In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes documents the full process of launching a 1‑acre regenerative pig operation. After learning about a nearby farm closing, he acquires ten feeder pigs and sets up a forested acre divided into twelve rotational paddocks, each fenced with electric netting and equipped with a water‑nipple system. He walks through measuring and flagging paddocks, installing the source fence, troubleshooting water‑line leaks, and moving the pigs weekly to allow pasture rest and sanitation. Family members and friends help with fence placement, water setup, and pig handling. Rhodes explains his marketing strategy: selling pork shares directly to locals and online followers, ultimately selling 3.5 shares for over $6,000. He reflects on the regenerative benefits—pigs tilling underbrush, improving soil, and providing marketable meat—while noting the multi‑purpose value of livestock on the farm. The video ends with plans for future sales, potential farmer‑market partnerships, and a vision of expanding the system for cows and other enterprises.
Chapters
Okay, yeah, I came up here to capture this narration for this pig story, and I'm supposed to say why I got pigs. Why did I get these 10 pigs? Yeah, this is like, didn't you just do this 2 days ago, knock your feet out? And didn't you guys just bust out 2 days ago? My buddy Mike with Kati told me about this farm that was going out of business. They raise animals like we do, and I thought, well, that's interesting, we could probably get some good deals. And it turns out they had steers— well, that turned into heifers that turned out good— and they had pigs. And I'm pigs for everyone, and I thought, why don't we get some pigs? We're good on pigs, but why don't we do a 1-acre market farm. Let's show people what you can do on 1 acre. 10 pigs, 12 paddocks, moving them around. And let's see if we can't make some money. And from our local influence or online influence, and, uh, but start locally and see if we could teach other people how to do this. I've got 10 feeder pigs and I've got 1 acre of woods. I'm starting a pig farm. This is us setting up an ideal setup. Did I say set up too much? Now we got pigs on the homestead, and it's probably one of the most exciting part is setting up 1 acres in the forest. 1 acres? 1 acre in the forest. Get our tools. Actually, before we go to the field We need to train the pigs to my electric fence. You can hear it grounding out. Oh, they, they know this. Maybe trained to net. Yeah, they won't go near it. Yeah, they've been trained to net. I thought they'd been trained to wire, but I didn't know they trained to net. They know that net. Next up, our 1-acre glen. It's perfect. It's forested, it's not too steep. 1 acre is good for 10 pigs. We need to divide it into 12 paddocks. This is basically a rectangle glen, so we're going to do 2 sides of 6. We're going to measure each length, divide it by 6, and then put the flags down. So ideally, we're going to put them in a forest situation where it's nice and cool. We're going to stock them in a regenerative way. We're not going to put too many per acre. So 10 per acre. Now we're going to imagine it's broken down into 12 little paddocks. Now we're only going to do 1, 2 paddock at a time and then just move the paddocks. That means we can keep our pigs in one paddock for a week and then move them out, and we don't return to that first paddock for 84 days. For pigs, that's the rest and sanitation it needs. I've set up what I call a source fence. That source fence connects to our energizer here, and we build off of that. We've got our paddock set up, and we've got some help. Let's do a final check, make sure nothing's hitting the fence. We got the trailer ready. You pigs, you ready? You're hungry. We haven't fed you yet. We are there. You guys ready for this? This is an exciting moment. They're crowding up at the entrance. The bucket— the pan has come down. I don't want to get in there and get it and pull it up because I'm going to scare somebody and they're going to jump right through the fence and destroy it. So we're just taking our time. They're going to forest. They don't even care about the feed pan. Love it. Let's continue to move them up. I'll drop some feed on the ground. Jonah, carefully bring that fence over. Holy smokes, they love it! Look at them! Got some eating the grain, we got some digging and exploring. Ah, that makes my heart sing. 10 pigs! In the woods! I am so excited about that. We've started a farm. Hey, we've started a pig farm! Yes! Then it was just a matter of maintaining the rotational system, getting them water and feed. I say just, you know, kind of towards the end it's been a little tricky keeping up with them. But I'll tell you the truth, Josiah, my 12-year-old, has done the absolute majority of this, so there's little, little holes in the plots. Water is below the nipple, so they do need water. All right, we've got a hose. Filled up with water. Johnny, you're going to put it on that end and I'm going to put it on this end. I guess we put them in at the same time, or what? This is so cool. I like it. What do you think, Beck? Really nice up here. The water and the feeder. Really nice. Once this is pastured, is it ready for the pigs? Yes. Good job. They need a little coaxing. There they go. That was easy. That's their first pig move. So they're not in the groove yet. Big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. There they go. Bring that pan, Jonah. They move nicely. Look they're happy. They're so happy. Happy. Let's see how this works. It working. There it goes. Yep, they'll figure it out. They gotta turn that— I'd say they're hungry. What do you guys think? Rebecca went and got our hose filled up with water. If you fill a hose full of water to siphon, then you'll have to suck