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All right. So, I've talked from time to time about life lessons in homesteading. I'm going to share one with you that's in real time. Today's June 3rd, 2025, and uh last night, June 2nd, I got up at about 11 cuz why not. And I realized I had left my water bottle outside from the night before and I was pretty thirsty. So, I went outside to go grab my water bottle. I heard some water running over here. So, I come out here and of course everything's dark because it's 11 at night and open this gate. I hear a large animal run off right here and I heard water running right here. That's why I came out here and I said, "Uhoh." So, I shine my flashlight and I saw a pig. So, we've got pigs. You can actually see them in the distance and they're in this electric net. And come to find out what happened was the electric supply that runs to the fence had become disconnected and the pigs know when the fence is down and they broke out. So they were running a muck in our garden area and there are places where that's less bad. But right here is really bad. So let's check out what the damage was and we'll get to the lesson here. So, one of these timers, I'm not sure which, is definitely broken. And so, I'll have to take this apart. Oh, here it is. See that? So, that's 10 bucks. And then it'll take about 10 minutes for me, 15 minutes kneeling down here to replplum that because all those connectors will have to be taken off and replaced. This right here, I'm trying to think what we have planted here. Do you remember, Luke? No. No. So, we had something planted here. You got to understand. So, it's June 3rd. In a lot of places, that's like the middle of the season. In Montana, it's just the beginning of the season. And basically, everything like you can't put anything in the ground before May 1st. And you have to start a whole bunch of things inside. And that's a matter when the sun starts coming out, you have to put it inside every night, take it outside every morning. It's a lot of work to get these things going. So, check this bed out. This is kale and cabbage. And it's basically it's all dead. And this pipe's totally busted. Now, these pipes, this system that I developed, the pipes have wire drill bit holes in them. It's like a custom drip line that I made. And I made these pipes years ago, but it was so much work drilling all those little holes in this pipe. And so, luckily, this pipe, this particular pipe, I can reuse, but I will have to cut a bunch of things and put on some more connectors. And that's all fun. Of course, all this mulch is trashed. It'll have to be raked out again. So, let's keep going. So, they destroyed a bunch of strawberries right here. That looks like it'll be relatively easy to fix. It's just back fill it with dirt, provided the pipes aren't broken here. This was all full of beets, I believe. And so, they're all gone here. This one was What we have here? Beans. This was dried beans. And I see maybe two plants survived. This whole bed was full of dried beans. And we've got same story over here with green beans. Although more of these made it. It's a total loss because this late in the season, we can't replant those. They won't make it. Um there's just enough time with this specific variety that it can get to harvest. You see there are more pipes broken over there. You get the point. Now, we have potatoes all through here, and it looks like we'll get about 30% out of that from where we were before. Now, that's not the end of the sadness of the story because, like I say, June 3rd, so we're 3 weeks in to watering this every single day for about two hours at least. We've hand watered this for about two hours every day for three weeks. And the reason we have to do that is because I've not been able to develop a watering system because it like never rains here. I've haven't been able to develop a watering system that works with sprouting seeds. Um I've tried a bunch of things. We just don't have enough water to make anything else work. So once the plants are established, which we're like a day or three away from, this pipe system can be taken over and it just works on the timers. You come out, you turn on the timer, you walk back in, no big deal. And so, um, yeah, massive loss. And so, let's go to what the problem was. So, this electric net is what we use to keep the pigs in. And it's great cuz we can move it around and you can hear the clicking. That's the current. So, we've got it hooked here with an alligator clip to the supply. And this runs to a charger which we have for other parts of the fence. It's all just one system. And what happened was when Luke, who's filming this, hooked up this fence, he ran this line under just that corner post. It was right here. See, it's here now. And it was right here. Okay. Now, just that cutting this specific literal corner, just that a brave pig decided to grab that and pull it as far as I can tell. And in doing so, disconnected the fence. So, all that destruction, hours and hours and hours of work, weeks lost in the season. The whole season's done for a bunch of those beds. We won't get anything out of it except for like radishes. we could replant radishes or something because that wire went through here. And so you constantly hear me talking about complexity and how the more complex the system, the greater the consequences of what might otherwise under surplus or simpler system be no big deal. And you think, dang, one wire inside of one post. Look how big this fence is. just one post, right? And all of that is destroyed. And who knows what would have happened if