In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes (Speaker A) documents a full day of homestead activities centered on the humane harvesting of a bull named He‑Man. He reflects on the emotional difficulty of culling a valuable animal, explains the decision to harvest before the bull gains excess fat, and outlines the ethical goal of humane on‑farm slaughter. The video is presented as a G‑rated YouTube version, with graphic details relegated to the subscription platform Abundance Plus, which hosts uncensored butchering content. Rhodes discusses shot placement, choosing a .410 shotgun with a slug versus a .22 Magnum, and the importance of a precise brain shot to avoid suffering. He walks viewers through early processing steps, including skinning, organ removal, and the handling of the bull’s testicles and liver. The vlog also covers dairy management—milking the herd, separating a new calf, and making mozzarella for upcoming pizzas. Speaker B assists with freeze‑drying diced tomatoes and the bull’s liver, describing the use of a freeze‑dryer, food‑grade 55‑gallon bags, and plans to grind the liver into a superfood powder for incorporation into ground beef. Additional farm tasks include lamb harvesting, meal preparation with lamb, potatoes, zucchini, and tomato salad, and discussions about salt storage, brining, and upcoming pig farrowing. The pair also mention logistical challenges such as navigating windy roads to Vandell Farms in western North Carolina, collaborating with the farm for processing, and setting up new gates and a pole barn for livestock. Throughout, Rhodes emphasizes self‑reliance, teaching youth butchery skills, and the broader philosophy of learning to raise, harvest, and process large animals as a pathway to broader self‑education.
Chapters
Happy day. That's what my late dad would say. Just to find the positivity of the day. Doesn't mean the circumstances are grand. I guess it does mean you can find happiness, contentment, despite your circumstances. It's dark 30. We're harvesting He-Man today. It's— he's on 4 strikes, you're out. In some ways, I'm embarrassed on how long I waited to do this. I have a hard time culling an animal, especially one of that importance. He breeds back our milk cows because I want to make sure I'm making the right decision. I probably wait too long to make that decision. You can see the poop looks like they stayed in last night but hasn't That hasn't been the case. He's been getting his horn in the fence, lifting it up, and people have been getting out. He also has the habit of tipping the water, stepping in the water. Okay, it's been raining like this every day. Positive side is we're gonna eat an animal that hasn't been castrated, which is rare these days. So there'll be some— surely there'll be some testosterone or some other benefits. In this meat. He's been grass-fed, untreated. He's at a good age. He's not at the best age to be harvesting. If he could go another 6 months or so, he'd have more fat on his meat. I'll have the courtesy right now to tell you, this, uh, YouTube version, it's gonna be the G-rated version. So if you don't want to see the gunshot and the neck slit, well, don't worry, I'm not going to show it here. It's against community guidelines. We're going to respect those, but I also know this is also important, especially for some of you who are wanting to do this. Do I get the shot? Do I get it the first time? What happens if we don't? Uh, you take the shot and then, and then what? How do you slit the throat? Some of that early processing where it's still yet bloody, can't show that on YouTube. That is literally why Abundance Plus was born in 2017. House our butchering content, gun content, things that aren't so much allowed on social media, we needed a platform for that because it's important. Tell you that it's on Abundance Plus so that you don't have to sit through half this vlog and then see the butchering and be like, ah. And by the way, it's ad-free over there. No ads. Check it out, abundanceplus.com. Free trial right now. Get visually prepared. It's always a nerve-wracking day. Harvesting a big animal, but especially— it's a big job, but you're killing such a big animal, such a big heart. It can go wrong. You can miss. You only have a window of about that much into his brain or you miss, and then he's just standing there with a bullet in his head, or running around with a bullet in their head. It's terrible. It's not why we kill on farm. We kill on farm to be humane and to— that cow's already getting a belly from all the milk. Oh really? Well, let's separate that little— let's separate the new calf tonight. Yeah, but it has to be tonight. It can't be at 3. Her one quarter's still pink. Yeah, that's bloody. The milk fat into the ground. He's got a bloody quarter, which is normal when they— can be normal after they've given birth. She seems otherwise all right, right? She's eating, drinking. Geez, wow. Do we need to put stakes on it? I don't think so. We don't need to put stakes on it in the water anymore because he— man's last day. Yeah, the couchers is This got real easy. We think they're easy because the cows aren't going to break out. I'm excited. I think this is the most milk we've got out of these two batches this round. This is to the brim, and we had to milk out one quarter. And we're gonna start putting up the other calf tonight. One, two and a half. We're getting towards three. Plenty of mozzarella for the pizza this Friday. 