In this week‑ending farm vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes and his family walk viewers through a full day of homestead chores and hurricane recovery. The video opens with a light‑hearted chat before shifting to a health check on their cow, Honey, who shows signs of mastitis; the family administers feed additives and plans a teat injection. The crew then tackles extensive ground work: using a skid‑steer/BCS to shape new garden beds, moving and bedding pigs, hauling compost, and distributing wood chips for pig bedding. They discuss building a low‑land paddock, installing water lines, and preparing a pasture with hay‑bombing, while coordinating a youth‑group crew. The narrative moves to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, detailing how the storm destroyed structures but also provided salvage material such as sandbags and grit; the family improvises with limited resources, emphasizing frugality and DIY over hiring contractors. Throughout, tasks are divided among family members (Jonah, Josiah, Lily, Henry, etc.) with a “divide and conquer” approach. The vlog concludes with a family cooking segment where Josiah prepares lamb meatballs with tomato sauce and spaghetti squash, showcasing farm‑to‑table meals. The overall tone blends instructional farm management, collaborative problem‑solving, and reflective commentary on self‑reliance.
Chapters
Hard to drink tea and get your hair ruffled at the same time, isn't it? Now what's the point of hot tea if you put ice in it? How big are the paddocks? Do you want the paddocks to be? Um, I don't know. I'm gonna help you. Be nice if we had the boards out of here. We could come all the way to the creek. Whose tea are those? Me and Jonah. Did they go in? No. It's the new game. Yeah, kind of. Chicken feeder cage. I'm not joking. Stop it. A soccer ball. I guess we should get to work. Oh, he tried to dunk on you and you blocked him. But if this ain't a farmer's basketball court, I don't know what is. And we don't really know the rules. That's okay, just make up rules. Oh, that's definitely against the rules. Oh, how they doing? Any babies? Any day. Happy day. Welcome to the last vlog of the week. I hope you guys have a great weekend. What's wrong? Do we not film on Fridays? No, we don't film or post on Friday usually, or Saturday. Just put her some, some of that XL 7000 in her feed. Mix it into her feed. We've been treating Honey for a possible mastitis. We've got some teat injection coming Saturday. We're gonna wait till then because— did you see yesterday? She went crazy. It's gonna hurt myself. We're just not gonna be able to drench. Oh, it'd be better to drench. I'll give you $100 cash money if that worked. Wait, wait, come on, I'll pay you $50. She says nope. Giving out a smell. Is it pretty bad? I hope she takes it. Wow, look at this! In order to get material under this slab, everybody's saying you're gonna have to get a saw. You're gonna have to get a concrete saw and saw it off and let that drop in there and, and then fill that up. Where are we gonna keep material until after the spring. We gotta wait, we gotta move the animals out before we can saw this and get the hay out. You can put it all here, grade it as best you can, and then once we do that, we'll just take some from material from here and put it here. Okay. Hey, we're gonna rebuild better and have a driveway around the, the pole barn. Why do you say heck no? It will never use it, and it's better that it comes around this way because we stopped— we've stopped needing that, actually. Haven't used that. Yeah, forever. Fire our wood chips right there, and we used to put them in by hand, but now we're putting our wood chips over by the house in a shed, and we're putting them in with the machine. I mean, it's good to have a road just in case. You just never know. Access. Joel would say water, access, and control. We could have put it in here, but we put all the stuff on top of that. Uh, yeah, we should have done it as we built it, huh? Yeah. Do you think the machine could have gotten under there with that lip? Better. We're going to start rebuilding our lowlands here next to the creeks with hay bombing. We're bringing the group, the youth group down. She crazy. Come on, honey. She's eating it. This isn't gonna work. Wait, we were going— she'll get too close to vanilla. Why is she so opposed? Did you not see yesterday? Her lips were so tight. I've never seen a cow so opposed. So we got out of the two front teeth, huh? Milking both back ones out. You know, this cleared up when she had a calf, didn't it? Because the calf was on it. No, she does. When we wean the calf herself. Okay, because she never lets me finish milking her out. I'll, I'll feel it. She'll just suck all the milk into herself. This one's a champ. She's littler and gives