Day 776 - We're Stuck, Router Failure, Swale, "Pond"

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many fully hydraulic options, go to timberking.com.

[00:00:38]Heat.

[00:00:40]Heat.

[00:01:41]Well, good morning. It is Sunday before Memorial Day. Sunday morning and uh we're stuck. We are stuck. Not in a bad way. Uh but let me explain. So, we have so many different things that we need to get done. Our priorities list, you know, starting over like this, there's there's a neverending supply of things to do.

[00:02:05]Doesn't matter what time of the day, doesn't matter what day of the week, doesn't matter rain or shine, there's always something to be done. So, you organize those into priorities, things that we really want to get done immediately or as soon as we can, like say the garden or uh things that we need to get done, say run the sawmill to stack more lumber in here to dry out for our own needs. Well, we're at a point where the vast majority of things that we can do, especially everything on the top of the priorities list, we're stuck for one reason or another.

[00:02:38]We just can't get anything done. mainly because the weather. We had a uh bad drought this spring. Normally our drought is uh June, July, August, September, sometimes even into October.

[00:02:51]That's normally our big drought throughout the year. But typically speaking, Mississippi is a very wet climate where we get a lot of rain. So, we had our drought very early, which makes me wonder if we're going to get two droughts this year. Our drought has ended because we had rain and rain and rain and rain in the forecast. And then there's more rain and rain and rain and more rain in the forecast as well. So, everything outside turned into muddy goo. Okay, let's pump the brakes on everything outside. Uh although there's a couple things out there I want to walk out and show you. Uh cut the swale and of course that little pond thing that I'm starting on. Uh so, excuse me. We pause outside and hey, we've got this covered shop. Weather doesn't bother us in here, of course. So, let's go ahead and make a good oldfashioned woodworking project. So, that's what I did. I started on uh and almost got to the full assembly stage on a big raised panel blanket chest, hope chest. A buddy of mine's calling it his war chest because I'm making it for him, Mr. Nathan. So, this is some of that beetle pine. And love it or hate it, I don't know. Um, but I made some raised panel frames.

[00:04:06]This one right here, we're looking at uh one of the front backs right here. One of the front backs. And then I have the side panels and all that over here.

[00:04:19]So anyway, I'm ready to assemble this, but I can't because as I was setting up or actually walking to the table with this in hand.

[00:04:28]Uh my last panel to do a raised panel, my router died. So this is what I'm trying to achieve.

[00:04:38]And one more to go. So I can't do assembly. And my router died. This is my I got a pretty nice router table. It's a Rockler router table. cast iron top and a nice lift in it. And then this is a PorterCable 7518. I believe it's a 7518.

[00:04:56]PorterCable 7518 manufactured in uh 2019.

[00:05:02]So these routers were like the industry standard for a router table. It's a big beefy I think it's 3 and 1/2 horsepower router. Uh 4.2 in diameter right here. It's a big router. Um, but the recently manufactured, I say recently cuz I think they discontinued this model, but the several years before the discontinued is they ended up having a lot of speed control issues as well as switch issues. Now, my switch was bad, but it was stuck in the on position, and I tested everything with a voltmeter and all that, and power is going through it.

[00:05:40]So, those there's no need to simply uh rewire a new switch. Uh I don't know much about the speed control module which is this down here. Um but people say that the speed control goes out. Uh this also controls your soft start if I'm not mistaken. So um bypassing this completely gives you you know use of the router uh just with onoff switch and it's a very abrupt start which is not fun if you're using a big old gnarly like raised panel bit.

[00:06:12]Um, but here in a router table, I think that would be okay. However, I think this one is actually fried. Uh, because there's some stuff inside it that melted and fell out of it, which sucks cuz there's, you know, this isn't that old to be honest with you. All these parts came out of the inside through the fans, uh, where it was melted. And of course, I blew this out with the air compressor and it was just like a fog. All kinds of dust caked up in here because I think this router table is not the best actual design. It's nice. It's solid. It's beefy. But let me kick these boxes out of the way. Actually, I'll just sit on these boxes like a chair.

[00:06:53]Inside here is the router table cabinet.

[00:06:56]Right. So, the router table is the router is in that lift. That lift is upside down. It's sitting down in here.