1 gallon of this will make 16— we'll do 2 pizzas, 2 pizzas, 4 pizzas, 6 pizzas. That's all we need. D-Man is about to die. What would be quicker than this thing? Drink your coffee, think about your favorite cup of coffee, hold back no bunnies, get your favorite cup of coffee, and suddenly you're not alive anymore. You didn't see it coming. You're knocked out. It's like going— it's going to sleep at surgery, except it's even quicker. That's like eating his favorite coffee or ice cream or whatever favorite food, and then just suddenly you're not here anymore. Also helps keep him where we want him and keeps his head still. Gun of choice,.410 shotgun. Not buckshot ammo, uh, a slug. So it's a, it's a solid ball, so it really has a big impact. So your margin of error is much less as opposed to using a.22. My second choice, and if I could only have one gun on the homestead, it would be a.22 Magnum. That'll do a pig, that'll do a cow, that'll do, uh, self-defense. Fence with, uh, the buckshot, you know, you might be nervous, you don't have to be as accurate. Buckshot is also good for, well, if you wanted to hunt turkeys It'd be good for predators too, so, uh, you have a more likely shot of hitting them. So if I got two guns, it's definitely the.410 shotgun and the.22 Magnum. If only one, I'm going with the.22 Magnum. But good luck shooting a turkey. Hey buddy, you want to know the best way to get your kids used to butchering? What's that? Well, have them on your chest while we do it from day one. That's what I did with all them. Y'all were all like that, and now it's just normal to harvest. It's just what you do. There's a joint right there. You could open this up here. I— we could put him right here, but then I'm pointing up and that's not a good angle on his brain. Maybe we get him right here and we're facing that way, and then we move the cows back. What do you guys think? That's fine. I realize I'm shaking. I'm nervous. Short notice. Okay, everybody out. Jonah, get those cows over. Whoa, what is he doing? He's not interested in the alfalfa.
I am dicing up tomatoes and then I'm putting them on a freeze-dry tray and then I will freeze dry them. And I'm just gonna use these like I would diced tomatoes. I used my first freeze-dried food last night in a stir-fry, and it turned out so good. Um, I don't know what I was expecting, but, um, I'm very happy with how it turned out. I wanted to buy a super expensive, like, dicer It's a Breville, and it was like $700, and I was like, I don't really want to spend that much money on a dicer. So I have this that I use for my salsa, and I saw on Instagram somebody else was using this, so I was like, that's perfect, because then I can dice all my tomatoes and I don't have to buy that expensive, um, food processor.
They had breakfast. I I started, they came out, and I went and had breakfast. That's nice. This is the nice stage we're in. You boys are very capable. You could do this by yourself. Would you feel comfortable shooting him yet? I don't know if I'm there yet. It's only 9:15, guys. Most people are just showing up for work, and we've already got a bull killed. We've already got cows milked, bull killed, and halfway skinned. School's back too. And here you are in school. I figured if you could learn how to raise a big animal and kill it and harvest it, you can teach yourself anything, right boys? You can do anything. Look at the testicles on here. I don't know, I didn't know if you wanted to do something with them, and I don't know how to cut them off. Come on, grow muscles. I think you should make him eat the whole thing. I'll grow muscles. Have a sandwich. Whoa, think spinach grows muscles? That's a joke. And this happened while we're butchering. Lily calls me, she tells me the pig's in the garden. She was right there, we heard them over. I saw this. I'm gonna have to borrow our gate. Guarding the feed. We need to replace that somehow. Believe it or not, he walked in there. We got the new gate up, but boy, he's rough on them. Well, that was the exercise of her lifetime. She may go give birth now. Heart and only half the liver. Maybe we'll get around to do something with that liver. We want to— it's a superfood. But reality, for some reason, we just don't. But now that we have the freeze dryer, we might make our own capsules, or at least liver powder. Oh yeah, let's do that. And then we can put it in the, uh, ground, ground beef because we could just store it in our counter.