more milk. Vanilla, what do you got in that big belly of yours, honey? Twins? You got twins? What if she got used to it? I'll get— I'll switch it for you, honey. That's either alfalfa backwash or poop. Do they like this better? Back to the routine. Everything goes smooth. Jonah, you were gonna run the machine. Okay, that means you're gonna help me, right, Josiah? Remember, you already ate breakfast, so you don't have to go in. I sort of feel like we did a week's worth of work yesterday moving those pigs and whatnot. Today, should we divide and conquer? And it's kind of on the verge of spring, things are going to start getting crazy again. Should we divide and conquer or just work together? We got to get— do the pig chores, we gotta pile the compost the pigs made, we need to get wood chips to the pigs. That's mainly Jonah with the machine. We've got to get the group, the youth group down. Oh my gosh. And the garden covered with silage tarp. I don't think we're gonna finish all that. What, it's impossible? All within 3 hours. What if you set up a paddock for the cows on the flat there? Or do you want to work with me? I'll do that. You sure? Yeah, I'll take you working with me. I'll do that. Sally's there if you want to get her. Jonah's hauling rocks today, but I need him to move some compost for me and to get me some wood chips for the pigs. I need to get the bedding that the pigs were on and put it in our compost pile here. We're going to add to our compost pile. There's pig poop. I'm going to get up and get in that compost pile because we're going to need all the nitrogen we can get. Henry, you want to come with me? You got a shovel? All right, come on. I don't need it. Doing a little track-loaded guarding. I'm gonna try and enjoy this the best I can because you only build a new garden but once. Probably won't be the last one we build. It'll probably be the last one we build for a long time. That is gonna be a lot of garden. Moved that out. A little compaction, but we've got I got a friend who's going to let us borrow a BCS and we'll do some initial shape bedding. I only like to till one time and that's to build the initial beds. How hard is this ground? Oh wow, what? We might could do this by hand. So my idea is to take all that compost we've got right there and to put it in there. Yeah, see, it's compact right here. Yeah, we're probably gonna need a BCS right there. You voting for the walking tractor? You vote for the walking tractor, Josiah? Okay, this is an easy thing you do to your pigs' You got a pigsty. Pigs are nasty with chips. All you got to do to build a pigsty is a, uh, pig net and T-post. It took us probably less than 10 minutes. Watch the water. Will you come get the water with me? Sure, let me get this just— I— we gotta get that pig panel up. Cut the pigs a little feed. The pig panel has been knocked over. Let's just get in there and fix it while we can. He's like, what the heck? You're all right. Happy pigs. Things are moving along quite nicely. What next, boss? We're gonna do the, um, we're gonna move them down. We have to get the water, the electricity, and then, and then them. Unhook the hose. Should have it off. There you go. Yeah, you're gonna be a cowgirl. You gotta cowgirl up. Not good to leave them in an uncharged fits for long. We're gonna go set this up, get the rope halter. Whoa, look at the grass coming up in here already. This was a pasture— did we clear this last winter, Josiah, or the winter before? The winter before. And we finally hay bombed it, and that'll improve it immensely. Let's put it right there in that nook right there. For now, we're just going to get water from the house. Lily, let's set up the Everflow water on Sunday, okay? I wish we would have done this earlier. It would have been a lot easier winter. Still have a month of winter to enjoy. Enjoy the animals right by the house. The pastures by our house are, are the richest pastures, and so we're not hay bombing them. But not so now, just a bunch of sand. Josiah knows where our little hose is. Should be over at the garden stall. Shut off, Henry. You're Just in time. Park over by the creek so that animals, when they come down, they don't go past you. They go in their fence. Gotta let him have a job too. Lily is gonna get Blaze down. Josiah's gonna get all the animals. We're gonna stand here so they don't come up this road, but they go through there. That's their fence. Are you blocking them? Okay. Josiah said it was impossible. I thought it was impossible too, honestly, and it may still be depending on the conditions of our silage tarp. One more thing, we got to cover this bare soil. It's like what we're doing with cows. Mother Nature's modest. She likes to be covered up. Hay bombing over there. It's time to start the garden. We left this uncovered, and this looks great. Look