In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes walks viewers through a series of time‑sensitive farm tasks that only occur once a year or present unexpected challenges. He and his child (Speaker B) scout the property for flowering black locust trees, explaining why the rot‑resistant wood is prized for fence posts and decking and demonstrating how to locate viable trees using a drone. The vlog then shifts to cow‑grazing management, detailing fence‑maintenance problems, grass‑touching issues, and the decision to use a mower versus a string trimmer, including a discussion of dragging manure to improve soil. Next, they handle a broody hen, attempting a natural incubation of eggs without an incubator, describing the setup, handling of the hen, and the risks involved. The segment continues with a troubleshooting session on a pressure canner gauge that fails to reach proper pressure, highlighting observed symptoms and possible fixes. Mid‑vlog, the host shares a personal health scare: a loose dental implant that may need extraction, along with dentist advice to rest and avoid cooking. Interspersed are family moments— a surprise toy truck from Mom, cooking a coconut chicken curry, and casual banter about meals and the kids. The vlog blends practical farm instruction, emergency problem‑solving, and everyday family life, emphasizing the rarity and urgency of each task.
Chapters
On today's vlog, only possible once a year, an old-time trick for finding valuable locusts on our property. Also, a rare opportunity happens in the spring only, usually. A hen has gone broody and Gideon wants to attempt to set eggs under her. Will she stay broody after the move? And then a once in a lifetime— I wouldn't call this an opportunity Hopefully it's only once in a lifetime. I've got a loose tooth implant. I need to get it checked out by the dentist and he's most likely, I'm most likely gonna lose that tooth. Mama got you a surprise yesterday. It's partly how I'm able to get him out. There's a special task I want to do that we only have a 3, 4, 5, maybe a week window. But I just don't recall necessarily when it started. So I don't know how much longer I have. That's identifying locusts on our land. Give me one second, I'll get you a surprise. Uh, Henry, I want to show them this locust. This time of year, I want you to look. Yeah, see, it's starting to get very green. That locust is flowering. You can look into the woods and see them. The locust is an extremely useful tree because it is rot resistant, sturdy, and straight. So this is a good time of the year. We've harvested a lot of them for the decking on our house, but this is a good time of the year to go around and see if we can't find more a little deeper than the edge of the woods. The problem is we've got a lot to do to improve our daily cow grazing operation. There's some holes, there's some holes. Beauty's starting to preserve strawberries at 10. I want to capture some of that. Open it up.
Let me check the back. Wait, I'm gonna shut it so I'll just get whatever it is in the front.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be more— that was anticlimactic, wasn't it? Yeah. Okay, we're opening the door. You can look. Mom got you a toy truck off of Facebook Marketplace. You want to play with this? Was search for some locusts. I got the drone in the air. Let's go to the edge of our property, show you some. These are locusts. You can see them there flowering along that little access road. Look, this one had been ravaged by the hurricane. We have a crooked tree now, trying to save it. We left the locusts in the pasture when we cleared because they're so useful. We don't really need locusts right now. But this is a good time to find them. There's one, see that? But is that too far up? That doesn't look like far. Okay, so it's to the— well, it's to the left of that rock. Is it big enough? I mean, you could go in there with a horse team or do a trail. One on the right I think is just a lighter. This one's pretty close to the access road. You can see the access road kind of through the woods right there. So what is that that we could Yeah, see that trail? It's a rock there. I think there's two. Well, usually when there's one locust, there's two, if not a grove. Okay, well, that's right on the— that's right on the path. Hey, there's that brush pod straight up, maybe 20, 30 feet to the right. There's one. It's not going to be too far up. That's at the graveyard. Oh, look at that, we might have a big one. Above the pond. Oh no, these are light colored. These are light greens. I don't think that's a locust. No. Okay, that's like a light colored maple. That's disappointing. I could see that one from down here. It looks like a huge one. Well, we kind of have over here too in our 2 acres. Boy, look at this. This is a rare chance to see the grazing operation in place. The hurricane relief. Just look how much it washed away. Wow, wow. I don't see any locusts to speak of on the 2 acres. All right, we have a couple of locations to maybe check out. Get in, Henry! Get in, Henry! They're not supposed to be inside. Let's go hunt these locusts and then help the boys with the cows. Come on, let's go. Do we really need to take these trucks too? Let's carry it. I Got it. There's no key. 1 minute 37 seconds later. Got an extra key for Salma.
