In this homesteading video, Victor Justin Rhodes demonstrates how to milk a cow directly on rotationally grazed pasture using a mobile "milk sled" and a minimal field‑milking kit, explaining the benefits of keeping manure on the land and avoiding barn stanchions. He walks through preparing the cow, the mineral supplement setup, and the practical steps of milking in the field, while referencing Joel Salatin’s influence on pasture‑based practices. Mid‑video, the focus shifts to a hands‑on knife‑sharpening competition with Patrick from MT Knives, showcasing sharpening technique, a homemade sharpening machine, and a new knife‑storage solution for a large homestead. The segment ends with a promotion of instructional resources on abundanceplus.com and MT Knives, emphasizing the importance of proper tool maintenance for sustainable farming.
Chapters
I'm about to milk that cow, one of those cows, for the first time this season on grass, no barn. I used to milk right there underneath our house. I've milked here by myself. I've milked here with my kids. I've even milked here with Joel Salatin. It's because of Joel Salatin that now what we've been doing, not milking in a barn, I've come to realize this really stunk. We brought the cows in and they would poop. In the stanchion, pee in the stanchion, and we'd have to deal with that. We'd bring the cows in, so we had to have these lanes throughout our entire farm, lanes that were just used for them to come and go and couldn't really be grazed, and lanes they would concentrate manure in. And it's like pasture we're not even using to graze is like getting this primo manure. Let's get the non-milker cows to the new paddock and distract them. Good morning, Harriet. They're rusty, they're rusty. They've been in the pole barn all winter. Blaze remembers it. Come on, Harriet. Nope, she says. I'll take it, Blaze says. He-Man says, okay, I get it. Harriet says, okay, I'll follow, I'll follow. Excited. That's our— that's gonna be our third milking cow. She's just come of age, 20 months old, the descendant of an old patriarch of ours, Stud Muffin. Will you get Honey over? Here she comes, comes the matriarch, dried off, about to have a baby. Put all that energy towards the baby. The non-milkers are occupied with this brand new grass. Should distract them from the alfalfa we're about to give the milking cow. I do have what I call a milk sled. It's not a barn and it's not even necessary, but let me show you what I'm using it for right now. Well, we have minerals. Contain different kind of minerals. They pick up in here what's not on the land, and then it goes through their body, they poop it out, and they mineralize the land, and now it's there. Two, you could do a stanchion if you need to, but who wants the need to do that? And three, the reason I'm doing this— we can have a, just a sled for the minerals. I need this shade because we do not have trees in every paddock, but there are no trees in that paddock. Hang on, Vanellie, we're gonna milk you. We need time to change that. And it's happening. We got a honey locust coming up. We've protected it from them. They would totally eat that. One day our pastures are going to be forested. That thing is mobile. I'm going to show you how that works because we move our cows every day in a rotational grazing. This is all we need to milk in the field: a pan, alfalfa, a milking kit. Inside this kit, two cloths, a stainless steel bucket, some warm water in a Yeti tumbler with some soap in it, castile soap, some some apple cider vinegar and our Sea Gold rope halter, just in case. A cup of apple cider vinegar, a little tablespoon of Sea Gold. And by the way, she wasn't always this calm. In fact, we couldn't even walk up to her 20 feet. Wow, this didn't end at all how I thought it was going to. There was a struggle, but it wasn't the one I thought it was. I knew that it was going to be a struggle to train her. She's never been milked. This is a new mama. This is a heifer calf. Thank you, Vanilla. One gallon. And she's towards the end of her cycle, if you want to call it that. Prize cow right there. Little, gives a lot of milk. Go, uh, pour that for me, please. So one day when the trees are big enough, we're done. They'll have their shade. We'll start to get cheaper. We'll do that in a second, but let's get the stanchion over. It's kind of fun. I'm sure we all get the concept and the benefit of leaving the manure and the urine where it's supposed to go and leaving it behind, never having to clean it up. Two, it's easier to bring stuff out to milk the cow than to bring the cow home. You gotta have these lanes, you gotta go out and get them, you gotta bring them back, you gotta take them up there. I don't know why most people are bringing their cows to the barn anymore. I guess they don't know. I didn't know and I did it for years. Third, unbeknownst to me, I had no idea this was going to be a benefit, but my morning view, it was this. I'm not the kind of guy to stroll around and observe. I'm always wanting to just do something. Well, here I'm milking the cow and then observing pastures, the land. What do we need to do over there? And then tomorrow there's going to be a different scenery. Tomorrow it's not going to be as drastic, but tomorrow I'm there. A month and a half, I'm up there. Well, he doesn't forget a thing. The other cows are slower to remember. He's come back for any spilled alfalfa. Forward drive! You got to take off slow or you jerk it. There you go. Patrick, everyone. MTK Knives. Missouri is the new Tennessee. Yeah, it's a new homesteading state. Tennessee got found out. Should we not tell anybody about Missouri? They practically pay— they practically pay you in property taxes. Since you moved there?
