We Planted 2-Acres of TREES (to feed our family)
In this vlog, Victor Justin Rhodes and his family spend a day planting over 50 fruit and nut trees across two acres of pasture, while also establishing berry bushes and a gravity‑fed water system. The crew first determines the frost‑line elevation (about 50 ft above the valley bottom) to protect frost‑sensitive trees, marks planting spots with T‑posts and wire, and spaces trees sparsely to create a savanna‑style orchard that provides shade, windbreaks, and wildlife habitat. They protect young trees from livestock and deer, use wood chips, mulch, and non‑toxic weed barriers, and plant a mix of apples, peaches, nectarines, walnuts, and heritage varieties. A rapid‑planting challenge sees them install 12 trees in 20 minutes, demonstrating teamwork among adults and children. Later they install a gravity‑fed water line from an upper creek, fitting a pressure regulator (70 psi to 30 psi) and troubleshooting leaks and high‑pressure issues over a 550‑ft run. The video interweaves practical farming tips with family banter, chores, and moments like baking a chocolate cake, milking cows, and discussing holistic physical therapy. The vlog showcases hands‑on farm management, problem‑solving, and the collaborative spirit of a multigenerational homestead.
Chapters
Shoo!
Smells like skunk in here. Smell that, Henry?
Yeah.
Shoo!
Winnie! Oh my word.
Oh!
Oh! I'm serious. Okay, I'm gonna lure her away. Gonna feed Winnie out here today. Go on, get your food. Poor thing. Here we are. Trees. Another box. 80-something off trees. Fruit trees for foresting our pastures. These trees are already starting to bud a little bit. They came last week. We didn't have time to plant them, but we've got to get them in the ground. It could be really hard on them if they start to bud. 10 days to due date. Second day training to Stetson.
So close.
Beck, looking smashing this morning.
Thank you.
We're about to plant trees. Do you know how many? Because I gotta go flat.
All right, we have 56 trees total.
That's not so bad. I don't know why I was thinking 86, and that feels overwhelming.
Well, because I bought—
but 56 feels better. 15, 21, 24-ish raspberries, blackberries, which we just plunk in right next to the pond. Yeah, that should be easy. Yeah. How do you like indoor chore duty?
It's okay.
He's not a big fan of the domestics. Would you rather be inside doing dishes or outside mucking stalls? Outside, I think. You gonna go with us, Henry? Plant trees?
Yeah.
First thing we gotta do, the bottom of our valley, the creek, take elevation.
2,290.
We want to get 50 feet up from the bottom point to get out of the frost line for these frost-sensitive fruit trees. Got our supplies— T-posts and woven wire. What's that to do with trees? Well, we got to protect the little trees from our animals, from deer. First up, marking where we're going to put these trees. So we'd be looking for 2340. You gonna help us flag? I'll let you put in a flag. 2330. We need to go up 10 more feet. I'm getting pretty high. I still need to go more. There's our house way down there. I mean, we got a lot of pasture below this point. That's gonna have to be for more frost tolerant things like walnut, locust. Oh wait, 2340. There it is. We already planted a tree here. These pallets did not work to protect them. Is it alive?
Yeah.
Here's how you know.
Yeah, I did that.