[00:07:03]And the only way for air to get in this box is through the wire grommet. That's where the wire exits. And there's actual grommet that goes inside of it. So, it has to pull air in there because it's being sucked out right there with dust collection. You can either get clean air from right there or clean air through the uh throat plate of the router lift.

[00:07:25]Right? So, we're not getting much clean air in here. And then when we're also sucking air through the um the uh opening of the router plate up there, it's sucking that dusty air in. And of course, the router has to suck up that dusty air. It's breathing in dusty air.

[00:07:43]When I designed my lever router lift um back years back years ago, I designed both versions, the first version and the bigger version, so that way the dust collection was technically outside of the router. So, the router was actually breathing in clean air. The router itself wasn't in the dust path. So, did all of that dust cause this to fry or did I just get one of the typical bad quality uh you know, later models of this particular router. I don't know.

[00:08:15]But regardless, one piece away. One piece away.

[00:08:21]And I have to shut down operations.

[00:08:22]Couldn't finish the project. I was hoping to publish that uh today. Today is Sunday. I was hoping to publish this video Sunday. And um hey, while we're here, we'll check out the router router cabinet here. And of course, I can't publish it cuz I'm not finished with it.

[00:08:36]All of my bits, uh the shafts and whatnot got rusted during the move and whatnot. So, uh still good. They're just the shafts are a little bit rusty. And then the uh carbide's just fine as well.

[00:08:47]But anyh who, I got to clean all these up and get back to uh uh back to familiarity with router bits and whatnot, especially this bad boy right here, this flattening bit, because the CNC is uh next on the list as soon as I get this project done. The goal was to get this project done last week, uh edit, get the video out, and then be starting in on the CNC build today, which just means we're a little bit behind on that build. So, because we can't really get any of our priorities done, we're tinkering on some small stuff here and there behind the scenes, but nothing like nothing that really shows great progress, we decided to uh get the gang together, get get some good good old friends together and have a um card night and game night. So, that's what we did last night. We had uh there was five of us guys who were back in the day, you know, the pool shooting gang, right? all five of us, Friday and Saturday night, we would go to um this little place in New Albany, Mississippi called Jeans. It's no longer called Jeans anymore. It's a truck stop. And in the back of this truck stop was a bunch of barbox tables and they'd have pool tournaments all the time. And we just we'd play in tournaments and then of course that was a I think the tournaments were Friday night and then Saturday night we just we just hung out and had a lot of fun. And it was that group of guys and that's when we were witnessing didn't realize it but that's when we were witnessing where we were finding all of our significant others and then eventually starting to spread apart. Well, when I moved back here uh two years last year two two years we've been here for two years. When I moved back here uh you know every now and then we get the guys together and it's hasn't been all of us just yet. Uh most we've gotten together was four out of the five. Last night we got three out of the five including myself. So, two good families come over and we treat it like the 1990s. We're playing board games.

[00:10:38]We're playing cards. It's just so much fun. It's so much fun. So, uh this this shop has turned into such an amazing multi-use space and uh for for the to have the ability to just kind of push things to the side, clean up a little bit and and just chillax in a big old wide open space with a bunch of people.

[00:10:58]It is. It's um It's food for the soul.

[00:11:02]You know what I'm saying? It's it's it's uh it feels good. It really really feels good. Went to bed last night with nothing but smiles. Woke up with nothing but smiles. And yeah, a good day yesterday and today is a good day as well. So, why can't I just pause the woodworking and jump into the CNC build?

[00:11:18]Well, because I still need the shop set up to finish that project. And the CNC is going to go right where that tool island is right there. That island's going against the wall. All those over there going against that wall.

[00:11:29]Everything on that wall is going against this wall. So, it's going to be um rearrangitis for about a day. Uh and I'm okay with that because big machine's going to go right there. But I can't pause uh the build. Uh I I got to get that done. I can't pause the build and move on because it'll tear up tear up the whole shop. Uh speaking of build and projects and whatnot, this is a coffee table that I made a few years back. This is a pecan crotch slab table that I back filled with some epoxy. Uh, it's a little dusty. I got to clean it up real nice. And the legs are curly ash with a curly ash rail system down below.

