This content was created by Victor Justin Rhodes. This content was uploaded by Victor Justin Rhodes. This is a YouTube vlog titled "My promise to Myself (5 Days till Hurricane Helene)" (created 2024-09-29). The excerpt is a family, day-in-the-life style recording featuring multiple speakers labeled SPEAKER A, B, and C — likely a parent and several children/household members. Content covers morning activities and chores (mountain biking fatigue, tending cows, repairing a net), family logistics (kids' events like horse cross-country and soccer), cooking (making cornbread, a "cream of nothing" soup, and turkey divan), attending or traveling to a Cherokee/culture event, and reflections on off-grid living and traditional lifeways. Tone is informal and domestic, with practical descriptions and familial interactions. Metadata: YouTube content, recorded/posted 2024-09-29.
Chapters
Happy Sunday seed day. The boys and I went mountain biking on Friday and I was tired like I've never been tired mountain biking. I'm hoping to blame this cold, but anyway, I remember being so tired, tired I vowed I'm gonna take it easy on Sunday. I had to cool off the cows for a second. It's 8:20. When I left to do chores, Rebecca and Henry herself sound asleep. She had a rough night with him. Rebecca's supposed to be up at Grandma's at 8:30. Grandma fell yesterday. We declared that a sign that we're not gonna let Grandma be alone. Are y'all ready to go? That's nice of you, Jenna. Ellie's got a cross-country training for her horse riding. She's gonna have her first cross-country event this weekend. Besides, gonna be mad at me if I take too long. I think this is why he goes He gets to have a snack. What's your snack of choice? These. Pork rinds? Yeah. Okay. Gads. Oh yeah, gotta gads. You know you gotta be up there at 8:30.
Wait, am I up? Oh yeah.
Oh, you forgot. That's 5 minutes.
Mama's up.
Gonna get there on time. Henry's up and in a good mood.
Whatcha doing?
All right, I told Josiah he was in charge, and I told Gideon he has to obey him. I think Josiah really liked that. Gives him this responsibility.
Put me to work.
All right, I want you guys to look at something. I think this net is shot right there. What do you think? So let's go back to the closest together. The one that's together. I went back to where we had a strand for every single one of these lines. In this case, I had to go pretty far back. So many broken, it's, it's not worth just replacing a strand.
Nothing close.
The long strands on either side. I'm kind of liking what I'm doing. I got my two strands coming together. I wrap them around. This is a really handy knot. You wrap this around together and just run them through that loop, pull that tight. And the tighter you— the tighter it pulls apart is the tighter it makes that knot. I'm just gonna clip off a little bit of the extra. I fixed it. 10 o'clock, I'm already tired. What is wrong? I've been getting so tired lately. I'm not going to tell myself to rest. I'm going to tell myself to keep going right now. I got to get done with the chores, then I can rest. Do want to rest before this afternoon. There's a Cherokee, uh, event. Always been fascinated by the people who lived here on this land. 500 years ago. Forget alternative energy, how about no energy? Talk about living off the grid, talking about minimalism, talk about no waste. Grounding, cold exposure, eating organic, eating carnivore, hunting and gathering bugs. Like, what did it sound like, look like? Was this a forest or was this kept trodden with elk and bison and whatever else? I don't know. Chickens right over there. Albeit it's a nice sound, that wasn't here. You're just high on the mountain clearing a trail to the top. I'll be— it's nice. We have gravity-fed water down to our cows. We got electric net fencing. What was life like so here long ago? And more importantly, and most importantly, I reckon, what can we learn from that? Being connected to the earth, communal living, eating seasonally, even eating, eating locally, eating copious amounts of meat, eating copious amounts of fruit when they were in season. Like, imagine them coming across the wild blueberries when they're in season. I imagine they would just gorge. Anyway, we're gonna go learn more about them today. It should be fantastic. Hopefully this net is long enough. Short distance here, so I got a 50-footer. Definitely not 100 feet. How far did this kid get? He's doing great. He's probably a third. A little more of the way there. Look what he's going through. It's gnarly. Okay, he's turning that into this, right? He's working on a big tree leaning over the road. Just— I help you with those.
Should I go outside on the drone on the video?
Yeah. Yes.
In the house right there. I want to be.
Austin and I editing the fair video. Yeah, did a good job with it so far. Jonah, you're back! How was it? It was good. He asked me, are we really going to Cherokee? We're not going to Cherokee, we're just going over the mountain to Hickory Nut Gap. Cherokee's coming to us. How long is it? As long as we want it to be. It ends at 4. Hey, good looking, what you got cooking?
I only have grits, I don't have any—
that means you have to grind them more. So I'm just grinding it to make cornbread.
Of course. Yeah, I've used it before. It's, you know, look at it.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm doing that because I'm gonna make cornbread, and then I'm making cream of nothing soup.
Because you're not putting mushrooms in it.
Because I'm not putting cream of nothing chicken or turkey or whatever. My turkey Devon, which is here.
Turkey Devon single-handedly saved turkeys on the hauler. In the holler because I was so over turkeys. It's just not— it's not feeling— for somebody who eats mostly meat, you don't go away from a meal of turkey feeling satiated. You do when you turn it into turkey divan. We'll see why as she progresses down this path. Are you meaning to boil this?
I had to.
I had to be nice.
This is the cream of nothing soup. Okay, it's got milk, chicken broth, butter, fat salt and pepper.
That's the pile of cubed turkey. You taking those with you? The beautiful one had a long day with her mom this morning. I think she just wants to lay in the sun this afternoon. Finish cooking and I got to go. If I go now, we can spend an hour there. The big kids got invited to a soccer game with a bunch of their friends. I couldn't convince them to go to the what I'm calling this a culture fest. But I got these two. Y'all ready? We are there. He's unstrapping.
Are you scared? What'd you think, kids? It was good.
Was it? What'd you like about it? They didn't have a good time. I had a good time. I enjoyed seeing the dance. I enjoyed hearing them play the flute. I enjoyed some of the stories they shared. I learned something. You guys played on the slide and the little tricycles. See what I'm talking about? Look how that turkey de bon turned out. That's really loud in this house. That's really loud.
Oh.
Until we get some sound buffers. Here they come. It's been different. The older kids went off to play a soccer game on their own. Feeling like older parents now. We stayed home with the littles.
Watch this. Yeah? That's my dad's watch.
All right, so you know, there's that stage. Pop a watch. And then there's that stage. Could care less. Nobody's limping. Everybody else is though. Oh, that's a way to do it. Hey, give hugs. Everybody made it. Everybody made it okay. I love it when the kids come home. That'll never grow old. I'm calling it there. Happy day.