If I told most people what my taxes were, they would laugh.
Oh yeah, you're complaining? They don't forget. Of course, there's nothing else to do out here than to look for something different. This is wild. This is why— one of the reasons sheep and cows are so awesome together. Cows have eaten some of this ironweed. I'm watching Nacho. He's walking, he's walking around and knocking out the seeds. Seeds. Something the cows aren't going to touch. They eat the leaves. They weren't eating the seed heads. Sheep are less picky. We give the cows first choice. Their milk are prized possessions. They're our centerpiece. Everything else revolves around that milk cow. What's this? You welded legs onto it? Yep. Why are you making me the guinea pig? Because you're a heavier 46-year-old man. Oh wow, look at you! Heck yeah! MT Knives. And who's this? Ryan.
Ryan, you don't need all this stuff.
But what's the minimal? Give me— show me the minimalist setup. We're going to butcher a cow. Okay, well, let's see out of me and the boys who can sharpen the best knife.
There you go. Sharpening is kind of like dancing in a way, so you want to get a good stance. We're going to hold this knife about like that. I grab it like where I can control that angle, and so my thumb's going to be towards here. I'm going to hold out here, and we're going to just focus on one section of the blade. I do this, but you can also do a combination, and all I want you to do is smooth, even passes.
Let's see who gets the sharpest knife in 5 minutes. Whoever wins gets to sharpen the knife for us. See that?
Pick up the glit— the glimmer.
Oh, there's Tom. Yeah, it's jacked. We've been sword fighting.
Well, I mean, here's what you guys do, and everybody does this: they throw them in a drawer. Oh, and I just smacked that.
That's what happened.
If they're sitting there dinging and hitting, or in the dishwasher, they're just trashing the edges. See, look at that big chip in the blade right there.
Whoa. How fast can you sharpen it? Could you realistically sharpen one knife ready to go in 5 minutes?
Less than a minute maybe. Oh, well, that's good on one of these knives. It's going to depend on the steel and the condition.
Now that you're a specialist, that's what you do. So you've got a homesteader, a jack of all trades. Yeah, learn how to sharpen a knife in a couple of minutes.
Oh yeah, this is the angle you want, about like this. You want to use as much of the stone as possible, so you're gonna go 1. This is going to be 1. I'm gonna guess 400.
Nope, it goes until it cuts it. Yep. Wow. 147.
Now I may have hit—
1,000. Yeah, 1,474. What's the goal?
Um, I like to be— I like to be 170.
Get set, go! There it is.
There, shaving sharp. Very minimal instruction in 5-ish minutes.
You know, it would have been a knife to shaving sharp. Now let's test Josiah after he sharpened. Who's going to get the book— the sharpening knife job? 432.
432.
You had 70% improvement. Let's see how much Jonah can do.
15.
Yours was duller starting out. Uh, 480. I can't— so that's the same.
That's still pretty good.
That's— you guys are about the exact same. Okay, so both of you get the job of sharpening knives after the butcherings. I'll let him have it. This homemade knife sharpening machine, basically. I'll see how sharp the machine got this one.
I must say 170.
Really? 175. Oh, 280.
280. Apply enough pressure that you can feel it cutting. Go ahead and just go back and forth like I was doing.
Like this? Yep. All right, Patrick, we'll see you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Okay, we're gonna do this. We'll quit sending the knives off, huh? Me and the boys will get 3 stones. Sit down and do this.
Excellent.
I was making this classic mistake of putting knives, just throwing them in there all together, you know, just throwing them in there too. Not going to do that anymore. I'm going to show you the solution I have for that, but first I got to show you guys this. This is absolutely incredible. It's going to make cooking a pleasure. Now if you want to learn how to do this, just give us half an hour. We just put up a nice instructional video with Patrick, extended version of what you saw here today on YouTube. It's in Abundance Plus at abundanceplus.com. This just empowers us for one of the most important tools on our farm, for knives. This is actually absolutely incredible and quite pleasurable. Now we have some onions for our pizza tonight. I'll show you this thing. So this is what we got. Whoa, we were getting them out of that. Look at this, this just holds so many knives and holds so many knives of different varieties. We're homesteaders, we got 5 kids, there's 7 of us. I don't think we can just do 2 knives, um, you know, the kids get them out, a couple of people. We need a lot of knives. JosephJoseph.com, not affiliated, this is just cool. If you guys want more of Patrick, check him out at MT Knives. If you want to see that instructional, it's on abundanceplus.com. I'll leave the link for those in the description. Happy day.