You scratched the bark. Is it green or brown? It's green. It's very much alive. So we have one here. See, we have two trees there. Put one about right there. Okay. Okay, well, let's go see if that one's alive. Bring it up here for the next flag. If it's alive, it did good this year. Yeah, look at that. This didn't hold them back. The lambs would get up on this and then eat the leaves. Plus, once these rot, these nails are going to be in our pasture. That's bad news because they can eat it and get what you call hardware disease. Is that alive? Yeah, it is. Well, we're doing good. We got to keep up with how many we're doing. Just like, should we count out 56? There's 3, 4, 5, plus that one's 6. So now count out 50 of that. Put a flag on that tree so we'll know to come mark it. Okay, you guys can't even sit in the film. I'm afraid. 950. Okay, so let's take one of these because this is the extra one and put it here so we'll see it. Remember it. Well, let's see if it's alive. It needs to be protected. The animal meat is our heart, the dairy and the meat. So we're prioritizing that. The fruit trees are only complementary. They're rubs for the animals, they're shade for the animals, they're fly traps for the animals. Well, how are they fly traps? Well, spiders like to live in trees. Birds like to live in trees. The bonus is the fruit. We want to be spread out. We want to think about their paddock size. We want at least a tree in every paddock. We can probably do 2-ish, and we're not looking for a row here. We're kind of looking for a savanna look. If you're not testing, you're guessing. I'm way high, so I can go down a bit right here. Our first orchard we planted way down there next to the road— not only was it too wet from all this drainage, it was in the frost pocket. I didn't know. We do have one survivor, one lone peach. We just marked along the whole bottom at the 50-foot elevation mark. Now we can kind of go crazy. No more paying attention to the phone. There's not going to be an orchard with neat and tidy rows. The orchard is going to be sparse and spread out and in the pasture. Oh boy, I hope these are not too big for the auger or we're going to be post hole digging. Should be buried.
That's a nice seat.
Yeah, that's probably a shovel. Hey, don't tear up our lilies. The coming frost will do that. Don't be fooled, spring is not here. Beautiful one working on clearing out for the remodel. How's this system working out? Shelf and container? It's good. Do you want to look at these trees before I start planting?
Yeah.
Looks like it's shovel work.
Yeah.
Oh really?
The root balls are like 10 inches wide.
Trying to clear this area.
You got two more shelves?
Two more shelves like this.
Okay.
I know one could at least go here, and maybe one can go here or here. I don't know.
This container idea was a good idea. Our outdoor pantry.
The nectarines and the peaches need to be up higher.
Everything's above the frost line. Okay, Josiah, we're gonna see how many you can plant in 20 minutes. How many you think? 5. I love it. We've got our rules. Honeycrisp needs to be planted with a Granny Smith, King David, or Arkansas Black.
Arkansas Black.
That's good.
We're gonna cover more than 5. 20 minutes. There we go, first tree planted. 2 minutes and 45 seconds. We got another one planted. Here, let's put this wood chips around the trees we just planted. Maybe a hair deeper. We need to plant to top that root. Hey, we're halfway there. 10 minutes. How many have we planted? At least 5. I did not think we were going to plant 10 in 20 minutes. Come on, let's go plant the rest of these trees. It would go faster if I wasn't chasing a 2-year-old around. But it's the 2-year-old that this is all about, really. 8 more minutes.
Okay, there we go.
Okay, now I bury it. You want to help bury? Yeah, put it all in like that.
Well, that was 23 minutes. How many did we get? 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. That's one every 2 minutes.
Was that past the thing you guys thought you guys gonna do?
Oh yeah, way past.
Whoa.
I was going to be happy with 2. We're over a fifth of the way done. 12 trees.
You got 12 trees in 20 minutes?
Mhm. Oh wow, you were like, I know, I was going to be happy with 2. I'm stoked. She says she made me the perfect ribeye. Ooh, there's a couple of perfect ribeyes. Some hamburgers. Fuel up, we got 42 trees left. Jonah's PT.
Yeah, so I found a PT that's more holistic and, um, less just like program. I'm not saying that program PT is bad. I'm just saying we've done that and these have some lingering effects.
Anyway, she does—
Yeah, so she does other things besides just PT, but she said, helping to ease and integrate the lingering physical and emotional stress still present are my goals as well for clients. 'Cause I had told her that there's some of that.
Hopefully she's individualistic.
Yes, that's what she is.
Gideon, let's go.
Okay.
Henry, good night. Good afternoon. Have a good nap. Soaking up some sun? Yeah. How about some sun and some exercise at the same time? This is called the planting tree feature at Earth's Gym.
Woo!
56 trees planted. Lest you think we're done. Deer, our livestock, gonna come nibble on these things. Plus we need to get them some amendments. This grass is about to explode. The blueberries are gonna have to wait till tomorrow. Here, unload these, Gideon. Okay, blueberries and raspberries, blackberries.
