The video captures a New Year’s Day vlog from the Rhodes family as they celebrate, reflect on personal mindset, and tackle farm chores as part of their 100‑day homestead challenge. The day begins with repeated Happy New Year greetings and a brief discussion about the meaning of how one spends New Year’s Day, emphasizing forgiveness, positivity, and family togetherness. The family then moves to practical farm work: cleaning the pole barn, handling an urgent hay delivery, managing compost piles in winter, and planning a water‑from‑the‑mountain system. Throughout the chores, the parents encourage the children (Jonah, Josiah, Ben) to help, praise their effort, and discuss the importance of teamwork despite challenges such as a sick mother and the looming hay deadline. After the labor, they prepare a communal lunch of sweet potatoes, collards, pork butt, and leftover hay‑related tasks, then transition to a soccer game for recreation. The vlog blends casual family banter, motivational reflections, detailed farm‑operation logistics, and moments of play, illustrating the family’s philosophy of integrating homestead work with daily life.
Chapters
Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! Happy New Year, baby!
Happy New Year! The goal is to do this homestead thing as much as possible as a family. Couch.
Good boy! Hey, you found me!
Get your coat.
Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Would you have a late one last night? Stay Watch the ball drop? I did not stay up and watch the ball drop.
Did you guys? Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year, Hope.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
What are y'all two doing? Let's go eat breakfast. They say what you do on New Year's Day is telling of what you'll do the rest of the year. Now don't be confused, it's not what happens to you on New Year's Day, it's what you do.
Hey, Papa!
Hey, Darth Helmet! For example, Rebecca's sick. Well, that's out of her control. That has happened to her. We cannot control what happens to us, but it's our responsibility to do and act given the circumstances. Where do you need to go with that? Right there, my man, cleaning the garage. Is that telling of the year? I hope so. Even if you're out there sick or injured, what could you do? Oh my, that's not in far enough. Yeah, it won't go in. That's the problem. Even from the sick bed, you could read something positive, watch something positive. Send positive notes to your friends. There's a lot you can do to take action to be a better you, no matter what your situation is.
Papa, are you going to put a lot of bacon in all of it?
We can. You want to?
I don't want to. I want to have some bacon with my eggs.
Okay.
New Year's Day for us— you're seeing this long after New Year's, so if you lazed around or something And now you're feeling bad for wasting your New Year's Day. No worries, relax. It's not so much about that as so much about it's how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Don't be hard on yourself. Live your life forgiving yourself and starting anew each and every day.
Y'all ready? Yeah.
Okay, go. Although I was hunking my shoes last night at midnight, you guys were up. What was the big idea?
Staying up till midnight for fun New Year's.
What happened at midnight?
Well, we said Happy New Year and drank our apple cider.
Oh, I like it. Did you watch the ball drop?
We thought it was gonna drop. There was this thing like a ball, but then it didn't.
Oh, and they said everybody was in warm clothes. Nobody was in sweaters. You must have watched the wrong channel. You did not watch the New York City ball drop.
They set off fireworks.
You were probably in Miami or something.
Yeah.
What's the mood today? Are you guys still strong? Yeah, they're young, they can handle it. How you feeling, Beck?
I'm all right, I just got a headache still.
All you got left is a headache? Well, you got a cough, runny nose, and a cough still. She said she felt better yesterday afternoon, turned the corner, but then retracted this morning. Come on, you want to ride the Ergo?
Yay!
Nope. Okay, hates the Ergo. You cleaning out Sally? You're the man. Proud of that, kid. What looks excellent, my man? Maybe 2023 means a tidy and organized farm.
I don't want to clean the pole barn out today. I want to clean all around the house.
You know we have to clean out the pole barn though, right?
Yeah, but if there's extra time to clean the farm—
oh, what makes you so excited about cleaning the farm as opposed to pole barn?
The farm looks terrible. Oh, because we've been working on the 100, the clearing, so much.
Yeah, he's right. We've been focusing, in my opinion, on the more important things, like progress, like expanding our farm, but there is a boiling point. At some point it does get to be too much. What does that do?
That's the spigot. That's the spigot adapter.
Oh, okay. So you could put it in—
I want to run water from on top of the mountain in the summer. Yeah, it's not cold. And then we could have, uh, water from the mountain all the way. Oh yeah, this part will read all the way to the creek and that part will go all the way to the creek. Yeah, because the creek's the lowest.
It's killing me even today. We need hay fast and it's coming tomorrow. It's supposed to be coming tomorrow. I've been given dates before. It better come tomorrow. We're indeed doing— I still just want to go out there and clear and finish this 100-day challenge, but we have to get ready for hay. I'll be honest, I was hopeful that we could all work together on that as a family because that's what it's really about. And like, that would be the— like, who cares what we're doing? Let's just, let's just make sure we're doing it together as a family. Mom's sick. Jonah has other ambitions. He is getting older. That's, and that's just part of it.
