In this informal farm vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes (Speaker A) and Becky walk through a day of hands‑on projects on their greenhouse‑adjacent chicken coop and broader farm. They first address chronic water runoff into the high‑tunnel greenhouse, digging a drainage ditch and discussing future gutter solutions to protect nearby garden beds and livestock. The core project is constructing Joel Salatin‑inspired A‑frame nest boxes using plans from the Polyface Designs book; they cut, lean, and fasten lumber in the basement, improvising with limited tools and materials while aiming for a 28‑inch height and roughly 42‑inch width. Concurrently, they plan to convert an old farmhouse into a permanent video‑podcast studio for their Abundance Plus series, outlining camera placement, lighting, and the benefits of a warm, quiet indoor space versus the unheated barn. Throughout, they reference upcoming interviews (Rory Feek, Holistic Hilda, Jill Winger, Morgan Shaw), milking duties, and routine farm chores, reflecting a blend of DIY construction, farm management, and content creation.
Chapters
Yesterday we built some nest boxes. We want to get those nest boxes in here, Salatin style, so that we can get this chickshaw out to do some work on it. You can see it from here. See the high tunnel? Well, you kind of can on this screen. See this? See the garden that's next to it and the slope? Kind of dramatic right there. Water goes into the high tunnel when it rains, when we have a big rain event. And I need to chip away at that. Come on, let's go dig a ditch! Woo! See, it's uphill right there, comes downhill. You can see how the greenhouse is higher, much higher on that side. I'm thinking a gutter would be a little tricky on this greenhouse. See, the water's coming off in here, going under, but also water's running off the hill here, so it'd be good to have the drainage on this garden anyway. Her beloved green beans tomatoes were getting flooded last summer, and my beloved pigs were getting flooded in the winter. Well, I set up a time-lapse, but it failed. But you can imagine, we dug up about, I don't know, 10 feet. Don't know if we're deep enough, gonna have to consult Fred on that one. If we just chip at this a little bit every day, we'll get— we'll get there before we know it.
We're gonna be done in like 3 days at the rate we're going.
While the boys are milking, Gideon and I are going to pick up this video podcast equipment. We'll put it in the old farmhouse. The idea here is it'll be quieter, it will be warmer, and it'll be something that we won't have to set up, tear down, set up, tear down, set up, tear down. It'll always be up. It's kind of a long room this way, so I'm thinking main camera right here shooting to the— shooting to the interview. And then cameras on either side. It'll put depth on either side of them. This is the house that my grandpa bought on the 500-acre or 75 acres. I'm, I'm already giving away— I'm thinking he bought it for $500 in the '30s. Now we're turning into a studio. The video podcast on Abundance Plus has been such a hit, and I'm enjoying it so much interviewing the likes of Rory Feek, Jessica and Jeremiah Brandon Sheard, Rory's— everybody's out. Uh, Holistic Hilda, everybody's out. Rory's coming out this week on Abundance Plus. I've really been enjoying the process of interviewing and hanging out with folks. Is that everything, guys? Yeah. All right, come on, let's go. The camera equipment can stay warm. The barn is not heated at all. Ben, we've got I'm thinking the main camera is setting up right here. I mean, you might have different ideas. Okay. And then that way the two interviewees— yeah, like the couch would go boom boom, and then they would each have depth on either side of them. Okay. Because this room is longer this way than that way. What do you think though? Yeah, I think, uh, or maybe just like move it a little bit so we're looking right, right into that corner. Good luck, you're the guy to do it. Hey, we'll figure it out. Got through there. The animals right out in front today. Nice. A couple interviews on the horizon over there. Jill Winger, Grass Grazed, and Morgan Shaw. That's within the next 3 months. Should be a hoot. What you making?
Um, just I'm gonna do potatoes in the oven.
Come here, you want some water? It's just water, it's not coffee. Watch. You gonna fall asleep? Oh, you're gonna go right to sleep. Next step, the almighty Polyface Designs design book, available at polyfacedesigns.com. We are making this. We cannot make it exactly because we don't have these exact, exactness boxes, but this A-frame, that's what we want. And this tells us exactly how to build it right here. We have about an hour, hour and 15, so we have to make supper.
Are we going down in the basement? Are we going to the greenhouse?
I think the basement because we have all the chop tools and the— and the everything's there. Let's get one done today. We need to put backing on it. And we need to put legs on it. This is going to be about 28 inches off the ground. Okay, we just need to go at building the A-frame. We can also see a piece to cover this back. I don't have any self-tapping screws, I don't think. Uh, so scratch that. Let's just build the stand today. Oh, it's because it's bent. Do we not have any more, or is this all we got? That, and we can hammer it out. Oh boy. Can you get it out now? It's still going to be wonky. It's not going to be easy. There you go.
I was gonna say, might be easier to use your hands. Oh, it's about 2 feet.
We have markings according to the book where, where you cut here to here, and then you can lean this into each other. You get that? Yeah, that gives us 42 inches width if it's 66, but it's not. This is 48 inches. So just guess it's going to be a little bit more narrow, but yeah, it doesn't need to be almost 4 feet wide. Put it together, Becky. All right, so that looks good. That actually looks really good. Yeah, put it here, guys.
Okay, it's working.
I think it's gonna work. We just— let's get a— however long this is put a shelf on it. We need a straight— in lieu of a chalk line, one thing we did do the other day is go get an assortment of screws just for this purpose. What do I want? 2.5, 3s? No chalk line?
We couldn't find the chalk line.
We're gonna get organized one day. One day. Closer every day. Clamp that down and we can even it out. Is that gonna work? You can go down a little lower. Keep going down, keep going down. Now about right there. Does it still work? It's gonna work. Boom! One to go. That's gonna be nice. Yeah, and that leaves enough room to do a 2x4 across for extra support.
Yeah.
Sweet. I'm calling it there. Gotta make supper. We got one down. The second one will go faster tomorrow. We'll give these big bad boys a chance thanks to the Joel Salatin— I don't know, what do you want to call that, an A-frame model for these old nest boxes? Uh, we'll get one in there, maybe two.