Yeah, great idea.
How do you like milking her over here? It's good. You still like it? It's worth the trouble bringing her over?
Yeah, it's not that bad.
Okay, we're planting the blueberries up by the pond. It's gonna be a nice relaxing spot. Kids can come and browse and eat on the blueberries. I'm thinking this bank— she wanted it, you know, in sort of the creek area, not necessarily the pond area. So maybe from that tree over on both banks. And then how about along this bank? I don't know if we'll be able to put them all out. We're probably gonna have to put the rest down below the pond. Okay, there's not as many as I thought. That's good. We want to do both sides. We probably do 6 feet apart.
All right, I think I'm gonna put the rest of these along that bank.
Squares with one slit down the middle so that we can get it around our blueberries. This is a non-toxic weed barrier. We'll put the mulch on top of this. And it just gives them a head start over the weeds. I'm just gonna put a flag in it so that people string trim, they don't miss it and accidentally run into this thing, and we can find them. Boom! That feels good. Sun's up, we got something odd— blueberries berries in. It's gonna be a little Eden over here. Sunbathing over there, grabbing some shade under the pine trees, swinging off this walnut tree into the brook, into the pond, coming snacking on blueberries. What will be your favorite feature?
Whoopsing.
I am about to pot up— well, I don't know what you call it. I'm gonna put these raspberries in a pot. My helper came and he helped me get all these planted. This is a Fall Gold variety. This is a Blackberry, and this one is a Heritage Red. I got these trees all from Trees of Antiquity. They have a lot of heritage breed— heritage breed— heritage variety. I don't know what you call them. The reason that we went with this company is Trees of Antiquity, they had a certain variety called the Yellow Bellflower. And the Yellow Bellflower, um, we had eaten from Justin's granny's orchard, and they made the best applesauce that I ever made.
This is where we planted all our trees. We're way up here. There's our house. The road stops here for today. We've got to water those plants, so I need to get the gravity-fed water line going on this side of the mountain, because I don't think we're going to be pumping water from the house with our well pump this high up. We do have a line all the way down to here. This is the pig land, and we do have some trees below that pig land, so We get water here. We've got to get this back on there. This is a pressure regulator. There's too much pressure coming off the mountain. Oh, here, that's the fitting right there. Takes it down from like 70 PSI to 30. I meant to bring the measuring wheel, left it in Sally. I could be measuring this distance. 550 feet. Let's take a break for lunch. Look what I saw— cow's having a party out of the pole barn. What happened? Show them how to do it, stud. I guess the gate didn't get shut in the back. Did you shut the door behind them back there?
I tied it.
Okay, where's Henry?
He's asleep.
Oh my gosh, how precious. What are you up to, darling?
I'm baking a cake.
What kind of cake?
Chocolate.
This is your weekly routine now? Every Monday? Yep. Celebrate Monday, y'all. I love that you cook like this, Becky. We've arrived. We got a baker in the house. I know, we, we have arrived.
Birthday cake.
This is the height of parenting right here. Homeboy likes broccoli. That's the one vegetable you like. Oh, he does. What do you think?
Is it good?
He's figuring out that fork, buddy.
I know, it's a huge fork for him.
Lily, good job. Mom, how good is it?
It's good.
Delicious.
Rebecca bought us some time on the raspberries. We want to do this with the raspberries. I wonder if we should do it right here where these struggling blueberries are. They're gonna bear fruit this year. I think they can be improved. That leaves one spot above the people barn. Uh-oh, it's where we piled all our silt. That's the silt from the bottom pond. Great for our soil, it's great for our pasture. We just need to get a manure spreader, and that's harder said than done. These are the T's that go in the water line. Something might end up being something like that. That go every 100 feet so we can connect a hose right up through there. We're going to be running a hose and we'll need connections. Well, we're going to be running a line and then we'll take a water hose and connect to it and come down and water the trees. What you doing?
Well, I guess the path.
What are you going to use that for?
For a horn.