I'm going to cut the liver up to put on the freeze dry tray.
We're bound and determined to eat this liver.
I've never done this before.
There we go. So we're gonna freeze dry it, grind it into a powder, and then put it in with our ground beef. Just lay it on it straight on, huh? Yep. Sweet. I'll leave the link for freeze dryer in the show notes too.
I feel so grossed out right now.
This is the world's superfood.
I know, it's just gross. I got a real nice whiff of it and I really had a gag reflex.
What we're going to try to do here is bag it up. 55-gallon Food grade bags, total game changer. Oh wow, okay, that was quick. Did you put them back, the other ones that you didn't use? How'd you do that so fast? All right, now how are we gonna do this?
I'm going to pick my calendula though. I'm gonna get a basket to do that.
Yeah. Good job! We have made it. Vandale Farms. Boy, it was a windy road. We had to bypass Chimney Rock. I was hoping to get some work done, but I was getting nauseous just not doing that, just riding. Was that good training for your license? Rate that road, Josiah. Awful. Yeah, it's awful. It's about an hour of windy roads. Normally not this bad when you can go through Chimney Rock. We have to take bets on what this weighs. I'm gonna say 375 hanging weight. How's it going? Good. I haven't seen you in a while. I know, what have you been doing?
Like YouTubing and stuff like that?
Or the nightmare. How big is he? Small? Yeah. No, I'm gonna guess he's 375 pounds hanging weight. That's small. That's small. Do you like it if I quartered it, or do you like it half? I didn't know.
He's okay half. He won't hit the ground, I don't think.
You're guessing 400?
400.
And he's got a bag on.
408.
Okay, I'll go 400 then. You're gonna go for it? Should I go 407? Price is Right.
I'll go for the Price is Right. I want the whole showcase. What's your guess weight?
Just guess. 400?
No, you can't.
No, I already guessed 400. I'm gonna guess 375.
I got 408. What are you gonna guess?
430. Oh, how much is this gonna weigh? It might be closer to 500.
Wow.
Lucky day! Does he got 100? 100? Can't be that. 272. 272. For 272, that means we're about like 540.
157.
Wow.
I mean 257. That's what I meant.
257. 529. Mr. Brown, you got it.
Winner, winner!
Just in time for the rain. Good people over there at Vandell. Good people. Vandell Farms in western North Carolina. Been using them for several years. They have been breaking them down for us in the past, but we're gonna do it ourselves this time. Organizing a workshop as I— that's what I was hoping to do on this trip.
It's looking amazing. I've got it in the saltwater brine with the whey. So today I got liver in the freezer for the freeze dryer. I got a bunch of vegetables. I got tomatoes, and then I did mozzarella, and I soaked beans. But like, I haven't sat down all day, but that's okay. This is the time. I had good energy today. I felt great. Um, so yeah, it's very, very good. So now I'm gonna go get changed and get working out.
2 weeks into this Grow 30, day 14, discovering the abundance all around us. We harvested it. We prematurely had to harvest a lamb. There it is. It's so good. We get to mix it up. We've been having— we're down to chicken, ground pork, and ground beef. Oh look, our Redmond's came. Okay, we need to put those shakers everywhere. Just in time, we're about out of salt because we just go through— how much is it? 20 pounds? Just, just in case. Just in case you didn't know, Redmond sells it by the 20 pounds. And we're gonna have these shakers everywhere so we're never looking for any salt. Okay, let's talk about this lamb. Yeah, delicious. Is it because we haven't had lamb in so long?
No, it's like really tender.
Well, it's because it's young lamb. Yeah, it is so good. It might be because I haven't eaten any lunch. Yeah, much all today at all, but it is so good. Potatoes, zucchini, onions, and lamb, and tomato salad. Lamb from the land. Let's hope my temp fix for the pigs works.
What was that?
We gotta set up, uh, well, it's a, it's a gate. Cows can't get out though because that's the gate from the grain. The boys Tomorrow, can we set up the pole barn and we'll put the pigs in there? Because she's gonna probably give birth pretty soon anyway. We gotta separate her from, uh, Beefcake tomorrow. Another problem. Hasta mañana.
Any other solutions?
Yeah, there you go. Another problem, another solution. Hasta mañana. Both in the pole barn? Yes. They'll get too lonely. They can't see each other.
