In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes takes viewers through a day of hands‑on farm work and behind‑the‑scenes planning for his upcoming homestead design book. He starts by showing how he separated calves from cows and observed the herd’s grazing habits, then tests a large four‑wheeler to see if it can pull a milk sled. Next, he repairs a spring water catchment that has become clogged with sediment, improvising a small dam to improve flow. He shares his personal organization system for the garage, emphasizing “everything has a place.” The vlog shifts to design work: Rhodes discusses perch spacing for chicken and turkey coops with collaborator Chris Slattery, adjusting measurements for a new Chickshaw 3.0 coop and planning detailed plans for the book. He weeds a chicken garden before squash overtakes it, reviews the status of the Chickshaw 3.0 project, and experiments with a small batch of pork rinds, noting the need to remove fat before soaking. Throughout, he intersperses casual commentary, humor, and reflections on learning new tricks at 43, providing a comprehensive snapshot of daily homestead operations, design thinking, and experimental cooking.
Chapters
It's working! We put the calves 2 paddocks away from the cows and they haven't gotten through to mama. See the jungle along the greenhouse? Yep. The cows will take that down, no problem. Why mow? Why mow and string trim around it when that's perfectly Good food. Hey, hey, spot him, Josiah! Something about us moving the cows gets them all excited. Just look what the cows did to this. They just destroy it all. Look what they go for. I mean, stud's going for some ice cream grass in the middle, but they will get this. Stud likes to eat his ice cream first, then the veggies, I guess. Look at this. Lily, can you come swap flies while I milk? We got the biggest four-wheeler possible in hopes that it could also pull the milk sled. Now, it's not the end of the world if it doesn't. We have the side-by-sides for that. But if it can do it, that's great. That means another purpose for this thing. Will this 440 pull it? I don't know. Well, this carabiner holds— that's a big heavy shed. It's heavy. I'm gonna bet it pulls it. I know I was going up Grandma's Hill, which is like like this in third and it was ready to go into fourth. Okay, ready? This is a particularly boggy area, but maybe when it dries out. Yeah, yeah, it's too light. The machine's too light. I'm not giving up on the four-wheeler. I think in a drier situation, less boggy— see, This is very soft ground. We're at the bottom, we're at the valley here. Oh yeah, no problem. All right, we've got 45 minutes until Jacobs gets here. We need to dig up a— the water catchment and cover it back up proper in 45 minutes. Oh, I don't know what it is. As soon as I get in these woods, he starts crying. I forgot to properly cover the water catchment, and I think dirt has washed down into the rocks, down into the water catchment, and it's slowing down our spring catch. See this? Watch. There's some sediment in this. Shouldn't be that much in that. Oh, the water's coming in better today. Look, but look how dirty it is. It's coming in filthy. The mud is just going right under this tarp. Actually, maybe it's not. Yeah, it is. See, it goes right under. Yeah, look at that. Okay, so we've got to— hey, at least we don't have to dig this out. I thought we were gonna have to dig out the gravel. This time we got it covered up. There's your plastic. We got a little bit of moss patch there because the fresh exposed ground. I also diverted the water. The water couldn't come down here in a rain event, so I gave it a little bit of a dam here so it will come down here. Very nice. Just there. Yep, nice. This afternoon I'm going to take you guys on a little work project, a little behind the scenes. Of what I do off farm for content for you all. We don't know where that measuring tape is. On cleanliness and order, I like, I like Darcy's rule that she gave us yesterday. Just make time for it. Haha, lucky dog. Okay, look guys, I've been keeping the garage clean. I've been keeping the garage clean. Another rule is everything has a place and everything in its place. This is not its place. That's a lot for that. That's— that goes for a lot of those things. I got to get to that one day. Isn't it— isn't it a pain to like walk it in all the way into the closet and put it in there? Yes, but it's also a pain to look for it. Today I got lucky. Let's get some sun. Oh, I pulled my shoulder. I forgot. Pulled my shoulder training yesterday. I can sense myself about to get tested. Taking off my shirt. I just normally, I don't know, put it over there. Oh, I'll get it later. No, I won't get it later. Before I put on my sandals, I need to put my socks and my shirt folded and away. Can a 43-year-old learn new tricks? I don't know. And every day, in every way, I'm getting better. I think I can do that. Hey, where you going, Gideon? All right, have fun. Had my first phone call with my buddy Chris Slattery, who's helping me with this My next book, my next homestead book, uh, Homestead Designs. And I got some homework. These perches are 12 inches apart on center. There's 3 perches in there now. 6 of you can fit on one of those perches, so it'd be really awesome if we could get 5 in there and we could have This could be rated to 30 birds. The Pretty Shaw and the Chick Shaw 2.0, by the way. Anyway, haven't figured out by now this is going to be a book on the various designs from our farm. We need it to be— we need the perches to be 8 inches apart. So what would that look like? That's what I'm looking at here. We're gonna set it up so that these perches fall evenly over these wire meshes. So no manure gets hung up like that. Well, that's because the goose blew them down. Hey, 8 inches instead of 12 would be about right here. I think that'd be plenty of space. That'd basically give them 6 inches by 8 inches roosting space. I think that's plenty. This next part is not homework for my book. It's that I want to weed in this Chicken Garden Miracle before these squash plants get too big and we can't get at the weeds. This is so easy right now. I can get in here. Of course, they're easy to pull up, and then now the squash will overshadow everything. Here you go. Boom! Got my squash weeded. I'm very happy how that's coming along. We shouldn't have to do it again. Squash is plenty ahead. We probably would have been all right. Just wanted to look all right. We put out a video on the Chickshaw 3.0. That's the big chicken coop that you can push by hand or pull behind a side-by-side or similar. I had hoped to get plans for those by July, but then we decided, hey, we're going to do this book, we're going to get Chris on board, these are going to be like Polyface Design legit type plans. So it's gonna be a minute. We're gonna make that available for just an email, guys, as soon as we can. We're gonna go down to the turkey shaw and investigate which directions the perch is set on. Watch out now. Okay, Chris was asking me, well, can we put this perch diagonal that way? It eliminates something. I'm not sure what, but it does make it a little more simple. The reason I don't do it like that now is they don't go— this pole was down, so they were actually getting in there. When the handle's on, the turkeys don't really like walk in there and jump up. This is kind of an entrance to the bottom. We want people to perch on the bottom as well, so some people can be on the bottom and some people can be on the top. This is a 7-foot handle. This is a 7-foot piece. The closer you get, the heavier it is, right? Because we want to be across the board on all our things. Every handle is the same length. I'm gonna say 8 feet. I'm gonna say it won't— it won't be quite as cute. It will be lighter, and you'll have a little bit more room when you're moving it. So I'm gonna go 8 feet. While we're out here, let's get a TikTok. Hey, maybe 4 things you need for an amazing turkey pasture operation. Sounds good. Let's do that. Here are 4 things that you'll need for an amazing pastured turkey operation. Today, finally, we're gonna try pork rinds from the Slow Down Farmstead Instagram. We're supposed to get the skin soaking, I guess fat and all, until it's soft. I filled this up But on second thought, after consulting with Mr. Google Pants, I need to get the fat off first. I'm doing a very small batch because this is my very first time. Looks like this is going to be quite the process. I did get some skins. Hopefully I got enough fat off of it. I'm, I got my fat off. I'm gonna leave it in here because it's supposed to soak the skins like 6 hours. We'll soak Soak this overnight and we'll have to leave the, the rest of this project for the next video.
