Transcription
A lot has happened over the last two months on my end. There have been some great things and some terrible things. Let's start with the bad so we can finish on a good note.
It's freezing out here today, so I'm going to throw my hat on for this, and then we'll just kind of jump into it. The boss, the young king, the guardian of the garden, Big Tuck, he passed away last Sunday on the 19th. He was 4, 14, and A2 years old. If you watch the channel for a while, you guys know how much he meant to us, and I know how much he meant to all of you as well.
Tug was my shadow; we went everywhere together. There are a few things that I know he would want. First, he wouldn't want us to be sad about this. He loved his life; he lived a great long life, and he lived it to the fullest. We will be celebrating Tuck's life and the impact he had on so many people, especially on me. His memory won't be shrouded in sadness. The king, his importance, and his positive impact will live on forever and continue to grow and produce more seed.
You will still see Tuck in the future videos. We don't think it's right if he's not in them because he's just such a big part of the channel. He helped build it, he helped grow it, he helped inspire it, and that goes the same thing with this whole entire garden. He's so much a part of it that he will always remain a part of it, and we'll never forget to honor him for his contribution to just a better future.
There's definitely going to be a transition, especially for me in making the videos and stuff. It just doesn't feel the same, but we're going to—we have to keep going for Tuck. This is what he would have wanted. In his, you know, classic boss fashion, before he left, he wanted to give us a few gifts, and we've got some great things to show.
So let's move over to what Tuck left us before he had to go. The first one is a new homestead. This will be our future food forest and our future garden. We have way more space, and we have more privacy, which means more videos with better sound quality.
Before I show you some more, and before people start to worry, no, I did not lose the other garden. I still have that other food forest, and we will maintain that food forest and keep it because it's our baby. Tuck helped us build that. This place here will be a future site, but it's going to take a little bit of time, you know, a few years probably, to transition this into production.
So I'll bring everyone along for that process as we convert this place from just a regular homestead into a productive, incredible garden. It's going to be a lot of fun to kind of show you guys how we're going to do that. The property is a few acres; it's not all usable, but we still have plenty of space to do what we want.
You'll notice on the ground here there's a lot of deer tracks. There's plenty of deer back here. As you pan over to the left, that's part of the property too. There's a nice section of woods, which gives us a great level of privacy.
Come back here; I want to show you something else. In the future, I'm going to do a more comprehensive video with some drone shots and just go into more detail, but this is just kind of to give you an update of what's been happening.
Come back here; I want to show you something cool. You can see we've got a beautiful pond in the back of the property here. It's going to look really nice. I'm super excited about that, and the videos are going to be just like they were in the past. We're just going to be feathering in some updates of what we're working on at the homestead, and it's just going to be a lot of fun to bring you guys along for that.
One of Tuck's final acts of blessings was to supervise and help us build the first thing we added to the property, and that was a new Veo greenhouse. The thing is huge! We just picked a spot, leveled the ground, assembled the frame and the walls, slid in the polycarbonate for the walls, assembled the roof, added the polycarbonate, and finished off the roof, and then attached the windows on the roof, and it was done.
In Tuck's poetic fashion and incredible timing, when the finishing touches were put on, he stopped right in front of the camera to let me know it looked good. Because before that, he was going around the greenhouse making sure that it was up to code and that it was Tuck approved.
I'm really happy with the greenhouse and how it came out. I think it looks beautiful. Get a whole shot of it. It was super easy to assemble—mostly just nuts and bolts and barely any tools. I'm selling them now at team.us. You can grab a greenhouse. This one is 16 1/2 ft long and 8 1/2 ft wide, and there's a smaller one even 8 1/2 ft long. There's a number of different sizes.
So one really cool thing is these doors too. Check this door out! Pop it off there. We could easily close these doors; they lock in the back here on the top and bottom, and then we could open this or close this up. There's even like a lock, so you could lock it. Really cool!
Then come in, take a step in here, check it out. Look how much space we have to start seedlings and everything, grow all different kinds of stuff. It's endless! An awesome feature are these windows up here. All you got to do is here's the spot window. Take this, push it up, twist the knob, and that's it! Now you got an open window. Great ventilation!
Beautiful greenhouse, polycarbonate, super strong aluminum frame. I'm so excited to get some plants growing in here. It's going to be incredible.
I have two additional pieces of good news. The first one is that we are now selling on our website over at teamggr.us seeds that you guys can buy today. We partnered with Mi Gardener to be able to sell some of their seeds on our website. Luke's been a friend for years, and we've always had some conversations back and forth about kind of doing something together.
So we came together for this. I'm really excited about that because Luke has so many different varieties, and it's really cool to be able to partner with another YouTuber to bring you guys some seeds. You're always asking about where to get seeds from. Luke gets some of the best quality seeds and great heirloom seeds, so we're really happy to bring those to you.
One of the things we love so much is the cost. We got really sick of people saying, "Where should I buy seeds?" and then we send you over to a place that it's like over $6 for one pack of seeds. We don't want to do that, and we never wanted to do that. Now, working with Luke, we can send you right over to our site; they're only $2 a pack, which means you'll get more varieties for way less of a cost, and it's going to just bring a lot of diversity to your garden. We're real happy with it.
The last piece of good news is that we started a blog. We would love for you guys to go over, check it out, and give us some feedback. It's something that I've always wanted to do. I know I've made the videos in the past, but not everyone likes to watch videos.
So what we're trying to do is provide more value for people, reach a larger group of people so that we could grow more gardens and just, you know, build a better future for everyone. So we're super excited about that blog. Let us know what you think about it. It's just still in the early stages; it's fresh. We're going to be adding way more value, way more content on there just so we can encourage more people to grow their own food.
With Tuck's passing, it makes me reflect and contemplate and just ask myself, "What's the point? What am I doing this for? What's the goal?" It's always been about encouraging other people to grow their own food and start their own gardens.
Because I know for me, you know, years ago, I felt just completely lost, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. Me and Tuck decided to start a garden, and then so much good came from that. Everything good came from that. Looking back 14 years later, we can realize that it was only good that came from starting the garden.
It just opened up so many doors of opportunities for us. It brought joy into our lives, and it helped us find ourselves. So that's something that we would love to share with everybody. It reminds me of that Jeff Lton quote that I love so much: "You could solve all the world's problems in a garden."
In honor of Tuck, to celebrate him, his life, and his contribution, this year we're going harder than ever. We're going to do more, provide more value, more encouragement, more inspiration, and we will rededicate ourselves to the mission of growing a better future together, one garden at a time.
Tuck and James, we'll be back to you again real soon. We out.