In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes walks viewers through a busy day on his homestead, beginning with plans for a new kitchen garden and chicken run, including detailed layout, mulching requirements, and a table‑scrap diet for his hens. He then coordinates the movement of his cattle, guiding them through gates and into a temporary stall while a crew prepares to remove a massive fallen tree that has destroyed sections of his fence. Rhodes explains the challenges of the tree—poor firewood quality, proximity to a creek, and the extensive damage to barbed‑wire and woven‑wire fencing—and demonstrates the process of pulling up fence posts, clearing the area, and repairing the barrier. Throughout, he interacts with family members and crew, shares anecdotes about his animals, and plugs a previous video about rescuing his cows, encouraging viewers to watch for inspiration about perseverance on the farm.
Chapters
You want to watch? You don't want to go in? Wood chips are back. Everything must be mulched. That pile of wood chips right there— big plans. Don't have big plans, Beauty. I think so, yeah. This is your garden. This is your kitchen garden. Just gonna have to see it when it happens. 3 rows for garden. One right here, one right about here. Becky, is that right? And then one about right here. It also serves as a winter garden right outside of our kitchen. Herbs over here in the corner. Is that safe to say? By the wall. A perennial garden over here in this extra space. And then of course what I'm most excited about is a chicken run down here at the end with the tractor and room for a solar heated waterer. Yeah, and then the chickens, they'll be able to open up a garden run for each of them, open them and shut them. We'll do it with Premier One fencing. I'm really excited about that. This is nothing new to me, garden with chickens. I'm all about that. We've perfected it with the crop garden, with the kitchen garden. One thing that we admired in Joel Salatin, Curtis Stone, JM Fortier is they're good at what they do, but they also have a clear system that is very teachable. So that's what we hope to continually move towards, is something that's very teachable with dimensions and and things like that, wouldn't you say? Yep. So this would be our kitchen garden system. We'll have a crop garden system, we'll have the system, you know, that follows the cows. And, uh, what are the system on this? Oh, they're just the plain chicken tractor system if somebody's only got 3 or 4 chickens.
Can we spread that mulch?
Yes, we need— hey, listen, spread it evenly over the garden area as best you can to totally suppress these weeds, this grass. With mulch, we are going to need at least 8 inches. So get spreading, guys. How are the 3 fat hens? How are you, fat hens? Not so fat anymore? We got you on the table scrap diet. No need to buy any commercial feed here with all the table scraps we have. You guys stay up here. I'm gonna bring the cows in. You guys ready? You ready to come in? This could be tricky. I've got to bring them in because we have a guy coming to work that tree up tomorrow and I'm not gonna be here. So with them having to open the gate and get through the electric, I just need to clear that all the way. We just need to get the cows in, get them some hay. You know, he hasn't eat a lot of this hay. A lot of it's going to waste. I'm just going to put it over the manure. I don't have to mulch in here. There's enough of that material with this hay to balance that out. Done. All right, we got the gate open. Now we need to turn the fence on this one. All right, let's go herd them in. A number of things could go wrong. Of course, the bull could turn on me. They could bust down one of these fences. Uh, they could go in one of these— they could go in the wrong stall. I mean, I don't know what the chances are of them actually going in the right stall is since they haven't done it long at all, but we'll see. Okay, walk past stud muffin. I'm not looking at him. Are y'all looking at him? Stop looking at him. Okay, I'm looking at him now. Come here, Violet. Come here, sweetie. Come here. Come on. Okay, let him go on up, Violet. I'll show you what to do. Here we go, come on, I'll show you. Bless your hearts, you got a big old brain, but there's not much in there. He's got a puzzle here. He's going to want to go, but he needs to know how to get around that fence. There you go, there you go, you got it, buddy. He's just jumping right over those fences. I don't want to get him in the habit of that. Let's see if we can get him in the stall. Stud, I bet you go right in there since, uh, that's all you've been doing. That's all you know. I do not want to spook him over the fence. Here, there you go. Get in there, get in there. Lucky dog, lucky dog. Thank you, buddy. A very painless— get rid of the staff. I'm sorry, but it's only for a day. They're only supposed to take a day to do this. Boy, look at that work crew! You guys are getting it done. You guys got wheelbarrows, you got pitchforks, you got Mr. Brown. You're all right. There you go, sweetie. Enjoy you some hay. It's 3:20. I got roughly— I gotta get this done in 40 minutes. I gotta go at 4. Take our lane down across the road, turn off our fence inside the cow fence, move our cattle lane over and out of the way so they can drive through here. Pull up our fence around the tree. I realized then I need to roll up this wire before I pull up too many poles, or it's just going to be all over the place. Now I can pull up the remaining posts. Here comes the love of my life. You can see her, the red coat. The beautiful one. But the moment you guys have all been waiting for— this tree! Oh my God, massive tree. Two major problems about this tree. Well, three. One, it's not very good firewood, so cutting it up for firewood isn't that going to be great. That's what we're going to do, but It's not that great. The second problem is it's over this creek. One reason I'm not doing this, because they're gonna have to bring their equipment, get it out of the creek properly. Third, and the biggest problem, is the fence. It has absolutely crushed this fence. All right, let's get down from here. The boys practically run on this thing. All right, looks like it's taken down— took down two of my poles on this side. And this is the hardest part. This is the hardest place to build the fence. Looks like that side's intact. Absolutely destroyed our barbed wire, destroyed our woven wire. But you know, it wouldn't be farming without problems. And it's only 3:37. Knock that out fast. Oh man, I just realized something. We're gonna have to get these gates out of the way and probably at least two of those T-posts. All right, spin it around. How's that? Let's get these two posts right here out of the way.
Put their hand up.
I hope so.
Papa, do you think a cow could pull that? Pull that?
Uh, no.
Well, they cut out my thumbs attached in here. Help!
Ow!
You're gonna be shocked at how much mulch we moved. Well, we had to put it away. We moved more than half of a pile of mulch. Okay, let's do that. Dad, when you guys— oh, I guess you won't come back today. Papa, what, what, what are you doing?
Get that up there. Yay! Yay! Ow! Ow! Yay! Yay!
Why are they trying to get these seat posts off? Are they bringing big old trucks?
Yeah, they'll be bringing big trucks. Okay, all done with that. That wasn't too bad, only 3:40. Wow, Papa might get tea time. Let's see your job, guys. Whoa, it's starting to smell and look like Justin Rhodes's yard. What are you doing with that?
We play out in the mud.
That was our home.
That was for drinking.
Oh, okay. Hey, what happened? You didn't finish the pile.
No, because we had to go to Grandma's now.
Well, no time for tea. We got to go taking the children to Grandma. I'm gonna have a dinner with them. And then Beauty and I will have a bit of a break. Guys, if you have not seen yesterday's video, I encourage you to go watch it. It was on us getting Violet back, getting Stud Muffin and them together, and then getting them out in the field. It was so good. Put a lot of work into that. It's a micro documentary, guys. We shot a lot of those on the road. Yes, we're going to Grandma's house. Just one second. Yeah, we shot a lot of those on the road. I've been really looking forward to shooting some of those. Of our own family, of our own story, and I thought it turned out really well. I think you guys will really enjoy it. It's about not giving up on your dreams. Go and check it out. I think it's worth it.