I hadn't woken up at 11 uh 11:00 p.m. like some freak of nature and come out here and chase these pigs down. Here's the message. You might think, "Well, dang. I have no interest in doing homesteading if it's that complicated and things can go that wrong. And you know, if we didn't have redundant fencing, the pigs would have been gone. Right? But here's the thing. You live in such an insulated existence in the modern world right now that you think that this is a weird freakish example of what doesn't apply to anybody. It's actually the inverse of that. Normal life is hanging by a thread. you're surrounded by all this surplus that's not going to last and it's not um it's not correct to say it's not real, but it's synthetic. It's it's unnatural. And so getting to the point where you're constantly dealing with things like this, it makes you robust to reality because in reality things die all of the time. And if you have something even remotely complex which is required in order to solve a whole lot of problems. There is no way to grow stuff here without doing something like this. This isn't the exact solution in every case. But if you want to do things that are anywhere outside of the norm, you suddenly have a mountain of these things like this, these systems that you have to create. And one little mistake can bring the whole thing down. And if you're not in a realm where you're constantly learning these lessons, so I said Luke is a camera guy, a little about my son Luke, I cannot remember a time where he ever intentionally did something wrong, which is an exceptional thing to say. That's a wonderful quality for a person, right? But a lack of attention to detail, this kind of thing happens frequently. And I'm not ragging on Luke, you know, because he's here and everything. But my point is when we think about mistakes in life, we tend to focus on the ones that were intentional where we intentionally did something wrong. It's like 99% of the conversations that we have about this sort of thing. If you're in that that world, you have not even scratched the surface on the kinds of challenges that we have to become fluent in overcoming stuff like this, right? Where the lesson learned is I definitely have to put a fence around these raised beds, right? That costs money, that costs time. It's annoying to have to go through yet another gate every single time you walk through, right? But the price had to be paid to learn the lesson of that being necessary, right? And then we have to go through the process of solving that problem and then making up for the consequences of having it in the first place because all these beds are jacked up now and all has to be fixed. So I hope that that's sort of a lesson at what I'm getting at with this whole rural life kind of thing. If you live in an HOA, when are you ever going to face stuff like this? And not just because we're talking about pigs and farms. It's it has nothing to do with that. It transcends that. This is reality. Reality is not an HOA. Reality is not, you know, everybody's just on this treadmill life doing the same thing as everybody else. In reality, there are problems that require complex solutions. And as you implement those, it's evident that a lot of those problems are either unsolvable or you need someone else to do it because you can't. And then even when you fix the problems, stuff like this happens and just some freak thing can make the whole thing collapse. And we have to get better at this because you have to roll with the punches and develop the mentality of when things like this happen. Is it devastating? Yeah. I mean, it happens though. Whatever. And the question is, do I want a good harvest this year or do I want to build systems that make it very likely for me to get a good harvest every single year? Right? If if the garden system can't endure, you know, a two-monthl long drought, then it doesn't work. And it's not worth it to do this at all, if you can't have a reliable harvest because it's so expensive in time and money. And if if it can't endure pigs, something has to change. Either the pigs have to go or we have to get a fence or try something else, right? Do you get the message here? And so life is like that. When you see the problems, it gives you an opportunity to overcome them. And if you live in an insulated world where the problems are hidden because you're just overflowing with this surplus of, you know, I don't have to worry about making food because I just go to the grocery store. Well, guess what? When the grocery store is not there one day, you're going to have a big old problem. And not just that, you have a matter problem because not only do you have this problem of no food, you have the problem of never having faced problems, right? You were struggling in life on easy mode and now easy mode's out the window as hard mode. So these are the kinds of things that you learn and these are the kinds of things your kids can learn because there's a constant supply of opportunities to detect when someone's not paying attention to detail. And there are huge consequences to drive the lesson home, right? So that's that. And and you know, we were chasing down the pigs. Luke's got a favorite and he's particularly annoying. And uh we couldn't get him back into this pen. He was the last one. I said, "Luke, couple minutes more. I'm getting my gun and I'll just spend the morning butchering this pig." And we did get him in, but uh his time will come, but it won't be today. Anyway, I hope this is uh fruitful. My garden won't be this year, but hopefully it's fruitful for you. All right, you can cut it off.