This is it. I guess his horn's working. Water comes down off the mountain. We can shut it off to deal with this if we want. We can control the amount of water coming through. And when we need to hook a water hose to it, well, we put a quick connect on here and voilà. We need to make about 5 or 6 of these to get us to all our apple trees today. Ah. You got it?
Yes!
Shoot, forgot about the log. Should have brought a chainsaw. For you guys, it's probably been a couple minutes. What? For us though, it's been like 24 hours. We're gonna have to hike them.
No way.
No, we can go get a chainsaw. We'll get a chainsaw next time. It's just gonna be easier to hike these. This needs to Have a T on it.
Okay, there we go.
Now we're ready to catch a hose. Water gravity flow. Water has been— we've been letting it flow because it's winter and we're not, we're not using it. So, but there's good potential something's gotten clogged, surely, in this interim. Finally remember to chainsaw log. We can get through now, boys.
Let's get that started.
Listen, do you hear it? It's running. That's a good sign. We just got to put this in. It's running. We got a bunch of silt in the bottom. It's running plenty.
Well, you're gonna get splashed eventually. I know, but we'll have to help you out. Whoa!
You ready to get helped out?
Yeah. And up, up, up, up the hole. Whoa, boots, boots!
It's only got to fill up like an inch and then we got water coming through here. And once water fills up that line and we stop it off, it'll start filling up this tank. We got plenty of water in this upper creek here. Let's just get this kind of stuff out of there. Oh look, there's two leaks getting down to the tank, but we got the water going a lot more and I don't think that's enough to stop us today. Hold on, let's see if this sped up. Whoa, it's a gush! Oh yeah, that's set up going now. Wow, look at this!
Look at this!
Yeah, you can climb to the top. Wow, look at this feature! It's cool to have this stuff on our farm, huh?
This is going to be so easy for you. Come on up.
That's good enough right there. I'm just gonna wait. No, that's good enough. That is cool. Let's see you come down.
I want you to do it. Look at this.
Wow. I don't see the fun in this. This is cool, and this will be here for your kids and their kids. This ain't going anywhere. Oh, well, we don't have water.
Why?
We'll have to come re-put that on there. And we gotta figure out why we don't have water. I was afraid of this. I bet the water line's disconnected somewhere up higher up. Here we are again at the base. I can't believe this was happening. All right, another hike up this thing. Hey, come on, what happened to kids being better climbers? We're almost full. Then I can pull.
Is that how you do it?
Have to do it every time?
Is that how they make you do it?
Wow, I'm not able to get that. I could cut that right in, put a male to male on here. Whoa, well, that's a good sign.
That's cool.
Wow, that's a good sign.
Here.
Okay, okay, I don't get it. Water's flowing hard. I don't know if these Leathermans will do it or not. Nope. All right, let's hike it. I bet it's come disconnected somewhere. It's blown out, it's become disconnected. Why is there no water in this?
They're just getting air.
Oh, there's some water. Wow, wow, okay, there's plenty of water. This is going to be going down to the mountain. Look how fast that's going.
I know. Oh, it's broken up with a hole right here.
Okay, I'm soaked. So let's find out where this thing is broken. Maybe it's right here. Might be right here. Under the rock. There's a rock on it. Maybe it had to build up pressure in the tank. Had to get so much weight on it. Push it through this. Look at here! Hey, no, it wasn't running when first time we came through, but I bet all we had to do was wait till some pressure built up. Okay, it's gonna be a surprise for Josiah and Pete. Probably been a little more patient. Oh, thanks for holding my hand. All right, this is gonna water our trees. Oh, we're watering our trees in a minute! Put the water above it, it's gonna run downhill. Put it like this, like that. We are watering our trees from the mountain. We did it! Look at that flow. No electricity he needed for that. Hey, you finished your lines? Yeah. Guess what? I got water to them. Yeah, I've been watering the trees. Let's go tell Mom. You did good work. Hey, look, Mr. Henry, he's sitting. You got to be in your truck. Guess what? I'm watering the trees from the mountain.
Oh good.
The only problem is this bucket's lost its handle. This gets tickled every time. You like seeing that bucket take off? My biggest YouTube Short fan right there.
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