[00:12:13]Walnut pieces on the bottom for that uh curly ash drawer that's got box joints connecting it. And then the rails on this side. Let me go over here. the rails on this side um that are hanging down, you see that they are actually a sliding dovetail. So, the sliding dovetail helps keep the table flat as well as providing for the drawer right there. And the sliding dovetail is only glued on this side. So, it's not glued uh from here to the rest of it, however long each one is there. This one's longer than this one. Uh it's only glued on this side. So, it allows for expansion and contraction of the slab while also keeping it nice and flat.

[00:12:55]Anyway, I bring this up because I don't want to see this table get damaged, and it needs to find a new home. So, if you're interested in this table, uh, I'll have a link in the description to the website article of when I built this, um, you can check out that. And if someone wants to make me an offer and come pick it up, I'll probably gladly accept any offer for someone who's going to actually use it and take care of it.

[00:13:21]It's just in the way right now. I don't have a place for it. And if I store it, dust and probably mildew is going to destroy it. So, I'd rather it rather it go to good use. If anyone's interested, let me know.

[00:13:45]I'm recording the chest build for the woodworking channel. That's why you haven't seen it here. Uh, but something that's going to be kind of funny that I think people are going to notice is uh the chain popped off my daughter's four-wheeler. Well, it's sitting in the shop. So, I slapped a couple boards on it. And this is my been my rolling cart for this project. this and the wheelbarrow I've been stacking load on wood on and rolling it around the shop.

[00:14:07]So, uh, yeah, rolling cart is a four-wheeler. Let's go outside and I'll show you what I've been up to out there.

[00:14:14]All right, this video is supported by Brunt. I've been working with Brunt for quite a while. Uh, and then last year, two years ago, it's a year and a half ago, I picked up a pair of Brunt pants, which I'll talk about in just a second.

[00:14:25]It's muddy outside, though, so figured I might as well mention my boots. I've got the Bullduck boots on from Brunt. These are waterproof. They're slip-ons. Uh, which is what I want. Something fast and easy to get in and out of while I'm walking through this mud. And then when I go in the shop and I don't want to walk through the mud, I can quickly get out of them. Didn't really want to talk about boots though, right now, cuz I've talked about them in the past. Instead, I want to give an absolute glowing recommendation from the bottom of my heart. I totally mean this. I have found the pair of pants that are are jproof on this property or workproof on this property, whatever you want to call it.

[00:15:01]This property has destroyed so much stuff, me working on this property, uh so much more so than any other point in my life. This is a working place and I'm constantly doing stuff physically with my entire body. I'm working with my hands. I'm down on the ground crawling under tractor or or the truck or the four-wheelers or whatever, constantly working and constantly tearing up clothing until I found these pair of pants from Brunt. These are the Castello Tech pants. Talk about them in just a second. But before these, what what happened is I can't wear blue jeans on this property. They're just not strong enough. A lot of people work in blue jeans, but for me, my right knee always gets blown out. My right knee gets a little bit of a rip. And then that little rip becomes a bigger rip. And then that bigger rip becomes the most annoying hugest hugest annoying big rip that just grabs a hold of your kneecap.

[00:15:58]It seems like every time you bend and then just proceeds to get larger. So then you can patch them, but then the patch feels goofy. Or you can sew them or it's sewed the wrong way. And then as soon as you get another rip, you're down that same rabbit hole and it's just frustrating. And I speak from experience. Blue jeans on this property are a no-go. About a year and a half ago, maybe even two years ago, I got my hands on this pair of pants from Brunt.

[00:16:22]This exact pair of Castello Tech pants from Brunt. And I wore them and I thought, well, these are these are comfortable. They are stretchy where they need to be stretchy. And I'm I'm kind of a bigger short fella, but I'm also pretty flexible. So, the blue jeans, you're not flexible hardly at all. And you I feel like I'm a when it gets hot and sticky out here in Mississippi with blue jeans, you feel like you're kind of kind of stuck on the lower body and you're walking like a uh what are those? Uh any anyway, you get what I'm saying. Uh these don't do that.

