I’ve been searching out gardening info on the internet, and I’ve come across a couple of vlogs I’d like to share. The first one is Justin Rhodes’s channel. Justin Rhodes and his family (wife Rebekah – aka the Beautiful One – and 4 sweet kids – Jonah, Josiah, Lily and Gideon) are traveling around the country in a converted school bus they call Mabel, visiting homesteads, organic farms, and backyard gardens on the Greatest American Farm Tour. They have a farm/homestead in North Carolina (that is currently being maintained by some friends), and the channel is a wealth of info on working with chickens to cut down on the amount of physical labor associated with gardening. Justin contracted Lyme disease a few years ago, which severely curtailed what he was able to do on their farm. They had run a CSA and/or a market garden, and a summer camp on their land previously, but with the Lyme disease knocking back his energy, they had to reimagine their future. They scaled the farming back to “just” grow enough for themselves, got involved with the permaculture movement, produced a movie called Permaculture Chickens, and started a daily vlog. Their climate is totally different than ours, but I LOVE watching their vlogs, both the older ones, where they document life on the farm, and the newer ones, where they are showing all the places they’re traveling to.
The other vlog I want to share, ART & BRI, is also not arctic. This is another vlog with a family of six living on a farm/homestead in North Carolina. These folks are friends of the Rhodes’s – in fact, before the Rhodes family left on their cross-country trip, they gave Arthur and Brianna all their poultry. Arthur and Brianna also have goats and a dairy cow, which we are most likely never going to have. Arthur is an RN, and Brianna is a stay-at-home homeschool mom. He had been spending so much of his time working, the kids hardly ever saw him. He and Brianna wanted to do something to change that situation, and wanted to do it together, so they started a vlog to earn a part-time income while focusing on projects to improve and expand their homestead. They share a lot of great information on a variety of farming/gardening/homesteading topics.
Both of these vlogs are very well-edited and filled with inspiration for people who want to grow their own food. The settings are beautiful and the joy and contentment of the vloggers is palpable. After watching many of the videos from both these vlogs, I feel like I have friends in North Carolina, even though we’ve never met. One caveat: if you are trying to build this kind of life yourself, BEWARE! It is very easy to spend far too much of the day watching other people do it!
Butterscotch Grove 