In this family‑vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes and Rebecca Rhodes walk viewers through a busy day on their farm as they harvest a bumper crop of tomatoes, assess ripeness, and deal with pests. They discuss how to judge tomato readiness (color, softness, orange patches), spot and remove hornworms, and plan yield targets (aiming for 100 quarts of sauce). The video then shifts to the collaborative farm labor, with children helping move turkeys, clip flower tops, and bag produce. Rebecca demonstrates the detailed home‑canning process: filling jars, adding lemon juice, wiping rims, setting headspace, and the dreaded debubbling step, while Victor provides commentary and jokes. The family also checks other garden harvests (zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli) and outlines cooking ideas like tomato‑flavored pork and sautéed zucchini. Personal moments surface, such as Rebecca’s post‑shoulder‑dislocation recovery and a humorous ant‑in‑pants incident. Overall, the vlog blends practical farming advice, step‑by‑step canning instructions, and the lively dynamics of a multigenerational farm household.
Chapters
Today we've got a ton of tomatoes on vine. I feel like they're more than ready to go. I'm not so sure about the beautiful one.
No, there are—
it seems a little overwhelming to me with fruit. We've got our handy dandy crates, really fancy. One file crate full will give us 7 quarts of tomato sauce, and you can do 7 quarts at a time, you know.
Okay. So that was our rule last year, but this year I only had half a crate and I got 5.5 quarts.
It was watery.
See how that's all red? Okay, this isn't—
when you say all red, you mean the entire thing?
Yeah.
Okay, that one's ready. Yeah, but this one is not. Still got some orange in it. Okay, so then this one's not. Or you also gotta check softness, right?
Yeah. Yeah, you're an excellent tomato picker, Justin Rhodes.
Whatever I say, don't say race your face when I said that.
Well, I can't stand this. We gotta go fast.
Tomatoes are her jam. This is why she does what she does. So we gotta be— we gotta tread lightly around these tomato plants.
Too small.
Whoa, what is that?
Those are hornworms.
That's what they look like when they're little.
Oh, here's another little one.
There they are.
So they're coming. Oh wait, there's got to be a big one because this is a big poop.
Oh, where does moisture come from?
Just in the air. Here we go.
That was a good eye. Did you just cut it in half?
No, just cut the tomato, the leaf off that he was eating. But see, like, look, there's more poop right here. There's— look, this must be the larvae. Is that one coming out of its cocoon? You see that? White.
Hey, you think you'll have 50 quarts this year?
Oh yeah, we had over 70 quarts last year.
Oh, were we looking for 100? Oh, we got to get 100 quarts, y'all. 2 quarts a week. How many, how many we're gonna get today? 14. Oh, can you process 14 quarts in a day?
Oh yeah.
Rebecca got some sort of bug in her pants, had to escape pantless into the house to hopefully take care of that. But the work must go on. Hey, I've got my basket. Looks like the beautiful one is back.
Uh-oh, what's going on here?
No. Hey, did you get those ants out of your pants?
I did. I don't know what that was. That was painful. Let's put some bentonite clay on the bites. It was like little knives. What in the world happened?
Good morning, Mr. Brown. Good morning. You got chicken duty and move turkeys duty before it gets too hot duty. I was asking Beauty, should we cut the tops? I think our buddy Casey Oswitch taught us to do that because see these flowers, that's putting energy into making these. Yeah, we'll ask him. She's getting so nervous about this. We won't do anything, Rebecca, without you wanting to do it. 100%. You'll be the one that clips them.
This is so heavy.
I'm not gonna clip them. But the idea here is, see, these are flowering and energy is going towards them. For one, they're gonna be hard to harvest because they're way up there.
Well, no, you lower and lean.
Oh, okay. But yes, you lower and lean. Is that what you said?
Yeah, well, you lean and lower, so you like move this over and it, it like—
yeah, maybe later that we cut the tops. But at some point you, you do cut the tops so it stops putting energy into those flowers and more fruit and starts putting energy into ripening, finishing these off. I think we'll know when that time is, and we don't know it's now.
Slide that down here.
I'm on the hunt for a hornworm. I don't think I've ever found one. I'm not really a Where's Waldo kind of guy.
Josiah is so good.
Oh my gosh, he just found one! I've been looking for 10 minutes.
I brought him in before.
Did you really find one? Yeah, it's right there. Oh my gosh, it's huge too! What's the trick, Josiah? Just look for it. I've been looking for 10 minutes. He comes out and he's like, there's one. Keep looking, just You gotta go make breakfast. I'm gonna go help Gideon move the turkeys. I'm glad you came because you'll have to carry my files. Last chance for me to find a hornworm. I've seen them, I know what one looks like, I've never found one.
