In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes narrates a full‑day, hands‑on effort to cover two acres of freshly cleared, bare earth on a farm in Western North Carolina. The team—Jonah, Andrew, Josiah, Sam, Henry, Lily, Rebecca, Joel, and others—spends the morning acquiring and rolling hay bales, then manually spreading the hay downhill to protect the soil and prepare it for seeding. They discuss logistics such as gravel delivery, flooring supplies, and high‑tunnel brace installation, while juggling unexpected challenges like a teammate’s illness and the looming threat of rain. After the hay is in place, they seed the area using a handheld spreader, coordinate additional help, and reflect on the physical effort, the satisfaction of completing a seasonal winter‑work task, and plans for future planting. The tone is informal, energetic, and collaborative, with moments of humor and genuine pride in the collective labor.
Chapters
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! I'm excited about this. We get to cover our barren earth. La la la, let me be free. A forest clearing job we've done and now Mother Nature is exposed. She's modest. We need to hurry up and cover her. We also have this garden project. Look, I've got 2 of them up. And their braces for the high tunnel. I think we were supposed to do this when we first got it, and apparently you can string tomatoes to it, and then we don't have to go way up there for those thingamajiggers. I bet we can bring the thingamajiggers down. The dilemma is we were going to build beds in here today. Yeah, wet it down and cover it. But do you see what came? Hey, yeah, yeah, I had my heart set on the gardening today. I didn't know the hay was coming yesterday. We got some local through my Buddy Andrew, we've got to put castration on the list. They're getting big. If we don't castrate them before too big, we can't handle them. They get too strong. Took a break for breakfast. We're gonna go back at it. Andrew brought us some gravel yesterday. Now we're not a mud pit. I was hoping to catch y'all. Y'all got him set up? Yeah, and I have to call— or you can call. Who do you want me to call? Like the building supply place. Okay. To get nosing. The nosing, you'll have to get it here tomorrow because I won't be here tonight. Hey, is everything good? Looky here. This is very exciting. Floor guys are here finally. We had to put floor off a couple of weeks to line up somebody. We had to put cabinets back. We moved cabinets to next Tuesday, and I did not want to move him again. So this is really good that they're here. It's getting laid out. It's happening. Is that pot still simmering, or is that Dust. Look at the pathway. That's new ground right there. Grass is coming in great. My feet hurt just looking at all this bare ground. We've got to walk over all this spreading the hay. Machine can get it here and we can get it rolled. We can get the hay here, we can roll it out, but we still gotta pick it up and spread it. Hey, come back, come back! Jonah's gonna finish piling up that brush pile. He's got us a hay bale up here. Let's see if we can't spread it. There begins a long Long day and a lot of steps. Got Josiah on that pile, getting on this pile, and hopefully that'll maintain the peace. I'm gonna chase this strip we rolled down the hill. I just saw Andrew come with more hay. A lot of— lots of more hay. We're gonna have enough We got hay. Now we just gotta get it down. I wonder if there's a better way. The hay bale rolled beyond the bare ground here. I think it's going to be better to push this across the hill, maybe slightly down, than opposed to down. I sense that needs to be turned around. Now after talking with Joel, I'm not too worried about picking up these hay strings. We're finally getting a method here. We're rolling out the hay bales and then we're spreading it downhill. That way we're never carrying any hay uphill. We're going to start another hay right next to it, and that— see, that'll cover from there down. Jonah's got from there down to the grass. Well, that's what 3 hay bales, looks like, laid down. It's lunchtime. We did it by lunchtime. Sam's coming after lunch. We're recruiting some help. We've got that, which I'm gonna say is 6. Could it be 7, 8? It'd be twice, maybe 3 times. We got to pick up the pace. We're gonna get what we need out in the field, the rest under shelter, hopefully before it rains. It's April. Western North Carolina. It could rain at any moment. Can you guys come help us spread hay a little bit? Yes. Hey, do those tools help? Unfortunately, we're down 2. Lily is feeling under the weather. Rebecca's tending to Lily, plus has to go into town to get the flooring people some supplies. We got to keep that going. That's priority numero uno. We got Sam though. We're gonna get it done now. Are you sure? Really? That wildness runs in our blood. We got one unrolled. Sam and Jonah are spreading it. Beautiful. It's a beautiful spring day, isn't it? Come on, Henry, let's go get him some seed. We've yet to seed it all. We've seeded probably half of it. What about the seeds? I'll go get them. Okay. Hey, we got a little spreader for you. Henry, I wanted to work in there, but did I really? Gonna be so hot in there. Is that all we got? Yeah. What's that? Seed. Leftover seed. Look for him. Okay, that's enough. He'll just maybe have to grab it by hand. Henry, can you pull the trigger and spin that at the same time? Oh, whoa, it's all dropping out. All right, walk while you do it. Hold the trigger, spin it, and walk. There you go. All right, are you pulling the trigger too while you do that? Here, let's make it a bigger setting. All right, there you go. Are you boys holding up okay? How you boys feel? Fine, pretty good. You got Josiah now? All the hay bales are up here. Hopefully 2 more will do it. I know, let's go see if we have some more. Okay, well, we had no seed. We had no more seed down there. Had to deal with some things at the house. Milly threw up. They're almost done. One more bale. They did a ton. I'm very impressed. Fantastic job, guys. We got it covered. We can sleep easier at night. I went a little overboard on the hay. I thought we'd need 30 bales. We needed how many? 6? Yeah, that's it. No, we just bought 8 or 9. Well, I mean, just for today we use 6. But I guess you can't have too much carbon. How does it feel to get that done, my man? Good. We worked so hard. How was pond? How was the pond afterwards? Good. Does that feel good to cover our winter work or what? Yeah. Every year, well, for the last 2 years, we've been clearing 2 acres for winter and it feels good. It's covered. We do need to get some seed, I think. Hopefully there's some seed in that hay. Yep. La la la la la, let me be free.