No, that's the same key.
We really gotta go get a key made for that. Actually, we have to borrow it from the mower. For some reason, Salma and the mower can use the same key. I think we've been struggling since we moved the cows out to the field, and maybe I haven't re-established it with the boys because I looked out my window this morning And I saw a cow laying right here out of the fence, and I said yep. And look what's happened. Hey, did you know I'm scouring the woods right now for locusts? And we have one right here, but it's no good to us if the cows eat it. Oh, pop, those recover so fast. That probably set us back a season, bro. Up there on the mountain, the cows will eat them in the first round and they'll grow back in the second round. The point is, let's figure out What's wrong? It's not connected well. Okay, connect everything connected well. That's check number 1. Check number 2: no grass touching the fence. It'll also give pressure off the fence. I hate to use the mower because we're already nook and cranny farming and it mows this much grass versus this much grass with a string trimmer. But he's right, if you mowed the grass They wouldn't graze as close to the fence. We have these wonderful deposits of manure, but they're right there, and we'll have an explosion of growth right there. If you do the drag, you're already mowing this, you're already mowing behind them, do the drag and it'll spread that manure. You know, since a lot of it falls on him, I'm going to weigh that into this decision. We're going to go with the mower. The other reason for the mower is it already is out here to be— to mow the grass. So if we did string trimming, that'd be one more thing to bring out here. So I'm, I'm okay with simplifying, even if it sacrifices some grass. Let's go get this drag for them. Less resistance for these guys. The other thing is we need to test this fence, because if you're not testing, you're guessing.
Let's go check the cows.
And find those locust trees. Let's go! Come on, let's go! I hear mowing. Let's make sure he's doing the drag. I don't like doing the drag. Oh shoot, he's not doing it! Come on, catch him before he parks it! We gotta go back out. Why? You didn't drag. I did. There was one spot I couldn't because it was too— Oh, you dragged? Yes. Good job then. Good job. The drag has been moved. The drag has been moved. That's just— that didn't really get spread. It's it's clawed through that.
Why don't we do chickens?
But I don't know if it dragged much because they won't stay in these fences. Here, it spread it. That's not worth it if it only spread one of 20 pies. Either they didn't guard this tree or somebody got out and ate it too. We may not need to do anything on this fence if it's working. All right, it's, it's hitting at 2.5. That's pushing it too low. It would hit harder if we— it wasn't touching grass everywhere. We were turning over a new leaf with the new one, so it should start hitting harder soon. We'll see if it keeps them in. There's a tree in the way.
Oh, there's a big tree.
This is about where I saw one of these locusts. Yep, there they are. All right, little guys. But there's, there's a locust tree. Well, that'd be a great fence post. And where there's one locust There's usually two, and where there's two, there's usually a grove. Okay, now let's find those other ones that were even more promising.
What was it inside my sweat?
I'm gonna film every time we hold hands if I have a camera on me. Maybe I'll catch the last handhold. This one is even more prominent— promising. It was more dominant on the drone with its flowering. Hey, while we're here, here's our newly cleared pastures, winter before last. Boom! Do you want to stay here or do you want to go in the woods with me? I'm going in the house. In the house? Is that what you just said? There's the rock I believe we saw on the drone. That means the locusts It's straight up through here. I don't know if it's the one. So basically we're finding out if you just go 20 or 30 feet into the woods, you'll have some. Okay, this would be nice. There's one. So we may or may not have seen those flowering ones, but what we have learned is we have locusts growing 50 feet, 75 feet from the tree line. It feels really good knowing that. I was afraid we depleted our locust reserves on the farm, but we have lots up and coming, and that'll be good for my children. Next project.
Papa!
Yeah?
The chicken's egg's about to fall off!
Uh-oh. Why are you up there?
There's a bird's nest in it!
