In this informal, behind‑the‑scenes video, Victor Justin Rhodes films a day of shooting the Master Class companion for his homesteading book The Rooted Life. While on set, he shares five Christmas gift ideas that cost little or nothing, weaving in personal family traditions and promoting his upcoming book. The ideas include: (1) handmade gifts made with the kids (e.g., a jigsaw‑cut wooden toy), (2) handwritten letters exchanged each year as a family tradition, (3) a free pre‑order bonus for The Rooted Life – a Chapter 1 PDF, printable bookmark, and a virtual book‑club, (4) experience‑based gifts such as family outings, community parades, or volunteer activities, and (5) farm‑produced gifts like eggs, turkeys, and other produce wrapped in custom farm branding. Throughout, Victor mixes casual banter with his crew, discusses his health (carpal tunnel, reactive arthritis), and emphasizes the value of non‑material gifts and homestead self‑sufficiency. The video ends with a quick demonstration of a homemade projectile, a thank‑you to staff, and a festive holiday greeting.
Chapters
Kids have been milking for me lately. Gotta love those guys. I've been having a little bit of carpal tunnel symptoms, probably from our reactive— talking with the doctor, probably residue from the reactive arthritis. We have a film shoot today for The Rooted Life. Master Class. It's like a video companion for the book, which, speaking of the book, we got our Christmas bonuses ready. They're ready for all you pre-order folks and anybody else, uh, that pre-orders by Christmas. You ready? Yeah. We're gonna trim that edge off. So I was thinking about content for you guys. Today because I'm filming that master class all day. That's kind of boring. I mean, you only want to see so much behind the scenes of that kind of stuff. Uh, but it's Christmas. I thought, look at that, that's gonna be nice. So close too. I was racking my brain getting the word out for the Rooted Life. Uh, we have this class. How can I get you guys? Well, it's Christmas time. How about 5 gift ideas that you can do for Christmas? 3— how about 3 of them don't cost any money? So gift idea number 1, what Gideon's doing right here is make, make gifts. Make gifts. What are you making? And who's it for? Lily. All right, so we got this little edge right here we can clean up. If you want to make this one for somebody, it's pretty easy. He took his BB gun and he traced it out on a board and I took a jigsaw and cut it off. And then look, he's making this for Lily, but he's spending a lot of time thinking about it. I think it's even more meaningful than a gift. You and I are working together on it. So I'm gonna try to sneak and in between shoots talk to you guys about these Christmas gift ideas. We'll put the trigger up there and the handle here. Since this is small, we'll go in and then we'll All right, Gideon, I got your hole there. Now do a— your little handle. You want a handle? The handle would be cool. I don't want it. Why not? Because I don't know why, but I don't want it. All right, it's your present. Nice. Oh, I like it. Looks like the film crew is here. Been missing hanging out with those guys since we've not been doing— since Rooted is over. I think what we're gonna do here is I'm just gonna look at look at each section and then tell new stories, different stories, elaborate, do things that the book can't do. In that case, that video can do. Over the stock market, if you did it in the last 100 years, you're going to get 8% a year. We're talking about 100 to 300%. That could be the wisest thing you could do with that money. That's a wrap on that one. Lessons 1 and 2 down. They're going to set up another one this way. Let's highlight another free gift idea. Let's see. Okay, uh, yeah, Christmas 2016 handwritten letters to everyone— our children, spouse. I've got that— those in the lockbox, fireproof lockbox. The way that started is when Rebecca and I first got married, we got each other all the things. That's what you do. You just get each other gifts. And I think we just got each other gifts because— just because that's what you do. And I say that because in a month's time, maybe just a few weeks, we're like, uh, we could use the money. And we basically returned all those gifts. And I'm not kidding you, from then on we were like, let's opt out, let's just write encouraging notes to each other. And it stuck from then on. And when we started having kids, that's just what we did. We would actually the night before, watch It's a Wonderful Life, and we'd write the notes as we watched. And it was just a Christmas tradition. And now we do that all together as the kids, and they've just come to expect it, and they get excited about it. And they don't get gifts on Christmas morning, and it's not a big deal. They don't care. They enjoy Christmas. Actually, can anybody relate to this? I would get a lot of Christmas gifts on Christmas morning, and I'm thankful to my parents for that. Rebecca would get some, and it always, like, Christmas morning ended up being like a letdown for some reason. Like, I was thankful for the gifts. I don't know if it was anticlimactic. I don't know, this just didn't satisfy the way I anticipated. You know, as a kid, you just anticipate and look forward to it for weeks, and then it just never meets. It can't. It's material, right? It cannot. I think, to give you an idea of, well, what do you write? Well, I usually think about maybe a funny story that happened. You might say how they've changed. You might say, if you're a parent to a child, you definitely want to say how you're proud of them. Something that they're into that year, because then, you know, that's a 2016 letter. It would be kind of fun to read that now and see what they were into, what is that, 5 years ago? I actually turned my 2017 letters into a video. I mean, that's what I do. I make videos. Here's Here's a clip of that to maybe give you an idea of what you might say. Dear children, 2017 will certainly be one of the most wildest years of our lives. Namely, our 10-month adventure to all 