In this vlog Victor Justin Rhodes gives a day‑long, on‑site update of multiple farm projects. He begins by excavating and grading a steep front‑yard garden to stop nutrient runoff, building retaining walls and preparing a site for a 16 × 50 ft high‑tunnel greenhouse. He then outlines a Joel Salatin‑inspired pole barn plan (≈35 × 30 ft) for deep‑bedding winter cow housing, hay storage, and mulch, describing how the barn will capture nutrients for compost. The video shows the relocation of cows and sheep across temporary lanes, milking, drying off a cow, and handling a newborn calf, with details on milk yields and cream separation. He discusses future expansions: a pig operation (3 sows, 1 boar) and an access road through the woods, and explains soil‑nutrient management using topsoil, chicken manure, and mulch. Interspersed are casual moments such as a Cummins generator giveaway and family banter. The vlog blends instructional commentary with enthusiastic observation of farm life and upcoming infrastructure projects.
Chapters
Some big excavating farm jobs began today, starting with this garden in our front yard. It's on so much of a slope that a lot of our nutrients wash from up there down to here. The plan is to level this out with field dirt, nice rock retainer walls right here, so that then ultimately we can put a— or our garden will be flat, but we can put a high tunnel here, a greenhouse in our front yard, up next to our orchard pasture. Follow me, follow me, follow me. Ah, some of those beautiful boulders down here in this ravine, those will serve as perfect— absolutely beautiful. Let's get them out of here where we can— they can be seen and enjoy and used. Our house, over the road, a lane up to our pasture, and the water wants to go anywhere but down this culvert. So hopefully we're gonna dig that out and figure out what's wrong with this thing. Right next to our house, this pasture, perfect place for a Joel Salatin-inspired pole barn deep bedding for the cows in the winter. Gives us a break, captures their nutrients that can then be composted and turned and put out to soil in the spring when the land can actually absorb it and use it and it doesn't wash away. There's our milking, uh, station, which we might just milk underneath the pole barn. Coming right here, starting about right here, this will be an outdoor sacrifice area deep mulch. The cows can get out here, and then when we move the cows out in the spring, guess what this will be? Pumpkin. And what about the blueberries, raspberries? Well, we can transplant those. We have other blueberries and blackberries bushes as well. This, a 35-ish by 30-ish pole barn, good enough for 5+ cow equivalents. 600+ bales of hay and loads and loads of mulch all under one shed. Mulch being wood chips. This is going to be exciting. It begins with building a pad. Got the cows in here, gonna move them out. Let's get excavating. All right, I think I've got everything ready. Oh, congratulations Diane M. from Michigan for winning the Cummins Onan 2500 portable generator. And thank you Cummins, thank you again for doing a giveaway. To this audience. And congratulations, uh, Diane. May you feel more secure tonight knowing you have a generator. Good morning, Miss Thing. Yes, the cows are over here. We brought them over here. Look how they mowed this down. Look, look, this is the after. I'm going to show you before. Yesterday evening we moved them Here that is now. You guys, come on, come on, Miss Thing, come on. Hey, Little Belle. Boy, they really like this spot. They mowed this down. All right, we got them going good. They all crossed right over into the lane. So the question is, if we got rid of the lanes, how would we bring the cows back to the barn? The barn goes to the cows with a mobile shade, mobile milking That's what I'm thinking about. That's why Joel blew my mind, and I'm trying to think through ways of possibly doing that. So running these guys in nets is the first test of that. Oh, she got a little distracted. Come back, come back. All right, also there's not much of a lane. I mean, there's no— there's nothing really there. We could put a temporary lane in for cross-farm moves, stuff like that. Oh, I'm just gonna try it before we take out our lanes. Look at that pasture, it's as tall as Flossie. Look how tall this is. Now that's not what they got for forest. Well, they're getting some of this tall stuff. You don't even have to bend over, Flossie. This is the easiest move on the farm. Their paddock is right there. Yesterday we pulled them off that new pasture that we put them in, rested the rested pasture. Here's what it looked like after they were done. End of today, we're about to move them. They have crushed it. I don't think I see very many, uh, clovers left. Do you, Jonah? Look at her, she's like she's pregnant. Yes, she's loving it. Y'all loving it? So it's going to be interesting to see how much milk they get now because they went from hay to this crazy lush, super rich grass. Look at that, you know, it's about the same, so maybe it's gonna Take a few days for it to get— but she's also drying off, guys. We're actually gonna officially dry her off, start that process next week, because she's about to have a calf in a couple of months. That's one cool thing about 2 cows is we're pretty much always in milk. We got to get the little— well, I could put her back out in the pasture if it's right there. I was going to say we got to get the calf out of the stall so that we can put Flossy in. But we don't have to. We can put Flossy out to pasture. Let's do that. Hey Flossy, we're gonna go back in your— no, no, no, we're gonna go back in your pasture. Good, perfect. Thank you. Here we go, Phyllis. I don't know if you guys could hear equipment in the background or not. I'm going to show you something. Don't let your heart break too much though. Oh, Arun's garden, our front garden here. Look at all this topsoil we built with chickens and gardening, and that's a lot of topsoil. What are we doing? Actually, we're leveling this. It's a 6% grade. It's too