[00:16:54]They're nice and comfortable. And the most important part for me, they're durable. Like I said, I've wore these almost every single day for the past year and a half. This is my uniform. And I'm a guy. I'm out here. I'm not out in public. If it's got a little mud around the ankles, I'm still going to wear them the next day. If it's got a little bit of something spilled on the knee, I'm still going to wear them the same day.

[00:17:14]The only way I would take these off and throw them in the washing machine is if they stink. I'm a guy. Eh, whatever. I'm I'm here by myself, uh, working by myself most of the time. It just doesn't matter. I don't care if my pants get dirty. And I bring that up, uh, not because I want you to know my laundry habits, but I bring it up because that kind of tells you a little bit about how durable these pants are. I work hard in these pants all the time and they hold up. They're they're really good. So, about that rip, right? These have rip stop technology. No pair of pants um I wouldn't say no pair of pants, but these aren't Kevlar. You know what I'm saying?

[00:17:51]You can still tear basically any material uh that you're really working on. And that's what I did with these pants about uh I don't know the exact video. I think it was uh in October of last year when I was doing that sketchy hillside extraction with with Hickory.

[00:18:08]Uh I don't know if it was that video, but I do know for sure it was at Mr. Jack's place. I jumped over a log and as I'm coming down, I see those insanely large briars, the really pokey spiky briars that are like half the length of your finger. And in midair, time slows down and you're like, "Oh man." And then you land in them. And I got them right in the back of my right thigh and uh cut my thigh up quite a bit. But let me stick my hand on the other side of this fabric so you can see it. This material so you can see it. So it ripped these pants, right? It ripped them at about/ inch in either in two different directions. You got a little bit of a tear right there and then also got a little tear right there. And at that moment I'm like doggy, watch out for the tripod. I'm like, "Oh man, my favorite uniform for work. These are these are a tool to me. I got a tear in them." Dang, there's just nothing that I can't tear up. I'm so hard on my clothes. Well, that was 6 months ago and I'm like, this is just going to keep spreading. Well, these have rip stop technology. I don't know what that means. I guess it's sewn in in a couple different directions to stop the tear from spreading. That's my guess. I don't know. But what I do know is that rip stop technology works because this rip is the same size as it was back in October and it's uh near the end of May and the following year and I've put a lot of miles on these in between and that tear has not changed at all. So these are durable pants. I've worn them like I said almost every day.

[00:19:39]Of course you got to wash them occasionally. Almost every day uh for the past year, year and a half. So that's like I don't know maybe four or five times the amount of typical wear and tear you'd see on a pair of pants.

[00:19:51]And these have held up fantastic. These are the Brunt Castello Tech pants. And after being so impressed with these, I ended up getting three more pair and a couple different colors so it doesn't look like I'm wearing black every single day. So this is my uniform. This is my legit I want uniform. Uh, this is getting kind of long, I know, but uh, I think it I think it's actually helpful.

[00:20:14]Uh, the pockets, they have this little reinforcement here because I'm an EDC kind of a person. I always wear all kinds of tools with me. For example, this four right here. Can you see my pocket? Yeah, this four stays with me at all times. I have a knife for cooking because I'm a savage and I don't like kitchen knives. I have a knife for utility stuff. I have a flashlight because Oh, flashlight is the most important thing in an EDC kit. I use it way more than you ever think you would.

[00:20:39]And a marker. I wear those every single day and it doesn't tear up my pocket.

[00:20:45]All of these are I'm able to take them out and use them and put them back basically one-handed and I'm not tearing up the pocket as I'm in and out, in and out, in and out constantly. So, the pockets are very durable in that regard.

[00:20:58]Uh, yeah. Brent, thanks for letting me ramble about your pants. They're really comfortable. They're really durable. And I give them two thumbs up. Really do. I have a coupon code for anyone who wants to use it. It'll save you a little bit of money on your first purchase. I'll have a link down in the description.

[00:21:15]There's something on the screen you can scan if you want to scan it. Uh there's that. You guys take care. Actually, that's not the end of the video. Uh we got to go talk about what I already did.

[00:21:23]So, let's go do that right now. We are in need of another round of wood chips.

[00:21:28]Uh this is this is actually wood chips.