how dark this looks. When Jonah leveled this with the machine, it brought our better soil from up there down here, and he sort of leveled it. He killed a rat too while he was at it. That's all we had left. Hurricane Helene took away a lot of stuff. But she also gave some stuff. Penny was like, hey, could we use this as grit? Yeah, we can use this as rooster teeth. We can use this for our sandbags. You guys do that and I'll tie the bags. How about that? Hurricane Helene, a gift that keeps on giving. We got a bunch of sandbags. All right, Henry, let's go put these sandbags down. Let's put the white bags down just as on it, getting the garden covered. That's one of the most best feelings you can have. We're gonna unload those sandbags, but I don't want to miss it. Looks like Jonah's about done. He's about gotten the last load out of there, that big pile. I think I'll be all right to help them unload and then go film that. Did you guys already get it? Okay, thanks. That's it. That's all we got left. This is the last scoop. Come on, you gotta get this big rock out of here. Better just to smooth it out here. Okay, what about these big rocks? Put them by the creek. All right, you got the last scoop. What an accomplishment. One bucket load at a time. It was a huge pile, probably 12 feet tall, from here all the way to where he is. It was an incredible pile, and we did it. We did it with what we had. We thought we needed a dumpster, a dump truck at first, but I think what I've learned from this hurricane recovery is give things time. Don't rush. Mole things over. Think about how you can do it with $0 or with what you already have. And it's, it's been amazing what we've been able to accomplish that way. The instinct is to rush and hurry and get things back exactly the way they were, sparing no expense. It's been good because this hasn't been in the budget. We want to pay off our home that we had just built right before Hurricane Helene hit. But this has been a good exercise, a good mind exercise to just try to be more frugal about things. And it's been more satisfying, been more work, and it's, it's been work we've done as opposed to hiring it out, which is, I think, more special. We have more ownership in it now, don't we? Animals healing the land one poop at a time. Where's supper tonight? We have the beautiful one mincing garlic. Gideon, where is he? I'm putting together our ingredients. Josiah is getting our lamb ready. You and Josiah are switching tonight. He's gonna cook, you can clean up the kitchen. You weren't here, girl. What? You were gone to horses. Oh, I'm gone. How was it? How was my horse? He's good. What do you think? We think we should get the VPN on him and buy that horse. What? Can you decide to breakfast all the stuff? Probably. You hear, Dar? We need a whole onion diced. Grok, our— my new favorite coach on, on cooking. I say give me lamb meatballs, no grains, with tomato sauce. This whole onion? 5 pounds. Ounce, and it whips out the ingredients. And then I have our salt, basil. All right, Chef Josiah, mix it up. Jumped at the chance to cook instead of clean up, huh? Go for it. Roll your hands up. Yeah, wash them first. See, you get a little taste, get a little taste of what it means to cook. It's not all eggs and bacon, bro. Sometimes you got to put your hands Some raw lamb from the land. How'd you have to get teary-eyed? We should have made him cut onions. Yeah, he hates to eat them, let alone cut them. You hate to grow onions? If I don't like to eat them, why would I want to grow them? Well, what do you like to eat? What do you like to eat from the farm? Uh, meat. You like to eat milk? Yeah. Yeah, see, that's why you milk the cow, not the eggs, bro. Here you go, mixing. Just gotta get it in, guys. There, check. Brown. Oh, perfect, perfect. Oh, that boy just browned up. It's like summer. We're going into March, we still got tomato sauce. Exciting. Okay, I ordered tomato seeds today. We're going to be starting them next. Well, that means we need to get on this garden. No, not next week, in a couple of weeks. Okay, basil, basil and oregano. Basil and oregano, that's it. No salt? Oh, some salt. These are going to need some salt. So how's cooking so far, Josiah? You may make noodles for you guys, cuz Mom and I are eating spaghetti squash noodles. Go get a box of noodles. Josiah's getting his noodles going. Uh, we should probably check our spaghetti squash. Oh, it's done, it's done! We got our spaghetti squash into rings. That's how you get it to dry out really nicely. Hey, Josiah, we did it, bud! Okay, you're gonna have to let me do it. No, I had it on the first— on my first meatballs. Oh, I haven't had them yet. And don't forget the broccoli, it's ready in there. I'm waiting for it. Don't forget it. I win or what? Did we win? Lamb meatballs. Happy day.