50 states of America. We've had some incredible experiences. So far we've got making something and writing letters. The third one— hey, buddy— let's call it the Rooted Life sandwich. My book. Now, did I not feed you this morning? That's not quite fair because the Rooted Life does cost money. It's like $28 retail. It's hardcover. We're doing a crit, but here, here's, here's the thing. Here's, here's the free part. Okay, I admit, yes, that, that does cost money. It's not free, but I am going to give you something free if you pre-order. So that part will be free. And if you pre-order, well, there's nothing more to do. All you got to do is claim your free stuff. My book, gonna be hardcover. This is just a PDF printout. It's not available yet until March, but it's crazy. It's inspiration It's know-how for permaculture design, for gardening, for chickens, and making those things work together, and just how to make this homestead lifestyle fit. I was gonna pull it up on the computer and walk you guys through it, but they're kind of in there talking. So work with me, guys, as I talk to Dan. Dan, will you do a screen share and let's walk these people through it? So what you would do, guys, is go to therootedlife.com Look there, we're giving away Chapter 1. You can get Chapter 1 PDF as soon as you pre-order. And if you've already pre-ordered, all you got to do is fill out the form at therootedlife.com and you can get it. So you'll get all of Chapter 1. If I can homestead, you can too. So you'll be inspired. You feel like you can't do it? I felt like that once. You can. And this will take you to the, uh, to the next level, no matter what level you're on. And then for Christmas, if you order by December 25th, I'm giving all kinds of bonuses. I've created a bookmark that you can print out I've created a card that if you want to give this as a gift, you can give it to them. And it's got a little— it'll have a little shortened link on there so people could easily type in this link to go get Chapter 1. So whoever you give this to can actually go ahead and read Chapter 1 since the book's not quite out yet. And what's the other one? Oh, let's hop— let's do a book club. Let's do a book club. Chapter 1 Book Club, December 26th, the day after Christmas. You're fat and happy, you've eaten, you've had a good time at Christmas, you're hanging out, you're still off work probably. It'll be a Sunday. Let's get on live and let's talk about chapter 1, and you guys can ask me any questions or whatever regarding to it. The 4th gift idea that costs no money is experiences. Now this can be one of two things, and we like to do them both. One is just go out and do things together as a family. We like to go— last night we went and saw the lights. A couple of years ago, we went to the Biltmore House in Asheville. That was so much fun. Another thing you can do for experience— you feel in a giving spirit, right, around Christmas? You know, we're homebodies, we're homesteaders, we got a lot of animals, we got a lot of kids. It's a lot to get out. So last year, we did a parade. We loaded up the tractor, the, the mower, the everything else, and we just paraded down our road waving at people. I don't know if anybody saw us, but we tried. And it was an experience and we were trying to give and it was just fun. I mean, we went to the park and picked up trash one year. And before that, when our kids were little, we'd go to the nursing home and visit people and sing them a song or something like that. Anything like that to create experiences and memories I think outlasts any Lego toy there is. We need to change our shirt for the set. All better. Now, revolutionizing your own family's Christmas is one thing, but you still got normal people in your life that give Christmas gifts, like, like gifts, like they bought stuff and they give gifts. And maybe it's nice to give them gifts, not experience letters or whatnot. So what you could do, and what we've done— this is like just some ordered fish or something. We get these coolers and we save them. And then you go— this is the best. This excites me the most because this is the absolute best gift I can imagine giving somebody. Everybody on our staff, well, they got a turkey. Put that in there, and this would be a heck of a present to wrap. It's heavy fillet. Bad joke. Uh, you could wrap this. We, we got these printed custom. Holler Ganic Farm. All this was like normal, but then you could put in your name. Holler Ganic Farm, that's the name of our farm. Now here we go. All right, Gideon, look. Is it gonna work? Here we go. Oh, it shot about, what, 15 feet? Got them drilled, got it on there. Oh yeah, I think it's gonna work, Gabe. I put a little, uh, tip on there. Put it on like so. I think that'll work. Hit the top, let's see if it flies. Oh, all right, I was afraid of that. I think it's because of the screw head. I think if we go down more. All right, now let's try it. Yeah, all right, come on, get in. Yay! Shot a little crooked though. I think we need to put it at the end actually. Get in so that it connects out of the tip. Now boom, sawed-off shotgun! Can I hook it? Oh, I don't even need a hook. Can anyone try it? It's killing me not to just try it. I think so. Try it now. Okay. Whoa! Yay, we did it! Look, wow, probably went 30 feet right there. And I'll see if you can load it. Shoot me. Don't shoot your bro— he got me. Don't shoot your brothers ever though, or sisters. We just wrapped at the barn. Sun's about to set. Jonah, Jonah, show Mom these. Have you seen these? Where's the third one? Okay, let's see what these guys think. Their homegrown Christmas gifts. We got 6 out of 10 chapters done today, Beck. So we only got 4 more to go, so we're gonna go over the top with some bonus stuff. Santa Claus is coming to town! This is— we gave out— Merry Christmas! Thank you, Jacob! You guys got— it's like the healthiest eggs in America. I know, right? Yes. Thank you. And the assortment of colors, fresh, probably today or yesterday. My son's gonna eat all of these tonight. Good. Merry Christmas. Thank y'all.