[00:21:31]It's just starting to decompose into material and we're starting to get grasses grow in here naturally. We're not planting anything. Uh but grasses are starting to come back. We need more wood chips. What we've decided to do over here Oh, I moved all these hickory logs. I just drag them off out of the way so that this could be parking. We realizing or I always park over here.

[00:21:49]Jamie always parks over there. And uh what we're going to do is put a couple beams like railroad ties over here to kind of have like a like a visual parking station right here. And then this distance, these these pipes, it doesn't look like it here, but they parallel the front of the garden. We're going to have that distance of wood chips all the way this way because that's where the tractor is in and out of the sawmill and whatnot. Uh so the next delivery of wood chips from the tree service company, we're going to put right here and just keep keep spreading it out. So this is just going to be wood chip area. I think we've determined our game plan with the uh with the rainwater harvesting and I'm not too sure if we're going to do it immediately. Maybe when we build the house, we'll rainwater a harvest off of here and then use a big big container there to feed the house as well as whatever else. Uh but in the meantime, I just can't justify going all in on a rainwater harvesting setup for the shop.

[00:22:47]So, I'm not going to do it halfway. Hey, you know what I'm saying? I don't want to spend a little bit of money knowing that I'm going to spend a lot more later. So, definitely long-term rainwater harvesting over there somewhere off of the shop roof. At that point, these would have to go underground that way. But, we're going to do something different right now and probably put them underground just the way they sit over there. Maybe even switch over to PVC if I don't reinforce this some way because I am going to be driving over it and PVC is obviously the better thing to drive over than this stuff. So, uh anyway, we've come to that decision. So, parking spots here, chips over there. This is where this is going to go. And that pile of wood I've already sold, already paid for, but I can't get it out of here because of where it sits. I didn't think this through. Actually, I know when I put this here, we are in the drought, so I could drive anywhere I wanted. So, these two stacks and those two stacks over there is about 1,000 board feet of four quarter pine. And that's going to a local uh local friend of ours. Um so I got to get that out of here. But I got to get this to where I can drive on it already. Again, uh wood chips for us to walk through here. And then I jump over our swale. I used the rear blade on the tractor off camera. Tilted on an angle to just cut a swale that wraps around there, feeds into this swale over here.

[00:24:10]Let's see. Where is it? This swale right there goes this way and points that direction. This one feeds into it. And if I come over here, you can see that it all kind of whimsically goes that way as well as I kind of funneled some of it this way. So all that water I wanted to to gather into this a little bit and then hit this and either go that way or this way. Uh it's working because we haven't been totally flooding the garden during these heavy rains. So it is doing what it needs to do. And that's fantastic. Let me walk through these chips just a little bit and come over here. And we still have the panels laid out on the ground where the chicken area is going to be. Uh, but I'm not putting any emphasis on this until we get actually closer to having chickens. And I want to build a a nice coupe first.

[00:24:56]It's it's kind of an order of operations. There's no immediate rush to get this done. So, I know we're kind of dragging our feet on chickens and livestock and whatever, but uh it's just a matter of uh order of operations, and this is a long-term solution for us. So, I don't want to do, like I said, something halfway and then come back and change it because when I get to the point of actually doing it, things change. So, chicken coop's going to go right here. And I mentioned it in another video that it's going to kind of arc around rather than being a nice square. So, that that's that's why the swale does that as well. The swale goes I'm starting to get into this all this mud that I don't want to track back into the shop. Uh, the swale kind of goes around that way. Something we did off camera as well is uh we got an augur for the drill uh for a drill so we can drill 3-in holes really really fast for planting and such. So about 3 ft wide about 2 and 1/2 ft wide 2 ft wide something like that around the perimeter of the uh garden starting at that gate going this way and then that way through the chicken area and then around and then all the way through there. I just went and randomly drilled holes and Jamie followed me back with sunflower seeds and a little bit of compost filling in those holes. So maybe come Septemberish, we'll have this entire wall of the uh garden just filled with full sunflowers and that would be fantastic. Sunflower seeds. If you don't know, you can go to Walmart or any other local big box store and buy our local Walmart has 40 lb bags of black oil sunflower seeds for $22. 40 lbs of them.