Someone has to watch.
It's still the same thing. I mean, still all the same mission. We're still out working on the farm. We could maybe, maybe marry both worlds where you go and clean up the farm. You want to do that, that's a great thing. When we're ready to, uh, pressure wash, you could set that up for us. It's so wet here, Jonah. I can actually see water.
I'm gonna wait for it to maybe soak in a little bit more, and then—
no, it's not gonna soak up anymore. You gotta empty out this part, put down some dry wood chips. I like that you've piled the compost out there. We started a compost pile here and we're like, wait a minute, we haven't even been in here, what, 2 weeks? And look how full it is. No, we're gonna have to make a gigantic one out here that we'll haul it off with our track loader when it comes. This compost pile may not start breaking down because it's winter. It's hard for it to get up to its necessary heat, but that doesn't mean we can't pile it up. And preserve it. It'd be better even if we covered it so it didn't leach away. Will compost heat up in the winter? We just had about single digits. It's possible it's broken because it reads 0 degrees, 8 degrees before I even put it in there, and it's not moving. Okay, dang, it's 45 degrees, so that's definitely something wrong with that thermometer.
You know, she's actually wider than I used to ride a cow.
We could probably ride Flossy down.
Jonah got some wood chips down. Much better.
Hey, let's go!
Faster, faster! Boring, boring.
Uh-oh, we have a breach happen right here. Make sure you give it to them once you get there. Go ahead, go ahead. What you working on? All right, then you can shut that gate. Project of the day: almost out of hay. That rhymes. We gotta clean this up. It's coming tomorrow. Boys, let's get all this hay up and put it to the pigs. I wonder if we shouldn't put all this in the pigs today. We'll store it over there into the shed and use it as bedding. We could get 2, 3 more loads of hay in here. This can take forever with Henry cart. I think Sally might be better. Okay, yeah, no way I'm going to keep up with them. I'm going to get Sally. Okay, we'll load her. How's it going over here? Look who's here! Hey, take in the moment. New Year's Day, we're all working together. Look at that load!
Stop! A lot of hay.
Well, that ought to keep them busy for a couple of days.
What is that doing?
He's learning. Maybe we can go 30 more minutes and then we need to— we have to go make lunch. This is intimidating right here. This is a huge pile. This is crazy, this area too. Oh my word. It's clear from this wall over. All right, you going back in? Okay, go get better. Josiah's been refilling Beefcake's water, says he's out. If you clean this enough and we sweep it, we don't even need the tractor to move that corn. We got the pallet jacks and we can move it over here. Could we, guys? I think this will lift our spirits. We get this pile cleaned up and dealt with, finish loading Sally, all we'll have left is clearing our path here, getting our corn moved over. Jonah, you wanting to build a platform to load your hay? I have this janky platform, but it's working out for them. For loading hay, so he's thinking you're gonna do something better. All right, everybody on deck. Let's get this over with. This will go to the dumpster.
Jonah was putting on her poop area because she poops and pees in the same area and then mixes it up and then lays in it.
Oh.
That's why she's—
you're gross, you chancho. One more load and let's eat lunch.
Can I go in and make one?
Oh, that would be very handy.
Okay, what do we have?
Very handy. We have leftover sweet potatoes that goes in the oven first. Heat up the collards, and then next you should probably focus on the meat. Oh, heat up the, uh, pork butt. You guys are funny staying up like this. You put yourself to bed. Not good. I didn't hear you. I was half hoping I would wake up before midnight and go, go see it with you.
We would have woken you up if you had asked us to.
Oh, maybe next year. No, it's like the middle of the night is— I feel like 1 o'clock. You know what we drank at midnight, Papa? Drank that sparkling apple juice.
I think we got the hard part behind us. What do you think? So let's go eat some lunch, get refreshed, and I heard you guys want to play soccer after we do this.
Yep.
Okay. Wow, it looks splendid. Looks like everything heated up so nicely. Good job. What a feast. Anyone want some meat? All right, lunch behind us. Let's see if we can't wrap this up. 1, 2. Let's go get lucky for moving the hay bales.
That is flat up here.
Oh shoot. See if she starts anyway. That does hinder our progress because we need to get those hay out of the way so that we could fully clean it up, like pressure washer and stuff. If everybody grabs something, we'll get done with this so fast.
Well, this is how you do it.
Well, well, I'd like to say that we got done. We making it look good, but we did not get done. I can tell I'm losing the kids. They're going to start boring me if I don't be careful. They're going to start boring the farm. We need to cut it. We need to call it a day. It's not an emergency if he comes in the morning. He won't come in the morning. We can finish this up in the morning. You gonna play soccer?
You're goalie over here. Okay. Oh, you're kind of winning, Ben.
Half time. I'm not used to this. Kids are leading 2 to 1.
