In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes and his homestead crew navigate a rainy day on the farm, moving chickens, ducks, pigs, and sheep while demonstrating practical low‑tech solutions for animal care, pasture improvement, and infrastructure maintenance. The video covers deep‑bedding chicken shelters, tilling and reseeding pasture with edible ice‑cream grass, troubleshooting low‑battery issues on a solar‑powered system, designing a self‑adjusting pond water intake using a float and weight, and a brief on‑farm fitness session where Jacob teaches a kettlebell‑style power swing. Throughout, the team collaborates, shares humor, and references Joel’s homesteading book and an Abundance Plus offer. The narrative showcases how resilient, community‑driven practices keep the farm running despite weather challenges.
Chapters
Today we're gonna move all the things. Oh my word, you guys destroyed over half of it already. That's a good thing. This time we want them to destroy. We tried, we put it up on the bin and they still got it pretty nasty. This is supposed to be Gideon's chore, remember? Gideon, you got to do your chicken chores, bro. We got Mr. Brown. All right, Mr. Brown, grab the, um, the feeder out of there. Yeah, they buried it, man. Come on. I got Mr. Henry. You gonna hang in there, buddy? He's about to fall asleep. Yeah, he'll be asleep. Let's check mom's lettuce. Just what I was afraid of. They're getting a hair leggy. We haven't had any sun in like 4 days, plus we have this full-on shade cloth, so I think that needs to get pulled up to capture any sun we do get because it's not been that hot. How are these guys doing? Good, but look at all those new spider webs.
Holy smokes.
To turn into spider webs.
It's her— it's like perfect hanging.
Oh, this needs some shavings. I can smell it a little bit right here. You want to cover your wetness every day with the deep bedding. It's hanging up right there. Can I get it with my umbrella? Yeah, go ahead and break it. Oh, there it is, there it is. All right, almost. The crazy hot days may be behind us. We may not even need a Shake off in there. If we do, I'm gonna put the half one on. Gideon, that looks so neat. Good job. Can you carry both? Henry's got his so long farewell song going on.
Oh, I need help.
Well, I'll help you. They're way ahead of me. Let's look at this bank. It's a state bank. There was no way I could have done this. A month ago. Our ducks are due by our calculation next week. They look plenty huge. Are they too big? I think we harvest at 7 weeks. You guys are huge. Look at this, they pulled their shelter over on that. Boy, we better put that back before they figure it out. Josiah's gonna get the water. Arun's string trimming the new line. This has been a fabulous till job, guys. This was tough too with all the roots. You guys have done a wonderful job. Not too deep, just a nice Shallow, even till. Let's examine what that has done, what we're doing here. This is a week ago, guys. See all the grass already coming up? Okay, let's go to a week before that. All right, here's one week before that. See this grass coming up nicely? Let's go to a week before that. And this is all edible Ice cream grass. Is it no junk grass? Look right here, a week before that. You get my point? And down here, it's already 6 inches tall. This would be grazed this year, the next, next time around, right here. We're already seeing improvement in just, just one season. Our Energizer was blinking red. Double red means both batteries are low. No wonder, because we haven't had the sun in like 4 days. Their shelter was laying on it, grounding it out. What's the matter? What's the matter? You're not going to sleep today? We're string trimming along the source fence. You can see where it's grounded out. It's grounding that grass. Yeah, that's also why it would, uh, it would wear out the batteries. Now we're putting it back. Doesn't that look so much better? There's no reason to ground it out. I just want you to see what we're replacing here with these pigs. Multiflora rose, other unedibles. Don't mix up the wires. Remember which wire goes to which wire. I would replace one, one at a time.
I am.
Look who fell asleep. Time to move, pigs. All right, it's still blinking red. Trying to change the batteries, it made me think maybe you accidentally put the dead batteries back in.
Yeah, that's what I probably did.
Well, look, the wire's not connected. There it is, green.
So I didn't put the wrong batteries in.
Nope, you did a good job, man. It is pouring rain, separating the men from the boys this morning. Moving the animals is not an option. Rain, shine, sickness too. All right. All right, we gotta get the sheep over next. We're about to do a road crossing with no lane across the road. We'll see how this goes. Get in. You stand over there and don't let the sheep go that way, okay? Josiah, you come stand right here, stop them from going down that way, and I'll stand right here. Well, here they come. That's a beautiful sight right there. They know. Go up, Josiah, so they don't go down. They're going, they're going! Look at that, beautiful guys, beautiful. This is when dialing in the systems counts. This is— on a rainy day like this is not the day you want the animals going haywire, but they're so accustomed to moving and this pattern that they recognize this move. I get in, I'm gonna get in the bathtub. Looks like you've already taken a bath. With your clothes on. It's pretty cold.
