In this informal homestead vlog, the host (Speaker A) and Rebecca walk viewers through a day of farm chores and family interactions while promoting the host’s upcoming audiobook, The Rooted Life. The conversation jumps between several topics: troubleshooting a wheel‑and‑axle problem on a sheep shelter; reorganizing sheep paddocks and creating a new 20‑foot‑wide grazing strip that could add up to an acre of pasture and reduce hay needs; practical, low‑profile tips for keeping chickens in urban or HOA settings, including avoiding a rooster, offering eggs to neighbors, and using resources like Pat Foreman’s City Chicks to legalize flocks; a brief mention of mineral organization for livestock health; setting up a trail camera with chicken carcasses to attract wildlife; and reflections on letting children take charge of projects on the homestead. Throughout, the host intersperses promotional remarks about his audiobook, shares personal anecdotes, and emphasizes a supportive, hands‑on parenting style. The video blends instructional content, equipment repair, livestock management, and family dynamics into a cohesive snapshot of daily homestead life.
Chapters
I think we're each missing a boot today.
I don't know where your other boot is.
Here's my boot. Here's my boot. You find my boot, I'll help you find your boot. Can you move so we can look?
Not back there.
All right, I don't see it. Push it back. If one of my boots was inside and one of them was outside, maybe that's the case for yours. Who do you want to breed?
Penny and Peter. Mommy should be watching this. It's very, very important. Is that what the move is?
They may or may not have bred.
Penny, I already did.
He's mounting her, but I know, but she left it under Lily's supervision and she can't tell me if he fell off or not.
There's a chance she may be bred because I came up on it and it was happening, I feel like. But there was no fall off that I saw, but that was not the first or second time even that I saw. So I don't know.
I'm glad I'm not too attached to this project. We do need to get them in with the chickens. That needs to come after all this mineral projects we have.
Yeah.
Tip of the day, in honor or In the theme of my new book, The Rooted Life, I'm doing the audiobook this week, and we started into the chickens chapter yesterday. One of the things I addressed right off the top of the chicken chapter is some questions like what to do if they're illegal. That was one of the questions. Or you're in a small town— or not small town, small city— or a neighborhood like HOA. That can be tricky, and I have 3 tips for everybody. Wow, there's like 4 hens in here. One is, I'm the kind of guy that's like, beg for forgiveness instead of ask for permission. I realize that doesn't always work though, and here are some tips to help you with that and to get permission if you need it. Look at everybody in here. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 chickens in here. So one thing you can do, look, if you look at this, to not call attention to yourself— really, a neighbor's probably going to complain— is not have a rooster. Uh, you don't need a rooster to have eggs. That's a common question I get. That's a common question. It's not a stupid question. You need a rooster to fertilize eggs, but you do not need a rooster to have eggs.
These need to be tightened. Okay, but we couldn't do it. Jonah and I tried, and there's actually two that are still down.
Okay, another thing you can do is give a few eggs to your ornery neighbor. My original chicken mentor, Pat Foreman— yeah, I see why you guys couldn't do that. All right, we're gonna have to screw that out. She has an amazing book called City Chicks, and in that is all kinds of resources, blank forms petitions, that kind of thing. What you can do to help legalize it. Loopholes— there are some loopholes to making it happen around certain rules. So that's my tip of the day for chickens. That's just a little tiny section of my book. Oh shoot, it's missing its hook. I think I hear the trucks. You hear the dump trucks? Lily, did they mate?
I don't know what happened.
You went to the bathroom on the job? It's her project. I really don't care. You really— parents, you got to really let go and let them have a project and let them fail. Just help them. Just do what they tell you to do. Lily's the boss. I am? You're the boss of this operation. I'm here to support you like you support me on my projects. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they are successful. One more thing to do on this sheep shop. The problem is, see how this wheel— lighting is terrible out here, but see how this The axle is coming out away from the, from the shawl. I think it might be the bolt— that is, the axle needs to be switched to the other side, or the wheels are— it's so tight that the wheels are actually spinning the axle. It's not the case, so why is that coming out? The wheels aren't spinning the axle, but I wonder if they do when there's some weight on it and they unscrew because of the way the axle is. And if I flip it and that happens, it'll only tighten it up. See, this side stayed on real nice. Oh, but it's the same way. I think this is just slipped out. Get in! Don't create any more new problems, bro. Come on, put the hose away, man. See how it slipped out of there? I wonder if we just hit something and it came out. We'll loosen that and see if that can't— oh, that doesn't fix it. Get in, you're a wild man with that hose. Since every day is bring your kid to work day on the homestead, I thought It's a little hard for me to roll around in the gravel with him, so can you watch him, Gideon? Gideon, you got to keep him off the rocks. I got my wheels secure. Rebecca's filling up the minerals. It's going to be exciting. We're going to get this back to the sheep today.
Go in here.
And we got the sheep in their own paddock again, away from the cows. Now that the ramlet and the— the ramlets and the sisters are out of there, we can blend them all again, or we can put them back in their own paddock. We got the minerals organized. Let's get the sheep shot up out of there. They are swarming it. Much needed. Check out Fred's work from the other day. Just this little bit here, Rebecca, just a 20-foot-wide strip. It doesn't seem like much, but when it's a 20-foot-wide strip for 600 feet, this will just make— look, like already instead of just one strip of grazing through here, we could go down and then back. So we, we might have gained a whole entire strip of grazing, which means a week or two each round, which means 3-4 weeks gain in pasture a year without needing hay.
Yeah, and we had him keep— you can see that the trees that he kept, but then we also told him to keep any maples because I eventually would like to tap, maybe.
Well, let's drive along and look at the difference. Now we're shooting into this peninsula that comes, juts down. I bet you it's an acre, acre and a half we're gonna gain right here. Recording time. I've kept my voice intact. You guys want to see my little kit? We got a little bit of tea. Yep, I'm gonna drink some tea. The milk was too thick yesterday. Some water and an apple. I told Rebecca though, you know, this is, this is a lot of work. It's a lot of work, more than I thought even. But hopefully it's gonna be a timeless classic and we'll have dividends for the rest of our lives. I think it's gonna be really fun and helpful for you guys. You're gonna want the book, you know, to open it up and take it out with you and do the things in it, but you'll also want the audiobook just to sink it into your brain in a different way, like on your way to work or something.
The kids and I came up into the woods and Josiah is going to put his trail cam up. We got a couple chicken carcasses, old chicken carcasses, and we're gonna put them down.
Put in the batteries.
Okay, tell me when it's tight and I can lift up. We've got it. Now we have to run the battery pack to this thing. Okay, Josiah's just gonna lay the carcasses out. Teddy may need to be held back. All right, there's the— yeah, let's make sure.
Okay.
Yeah, you'll see the whole animal. You can. Looking forward to what we see with that. Look at it tomorrow. Yeah, we will. And the next day. Yeah.
Only 2 chapters left. Of course, I think we're gonna redo chapter 1 and there's gonna be some corrections inevitably, but we're quit on the money tonight, man. We nailed it. We nailed it. Let's get home to the kids. Oh, Grandma's here! Josiah's here! Jonah's here! Mama's here! And Teddy's here!
Sit, Teddy, sit!
Or not. Here we go. Yep, sit. Stay sitting. I hope you don't pee all over the shoes.
