Victor Justin Rhodes documents a rainy day on his Western North Carolina farm, from feeding chicks and treating lame sheep with maggot-infested hooves to unboxing locally sourced dairy from Farm Match. He inspects hail-damaged crops and discusses why buying direct from farms costs more and takes more effort than the grocery store.
Gonna have to start to vlog off on the GoPro today. I'm reminded this spring we definitely live in a temperate rainforest here in Western North Carolina. It's been dry the last couple of springs, so I'm thankful for this, but it has its challenges. Forgot to soak the feed last night. You still want to wet it though because I do Chick Starter, which is like a powder. We're going to switch over to grower now that all our chicks are through, but everybody gets the same feed. I also forgot to put them up last night. Hey, I think it might be happening all day. Help me with the lamb! Whoa, hurry! Shoot, got to move these guys. They're gonna tear this up if I don't. Especially it being wet as it is. They're not trained to this yet, but I guess now's a better time than any. We have trained them to where we could move them during the middle of the day, especially if they're just going right next door. So we're going to open up the gate right next door. We're going to put their coop. Let's capture who's in it. There's only one left in there.
Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.
We'll start training them to call. Come on. Get in. Stay with me.
Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.
We are gonna get soaked.
Chick, chick, chick, chick. Ch.
They'll follow their feed.
Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.
I mean, they'll follow their water and their coop.
Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.
Today we'll put things close-ish because they're not going to want to go far. Well, that might be a reason to put it even further, huh? They all came. That was easy. All right, Gideon, help me with this fence. Launch the umbrella. I'm sending him— Gideon home. It's not safe. I don't know if the chickens will be this far today. I doubt it. It's gonna rain like this all day. Probably could have gotten away with just one fence, just in case. All right. Yeah, see the chickens? They don't even want to eat. They want to stay dry. All right, let's get into the shelter ourselves. Well, we're back safe and sound. We're gonna have our skim milk over to the pigs. Oh yeah, that's an awful day to do that. Y'all ready? Henry, where's your shoes? Rain day, town day, guys day. Stopping at the bike shop. Do we really have something wrong with 4 bikes? Yeah, y'all are rough on things. Hour and a half later. We're heading home and it's not been raining. I think we can take care of our, um, gimpy sheep. We are back from errands and we're unboxing Farmhouse Tack. No, I was just doing an unboxing with Lily.
This is Farm Match.
What's this? We bypassed the middleman, I guess. Where's Farm Tech? There's Farmhouse, the middleman.
Farm Match.
Farm Match is the middleman, so it's a way to get your— collects all this from farms.
No, I think they just allow you to put it on, put your products on their website.
So you bought this from a farm?
Yes, I bought this from one farm.
This doesn't—
Miller's Organic Farm. Oh, so this is mozzarella, A2A2 mozzarella.
Guys, hang on, there's some big blocks of something another in there.
This is, whoops, um, Monterey Jack.
What are we gonna do with that?
Shred it and put it on.
Oh, is that a Mexican cheese?
They didn't have it in a 1-pound block, so I had to buy in a 5-pound box. And then cheddar, and you get a discount. This is cheddar, mild cheddar. This is sour cream and this is butter.
Okay, A2, A2.
Yeah, raw.
Is it grass-fed too? Dang, this is not quite as convenient as the grocery store, is it? Well, maybe, I don't know, it comes, it gets shipped.
Well, there is a local drop. I need to get signed up for our local drop, but I just needed to figure out if I want to do this. I want to—
yes, shipping was more expensive than I was, but good Lord, I feel like that's a good deal. If that's $53, that would have been a whole lot more.
Even packages.
Yeah, of course we grow our own butter, but believe it or not, that's not quite enough. Although we probably will when our second cow comes, has her baby. Look at this.
So I came in here this morning to check on my babies. I noticed that this plant was a little disheveled, so it wasn't this. These were the two— these are the two things. This is from the hailstorm. If you look up and you can see the holes that we got. Look at this tomato. And then it tossed this one, it broke it, and it was all the dirt tossed over there. It got crazy. This okra lost its leaves, but it's all right.
You think we can just catch these two lame sheep? Yeah, I think because they're so lame, we might actually be able to. Yeah, let's get these panels ready. Oh my gosh, we are doing panels! I took the 15 minutes to put up the panels. Hopefully it'll save us 15 minutes in chasing them down or more. Look at this little calf. You hiding there? You hiding?
She's fast.
Is that Belle right here? Boy, she can run. She'll do something crazy. Hey, she'll do something crazy if you don't let her be with the flock.
How many years ago was that?
Bring that, Lily.
You know, this might have helped this hoof.
You think?
And there's maggots in there.
Oh wow, no, we might have gotten those out of there. There's one in there.
Wash it out.
Don't pour it on her.
It's disgusting how much just came out. Oh my gosh.
Wow.
Holy cow.
See, we were just arbor— we were just harboring them.
That is disgusting, Papa. I'll get more.
Hold on. I wish I brought our pit.
Can that happen to me?
I honestly— no, you bathe every day. I'm afraid if we wrap it, it's just going to keep it soft and it won't harden up like it's supposed to.
See, there's still maggots in there.
See that? Here, let's spray it because it might also be that hose over there. It's gonna wear it off right away, but here it goes. All right, we'll see how she's doing tomorrow. Let's see tomorrow if it's better, if it was better to leave it unwrapped. There we go, there we go. We're gonna look at those feet tomorrow and see if the maggot situation is better without them and improving. We did improve from yesterday to today. We'll look at it tomorrow. We're gonna also do a little bit of research. Rebecca's got some sort of treatment she thinks we can do, and if it's intensive, we're gonna need to get those two ailing ladies out, wean them from their little babies if they're not. That'll help give them some strength and treat them in the mowable sheet pen.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