on one end. I hope we're not missing something here that creates a vacuum seal. No, I don't because there's no hole there. There's no threads. Oh, you're thinking like a stopper. A plug or something. Yeah, I'm afraid this water is gonna come right over the edge. It looks like it's leveled out and it might be messed up because it can't really sit on a level spot either. Why we have a leak right here? Okay, uh, pinch the hose off, Jonah. Put some of those logs underneath it, Jonah. Put some logs. Maybe it has to be flat. It has to be flat is what's it— we got that stopped by leveling it. I guess it does have to be level. It still could be— did we lift it too much? Good news is this is leveled out. We've been having water problems out at our pigs. We got them a reservoir. We got a total new system. They're drinking it. They're drinking almost half in a day. They're at it right now. It's working. I think we might switch it to the other side of the T-post. Shoot, this is broken off and they're nibbling on me. Stop, guys, I'm trying to help you. The feed is wet, not coming through. Looks like it's caked up a little bit. Yeah, this is caked on. I don't think it's stopping it from working, but we might as well uncake it while we're in here. This would have definitely restricted the flow. Well guys, I think we fixed it once and for all. Let's rig this up a little bit better now it's proven to work. These metal bands are not easy to break. That's too far back to do it like that. Do you think it is too far back? We're gonna need to do it like that, and then I could do a strap here and here. Really kind of needs to be like that. I hope they can get their mouths around it. I hope so. They might not be able to, and that's okay. We'll fix Let's see if they can even get it with that little bit of a nipple. The problem is it's gonna— it can get pushed back. We need to wrap it around that knot. We need to go get more zip ties. It's gonna start nibbling on the hose. Not gonna work, not gonna work. This is gonna kink over time too, guys. I don't necessarily know the solution. I'm just gonna pull it out. I think we rigged it. Oh look, oh, let's cut that little tag off. The pigs made it full circle, rotating them every, I don't know, week to 12 days, 12 paddocks, and they made it back to the original spot and it was recovered and just fine and they were ready to go again. The 10 pigs on my 1-acre pig farm are moving to their original spot. We've We finally made a loop in that acre. We've got our water. The pigs' date is up in like 15 days, 2 weeks, they're gone. We never really did figure out a better water supply than just hauling it up there. We've got our harvest date, and I thought let's invite everybody in my phone, locals first, not, not my online influence, and let's see how many shares we can sell. But just giving a free tour. Give free content. Hey guys, come enjoy a free tour. We'll see the whole farm. You can see the pigs. We ended up getting a food truck here. It was amazing. And by the way, we got some bark for sale. Permaculture will teach you to turn a problem into a solution. So we see that the pig wants to root and till, and this is a place we didn't have pasture once, so we could throw in pasture seed. This was their original spot when we first brought them home. And they're back to it, and it's clean in here. They're going to underbrush in there. We are selling this pork. I'm going to give everybody a sheet if they want some. Uh, we're selling it by halves or wholes. Maybe if you don't even want to go out on half, maybe you can find somebody and you can quarter it up. And notice we have the pigs in the forest. They like the forest. People talk about the goats for the, uh, for the underbrushing and clearing, but forget that. Pigs will do it too, and they taste a lot better because we grew these for the market. And they're growing, they can eat all they want all the time, 24/7. Now if you're a grown pig, no way, because they'll keep eating and then they're eating 50 pounds a day. Out of 10 pig shares, we sold it by the half or the whole, we sold 3.5 pig shares, so that's over— end up being over $6,000. Not bad. Okay, Dan's directing me on this. Dan, my editor, is now turning into my director. I love it. Uh, we need final thoughts. My final thoughts are this has been great. This has been a great demo experience. I just called the meat handler's license. We just set up our stand-up freezer because we didn't sell all the pit pork that we did. So now we're having a thought of, well, we, we may sell to you guys. I guess you should check the link in description just in case. But we— but I think what we want to do is maybe see if we can't partner with some of our friends who are at the farmers markets and see if we can't sell pork there. It would really be cool to try to sell pork like a normal person. But, but overall, having these 10 pigs on 1 acre, that I've shown it's possible, and I'm super happy because whether I do it again or not, they helped me. They're helping clear so that you can actually get in there. Sun can get down on the weeds, on the grass seeds, and grass can grow. And we can actually get in there with machines, chainsaws, and turn it into this. So this time next year, I dare to say, this is going to look like this, and it's going to be a happy place for cows. And that's important because cows are the most near and dear to our heart. They are centerpiece of the farm. Everything is complementing them. So even if this didn't work out, which is working out, for sale, we used animals to do the work of the farm and we're happy. That's the cool thing about multi-purpose. Everything is— sure, we could get the pork, but we can also get the tilling and the work And if one fails, the other could still win. And in this case, both have won, so I'm extremely happy.