much. We're losing a lot of our nutrients downhill, and we're leveling this and then putting in a greenhouse up here, a high tunnel, a 16 by 50 footer right here. More on this, guys. We're filming the excavating and the grading, and we'll have a whole movie about that later. But for now, we'll just get quick updates. All right, I just filtered our milk and put it in there. It's at 100 degrees right now, but we'll end up adding the cool stuff and having to heat it up. Beauty, hey, you ready for another day of cream separating? Another day of cream separating. This is exciting. Let me go help finish milking the cow and then I'll come help you. All right, whoa, look at that! Good job. You're here to take over. Yes. Okay, put that out right here. I hear the machine up in there. You hear it? We're gonna do an access road up through those woods. That's another area, guys, that we could do pigs. That's why if we're gonna go pro with anything We're going pro with pigs. That's coming up in November. 3 sows, 1 boar, that's the plan. And we'll probably run them up to that forest. It's not as steep as the forest way out there, and we can clear and get more pasture that way, but use pigs to help prep it. But anyway, they're gonna— to get an access road, they take off the topsoil. Well, that's, that's what we'll use up up in our orange garden. We got the cows down here early and out of order. It wasn't really time to hit this because we got to get this grazed out of the way so these guys can level this thing. Boom! She's staying strong. 3+ gallons. 3+ gallons, Aunt Phyllis. Thank you. Our cream separator is ready to go. Cream here, skim here. Some cold milk. It's kind of a— whoa, I thought that we had— this looks like 10-ish gallons. I thought that's— do these not quite hold 10 gallons, Rebecca, or 5 gallons? Okay, so maybe we have more than I thought. Well, you did, because how much did you milk this morning? Oh, that's right, probably 4 gallons. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so after we moved the cows yesterday, we put the calf up. They were right there by the stall, so let's just do it. Let's just put the calf up. And now I want to show that to you guys. You don't— I don't think we show that much. Let's herd them in. You guys will get to see what it's like to put the calf up at night. And what would we do with the calf? Well, the calf would go in with the sheep. But right now we're just so close to the barn, we're just gonna put them up there. Here she comes. All right, there they went. All right, let her— the mama out, and then we'll deal with the cow. Okay, come back out, fellas. Here we go, put you in that stall. Good girl. We get her some water. She's eating hay now, so we've got her some hay in there. She just stays in there and she's here when the cows come in in the morning. Got the rest of the milk going. This one's going to be soon. Mom's warming up the spaceship. That's the worst I've ever done right there. I splashed a bit, but it's working. Cream over here, skim over there. Another thing I want to show you guys from yesterday— late yesterday, sorry, we didn't get in the vlog yesterday. Was, uh, the greenhouse where Randolph finished on that. And he's, he's not coming back today, so, but that does resume work tomorrow. But anyway, here's that clip. Looks like Randolph has got all the poles in and he is having a good time with this greenhouse. Really, essentially, a lot of what we're doing now is getting ready for the winter. That's a big winter item right there. Keep the chickens in it, grow a winter garden in it, whatever. All right, but pail number 2. How big do you like to fill up your quart, Becky? I think we got a bit. It's not like it's gonna rush. Oh my gosh, we're doing terrible. Oh well, maybe that's the problem. True that. You and Grandma just grab that thing by the Horns. Oh boy, the big guns have arrived. The big excavator. That's a story for another day. We are documenting that well and we'll get that to you sometime in the future. It's very exciting. Uh, one more thing, guys, one more thing that happened yesterday. We got the cream separating under control. We almost got a quart of cream. We probably get a quart and a half of cream. Anyway, we, we moved the sheep also. And just wait till you see them on new grass. Here you go. Holy moly, we didn't even call them, they came running. Look, Jonah, we got to get the calves. I'll go monitor the sheep, you get the calves. Can you do it? We're just going to take our time with them, no rush. I wish those kids weren't playing like crazy in that yard, but What are we gonna do? Okay, Jonah's got the cows. That's good. I'm— I was afraid we made this lane too big. They've already come back on us. Come on, let's keep moving, let's keep moving. That's the trick. We stop too long, y'all get scared and start coming back. I'm afraid we made this lane too wide here, but we built off of that. Okay, they're getting it. Go on, go on, go on. Okay, I think we're home free because this is a narrow lane. There's no obstacles. Kids are gone. Oh, they scared them all out. Jonah, keep the cows moving. They'll be an example. Oh my. Here we go. This is definitely not a bulletproof lane. Keep them coming, Jonah. Keep them coming. Hopefully those sheep will jump it. Jump it. You get the cast in, and I'll go get ahead of these guys and bring them back. Here they come back. There you go, Jonah, you got it! Oh, look, look, they caught it, they caught it! Oh, good deal. I was never panicked, it was just going to be more annoying. At this point, these sheep are going to stay around. It would have just been tricky getting them back in. We did good. Okay, y'all can play. Thanks for chilling on the porch. Now that's some happy animals. Now if we train the sheep, the cows, the alfalfa, might could eliminate lanes anyway. Still take them back to the barn. Still do we need to do just train them to a bucket of alfalfa because now we got to go back and pick up both sides of this fence, roll it up, pick up all the posts, put it back where it goes. It's a lot.
