In this informal, on‑site vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes and his family explore their 75‑acre property to locate a flat area suitable for expanding pig paddocks, aiming to add up to 20 more pigs per year. While scouting, they discuss repairing the Everflow water system, assess water line routes, and note the challenges of steep, wooded terrain. The vlog interweaves farm chores such as rabbit breeding, calf milking, and a bacon‑making hack, alongside a busy period of order fulfillment for their books, counting over 300 orders and planning a sales push tied to a webinar with Joel Salatin and a October 3 deadline. Family members (Lily, Josiah, Gideon, Rebecca, Henry, and others) appear throughout, contributing to tasks, sharing observations, and discussing future plans like building a road to the newly discovered flat spot. The narrative blends practical farm management, logistical coordination, and personal moments, reflecting the family’s collaborative effort to improve land use, animal husbandry, and product sales.
Chapters
Come on, G, let's do it.
Oh, my boot might be stuck on me. Today we're gonna get to the top of the mountain.
You think?
Yep.
And I get to go check it out up there. We have a spot on top of the mountain that looks like it could be an acre of flat, which could mean 10 more pigs a year. Actually, times 2, 20 more pigs a year. We will get this Everflow water going again soon because frankly I'm tired of doing these, uh, this water chore.
Hey, don't give up!
You came so close. Maybe pull it away from the coop. There you go. Get it open for him, buddy. There you go. One more, one more, and you got it. There it is, there it is. That's enough. This is the only thing stopping us right here, this leak. We have to get a mail-to-mail that's coming in the mail, and then we've already got the intake stuff ready. That's the pond, guys. That gives you perspective. Here we are across the street, we're on both sides of the road. Here's the water line coming down to the— it'll go over to the chickens. See Mr. Brown over there walking around? Yeah. And then there's our house. So there's to give you perspective. The pond up there behind those bushes.
Is there anything I can need you to hack up?
I can't think of any hack jobs right now.
I need rotten potatoes. Yeah.
Who are we missing, Mr. Brown? Everybody. I think Jonah's helping with the baby, but where's everybody else? No, don't, don't hack that, bro. That's Mom's plan. Oh, there's somebody. There's Josiah. Lily, you coming? I thought we were gonna breed your rabbits. Yeah, let's go. Hey, get in. Don't do that. No, no, get in. Don't do that. That's a good plant. No, that doesn't need trimmed. We're checking on our big watermelon. They're telling me there's a crack. What, did we let it go too long?
No, you can see bugs.
You think it made it in?
Still good. Holy moly, still good!
Yeah, if you want to salvage that, you can just trim off where I cut with that machete and trim off the rotten part. That's all right. Lily had a good point. She said, 'Mom would want to keep those seeds.' That's a good idea because that's, that's the watermelon that made it out of all the, the things that liked our soil, our situation the best. Trying again at breeding. This time we're not going to make the mistake and feed them first. These virgin rabbits, they don't know quite what to do yet. This one's the male, the blonde— the brown one. We want him to mount her. When I saw this done at Polyface, Daniel just put the female in there and the male just went at it right away. That's not happening. Open this for me. See if she's got any milk today. Oh boy. Ah, she's just got poop all up on her side. It's pretty dry out. Nothing to speak of. I mean, we might start— she's got ice cream poop, guys. Ice cream poop. Okay, I guess there's nothing to speak of. I mean, maybe poop in the tail, so the sea like whacking her tail, so getting more dirty. It takes a while for her, uh, milk to come in, but I don't know if it normally takes this long. It could be that that calf is so vibrant, vibrant, she's drinking all the milk, which normally doesn't happen this fast. All right, I got an idea. See if this little bucket will help me. Might make it too high. I think it's too high. Well, Gideon took over, and I think he's probably Better than I was. Been bringing Gideon milking for years. He has had no interest, basically. Last couple of days he's wanted to milk and he's doing a good job. He's 7. All right, Lily, when'd you start milking full-time? When'd you start milking full-time?
No, I was like 7.
7? So about this age. How many orders we got today, Beck? A lot. I don't even know how many. Too many to count. Is this even the pile? No, there's more pile over there.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. There's a huge pile right here. More orders. We got Henry to help today. We got a whole nother stack. Right here, guys. That's just— we probably have over 300, would you say? 300 orders over the— just over the weekend. Well, a couple of these are labels or, uh, envelopes. These are books, and then we have one palette. I would say we're over halfway sold, aren't we, Rebecca? I'd say so. We've sold over half. Guys, this is what's gonna happen. I've been 6 years in sales. It sells hot right in the beginning, then you get in the middle. We're kind of coming out of, out of the middle, and then it really takes off at the end, at the deadline, which is October 3rd, because people want to get in. We're going to have a webinar with Joel Salatin, the 10% off goes away, and I'll stop signing random copies, which I've been signing a lot. So it's a good chance you're going to get a signed one. We've only got so many books that we're shipping out now, so I have a feeling based on what's happened in the in the past, these are gonna sell out. I mean, they might not. I mean, you can never predict the future, but I'm thinking we're gonna sell out. Don't delay. Every time we do something like this, it's inevitable. It'll be over and somebody will say, oh shoot, I missed the deadline. Mom, shout me out.