[00:26:31]That's a tremendous amount. And they have like a 100% germination rate. Let me see if I can't get back over here, this side, and we can just take a look at some. I can see them sprouted sprouted from where I was standing. So, yeah. Look at this. These are all sunflower seeds right here. All of these, oh, those are ants, too. But sunflower seeds, sunflower seeds, they all pop up. It's sold as bird seed, but it's the it's the best bang for your buck as far as getting a bunch of sunflowers growing. Uh, so there's that.

[00:27:02]Um, what else? Let me walk this way through the mucky muck. And we got So, we were in this drought and we're like, is this drought ever going to stop?

[00:27:11]Because they keep saying rain's coming and no rain came. Run. Rain's coming. No rain came. So then I picked up this multi- uh filtration system, just a a basic uh filter system with a uh carbon filter to hopefully get the chlorine and whatever out of the water. So I hooked it up to the the city supply and watered it with a soaker hose for one day and then the rains came. So it's like, ah, what do you do? All right, this is still ooey gooey over here. Here I need to work a little bit more on mounting up this right hand side and getting this soil to uh function as a better soil because these are tractor tires going that way. This I left this strip right here because last year we had these just beautiful yellow wild flowers that came up about waist high and it was really really dense with wild flowers. It was so dense of wild flowers that uh Tyler and I almost caught a gardener snake that was about waist high just chilling in the grasses just hanging out. and uh we tried to get it but it scured away.

[00:28:06]So, we're going to have a bunch of these pollinators right next to the garden. Uh Jamie's been coming back and adding compost to each one of the plants and whatnot. She's getting mild success.

[00:28:15]Obviously, it's going to be better next year. I'm just going to go ahead and walk around this side and stay over here. So, the pond that I was digging is about a/4 to one/3 the size that I actually want it to be. Um, but I had to stop because like I said, the uh the well, as you know, the hose on the tractor blew on the loader lift. So, got that fixed and then I was behind on other stuff. So, I had to come away from this and you know the story. So, anyway, this is nowhere near the size that I want. Um, it's about 3 ft deep at the deepest and about as long as it is this way. I want it to be an oval that way. So, we're going to cover a lot of this stuff over here. Those three leaning p um sweet gums, those were damaged from the ice storm. They're obviously not going to stay that way. I'm going to cut them down and just let them grow right back into that same cluster of stumps.

[00:29:13]They'll come back. It'll take many, many, many years, but I think that with another uh that is a sweet gum behind it as well. That'll be a nice two tree cluster for what we're calling the berry bunch. Anyway, this still needs to be dug out and I'll probably wait until uh the next drought. If we get another drought this summer, which we typically always do, then I'll wait till it dries out as much as I can and then start digging this out as as well. In the meantime, this is Tyler K's favorite spot on the property. Absolute favorite spot. So, uh yesterday some friends came over. uh her and Lucas, her buddy uh Nathan's son, they were playing in here constantly with the dogs, and the dogs love running through it with them. So, ah, a little little watering hole. What about mosquitoes? It sounds kind of weird to say, but I'm not entirely worried about mosquitoes. Uh, one thing that I've really learned with this property, and I've I've educated myself with with it on YouTube and whatnot, but the more diversity you have with plants, the more diversity you have with insects, the more diversity you have with insects, the more competition you have, and therefore pests typically can't thrive. Let's just say you're in a city or something that has a pond, uh, some area of not any moving water.

[00:30:32]That's going to breed mosquitoes. And if you're in the city, well, you typically just have grass or in a in a community.

[00:30:38]I guess you typically have some grass and maybe every person, every house has a little bit of of uh a landscaping and and flowers and whatnot around their house, but it's not like it is out in nature where there's a lot of variety.

[00:30:51]And I think that variety brings in all these competing insects and really helps control the population of of all of them across the board. So, we do have mosquitoes, but for the amount of standing water we have all over the place, I don't think we have bad mosquitoes. They really haven't been too bad here. And I maybe I just jinxed myself. I don't know. But it really hasn't been that bad. And I'm thankful for that. Like I said, I think it is the diversity of everything that we've got going on. Oh, we've got some of our first wild yellow flowers coming up over here. All right, this is the point where I say leviosa and just levitate over there, right?

[00:31:31]Uh there's no way around it. You got to walk through it eventually.

