This content was created by Victor Justin Rhodes. This content was uploaded by Victor Justin Rhodes. This is a YouTube vlog titled "Building a GIGANTIC (40x60') SHED" (published Feb 8, 2024) documenting a homestead project. The excerpt is a first-person, informal walkthrough by the main vlogger (labeled SPEAKER A) with interactions from family and crew—Ben (photographer), Becky, Lily, Amanda, Randolph, Andrew, and various contractors (framers, shed crew, block mason, inspector, etc.). Content covers proofing and photographing the vlogger's new short homestead book and course, planning and finishing a large shed/lean-to and other property work, farm chores (feeding, hay spreading), construction inspections, cooking muffins, and reflections about homesteading and designing a homestead plan. The tone is conversational and documentary-style, combining narration, on-site dialogue, and everyday homestead activities.
Chapters
The moment we've been waiting for. Proofing my latest book. Okay. Wow. Alright. Let's see what this thing looks like. Cover coming this afternoon. 44 pages. So short and sweet. Not gonna waste anybody's time with this design plan. We lean into the problem, but only a little bit of the problem. Then the rest is the solution, really. Not trying to be a smart butt. I promise. We lean into the whys. And then a chapter on what to grow. That was a fun chapter to grow. Growing outside your door, growing outside the door of your heart. Oh, she did it! She did it! A nice graph. All the different possible elements: cows, garden, turkeys, financial investment, time commitment, and energy. All those requirements, and you can compare them to each other, and it helps you— it can help you decide what to do next. I can't wait for you guys to have this in your hand. You can use it as a workbook and by the end of it have your own plan sketched out on paper of your homestead. Yes. Okay, it's available now, book and course. I'll leave the link down in the description. Help you design your best homestead ever, 2024 edition. Seeing those images like in the slideshow earlier and now the book, it reminded me we need to get our photographer out. It's been a while. Ben's here taking pictures. Hey, bomb! Hey, good morning! It's been too long. It's so long, man. How's Spot doing? She's doing good, getting a lot bigger. Trying to get some lifestyle shots. He's already done the pigs, but hey, we can always add some wood chips for the camera, right? How do you see? There's a little hole right here. We're hay bombing. Let's hay bomb out into the field, guys. So throw them down. See where the hay's been? We're putting the hay anywhere it hasn't been. It's called hay bombing, adding nutrients with the spent hay that they don't eat. And the concentration of manure in one area. Now the boys want to show me a place they want to dig a trench for their airsoft. But do you even use the foxhole? Uh, it's too small. It's not about using it, it's about building it, and you need something else to build. The fun is in building. Oh wow, y'all have a proper course. What about this as a pasture? What happened to that? Well, we need a place to have fun. If you're letting Lily have her horse ring in the pasture Oh, touché, touché. We're not taking that or that, we're just having to the building. Okay, this is kind of a tricky place to bring the animals, isn't it? Oh boy, we just spread grass seed over where we tore up Grandma's yard to make a driveway. This is too wet. Yeah, it looks heavy. Look how much that machine carried up here. I thought the shed guy was coming today by 8:30. It's like 9:30. We do have framers here finishing up on the Holler house. Oh, the shed folks are here, Becky. In just a day and a half, all our farm equipment will be undercover. Why do you want to get a jackhammer? To break those big rocks. You said we can't come out. Yeah, they're in the ground. Well, don't we want them? What machine runs a jackhammer? Either one can. Or you. Hey, are y'all still gonna be hungry at 12:30? Yeah, turn that off. 10:30 breakfast. While they're getting set up for the shed, let's go see what's happening to the homestead house remodel. Randolph, hey, hey, you're leaving us? I'm moving out. Okay, stuff out of here so they don't spray. All right, say hey to Mickey Mouse for me. Hey Steve. Hey, sorry. Yeah, you're good. Are we putting a face on this? I don't know, Sean mentioned something. I didn't know if you got somebody doing it. We need to. Do you have it? Ain't that what's out here? No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lily's horse riding lessons. They got through. I can't find Josiah. I might have to drive this machine. They're better at it than me. Uh, block mason is here and he needs his sand moved. I'm gonna switch out the forks in a