Somebody. Lisa W. Matthew K. Lisa W. What?
Scott Hart. Scott H. Scott H. Hey, Scott H! Woo!
Scott H. Juliana S. Juliana S. Woo!
Gina P. Gina P. We did it! We got some leftovers there. Hey, we even got some inventory for tomorrow. I can't believe that we just did like 300 labels in what, an hour? Huge dent in this pallet, guys. We only got one full pallet left. And a little bit of this one. Some of these are labels or envelopes. Look, there's all the shipments going out. My gosh, you looking at me over there? Look, he wants the lens. He wants this camera strap. Lily making— what are you making, Lily?
Cookies.
Nice. What kind of cookies?
No-bake cookies.
Nice, I like it. Mom and I had good intentions here. We laid out steak— well, this is chicken. Chicken. And steak. We were gonna have Japanese steak and chicken. I don't know, we never made the white sauce, and it needs to kind of sit overnight, doesn't it, Beck? Yeah, it does. So let's make the white sauce tonight. We'll have this meal tomorrow. Did you guys make it to the top? Yep. Okay, so can I go up there?
Yeah, right now if you want.
All right, let's get the bacon going, then we'll go. Got a hack for you guys. Look, medium store-bought Bacon. You can buy store-bought bacon, organic, and even, uh, sugar-free. So what's the hack there? Well, the hack is you can get bacon, or you can get what you call pork belly off of a pork when you harvest it yourself. We ain't gonna grow our own bacon anymore. We're gonna grow our own pork belly because, one, it's delicious. Two, you can't buy organic pork belly, but you can buy organic, uh, bacon. All right guys, let's go check out your job. This is what we got to start up. Oh boy. Okay, we got four-wheel drive lock. We just came up that road and we're up there and it looks like we got some flat up there.
See, it goes and then you can run over there.
It's a bit of a gnarly road over here. It's too steep. We're looking for pig paddocks. That'll work over there, maybe the top of that.
Here will be a good place.
This— Joel was advising that we access our property that we'd be able to have— be able to get to around our property. We have 75 acres. We're only using like 8 because 75 are mostly like— because most of it's like this, it's steep and wooded. Look at this, super flat. Look, there's a tape. Yeah, our line's up here somewhere. We're gonna have it, uh surveyed this winter. Yeah, look, there's the tape.
Somebody's already surveyed this.
Wow, so that's not us.
No, and you don't—
I don't think that's okay because you—
no, we went down.
I don't think so. It's crazy steep.
I know, we went down at once.
What's down there?
The lake.
The lake is Yeah, what's that way, guys? Did you clear that?
That's just to the top of the mountain.
This knoll isn't as big as I'd hoped it would be. Yeah, don't knock those down, guys.
Yeah, no, that one already fell. Papa, it goes back that way though.
Oh look, there's an old barbed wire fence in the— so Pop probably already had some barbed wire up there. Pop or Grandpa Henry. Just too much of a ridge, it's not much flat here.
Go back that way. But if you stop here, this is fine from here, right?
But it's not— it'd just be one straight run through there, maybe. Maybe because the way we came up would not be sustainable. The road would wash out. Okay, so if we're over here, look, we do have a lot of flat over here, guys, on the edge of our property. Do we have an acre up here to where we could have another pig land where we could raise 20 pigs a year? Flat over there. Here looks like there's an old logging road right here. Oh no, okay, this is super flat. No ants. This is great. Good job, guys, getting us up here. This might be worth trying to get a road up to. See this?
Look at this. Look.
Wow, I think we got us a pig land up here. If all this is us over here, we're good. It keeps going. Your mama said she'd love to have a morning sunrise spot, which that'd be totally cool because the sun does rise right over there. What's here?
Not that much.
Uh, it does start to slope off pretty good. The good news is I'm trooping through this, these woods without too much problem. I guess our answer is we don't know until we know where the line is. There's some potential up here if that's on us and not the neighbor. Rebecca, you did a good job on those eggs. Bacon and eggs. Hey, that's a farmer's fest. Food, isn't it? When, when your meal fails for whatever reason, just break out some bacon and eggs.
