it one day, take it to the pickle factory, half of it the next day, take it to the pickle factory, and I go back to where I started at. It was just a constant job for me all summer long.

[00:35:18]And I told one and I were talking I told her I said I said how many 12 year olds in the world today is there out there that you could send off to a to a field with a bunch of guys to pick cucumbers that even knew what they was doing to start with and secondly wouldn't sit around and cry and complain cuz the sun was bearing down on them and it was too hot out there.

[00:35:41]They'd be over there like I'm hot. I want to go home cuz you didn't get to go home. you one ride there and one ride back and if it was flooding down raining, thunder and lightning, you had nowhere to go. You was just in a field, you know, you just had to work right through it. And and if you was on the back of that truck and it started pouring down, raining, you just had to ride on the back of the truck, get soaking wet, you know? I mean, that was just the way it was. And I told her, I said, "Life has changed so much now." Uh then we got to talking about how our we used to have garbage pits out where we live. You know, Wanda had them where she lived at. We had them where we lived. Garbage dumps. And the families would burn any paper products and anything that was glass and cans and all that kind of stuff they put in uh garbage bags and they put them in the back of old pickup truck usually on the property. And once a once a month on a Saturday, usually Saturday morning, Daddy would crank the old truck up and he'd drive it to the garbage dump and we'd unload all the garbage out into the garbage dump and we'd drive back and usually go by the little convenience store or something and daddy would get us a a root beer and a little bag of peanuts or or RC colon pie or, you know, something like that. And man, that was or or the orange push-ups or something like, you know, anything, whatever you wanted. And that was a highlight of our life, you know? I mean, that was just like the greatest thing in the world to us. Once a month, we got to go by the convenience store and get a get a root beer and peanuts or RC colon pie or the orange push-ups or something like that, you know.

[00:37:25]Now kids, kids have so many snacks and they I don't know. It's It's just crazy. Now I ain't want to go into it. Makes me angry every time I think about the generation today and how lazy most of them are and how soft this nation has become.

[00:37:48]Uh you you can't put a kid out now. No, there's labor laws now. I mean, which I think is stupid, but uh they got labor laws. You can't work a young kid to give them any kind of uh incentives or or knowledge about how to do anything. They got to be a couch potato until they get old enough that you can send them to a job somewhere and you can be hired legally. I mean, heck, when I was a kid, it don't matter how old you was. If you could pull your own weight in something, you could do it, you know?

[00:38:21]And I told Wanda, I said, "So many things has changed that in the homesteading world today on YouTube, to be honest with you, I'm just being honest, one and I just don't fit in anymore, you know. Uh, one that did the homeschooling thing when homeschooling wasn't cool, you know. I mean, one had home births when home births weren't cool. Everybody went to the hospitals to have them done and everybody sent their kids to public school. Mine I sent mine to private schools for a big portion of her life, private Christian schools. And then the at the end they wanted to graduate from a regular high school. So I let them go to high school. But Wanda homeschooled all her kids all the way through everything. And so much has just changed. We don't one and I just don't fit in in the new homesteading movement. We I I don't know if we're too old-fashioned to what for the for the new system the way it is. I I don't know. I sit and watch all these new homesteading channels come out and their views just go through the roof. Of course, one and I know how all that works. Y'all may not understand it. We do. We get we get emails every day. I'm talking about multiple times a day from companies that says, "Allow us to promote your channel so you can get your views up."

[00:40:00]you know, and and if you go with one of these channels or one of these companies, they kind of it's kind of like an underhanded thing, but they they do a thing where they claim they're marketing your channel, but what they do is they most of them is most of it sent to foreign countries, and there's people over there that's paid pennies on the dollar to sit there and and just run your views up, you know, and and it makes it look like your your channel's just blowing out of the water, you know, through subscribers and views and all this kind of stuff.

[00:40:35]And we get this on a daily basis. And Wanda and I, we've always opted not to do that, you know, and we've watched little YouTube channels start and they'll go from nothing to having 500 to 800,000 subscribers in a couple of years. And and that's not normal, you know.

[00:40:58]We do ours the oldfashioned way. And that's what I'm telling you. We We don't fit in with the way the marketing schemes are today. And they're schemes.

[00:41:08]When you see these channels go from nothing to having several hundreds of thousands of subscribers in a year or two, they have gave in to the marketing scheme and allowing other uh other companies to market their YouTube channel for them and help them get the views. You, in other words, you pay for your channel to grow, for your for your subscriber list to go up and all. You pay for that. And we just have never we've never we've always decided we're just not going to do it. We're going to do it the oldfashioned way. If people want to subscribe and listen to us, they just just subscribe and listen to us.

[00:41:47]I'm not going to I call it lie. I'm not going to lie. I've seen people go from little small channels to have a million views, million subscribers in three or four years, you know, and most of that's done through marketing. and Wanda and I, we just don't feel like that's honest and right to do that, you know. So, that's another reason why we just we're probably in the near future. Now, I I don't I can't give you a date as to when that's going to be, but in at some point in the near future, we are going to be backing out of uh YouTube.

[00:42:28]Not all the way, but some to give us more time to ourselves and more time to enjoy our life without having a camera right on us, you know, all the time because we don't create content. A lot of people call themselves content creators. Wanda and I are not content creators. We just video our daily life and it is what it is. I don't dress up.

[00:42:55]I just wear my old clothes and uh I don't try to make sure my hair is just right. I don't try to make sure uh I got a nice shirt on and nice pants and all this kind of stuff and everything looks just right. That's not that's fake. That is there. That's fake. And on and I just we just turn the camera on. What you see is what you get. You like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. you know, and and it doesn't hurt our feelings either way. We're just mainly doing YouTube to create a library for our for our grandkids and our great grandkids in the future should something happen and there's nobody to teach them how to do anything then they if YouTube is still available then they can go back and say now that was my grandpa or my great-grpa right there he did it this way and he said he did this or he did that or my grandma did this and she did that. We're doing it for a living legacy.

[00:44:00]And see, I have no I have no video of any of my grandparents.

[00:44:08]I have a few pictures, but I have no video of them sitting talking like I'm talking to you right now. And I want to be able to leave this to my grandkids.

[00:44:17]Grandkids in the future, if you're watching this, I'm talking to you. You know, I'm I'm leaving a living legacy of me visually talking to my future grandkids and my future great grandkids about how to do things and a little bit about what life was like during this particular period in history. You know, how did we do things?

[00:44:44]Uh this is a living legacy for those in the future. So, I've been on here long enough, guys. Uh, I got to get off. Uh, I know it ain't my normal porch time, but I wanted to just share my heart with you for a while. I want to thank each and every one of you for the well wishes on happy anniversary on our live stream the other night. I have a birthday coming up this coming week. Thank you for all you who told me happy birthday. Uh, thank you in advance for those who will tell me because I don't know, you know. I appreciate that.

[00:45:19]And uh I appreciate y'all just subscribing to us and watching us. And uh people's always saying how much they've hyped some of my videos. Uh I don't know a lot about that, but thank you for doing that. Um I think it helps. My understanding is from what Wanda has told me is it helps to put us in a little bit higher better algorithm maybe. I I don't know. But I'm I've been trying to back out of YouTube for quite a while now and uh so I just quit following the algorithms and all that stuff anymore because I don't to me it ain't about the numbers. I'm leaving a living a living legacy for the future generations. Thank you guys of Deep South Homestead.