In this episode of The Rooted Life, host Victor (Speaker A) and his partner Rebecca tackle the setup of a 2,100 sq ft high‑tunnel garden dedicated to tomato production. The video walks through the step‑by‑step process of removing a silage tarp, laying drip‑irrigation tape, installing weed‑fabric, and hoeing the beds while coordinating a small crew of family members (John, Josiah, Gideon, Jonah, Henry, Lily, and Blaze). Mid‑task, a herd of escaped cows briefly disrupts the work, prompting a quick rescue and a discussion about future paddock planning. The hosts also reflect on the lingering impact of a recent hurricane, describing how they are rebuilding the garden “wheel‑barrow load at a time” and noting the loss of a pole barn. A brief interlude covers a countertop repair in the house, tying the day’s labor to broader household maintenance. Throughout, the tone remains informal, conversational, and upbeat, with moments of gratitude and optimism about the upcoming tomato harvest.
Chapters
In today's episode of The Rooted Life, we are setting up the beautiful one's dream 2,100 square foot garden. That's a good project for a rainy day. And Rebecca's dream plant, the tomato bursting out of their seams, so to speak. Those have surely got to get transplanted soon, but we got quite a bit to do before make that happen. 8,400 square feet of garden is going to be tough to maintain. 2,100 square feet alone in this high tunnel. I got some tricks. Trick tape, weed fabric. Oh my gosh, what was wrong with it?
My arms, they had to be like this.
How's that? You want some eyes?
Yeah, that'd be nice.
How's that, my man? You can see now. First we got to get our silage tarp off our 3 rows for our tomatoes. Go get us a couple stirrup hose and a soft rake. Maybe I need to cut ear holes in that. What? Hey Gideon, you got me a hard rake. Trouble hearing in that thing?
You said a hard rake and a hoe.
What'd I say, Austin? And a soft rake. Okay, look, we forgot something. Ear hole. Ears. All right, can you hear me now? Well, that'll work. That'd work better for you or Henry. Can you go get me one and hose? I like this. I can't see your full frustration. Look, we killed a lot of the weeds with that Silage Tarp, but not ones like this. We'll just get those up real quick. It's hard to get at the edges. Was that tiring? All right, now go get me a hoe. Get in. This is taking 15 minutes too long. Should have took like a minute and a half. This morning I'm feeling very fortunate about being able to do this work bless myself, bless this family in this way, and working today for such an abundance that's going to come down the line. It's a nice cool day. I'm just— I'm feeling a vibe. I'm feeling a vibe. You brought one. How many did I say to bring, Austin? Go get us a couple stirrup hoes. Go get you one too, and get you a smaller one. This one's kind of ridiculous. This is how big that is, okay? That'll get it done where there's a lot of weeds. We have to hoe first. No, don't do that yet. Don't do that. And just do it very lightly or we stir up more seeds. I interrupt this program. Jonah's calling me. It looks like the cows have busted out. This is different. I think they left the property, went down the road. Oh, don't go down in there! Shoot! I was hoping to go around them on this road. Instead, I scared them. The naughty horse! You didn't do anything. Look at them! That's our neighbor's property. They went down, down there. Herd them back up. I think there's sort of a trail right there. Thank goodness for Josiah and the dirt bike. I'm a little surprised they got out and carried on and left like that because the grass is so green. He is, he is. Blaze literally ran back into the paddock. The cows aren't so smart. They went right past it. Okay, everybody is back safe and sound. I was hoping to have the boys set up a paddock in the 2 acres across the creek for these breeders, just in case this happens, they don't get at each other. I'm gonna get the weeds off the edge. Our goal: drip on all 6 of these, weed fabric on 2 of them, the tomato rows. I'm just pulling away at the dirt so I can get the weed fabric under that. 9:45. Doing that was extra. I didn't really really think about that job. So hopefully we can still get this done. It is good that John came. Rebecca and I both, on the day of the hurricane, were saying, how do you come back from this? I don't know. How many years of work is it taking away? But also then, how many years in the future is it going to take to rebuild it? Rebuilding one wheelbarrow load at a time. That's going to go eventually go under old pole barn that got washed away. Excited we can do our project now. The first thing is drip tape that's going to water these tomato plants. I don't want to run that drip tape over that, I want to go under that. A little pressure. Thought I was going to be further along than this. Let's get our rocks out of these other 3 Let's put our drip down on them. It's John and I. Mom's inside with the— he's here, the marble guy. Josiah's watching Henry. Jonah's on a lesson. Gideon's at co-op. Lily, where's Lily? I've texted Lily. I'll be real happy if I at least get the drip tape on these two plus the weed fabric on top of them. Got the drip line down. Like a light switch went off, all the energy went out of my body. I've only got 2 more beds. We are going to do drip on these other ones but not weed fabric, so we're covering everything back up with this silage tarp. So I just realized we don't need to put our drip in here yet because if we do, we're just gonna knock it when we put our silage tarp back on. So that's a relief. As long as this goes reasonable, we should be done and be having tomato— let's have tomato burgers from the land, from this this idea. The, the high tunnel was a little bit over last year from last year's high tunnel. We are finally in the home stretch. We've just got one more— well, we just got this end, and it should be the easiest end to staple down. We are already for the tomatoes now. I'm gonna vote tomorrow. Well, there went the beautiful one's morning, but I bet our countertop is fixed now. Let's cover this up. Oh, my favorite part! Wow, looks amazing! Where is she? Oh, there she is. What do you think? You gotta shout, my mic sucks right now. I can't even hear. What have they been up to in here, babe?
The countertop guy came back and this had just like disintegrated.
Is that under warranty or— oh good.
And over here it's separated and this side is actually raised up.
Whoa.
And so he just put tape on it to prevent anything from going in it because the crack's pretty big.
Yeah. Here it is. This is what we're working so hard on this morning. We've got to keep in the flow of that. The secret to that is be working on it. There we go. You like this, little bro? I know it's not pizza, but it's something. You like it? What? The smell. You like it, buddy? No. One of my favorite go-tos. Happy day. Okay, ready? Drip tape. All right, do it again. I wasn't ready. Weed fabric.