[00:31:39]All right, so this is Jamie's been mentioning this.

[00:31:43]This is the Brady Bunch. There's a huge cluster of red maple trees right there.

[00:31:47]Interesting. Um anyway, uh this is the Brady Bunch. There's a bunch of sunflowers in there as well. And you can kind of sort of see a path that I've started to cut with the uh uh flail mower to go around it. So, we're going to let this thing grow wild. And then once it's wild, we're going to come back and maybe if there's something we don't like, we'll pull it out. But generally, just let it go wild. This is full of berries and whatnot. This over here, we haven't quite tackled yet, so we're just going to leave it and let it grow and let it do its thing and and bring in all kinds of stuff. Like I said, uh there's the first wild flowers over here.

[00:32:24]little color for you. So, this will all be just glowing yellow and full of bees here soon, which is fantastic. Also got some uh what is that? I think I know the name of that, but I'm not going to say it because I think I'm not entirely sure.

[00:32:41]Um anyway, this is uh this is going to be nice out here soon. Some people say, "Oh, like this looks horrible and trash and you got to keep it mowed." I don't want to keep it mowed. This looks like nature in my opinion. Way better. Now, the house is eventually going to be over here. And I do want to have a little bit of the house lawn be mowed as well. And I'm going to take this path because it's less mud.

[00:33:07]Uh, but you can see this is the original swale that I cut through here. So, we're still draining all that water behind us.

[00:33:13]all the overflow from the pond and all that. It still drains through here and goes that way. It's a slow process. It's not steep, but uh that is the direction that it all goes.

[00:33:25]I don't have a good lens on here to zoom in, but right on top of one of these pieces right here is a beautiful cardinal just landed. Oh, there it goes.

[00:33:35]Beautiful. The birds on this property are just gorgeous. They're just so gorgeous, man. I wish I had a camera with a lens. Beautiful. Uh so anyway, speaking of that burn pile, that's basically where the house is going to go. Probably a little bit to the left of it. We're going to try and line up the side of the house with the side of the shop on both directions. And both structures at that point will be slightly skewed from being perfectly in line with northsoutheast west. That way the north side, which is Oh, go away.

[00:34:03]Horse flash. the north side, which is on the left over there. Uh, it does get just a little kiss of morning sunlight as it comes up, uh, just to, you know, prevent mold and mildew and whatnot.

[00:34:15]That was a happy accident. We didn't we didn't particularly plan that, but that's just a happy accident. So, the house is going to be somewhere over here. And I love it the fact that this is a little bit lower elevation because you see these different levels of stuff of our life, different levels of our life as your eyes continue to wander further and further back. You know, you've got in this case, we've got the burn area, then we've got the log garden over there, then the logs over there for the sawmill and lumber over there, and of course the shop over there. And it just it just looks more interesting from this dynamic. It would be really nice if we can figure out a way to have at least like a second story balcony of some kind to where we get our coffee in the morning, go up on that second story balcony and look over all of our all of our life and then see the sunrise over there in the Oh, just goosebumps. Love it. Love it. The swale is working and the pondish pondish that is working. I just wanted to show you those two things. Uh because like I said, we're stuck. We're stuck outside because it's muddy. We're stuck inside because of that router tearing up.

[00:35:22]And that's okay. We're just doing a lot of things behind the scenes. As I leave you here, I'm going to spin you around and show you how much Jaime's last minute idea that we're completely winging it and didn't know how it was going to turn out. Raised log bed has been turning out. It is. It's nice.

[00:35:41]Jamie did not add any fertilizer or anything synthetic or anything like that to this raised bed. She hasn't hardly done anything. What we did is last year we built this raised bed. We threw a bunch of sticks in the bottom of it. We covered that with dirt, not soil, just straight up dirt. And then uh let it sit for a while over the winter. Then she came back and added a plant here, added a plant there, added a plant here, added a plant there. Most of which she transplanted from the Impossible Garden last year, and then added some wood chips. And it's just thriving. It is really thriving in here with very little effort. And I wanted to show you this because this is what I'm kind of hoping to see next year over there. All of that's covered in wood chips. All of that has decomposing stuff down below.

[00:36:39]It's It's going to get better. It's going to get better. And there's your proof.