I want to take a bath.
You do? Hey, that's the reward. How about some hot bath, hot tea? Finally made it to milking time, just an hour and 15 minutes late. I think it's gonna be okay because she— we do calf share, so she doesn't seem too upset about it. It has stopped raining and Henry is waking up. You waking up, buddy? Did you have a little nap? Those are lucky people today who are the homesteaders ready to change their lives. Are these all got to go, or is that replacements? Almost gone through a whole nother pallet. You want me to sign some of these back? I made some fresh apples and onions for the Pork chop, leftover hamburger, leftover turkey. That's protein-packed. Delicious. We've got our stuff set up for our training. We are normally late ourselves. Our trainer Jacob is normally early. I'm gonna play a trick on him. We've set the clock forward 1 hour and we're gonna be doing our finish stretches when he comes in. Hidden cam right here. I'll just leave this. I'll just leave you guys rolling. All right, here comes Jacob. Let's get in our final stretches. What? Oh dude, we didn't think you were coming.
What?
It's 1:30. What? You're an hour behind us. We're done. It's 12:30. Freaked me out. Oh yeah, you wouldn't have worked out without me. We had you for a minute. What's the goal today, Jacob?
You're doing the whole deal today. We're gonna swing.
Oh man, first time because I've not swung before.
First time he hasn't swung.
I've never swung.
He hasn't swung.
What?
Swung? Past tense for swing.
The only thing you need to focus on is standing up. Okay, so we'll start with the power swing. So what that means, I'll demo with this belt. Stand, catch, back. Hike, stand, catch, back. So the only difference is it starts the same way and it ends the same way, and then in the middle there's just a stand. Don't worry about what the bell does, it'll do its thing because the trajectory is back there. So as you stand up, it's going to naturally go where it needs to go, and then you just have to return it and then back down.
So do 3 of those.
Hike, stand, catch, down. Butt down a little more. Try to take it right back to the same spot. Hike, stand.
Oh yeah, yeah, good, good.
Hike, stand, catch, back down.
3 is good. Relax. Cool. Okay, on a 1 to 10, how was it? Uh, I know it's my first time, you can bash. 4. Show us how it's done, Beck. All right. Wow, she's not having a break, she's just going through all 10 of them. Felt good to be that far along in the training. I'm glad that worked out. We're gonna live this. We're gonna live this right now. While I face my crow. Let's go. All the water is sourced out of this here pond up the hill. I was just reading in Joel's book— well, I read it a few— well, it's been a couple of months ago now. When you're sourcing water from a pond, which is great— this is, this is one of his favorite sources for it— look at the top. Look at the top of the pond. See all those leaves? If you have a water intake, that will quickly crudded up. And if you let your water intake go to the bottom, of course it's going to clog it up. So you want to go about 16 inches from the surface, he said. Right now we're right on the dock, which we went down 16 inches after reading that, but we're still on this dock, which attracts a lot of debris, I think. So we're going to get our intake out. That's what that hoses for. It still doesn't explain this, so we'll get to that in a second. That's creepy, picking your hand down there in that dark pond. I can't make this any longer. It's a plastic line here. Well, maybe I should have looked at the end of this before I went attaching it. I don't— that's a half inch, it's not a 3/4 inch end. I'm just— somebody jerry-rigged something on there. I have to go order that piece, but I could at least show you— at least we got this done, and I can show you what Reptil Jill taught me about this. That's how you get something— an intake 16 inches off— a float and a weight. Okay, I guess we should make sure that's gonna work, huh? That's proper. That's not good. Oh boy, look, it's working! Brought it within 2 inches of the surface, but it's hanging in there. Now we just secure the end of our hose to the 16 inches down. What's cool about that is you get a lot of rain like we have right now and the pond rises, well, so does our— so does our float. And if you go through a drought and your pond goes down, so does your float. So your intake is always 16 inches from the top of the surface. This looks— well, it's jerry.
It's super jerry, but it works.
Those chickens have obliterated that grass on top of the, the, uh, the old potting soil. And then the, the kale, they just totally decimated it. Beautiful job, guys. Way to turn that kale into something so nutrient-dense and full of protein. Love you guys. That's just one little tiny nugget of gold out of Joel's new book. There's mucho más, mucho más. I'm including it with Abundance Plus right now until October 3rd, 10% off. Till then, if you use the offer code GELPOLYFACEMICRO at abundanceplus.com right now. Thanks, guys.