second. The inspector's here. They're gonna do HVAC inspection. Unfortunately, they cannot do HVAC and framing at the same time, so we'll need to call that in tomorrow if we pass. We only have tomorrow because Monday, uh, insulation's coming. Get these grapples off of here. Passed HVAC inspection. Calling in framing for tomorrow. We're gonna leave them to do their thing. Lily's wanting to make some blueberry muffins this afternoon. What inspired you to make these blueberry muffins? Mama likes blueberry muffins. I don't really like them though, but it's okay. Are you gonna eat some? Now, yeah. You're just making them for Mom? What kind do you like? I like banana muffins and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. We are wrapping up the blueberry muffins. Yep. Mr. Henry's helping. Yes. You letting him do it? Yes. There you go, right in. Getting them ready for the oven. Lily's oven's in the muffin. It's muffin in the oven. Cute little lamb legs from the farm. You can tell what that was right there. This time I am not gonna burn this lamb. Basically cooked it to 195 that last time. Broke my heart. Much, much, much later. I'm not kidding, it's 15 till. I haven't checked the meat once. I don't think it's cooking fast enough. I guess we're eating that one. Is this good? That looks good, actually. Daddy, I'll put it back in. Hey, I thought you were making broccoli. Broccoli goes good with baked potatoes. We're gonna check this out after day 1. We just changed the landscape again, Becky. I like it because we can do another little shed over on this side. The idea is lean-to off that side and the back. There's room in the back, so we left room here to get a car by. That's 11 feet. That's plenty of room for a 6-foot car. Whoa! We asked for silver tin. Maybe it is silver. Maybe that's the bottom. It is silver, Dar. That's better. Green is just the COVID Are we gonna build a shed in the back too? I think so. It's a little more difficult off the back though, isn't it? I think the idea For the hatch in the middle, you can drive something through. We could park Maple in here if we hadn't sold her. Our old converted school bus. We had to sell Maple. If we did that lean-to shed off of this, we could back them into here. Oh yeah, that's true. These could be trailer bays. Let's go eat. No, I asked Andrew, he said you don't enclose them. It's better to keep it open. It's so ugly, all of our stuff. Well, that's why we put it here in the corner. The end of the property. Oh yeah, you can see it from everywhere. This is crazy. Just before dinner, I get a text from Amanda. My booklet is ready. I cannot wait for you guys to get this and see this. But you want to see my booklet? Becky's going to see my book for the first time. Okay, this is Mom seeing the book for the first time. We're not looking at the pictures, we've seen these pictures. I know, I'm not looking at the pictures. We're looking at layout content. Remember Ben came this morning, took pictures? Well, he's done that over the years, and we have pictures for when we want to write a book like this. What would we have given for a book like this when we started? Like, homesteading's come so far. I mean, that was like— there's so many resources. 2009. It would have helped us know what to grow. I know. We wouldn't have ended up with a mule and a goat. He has double eyes. This helps me answer the hard question. Like, it would have saved us a lot of stuff. Nothing like— if we need a heifer from him If we need a heifer that is A2A2 so we can raise our own milk cow, we need an A2A2 bull. I really like it because there's like all these different— like, it's, it's like that graph. It's got photos and it has graphs. And look, I wish somebody would have laid this out for me. Go back down. Financial investments is a high, low, or medium time commitment, energy, and I could look at all the elements. I notice you're slowing down mostly at the pictures, and she's seen these pictures, so maybe this book is worth it just for the pictures. That's such a good photo. See? She can't see. Okay, just get it for the photos. Just get the book for the photos. So we gotta rush and print this off somewhere so we can show the people. Kind of forgot to film this, but I cooked it perfectly. Look at that red. Lily's muffins, how'd they turn out? Good. It's the next day. The shed folks are back. We're getting our roof. We're gonna get things undercovered today. And we've done it. Box trailer. Flatbed trailer, cattle trailer, all inside protected from the elements and room for plenty of other things. We're in this homestead thing for the long haul. This is what's close and dear to our hearts. This is going to help us ever continuing our health journey and growing the food that energizes us and that is our medicine. Happy day.
