Victor Justin Rhodes and his crew load rough locust lumber from their farm onto a hay trailer to turn into decking, discussing the need for a planer to smooth warped sections. Between the work, they coordinate contractors for HVAC, concrete, and plumbing while planning a garden-kitchen wall for their homestead remodel.
Does that mean you're ready? That's hard to move. I need to move it about 2 inches.
Where are we going with the hay trailer?
We got to take the locusts to Randolph treatment. Oh yeah, you want to get the track loader warmed up? Sure. Down here. Oh, it's got heat. All this beautiful locusts from the farm. We had it sawmilled. Now we have to— now we have to have it what, planed? Yeah, no, they can't use that, it's rotten. But he can cut shorter ones here. The framers, they don't want to do that. They're not going to do that.
They would just put it all down.
Maybe Randolph will explain what he's going to have to do with this stuff. I don't know, I don't completely understand it. I have absolutely no idea what's going on. This is our own decking from the land. Good morning! First we got to get this old hay and dirt off of here.
You need to pull the truck forward.
How far is your house from here? Uh, it ain't but a mile and a half maybe. Oh, is that it? Okay. What are we doing with these? Randolph's got to plane them, so smoothing them up, cut off the rotten pieces, cut off the jagged ends. And that's just rough lumber. Hold on, let Lift that up. We'll put more here. Put your other square one on here. I won't. The one in the middle is too tall and it's warping these on the end. What'd you see, a ghost this morning?
I don't know.
I like it. You got his car seat. You ready to go in the truck? Hey, you think Randolph's little tractor is gonna pick all this up? Henry, you want to see this dog?
Don't do it, huh?
Too much? All right, all right, we're gonna have to get a few off by hand. Try number 2. Yeah, that makes it a lot easier. Look at that. Put some slats under there. Load number 1. All right, they're gonna get the other load. Jonah seems to think we can get both of these. Hey, watch yourself. All right, remember what I said about eating what you grow? Well, we got pumpkins. We tried pumpkins 3 different ways this week. Gotta carry you all and all these pumpkins too.
Okay, I think I got it.
Whoa, you're doing that? Yeah. All you do is add eggs?
Yeah, I'm gonna like cook it in that. I might cook it in that butter, let it soften, and then I will Poor scrambled eggs.
What are you making?
Banana bread muffins.
Hey, what are you doing up here?
Eating.
What's your choice?
Do you want to try?
Well, they got it on there. It don't look like much, but it's heavy. Look, look at the weight it's putting on those tires. We've warped it, man. We've hit the max on this little wagon. It's a lot of weight on there. We've had to unload a bunch by hand.
We got a lot more wood on here this time.
While we're here, we might as well see one of these things done. Well, you get a lot of work done in here, don't you, Randall?
I do.
It's about a mess right now.
You're gonna run this through this and this planes it?
Yeah, that's a planer.
You had their muffin yet? No, that's my second.
I had 4 muffins. I don't even feel that good anymore.
Where's the thermometer? It was out here.
I think he probably ate too many muffins.
He only ate 2. Lily ate 4. She's just fine.
You making dinner tonight? Taco Tuesday. Look at this. Pumpkin pie from the land. Keto pumpkin pie. I like it. I can do that. I can get excited about that. This is my other office on warmish sunny days. Isn't that nice? That's nice. Shawn's here in an effort to keep our homestead remodel moving. Let's go talk to him. Let's go see if he needs anything from us. That's the key, us being available to keep things moving. I don't know where he went. HVAC was here today, so HVAC was here, so were the concrete guys. The plumber was going at it. 3 contractors today, that's good. You eyeing that garage project?
No, I just— uh, Robbie said he was going to send his guys out to start on the prep, so it looks like they got out here and got—
yeah, yeah, they know what to do here too with the footer and everything.
Yeah, well, we decided we're not going to exceed the steps, so remember we talked about that.
So let's talk about this garden kitchen downstairs. We framing this wall and insulating that?
Well, that wall right there is probably going to have to get sprayed or do some sort of foam board because we were limited to how far out. Wow, that— and we were kind of married to the existing stuff.
Yeah, my end goal is to have a stove here. Yes, with a hood. So do we want to make like a soffit there?
Wow, that's what you go into. We definitely need to build like a 4-inch— I say a 4-inch wall, but I'd do a 2x4 wall. Okay, pop 4 inches so you got your half-inch air gap. Okay, and then that'll allow us to do electrical. Yeah, anything we need to do in this wall. So, and that, that can continue straight up, right? So we should come out— we'll come out 4 inches to the face, so probably about where this gray pipe is. So they should be able to feed that line set behind that. It's really up to you how you want to do it.
I like it.
I like this. Okay, 3, 2, 1, get out of there!
See his hair?
I see it.
He broke something up, but he took a shower last night.
Hey, that's about a month. That's what I got going too. I call it my Chia Pet, you know. I think this is— you're gonna be so much happier with this. Yeah, this is gonna be it. What a staging area.
I was like, we're gonna put out some rocking chairs.
Well, that's what I was saying. I mean, automatically I see you guys like taking that table or something and just, just a nice little area.
We'll sit here and boss the kids on the garden.
Now you've made it usable space. I mean, before it was just kind of, okay, stick it up under the roof there, but this is actually usable space for you guys.
We're keeping things moving. Lily's got supper ready. Look at this. You hungry, Beck? I'm so hungry. Evening ritual, 1:15. We gotta cool that down a little bit, although we've been hitting in a light.
What's it at?
Like 114. Just a little bit of water, just a little bit of water just to get to 112. Don't get distracted. What she means— so is this a good time to tell y'all or not? Anyway, I want as many people as possible to see our new Shallow elevated on Abundance Plus. Guys, we take local homesteaders, uh, who have the everyday struggles similar what all of us go through and we go in and surprise them with a Homestead Boost. And in 1-2 days worth of work, I'm making the final episode with the Holts totally free, totally free at watchelevated.com or link down in the description. Oh boy, oh boy, that got down fast. All right, she's gonna kill me. 111. Boy, that did drop fast. It's ready. How's the bath, Beck?
Fabulous.
How about that sunset?
Gorgeous. Happy day.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