I love being amongst my tomatoes.
Did y'all hear what she just said? She just said, I just love being amongst my tomatoes. I thought she was going to say, I love being amongst my men. Guys, I am 15 days post-shoulder dislocation, doing a lot better but not ready to pick up a crate. She said my PT person who It's wonderful. She's making me— I'm feeling a lot better having these exercises. She says the only way you're gonna throw it out is a high impact or pick up something really heavy. Shall we do a mobility test? Okay, ready? I don't know. What do you think's stopping this? Is it strength or is it just stiffness?
I don't know.
I cannot lift my arm. Hornworms!
Did you guys get them?
What's wrong?
You got cut.
Okay, well, we've got my legs and we've got your arms. Maybe together we can move these turkeys. Oh, if you need my arm, that's a bad thing. Watch out, hold them out. This is what we got left over. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Okay, good. All right, let's move them. Open that, we'll pull their stuff through. All right, we're done. Come on, boys, let's do the tomatoes. Everybody's getting trained today, it's all hands on deck. So then you guys give, give Henry these tops. And Henry, I want you to cut the red off of this. Okay, and leave the top. Okay, hand that to Gideon. And then cut the red off, bro.
Here's the bag.
Good. I'll get Mom another bowl. I feel like I'm just, uh, I'm a runner. I'm making sure everything keeps moving.
Good guy, Matthew.
Good guy. He's doing good. Gotta give the little one a job too. He's cutting the the tomatoes out of the tops, which won't hurt anything. Careful with his fingers, not to cut his fingers. All right, you guys are going to be way ahead of me. I need to get you another tray. We failed to bag the broccoli. We flash froze it, but we haven't bagged it. Ay, mucho broccoli. Here's a tray.
Perfect.
Am I just in time? One batch out of the oven. They can skin them now. See, after it cools. How's it going? How do you like having all this help?
It's nice. It's a little overwhelming because they want to go fast.
We're gonna have tomato flavored pork. Yeah, you're going ahead and getting juice out of it before you even put it in the Yes. Have you always done that? And then we don't have to cook down as long, right?
You just never can really get enough.
Is that 5-gallon pot going to be big enough?
Yes, I think so. I am starting to fill my jars. I've got my lemon juice. I'm just starting to fill, and I'll measure and like do all the other things in just a minute. Um, that I need to do. So I've got 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in the jars. So I have wiped these lids, like I wiped the jars, and I'm screwing on these lids, and then I'm gonna— we're still waiting, we're waiting on the lemon juice. So it'll get here. I have from my Azure— having my Azure cart— these ones are ready to go. Let me make— oh, I didn't do the debubbling. I always forget to debubble. And actually, my debubble spatula is over at the farmhouse still. I need to go get it. So, so frustrating to have like been almost done and then— just kidding. I hate this part. I hate this. This is the one that I hate. This is the one activity that I hate of canning, but it is what it is. It's funny, my dad was like, when we tried to debubble concrete, we would just vibrate the jars. All right, so I've got my wet cloth and I'm definitely gonna wipe this edge because I probably got sauce on it. I don't know if you can see this. I need to stick these jars— I'm gonna stick these jars back in the water. So I've got my headspace tool And I'm just going to go around and make sure that I have the right headspace, which is a half an inch. And then I'm going to put this back on it, just finger tighten it. So I didn't tighten it too much, but just enough. And I'll debubble all of these. So I'm coming out here, we're gonna check the zucchini. Because I think that it is ready and I'm gonna make zucchini. Oh yeah, we got 2, maybe 3. Look at this, look at this bad boy. These are, these are okay, even huge like this. Okay, they're long. All right, look at how this is coming along too, my flowers back there. Oh, I love it. My favorite way to make this is to cut the zucchini up Cut the zucchini up, and I like to do— I think it's julienne, I don't know. Probably gonna take some of these middle ones out because they're just a little weird. I have it all cut up, and I'm going to cut up an onion and fry that in some butter, and then I'll put this on top of it. Onions in, and I'm gonna let them cook. Now I'm gonna just add some salt and some Italian seasoning. I'm gonna turn this off the stovetop and just let the cheese melt. And that is one of our favorite ways to eat zucchini.
And we've got cucumbers from the land, lettuce. Oh, we got some of our pickles back on the menu, our onions, and fresh today tomatoes. We didn't make tomato burgers like we like. Like we wanted to with the sauce, but that's because all our burners were being taken up. We got stud muffin in the oven. It's not hot, it was just staying warm. Deluxe burgers, here we come. Happy day.
