In this Day 51 vlog, Victor (Speaker A) walks viewers through a typical homestead workday, beginning with morning animal checks—collecting eggs, inspecting chickens, feeding pigs, and milking two cows. He highlights feed nuances such as using grit to help corn digestion and the importance of alfalfa for pigs. The crew then tackles equipment maintenance: Josiah’s electric chainsaw has locked up, and Mark demonstrates how to sharpen and adjust the blade using a portable sharpener, emphasizing safety stops and consistent edge angles. The group shifts focus to land‑clearing momentum, describing how they finally found a groove with the right tools, location, and goals, and likening the surge of progress to a soccer team’s post‑goal momentum. A major logistical challenge is clearing an old access road blocked by logs to move a piece of equipment named “Sally” across a hill within a 45‑minute target. They create a temporary speed bump, remove a silage cart, and coordinate to keep the chain moving. Throughout, Victor intersperses informal banter, reflections on past experiences, and motivational remarks about daily progress, illustrating the blend of hands‑on labor, problem‑solving, and team dynamics that drive the homestead’s development.
Chapters
Good morning. Poor Rebecca, she tries to have nice stuff, but I guess this is too much of a temptation for kids. Lily's horse obstacle course. Look at that chicken trying to get out. Did they eat their corn from yesterday? Come on, Mr. Brown, let's find out. I don't know, I think they did. I think that little bit of corn is from another time. Why am I singing and talking?
No eggs.
No eggs. Hopefully you're playing a game with me. Yay, you're playing games! How's Mama Pig? Where are your babies? Hopefully your babies are buried in the hay somewhere. Look at this. Wow, look at those eggs! How many eggs can you carry in one hand? I'm gonna definitely reach my limit. 5. I'm not gonna be able to get them all. I don't want to put these in the basket because those eggs are so nice and clean. I forgot to soak feed yesterday. We're gonna do 2 eggs yesterday and today. Well, that's not gonna work. That's the old rabbit's watering bucket. A little bit of help to get corn. Give them a bed of rooster teeth.
They ate it all, or the pigs knocked it all over.
AKA grit helps them break down this corn. They're all so warm in there. No shivering today. Let's go milk so we can be ready for Mark. Mark coming to fix Josiah's chainsaw. It locked up yesterday. I bet it's a quick fix. Look what I found yesterday. Did you see that? I found a bunch of our connections. It goes to our hydrant hose. That will help us weigh down the silage tarps on the crop garden. There's this phenomenon in soccer that they call momentum. Once a team scores, there's an incredible energy that follows them for a while. I don't know, I think it's like 5 minutes, could be more, but you tend to be more likely to score right after a goal than any other time, it seems like. Now that's a high-intensity energy, but there's still the momentum that if they keep on having an advantage and carry that energy on, although they might not be scoring, they're gonna be controlling the game. Well, speaking of momentum, I just crushed ours. Totally forgot the alfalfa. Where we are doing well, I feel, is in the land clearing. It took us forever to get our groove, and now we have our strategy, we have the right tools, we have the exact location and the goals. We're just crushing it, so we're running with that. Thanks. Hey, my man, good morning. Show them the saw, John. Just— I'll go with you. I want Mark to go over the electric chainsaw sharpener with me to make sure I'm doing it right. Billy's helping Jonah this morning, so I'm alone now. All right, we're gonna get everybody tied up. That's where management comes in handy. You're tied up, you ate your alfalfa, and we gotta stand here while you eat it. So she gets used to us being here because I've got to grab a collar on her. Look how jumpy she is. This is new. This will be a progress. What we want every day is a progress. Can she eat while I'm bending over her food? She's licking y'all's right ear right now. Good, good. That's as far as I go today, okay? Tomorrow we'll go further. That was a good training session. We're putting her alfalfa back. We don't want her to learn that, oh, I just gotta wait this out, he'll leave, and then I can eat the alfalfa peacefully. No, only alfalfa when I'm around. Good things happen when I come around. That's where we got a trainer. When you are milking 2 cows by yourself, 9 times out of 10, gonna be advantageous to lead to milk the dominant cow first. Keep the other one tied up or secured. It's kind of like old times. I milked 2 cows by myself for a very long time. Mark got Jesse's chainsaw going already. Ah, what is he doing there? That gets you a bit when you run them a little bit low, get a bridge over that.
25. See that? Oh wow, right there.
Yeah, that is. So you like 25 for this one, right? Okay.
But you can do, you know, you can do it whatever, just make sure that you do the same on both sides. That's all we're sharpening is, is this edge. We're not doing nothing.
So you actually cut some of this back top?
Well, I'm just cutting. I'm sharpening, sharpening this edge. This right here stays the same. Usually this don't get dull. Okay, but once you get it set, you just tighten that up or start.
See, this right here is your stop. Oh, it is?
That keeps you from going too deep.
Oh, okay. You got your chicken bone?
We have to move this and then cut down all these stumps.
Oh, that's true. We're trying to think how we can get Sally and equipment up to where we are. We have an old access road into here, but all these logs are blocking it. There's some laying in the way right there. Taking a little bit of a speed bump here to get us some access, which will speed it up in the end. The goal is 45 minutes, we get Sally on the other side of this.
Can we do it?
If we don't do it, we'll feel set back again with it tomorrow. Where's your helmet, bro? Oh, you'll cut it on in a minute. Just warm it up. Nice. First things first, get rid of this ugly silage cart. I feel better about that, just letting my firewood sit out here and rot. Uh-oh, we losing our momentum. What happened?
It stopped going again.
Did you hit the chain funny or anything? No. Maybe it'll work. Okay, you'll have this if it doesn't. We gonna be able to get through here? Hey, we can get through that brush.
Oh yeah, you wanna do that?
I could get through there right now. It's this one I'm a little more worried about. Help me clear this over. That's cleared. That's it, Josiah. Well, this is gonna be a little tight. Are you all boy getting your pants soaking wet? We got 5 minutes. I think we can get Sally up the hill and just have a victory. What do you think? We got up here with Sally! Back on track tomorrow.