Well, why did you mess with it? Don't mess with that. Get in. Well, we have a broody hen. We do have two. What, do we have two broody hens? One, they're not laying eggs anymore once they're broody. Two, they're ready to sit on eggs and hatch them, and he wants to do that. So we're gonna try to hatch some eggs naturally. No hatchery, no, um, no incubator, no post office shipping chicks. If I get on the other side of Gideon, I think I can lower it down. I think it's light enough without getting pulled off. Let's try it. Definitely works better with a camera. This could be very dangerous, Gideon. Famous last words. I feel like it might be dumb. I told you. I feel like it might pull me off the edge.
I'll spot it.
Okay, can you spot it?
I'm not—
that's not a horrible idea. Don't do it. Get in. Get off.
Lily, shut it. Shut it.
Lily, can you spot it? Shut the door.
That's a good idea. What you're doing— I found the real cable!
You did? All right, because this one's too short. I hope you're not kidding me. Hey, he found the real cable. That one's too short. It's the perfect coop for you, Gideon. Hey, beautiful. It's ready. You're just gonna transfer the basket that she's in. And let's put her in that corner where it's dark.
Okay, let's get everything ready before we put her in.
Gideon's running to get some supplies. Not a bad idea to get that all set up because then you just put her in and walk away and there's no disturbance. She's going to be stressed. She could maybe break her brood if we stress her up too much, so we just want it to be a nice quick move. Are we gonna plant these raised beds?
Yeah, we will. Look, okay, I got dill coming up.
Nice bonus dill.
Bonus dill. And then cilantro.
Bonus cilantro.
So bonus dill and cilantro, and maybe another one. I feel like that does look like Tulsi in, but also it might not be.
Whoa, that's way too much! It's just one chicken and she doesn't eat much when she's broody. Okay, listen, you pull that out. Whoa, whoa, she's definitely broody! She bit me.
Hold on, she's really broody.
See how many she's got under there? Dang, let's get some out. You can't do that many. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. We got 2, 4, 6, 8. You could sell them. Put her in the shade. We've put her opening towards the wall so she can't get out, and that's just for a few hours. We're not going to pin her in like that, but we want her to settle in here. That is perfect. Good, gentle. I want you to come back out here in a couple of hours and turn her around. You hugging your mama because she bought you that truck? How much you get that for on Marketplace? $50. How much are they brand new?
Like $120.
Good, you go, girl. We said goodbye there, boys. We're going to go to the Ag— no, the Ag Extension to test our canner. What are you afraid of?
Well, I'm not afraid of anything. I just— so what happened is I canned these beans and it like, all the water came out of the canner. Like, it was all— it all steamed out of the canner and it was like burned liquid. So when the master gauge— I went a little over— it's at 6. Yours is just reaching 5, which it's not uncommon for these to be off. Push to 15. Oh wow. Okay, it's not going up. Yeah, so that might be the problem. It never got to pressure.
Now we're at Ace to get a gauge, but they don't have a gauge. They don't have a gauge?
No, I'm gonna ask somebody.
Okay, now for the fun stuff. My, uh, implant's not working out and it's very loose and we're gonna have to have it pulled. We're still okay? All right.
That's gross.
It only hurt a little at the very end when he took that prick and started cleaning it out. I guess that's a back tooth for chewing. It's basically the last one. He did think I could put in a full— a partial, but reached over and connected over here without anything to grab to over there. He did say take it easy, don't cook any meals, uh, don't, don't, don't work on your book anymore. He said go home, lay on the bed, read a book, rest if you want, watch Netflix on the iPad in the bed.
He didn't say that.
That's what he said. Mom made a wonderful supper. I took a nap. I feel a lot better. Actually woke up with an appetite. Acorn squash, garlic green beans, broccoli. Hope I can try that. That's coconut coconut chicken curry. How is it, Brooklyn? You think I did it? Has anybody tried the coconut chicken curry yet?
Yeah, it's really good.
Is it? Is it a keeper? If Henry likes it— look at that, Beck— it's a keeper. Oh, you like it? I'm gonna try it. Happy day.
