Justin Rhodes

Justin Rhodes is a popular YouTuber.

He has more than 1 million subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel.

Justin is also a homesteader, permaculturist, entrepreneur, author, and educator.

Introduction-

Justin Rhodes was born on 31 October 1978.

He hails from Fletcher, North Carolina, United States.

His father, Willard, was initially a farmer, then he worked as an orthodontics travelling salesman.

Justin grew up in the country but used to travel to the town for work; he used to run a punch press.

The starting point-

Once his wife, Rebekah Rhodes, picked up on an article on the dangers of conventional milk and hormones in it and convinced Justin to switch to the healthy organic milk.

After switching to organic milk, she started requesting other organic food items.

This shift bothered Justin, as at that time, his income didn’t improve, and he was frugal, and organic food has been expensive in the groceries compared to the processed food.

Around 2015, he was dumpster diving and living off food stamps.

Once, while checking out bundles of organic kales and lettuce, Justin stumbled upon a lettuce seed pack; and was surprised by learning that the lettuce and its seed pack cost the same, but with the seed pack, he can grow a hundred lettuces and all he needed to do was to put in the labour.

So, he bought the seed pack.

But at that time, as Justin had no knowledge of growing plants, he called up a friend of Rebekah’s parents who was into gardening; he arrived with a tiller and helped him prepare his garden.

His inspiration & book recommendations-

Thanks to Justin and Rebekah being health conscious, they continued growing their own food.

Once, his mentor gave him a ‘Salad Bar Beef’ book written by Joel Salatin, and his mentor said that he could make a living or a side income by growing beef on his land.

After reading Joel’s book, Justin got inspired by him; the book explained the importance of moving animals frequently and getting more from a land; he started implementing Joel’s methods.

He is an avid reader and reads diverse books; one of the first books that he ever read was ‘Pastured Poultry Profits.’

At the beginning of his gardening and poultry career, Justin read ‘Pastured Poultry Profits,’ ‘The New Organic Grower,’ ‘The Small-Scale Poultry Flock,’ and ‘Introduction to Permaculture;’ he is appreciative of these books and recommends them.

It was Rebekah’s thing-

Initially, Rebekah became health-conscious and got into gardening, and Justin too started getting involved in gardening.

Later, she started working on a market farm and selling vegetables, but as he wasn’t into it, he stayed away from it.

Later, as she became pregnant and got sick, Justin had to follow through the market farm as by that time she had gained customers.

Stepping up his permaculture game-

While homesteading, Justin got into permaculture; he wasn’t efficient at permaculture because he was doing it by compartmentalizing animals and gardens and wasn’t connecting them.

Then, one of his friends showed him a Geoff Lawton’s video; he observed that unlike him, Geoff connects chickens with the garden by placing them in temporary electric nets and then planting the garden in the same place as the nets; he found Geoff’s techniques to be efficient.

So, Justin decided to study permaculture from Geoff Lawton.

But at that time, as he had no money, he took a tax return and travelled to Geoff’s Zaytuna Farm in Channon, Australia; here, he got trained as a Permaculture Designer.

Here, Justin was shown a movie, ‘Permaculture Orchard,’ and this movie impressed him as it was very educational, cinematic, well-produced and entertaining.

He also studied natural chicken care under Pat Foreman.

Getting inspired by ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’-

After returning to the United States from Australia, Justin’s mentor handed him ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ book.

He got inspired by this book, and as he has been raising chickens for a long time, he decided to launch a product related to it.

Also, at that time, Justin was into market farming, but he started struggling with the symptoms of Lyme disease, so he had to temporarily wind down from farming and decided to launch the product meanwhile in order to not lose touch with farming.

So, in January 2015, he started Abundant Permaculture LLC and launched a Kickstarter film project, ‘Permaculture Chickens;’ he got 1,099 backers pledging $35,048 for his project.

This was Justin’s first product; he also published a companion eBook with his film project.

His YouTube channel-

Much before starting his YouTube channel, Justin started a blog on farming.

Once Rebekah stumbled upon a viral YouTube video of a family vlogger and started exploring his other videos.

When Justin watched the videos of the vlogger, he observed that he was filming the videos on his iPhone.

He was confident that he too can produce videos on YouTube, so, he bought a Canon G7X camera and started documenting his homestead life.

Even though Justin started his eponymous YouTube channel on 26 September 2012, he published his first video, ‘Permaculture Chickens’ only on 26 January 2015.

His wife also has a YouTube channel, ‘The Beautiful Life,’ and his kids also have a channel, ‘RhodesBros.’

After Justin started working on his YouTube channel, he shifted his focus away from blogging as he found YouTubing to be more enjoyable than blogging.

A successful YouTuber & his books-

As of June 2023, Justin has 1.06M subscribers on his eponymous YouTube channel and has 111K followers on Instagram.

He earns from a variety of sources like advertisements on his YouTube channel, courses, merchandise, affiliate marketing, and sponsorships.

Canon EOS R5 is Justin’s main camera.

He owns a streaming network, ‘Abundance Plus.’

Justin published a documentary, ‘the Great American Farm Tour;’ he along with his family travelled across the United States for ten months.

On 1 March 2022, he published ‘The Rooted Life’ book; on 14 March 2023, he published a children’s book, ‘Where Are Your Shoes, Mr. Brown?’

Illness-

Justin suffers from chronic Lyme disease.

Previously, he contracted Campylobacter infection from handling raw poultry, where he accidentally ingested some manure; consequently, he developed reactive arthritis.

Personal life-

Justin is married to Rebekah Rhodes.

This couple has four sons, Jonah, Josiah, Gideon, Henry, and a daughter, Lily; he homeschools his kids.

Justin works together with his family in his 140-acre farm near Asheville, North Carolina and lives here.

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is his go-to book in difficult times.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Justin Rhodes?

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